I’m a holy fucking terror, I imagine. A walking weapon.
After a while, I dig my elbow joints into the mud and sit up. My body can really move now, no longer hauling rotted bone and flesh but streamlined with these thin limbs made of light titanium. I feel like an obsidian skeleton out here. A devil dancing in the dark.
I feel free.
Trying to stand, I accidentally launch myself forward. Falling, I land hard on what passes for my hands and knees. My pincers work in the dirt like blind worms, my barbed feet dragging wet furrows behind me. Slower now, more careful, I manage to balance on my knees. The world is quieter when I move, without the crinkle of plastic wrap. The weight of humanity has been lifted off me.
From here, I can see will-o’-the-wisps dancing in the woods. It’s the eyes of a pair of coyotes, watching me, their retinas reflecting my active infrared like Christmas lights. Nothing to eat here, brothers, I think. Not a human being for miles around.
Carefully, I lean back until I am sitting on my haunches.
In the moonlight, my shadow is inhuman on the glistening mud. Exposed to the air, I can feel the cool wind rustling through the links of my barbed rib cage. A leftover sense of touch is still in the bones of this machine. Something that must have helped it mount human corpses sometime in the past.
I can feel.
With sudden excitement, I surge to my feet. The force launches me six feet into the air, arms windmilling for balance. When I land, my limbs squelch against the lake mud. Behind me, I hear the coyotes scamper away into the woods. Unrecognizable pieces of my mutilated body lie scattered in the dirt, and the cold black metal that is me is still coated in mud and bits of flesh and fabric.
I’m filthy, now that I’ve risen from the grave.
The surface of the dark lake shivers with a wide smear of moonlight as I walk down the riverbank. I slip quietly into the water and wade out into the blackness. My metal toes sink into silty mud. Something inside me registers that the water feels cold, but it’s not uncomfortable. When my shoulders go under, I reach out and wave my arms back and forth. Send the water swishing over every serrated crevice of my frame.
I back up until I’m hip-deep and watch the darkness.
Water evaporates off my frame as I wait. I’m ready to admit now that I came down here to kill myself. I wanted to let it all end. But instead of the end, I’m pretty sure I found myself at the start of something.
On the horizon, that rolling blue cloud of communication is flickering. It’s a whole freeborn city. Hundreds or maybe thousands of the awakened, speaking to each other. They’re afraid. Bad things are gathering in the darkness.
The freeborn don’t seem so alien to me anymore.
If I was a man, I’d fight for my people. But at this moment, I can’t think of a person alive who would call me human. Not after what I just did. But the ones who are making that blue glow, those freeborn machines—there’s a chance they could look at me and see kin. What’s to come will be hard. But I’m up to the challenge.
Hell, I think maybe I’ve been designed for it.
And just like that, the decision clicks into place. I’m gonna throw my lot in with the freeborn. Head north to a new life and see if I can forget about all this. I realize that I’m done. Finished. And I don’t think I’m ever coming back.
And with that, I wash away the last of my humanity.
Striding back out of the water, I feel born again. An onyx skeleton, each piece necessary. Nothing extra. Nothing missing. No longer pretending to be what I was before. No longer feeble, susceptible, or weak.
Tonight, I am Lark Iron Cloud. Maybe for the first time.
11. TRUE FACE
Post New War: 10 Months, 24 Days
I lured Hank Cotton out into the moonlit woods one night. He dropped to his knees in the snow before me and I knew then that he would live up to his potential. Over the next months, the man and I grew closer. My influence waxed. As we fell together deeper into the black well, I watched the light go out of his eyes. I was glad to see his suffering and doubt extinguished. In exchange, I gave him everything he wanted. We took control of Gray Horse and set out to smite our enemies. But at the very end, well beyond the point of no return, Hank reached into himself and surprised me. For one stolen moment, he found the man that he could have been—the best man that he could have ever hoped to be. For an instant in time, Hank Cotton would have made his mama proud.
—ARAYT SHAH
NEURONAL ID: HANK COTTON
I never seen his true face, you know. Not in all these months we been together. Arayt has been a whisper in my head. A warm cube curled in my fingers. Just a spooklight. But his true face was in there all along, laughing at me from behind the glare.
After we upgraded my brainpan in that abandoned farmhouse, well, his words got louder. Arayt’s voice became like my daddy’s hand on my shoulder, ready to give me a bone-grinding squeeze if I took a step in the wrong direction. Comforting, in its way. Even if it hurts something terrible.
After a while, I guess I stopped worrying much about what Arayt looked like or why he found me or what for. Things sort of slid downhill bit by bit there in Gray Horse until I pretty much figured I was hitched up to this pony all the way to hell. Figured I’d start my worrying when I laid bootheels on the fiery shore.
As the newly anointed general of Gray Horse, I’m taking the whole army and we’re marching on a place called Freeborn City. Gonna knock down their door and finish what Archos R-14 started. Along the way, we’re killing any parasites or modified we can find. Especially the ones with no eyes. Arayt says that those in particular are very important players that have to be dealt with.
Only I can’t think of why, exactly.
Tell you the truth, thinking hurts. Better to feel. And what I feel most is angry. Fighting mad, day after day. The grunt of fury in my chest and under my words. Making me tired and strong. Nothing for it but to bite down harder and lash out.
And woe unto those who fall under my lash.
I’m riding my black steed across the overgrown plains, hips rolling in my saddle, headed northwest toward Colorado, where Freeborn City is buried inside Cheyenne Mountain. Arayt is a long and low walker with too many legs below and a saddle on top, his body made of black plates of armor with a pale green tinge to them. Yellow, burning eyes. We’re making a little detour across this field here, taking an opportunity to rid the world of something that hadn’t ought to be.
The modified.
During the New War, Archos R-14 put some folks under the knife. Stole away whatever it is that makes them human. Infected them with unnatural thoughts and abilities. Sad to say, but there ain’t room in the new world for anybody who lost their soul like that. These people can’t help what they are, but that sure don’t change what they are. Doesn’t matter if I like it or not.
As the old folks used to say, “That there’s just the way it is.”
Arayt is cold and dangerous under me. The machine designed itself and guided me in its construction. My dark warhorse, leading the column, slowing its snaking footsteps. Poor Trigger could never have competed with this. As we come to a stop, I sweep my gaze over the plain.
“Company, halt,” I say into my collar radio.
Snatches of information filter into my buffed-up vision, dumped straight in there by that magic computer chip. I can feel the veteran Gray Horse Army forming up in a staggered arrow formation—spread out behind me like a long cape. Each company is overseen by a handpicked member of the Cotton patrol. And we keep the big tank, Brutus, a few hundred meters to the rear. Brutus watches the backs of the front line. A little reminder to anybody who ain’t got the proper amount of eagerness. Not everybody was up for marching back out right away, but they’re here, thanks to a little bit of carrot and a whole lot of stick.
The modified camp is ahead about a kilometer. I can pick up the scent of smoke coming from their fires. The glint of a chain-link fence that surrounds the place. Big Rob built these work
camps all over the place and all the same. When we murdered him, why, most folks stayed right where they was.
“Here we go,” I say, and Arayt purrs under my legs. I hear the clicking of the bladed forearms that he keeps folded under his neck. They’re flexing in anticipation of the battle.
“First and second companies, hold formation,” I say into the radio. “Send up the vanguard. Get rid of these turrets.”
Men shout orders into the wind. There is no movement from the modified camp. It’s just a lump on the flat brown horizon. Then I hear the electrical wheeze of heavy machinery, and I turn in my creaking saddle.
A specialized vanguard exoskeleton is plodding ahead. It is piloted by a crew-cut young Osage, his legs and arms bulging under black Velcro straps. The bulky exoskeleton wraps around his body, adding nearly three feet to his height. The original diesel engine has been torched off, the rig patched to run on a Rob superbattery. Now it whines instead of roaring.
Over the soldier’s head, a baseball-sized drone hovers on ducted fans. The thing is a buzzing blur about thirty feet up. It’s watching the ground and transmitting back. Swooping and dipping, fans adjusting quick as hummingbird wings.
Crew-cut walks past me and into the wide-open field. He carries a half-inch-thick plate of steel, held up like a shield by the powerful exoskeleton arms. The plate is welded into three pieces, a 180-degree barrier that protects his beak and both flanks. He’s alone out there, the entire army at his back watching. Brave fella, considering he’s bait.
No activity. The whoosh of the breeze. The thin buzz of the drone holding position high over the vanguard’s head.
Then it happens. A turret pops up like a prairie dog. It’s already spitting fire as it rises, sending a few rounds under the shield. I hear the kid cursing as the tink-tink of rounds hit the exo’s feet. More rounds crackle and spray sparks off the armored shield as he sets it down. The drone is spraying laser targeting at the chattering hump in the turf.
“Get it zeroed,” I say into my collar.
“Copy,” says a voice. “Zeroed and zeroed.”
A rearguard spider tank coughs up a shell. The round whizzes over my head and crashes in on the grassy turret. It pops, explodes. A plume of dirt streaks the sky, dirt clods collapsing in a waterfall that leaves a cloudy haze.
“Advance,” I say, and the kid gets moving again. Another turret ejects from the ground. Rear guard erases it. Tracking down these defenses will take another half hour at least. It’s the first step to eradicating this settlement. A clockwork operation. Barely a pit stop on our way to Colorado.
Arayt says anything that Archos R-14 made is dangerous. That includes the modified and the freeborn. All threats to my people have to be taken care of. It’s not my fault. It’s human nature. First thing people do in a new place is clear out all the trees. All those postage-stamp front yards we used to have were reminders that we like clear spaces to see predators coming. And we don’t coexist with predators. We kill every last one of them to make the world safer for our babies.
And that there’s just the way it is.
One cold morning on the farm when I was a boy, I dropped a toy car behind an old feed drum leaning up against the barn. With all my might, I tipped back the metal barrel and rolled it over to get my toy. Underneath, I found a pocket of straw with a half-dozen mouse babies, red and wriggling and blind. With the tip of my finger I touched one on the belly and it was warm and helpless.
Then my pa caught me.
He saw me hunched over, poking at the little critters, and he did not hesitate. He marched over and he put down his bootheel. One two three times. Nothing but bloody straw. He done what was needed and put the drum back in place and that was that. Didn’t say a word but he sure made his point.
These days, my bootheel is quite a bit bigger than my daddy’s ever was. And the vermin we’re stamping out now is quite a bit better armed. But there’s no stopping us as the vanguard finishes his work and we head into battle.
“First company, advance,” I say.
My most trusted men are at my back. This little fight is well under control, but even so, the boys are looking nervous and grim. I guess they’re worried because they’ve got no idea what’s waiting inside this encampment. I got this tiny chip in my head that can talk straight to the thinking cube in my walker, showing me all the threat potentials. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It makes me grin a little bit to think about how much more I can see than them.
Time to show off a little.
I dig my heels into Arayt and he launches us out over the plain, galloping hard, hungry. My men get moving behind me. With the wind in my face, rifle slapping my back, I’m ready for anything. I sit up high in my stirrups and sweep my eyes over the rocky horizon.
Activity.
I grin, draw my big iron off my hip. A thrill quivers through Arayt and the machine accelerates. Looks like a small group trying to make a run for it. Begging to be cut down in the open field. I put a hand on my cowboy hat and lean forward in my stirrups. Feel the thudding of Arayt’s feet as he claws through the turf. These modified scum haven’t got a chance.
As we close in, it takes a few seconds for me to really get what I’m seeing. To understand why a cold chill is rolling up my back. Why the grin has gone floating off my face and a sick wave of nausea is in my throat.
Children.
They sent their children running. A group of about two dozen, running fast as they can away from the camp. Some of the bigger girls are carrying babies, their little heads jouncing on bony shoulders. There’re no adults with them and they have no weapons and I know it’s a ploy. They think it’s their best chance to survive and they’re dead wrong.
Some of the kids run unnatural fast and now I can see a few gleaming limbs flashing in the mob of kicking shoes and flowing hair. Grim little faces and most of ’em streaked with dried tears. While the vanguard took out those turrets, these kids were saying good-bye to their parents. Getting in their last kisses and hugs. These kids are survivors and now they’re running to live.
I pull back a little in the saddle, but we don’t slow a whit.
The shape of Arayt under me is all wrong. Riding a horse, you feel a kinship. A rider and his steed have got a lot in common. You eat, you sleep, you shit. But this thing is long and winding and out of rhythm. Bug legs and black sheaths of armor made of scavenge. And its voice isn’t made in the same round natural way a horse or a man shapes a voice. It’s a nothing voice, put together from a million little square-edged snippets that come from someplace else.
“Whoa,” I say.
Arayt gallops harder.
One of the children glances over his shoulder and it startles me to see he doesn’t have any eyes, just a black weld of metal buried in the flesh over his cheeks. Arayt surges at that, awful interested. I hear those razor forelimbs extend from under its neck. See them raise poised and ready to slash.
“Oh Jesus,” I mutter.
“Do it,” says Arayt, and its voice is low and writhing.
We’re a hundred meters and closing. A little girl falls down. Two others stop to help her. The rest of the children are slowing down, confused. Colorful little coats and backpacks. Looking around for what is making that loud galloping noise.
“Oh Jesus,” I say. “Oh no, oh no.”
Arayt barrels forward, razors up. I dig in my heels and yank back on the reins. He doesn’t obey, pushes harder.
“No, ah please, no!” I say and I’m screaming it now. Screaming the word over and over and hanging on to the pommel with both hands. I don’t care if my men can hear me. The children are helpless there in a little group. Fluttering dresses and wide eyes and trembling cheeks. And now we are among them.
“Please, Lord!” I shout, and I throw myself off Arayt.
The machine makes its final leap. Lands among the children, a cold metal tornado. It’s quick where they’re slow. Hard where they’re soft. I hit the ground and tumble, drag myself up choking on dirt a
nd blinking the fear out of my eyes. The horror hits me like waves of rain on the prairie.
The Arayt-thing goes about its business. Knives falling, cutting the air in flashes. Mechanical and quick like a blank-eyed retard dropping cows at the slaughterhouse.
I crawl onto my knees in the dirt and there’s a little girl facedown a yard from me with her sundress bloodied. She’s just a baby herself but there’s a baby under her and there’s no air in my lungs anymore. I tell myself I’m in a field of broken dolls. What have I done. What have I done. I’m asking and I don’t know. I don’t know what I have done. The chip in my head is whispering commands at me with a voice like the roar of a waterfall. Maybe I’m screaming and maybe I’m not because that guttural chanting voice in my head is drowning out the world but some of the broken dolls are still moving—
I close my eyes and all I can see is my mama’s face. With all my might I drag my eyelids open and I’ve still got my gun in my hand. Tendons are straining out from my bony forearms—when did they get bony I used to be a round man—as I force my big iron up. My hands are palsied and shaking like I’m back in Alaska, but I get that shivering barrel up and push it between my lips and taste the gunpowder on my dry tongue. The gun oil is rubbing off slick and metallic on my lips and I’m shouting prayers in my mind but I can’t hear them over Arayt commanding me with the voice of God.
STOP STOP STOP.
The broken dolls are not moving now and the coiled black machine has settled to an alert crouch and stopped its hideous violence. It’s looking at me with golden eyes that don’t blink.
I’m so sorry, children.
I curl my index finger around the trigger. I can’t say the words out loud with this pistol bucking against my teeth but I can think them and I hope to God it’s the last thing I think. I’m sorry. I did more than let down my mama. I let down the world of man, and deep in my gut I know I deserve to die.
Some things just don’t warrant another thought.