Robogenesis

  “The point of what?”

  I don’t want to say it. Don’t want to put voice to such a terrible question. I know there’s no good answer. “The point of going on living.”

  Cherrah shifts against me. She is shaking a little bit. I put a hand on her shoulder, concerned. Then I realize that she is laughing. She reaches back and roughly pats my ass. “Drama queen,” she murmurs.

  “I’m serious,” I say, nestling my face into her hair. Sleep is almost on me now. The world feels huge outside. I’m crouched behind my own eyelids, both of them giant like the screen of a drive-in movie.

  “Stop thinking, Cormac,” says Cherrah. “I need you. That’s enough.”

  “Yeah,” I say, but I must not sound convinced.

  “If you aren’t sure whether you want to live . . . ,” she says, turning to face me. “Try dying. Get back to me with how that goes.”

  We make human contact on a mountain pass in what used to be Washington. The roads are empty and we haven’t seen any sign of habitation for days. I’m half asleep on the gunnery turret, watching the snow-kissed pines roll and sway. Houdini’s half-filled belly net is creaking rhythmically with each step, like the rigging of an old ship. We’re climbing in elevation and the wind is getting sharp, but I’m warm and drowsy inside my arctic-tested down jacket.

  This overgrown highway cuts through endless columns of tall pines, climbing the pass one monotonous bend at a time. Mist creeps among the low branches on either side, nipping at the shoulders of the road. Looks like it’s been years since anybody came through here. Dirt and mud are caked in tidal pools. We tread over a thin, sandy layer of muck like the bottom of a shallow sea, with vivid green pines rising up around us like kelp stretching for the surface.

  Every now and then, I can make out the rusting remains of a car flipped over along the side of the road or impaled among the trees. These are the victims of those first few minutes of the New War. Horrible yawning moments when a hundred million vehicles became coffins and our relationship with technology shifted violently.

  Watching the trees is how I spot the hidden compound.

  A rusted old gate, suffocated with brush, hangs over a dirt road that branches off the old highway. For a split second, the faded road lines up and I’m able to see all the way down it from my high moving vantage point. I make out the mossy, sloping roof of a camouflaged building in the distance. From the ground, I never would have seen anything. Another second and I would have missed it.

  “Hold up, Houdini,” I call. Nothing happens right away. Not with a walker this size. He just starts moving slower and slower. Finally, Houdini takes one last wheezing step and comes to a stop. Birds call to each other over the rustle of the breeze.

  “What’s happening?” asks Cherrah.

  “Camp. Two hundred meters into the woods,” I say.

  “Could be good scavenge,” she says.

  “Or survivors,” I say.

  “Way out here? Fat chance,” she says.

  We both turn as something disturbs the brush. The moist leafy saplings next to the road shiver as something scrambles through them. Or someone. Cherrah swings around the big-caliber machine gun, her hands wrapped tight on the grips. I lean forward, staring. I catch the silhouette of a child. The kid is wearing dark goggles. His sharp shoulder blades are flashing, dirty elbows pumping as the boy runs over damp pine needles toward that half-collapsed building.

  “Ho, Cherrah,” I say. “It’s a kid.”

  “No way,” she says, leaning heavily into the grips and pointing the barrel straight up. She wipes her hands on her shirt.

  “Well?” she says. “You take point and I’ll cover, Bright Boy. Let’s go say hello.”

  The primeval forest is still, a soaring cathedral, rich with the smell of earth and rotting leaves and chlorophyll. The rows of craggy trees are like silent, damp sentinels. The cold mist that glides among their roots forms a pale skirt that limits our tactical visibility.

  Cherrah paces silently ten meters behind me, a light machine gun slung over her shoulder. She’s carrying only one extra belt of ammo to keep the weight down. With the injured leg, she’d rather lay down cover fire from a fixed position than run and gun.

  That’s why I’ve got an M4 assault rifle on the low ready. Extra magazines of ammunition flop silently in the molly webbing on my chest protector.

  “Rally point is Houdini,” I whisper.

  “Right-o,” she says.

  I glance behind us as the woods swallow Houdini. The big walker is standing as tall as it can to try to track us. His intention light glows a wary yellow. After about fifty meters, the narrow, soaring pines give way to fatter, lower hemlock trees that are covered in preternaturally green moss. Their branches reach down like shaggy claws.

  I hear a bird whistle from Cherrah.

  “Nine o’clock,” she whispers.

  Glancing over, I’m just in time to glimpse the boy as he pops up and dives through thick foliage. Too far away to shout at. He’s intentionally skirting around us. Heading for the gaping entrance of the largest building, the doorway a dark slanting mouth wreathed in ivy.

  I signal to Cherrah to be careful. An old barbed-wire fence has fallen down ahead of us. We gingerly step over the rusting barbs. Our footsteps are swallowed by spongy mounds of fallen pine needles. It smells good out here. Clean.

  Like life is on the rebound.

  The rest of the complex comes into view. Cheap sheets of corrugated metal thrown together into rambling structures. Planks of local wood have been cut and nailed together into boardwalks that lead through the brush from one crumbling structure to the next. At this elevation, the ground must be either snow or mud for most of the year.

  I lead us in a zigzagging route toward the largest building. This is where the boy was headed. Along the way there are no human prints. No camp smoke in the sky or on the breeze. No garbage or voices or human waste. No real indication that anyone lives here at all.

  Which is exactly the way human survivors would like to keep it.

  We stop at the tree line before a small clearing. The main building squats fifty yards away on a bare treeless patch, its mold-eaten walls leaning. Made of brown stone and wood, the building gives me the feeling that it grew out of the dirt. At some point it was an old house, something out of “Hansel and Gretel,” but now it’s been added on to. Scabby flakes of paint dangle from plywood additions. The front entrance is a double door with a half-moon window above it. The glass is broken out and rust has eaten the door hinges.

  Something thumps against the other side of the door.

  Cherrah and I hold position. Rifle up, I go to a knee behind the nearest tree. Dew soaks into my jacket shoulder where I lean into the bark. The door shudders, hit by something from the inside. I flick the selector switch to semiautomatic with my thumb. Hear a quiet snick as Cherrah deploys the bipod on her machine gun.

  The front door handle turns and the door begins to swing open. I put up a hand to tell Cherrah to hold fire. It could be the boy, I tell myself. Please let it be the boy. A widening crack appears between the two doors. There is only blackness inside and now I feel that old familiar horror climbing up the back of my throat.

  A face pushes out into the light.

  I swallow as two unblinking camera eyes appear, twin reflections of the crisp morning sunlight. They are embedded in pale blue plastic skin, molded into a perpetual screaming smile. The blue casing is freckled, blooming with age spots of mold. A stringy coat of moss grows like a rash across its chest.

  The Big Happy domestic robot steps out of the doorway and onto the small porch. Cocks its head sideways and starts a scan of the clearing. My mind is hit with memories as I watch that permanent smile, a rictus, slowly turning. I thought these memories were gone. In Boston, on that first day it happened, my brother and I saw these smiles everywhere we looked. My brain tasted the horror of it and withdrew, refused to remember the atrocities.

  The Big Happies. They’re filling
the garbage trucks with bodies, Jack, and they’re dumping them off the bridge. The people are falling, Jack. Jackie? Shut up, Cormac. Keep moving.

  I raise a hand and clench it into a fist. Extend my index finger and drop it twice. Fire.

  Blow this fucker away.

  Cherrah flops forward, resting the gun’s bipod on a fallen log. She yanks back the bolt and digs the stock into her shoulder. Takes a breath and then lets her gun stutter. A couple of dozen rounds climb the humanoid robot’s torso. Impacts chewing up the plastic shell, spraying the entrance with smoking shards. The Big Happy stumbles awkwardly and drops onto its chest, head still scanning.

  “Hold it!” calls a voice from behind us.

  “Six o’clock,” I say to Cherrah, already moving.

  “Target down,” comes her clipped reply. She stops firing the big gun and I dart between trees to her position, eyes on the forest behind her. I’ve got my rifle on the high ready, elbow tucked and one eye peering down the gun sights, scanning the trees for targets. Down low, Cherrah has drawn her sidearm and left the bipod aimed toward the main building.

  “Settle down now, buddy!” comes a shout. The voice is hoarse, strained. An older man, and I think I see his tree now.

  I glance down at Cherrah. She shrugs, in a crouch, eyes on the woods out in front of our log. I’m watching the big tree behind us, gun out, waiting for the owner of the voice to appear so I can put a round in him.

  “Hello?” I call.

  “I’m just saying, don’t shoot unless you want to get shot at,” comes the reply. “Let’s all be friendly, how about?”

  “There’s Rob activity,” I call.

  A face slides out from behind the tree. A human face. An older man with shaggy gray-black hair and an unkempt gray beard. His hands are up, calloused palms showing.

  “That’s just Hugh. We sent him over to take a closer look at you all,” says the man. He puts a finger onto his temple and talks lower. “Damage status? Got it. Repairs incoming. Joey, get over to Hugh and take care of him.”

  I lower my weapon slightly.

  “What are you doing out here?” I ask.

  The man grins and turns his head. Part of his skull is hairless and metallic. It’s been removed and replaced with finely wrought black metal. “We’re modified,” he says. “And I hope you don’t mind, for your sake.”

  I turn my rifle and let it hang from my chest strap. Help Cherrah stand up. She retrieves the machine gun, brushing dirt and pine needles off it. I point at the broken Big Happy and Cherrah nods, keeps one eye on it. It doesn’t pay to let down your guard.

  “I don’t mind,” I say quietly. “A survivor is a survivor.”

  “You two are from that Oklahoma army, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I could tell from what’s left of your uniform. You all are good people. It’s why we haven’t killed you.”

  “Is that right?” I ask, my rifle still heavy hanging over my chest. I guess my eyes must slide toward the piece. The old man raises his hands and waves them in an “ah, phooey” gesture.

  “Not trying to threaten. But yes, that’s right.”

  “Do you need assistance? Do your people have enough supplies?” I ask.

  “It’ll be close. Winters are rough this high up, but there are plenty of deer in these woods. We’ll grow crops in the spring. The most important thing is that the machines had us well defended. Now that they’re gone, we’ve got some control over the old defenses. These days, that’s all that matters.”

  Of course, this used to be a Rob work camp.

  “Why do you need defenses?” I ask. “The war is over.”

  “You’ve been off trekking, son. Otherwise you’d know better than to say that. The war has just begun for us, out here. Lot of survivors aren’t so friendly to the modified. It’s people we worry about, you understand?”

  Something moves onto the porch, crouching over the fallen Big Happy. It’s a woman’s corpse, flesh rotting from limbs that are creased by black metal bars. There is a parasite wedged into the back of her neck, and I can see her teeth through a hole in her cheek. I take a deep breath. The parasites lived. That thing must be Joey.

  I’m sorry, Lark, I think to myself. I remember how the Cherokee soldier came stumbling back out of the Alaskan woods, wearing one of those things. And then I shot his face off. My God, I’m so sorry.

  “It was a modified who saved us all. Did you know that?” says Cherrah. “A little girl named Mathilda Perez. She guided the final assault on Archos R-14. Without her we could never have won.”

  The man grins. “We did hear that. Most people don’t believe it. From the description, though, that little girl sounded like she had a full orbital prosthetic plugged into her prefrontal cortex with hardwired radio and infrared capabilities.”

  Cherrah and I share a glance.

  “How did you know that?” I ask.

  “Tim?” he calls. “Timmy, pop up for a sec.”

  Nothing happens. The grizzled man leans and speaks quietly. “He’s skittish because someone’s been . . . Well, someone has been after the children specifically. Hunting the ones with eye prosthetics. Killing them. Timmy has heard the other kids over the radio. Begging.”

  Over around the side of the house, a small face peeks out. It’s the boy we followed in. The one who I thought had on goggles.

  “Come on,” says the man. “It’s all right.”

  The boy steps into a shaft of sunlight. He lifts his chin and now I see he isn’t wearing goggles. His eyes are missing altogether. Instead, a flat black strip of metal stripes his face across the bridge of his nose.

  “Timmy here saw you all coming from miles away,” says the old man. “Sees everyone coming for miles and miles. Everything. Man and machine.”

  “How?” asks Cherrah.

  The old man shrugs, a smile creasing into his face behind the shaggy salt-and-pepper beard.

  “Your tank,” says the boy. “Houdini. When he talks, it looks like ribbons in the sky.”

  “He can’t talk,” I say. “Houdini is just a tank.”

  “Well, he talked to me,” says Timmy, nonchalant.

  The kid steps farther into the clearing and is followed by someone who must be his mother. A whole group of people emerges from inside. Some have shining prosthetics instead of limbs. Arms, legs, and joints. They are men and women, young and old, but all of them are rail thin. Big sunken eyes and yellowing teeth.

  “You can come with us, you know,” I say, looking at their leader with dismay. “Our walking armor can protect us back to Gray Horse. They know the truth about how the war ended. They won’t have a problem with . . . modifications.”

  The old man is already shaking his head. “No offense, but nothing is for sure out there. In here, we’ve got protection. And plenty of it.”

  Something catches the corner of my eye. A stealthy movement. The bushes are moving oddly. I watch, rifle dangling from my chest strap, and fight to keep from reaching for it. Instead, I raise my voice.

  “If any of you here want to leave, I can guarantee you safe passage,” I call to the group. “And if there isn’t enough food here, then you’ve got to come with us. I’m not negotiating.”

  “Oh, neither am I,” says the gray-haired man.

  Now I identify the movement: turrets. Three of them, flat and low. Sprouting up slowly from the turf on elevated gun assemblies. On top, each one is covered in a platter of dead leaves and grass and earth. Underneath, each has a minigun with a stubby six-barrel cluster peeking out ominously. They are glistening with gun oil and polished, obviously well maintained.

  When those barrels start spinning, I’ll start running.

  “You were prisoners before, but that’s over with,” I say. “Big Rob is dead. We killed it. There won’t be any more experiments. No more torture. You can all leave. You’re free to go.”

  Emaciated faces stare back at me. Whatever comprehension might be there is swallowed by the hor
rors that have been inflicted on these people. The young ones cling to the bony legs of their parents. And the older ones—well, I hope they heal.

  The old man limps out of the woods and moves between us and the group. He steps closer to me and talks low: “You haven’t seen what we’ve seen. Rob is not our problem. People are our problem. It’s best that you move on. We thank you for your service. We really do. But this thing has turned into a whole other can of worms.”

  “Let’s go,” says Cherrah, quietly.

  I don’t move as she takes my arm. Pulls me gently. For a few steps, I stumble backward without taking my eyes off those people. My mind is racing, trying to determine the right thing to say. Without Big Rob to maintain this camp, winter is going to come here and it’s going to kill them. How would a hero save the lives of these innocent people? What would my brother, Jack, have done?

  But I don’t see any way besides fighting. Jack would have found a way, but I’m not him. No matter how much I wish I were.

  Cherrah and I walk back to the road together where Houdini waits patiently. Not looking back, we stow our gear in his belly net. I drop a couple of boxes of MREs onto the road. What we can spare. Then we climb the metal rungs and take up our touring positions.

  Standing high on Houdini’s gunnery platform, I peer into the icy woods. Survey the thin, hungry faces watching from dappled shadows around the compound. Sunken eyes and fleshy ears sprouting from skin that is stretched too tight over skulls. It’s hard to shake the empty feeling in those faces. As if they don’t belong to human beings at all. Just masks of meat on top of walking zombies.

  “Come on, Cormac,” urges Cherrah. “It’s time to move out.”

  “Jack,” I mutter. He was my brother and he died for me and just saying his name out loud hurts like a pocketknife twisting into my lungs. I blink my eyes and the strands of broken people waver behind a layer of warm salt water. “Jack Wallace would have done something for them. He wouldn’t leave these people like this.”

  “You’re not Jack,” says Cherrah. “We did what we could, Bright Boy. Walk on, Houdini.”

  The quadruped powers up, his intention light flaring briefly. Those scarred ropes of black muscle flex and contract, high-tension cables singing.