Love, Death, Robots and Zombies Read online

“Y’all sure about this?” Wade asks, looking doubtfully into the scattered ruins. We’re standing just outside the Doctor’s transport. Roamers are still visible–not as many as in the city, but our path definitely won’t be easy, regardless of which direction we take.

  But Echo is determined, and I nod with her.

  “Good luck then,” Wade says, and shakes our hands.

  “We never said goodbye to Franklin …” I say. I’ve been thinking about something, about Franklin’s hidden Library, and though it’s hard for me to do, I take Volume Seven from my pack and hold it in a death-grip before me.

  “I want you to give this to him. To pay for our passage,” I say, closing my eyes.

  It’s hard to even get the words out. With the Library gone, Volume Seven is my most prized possession. I don’t want to give it up for anything. But without Wade, Franklin and the Doctor, we’d be half-starved in the desert still–or dead in the Roach pass–and Echo would still be in pain, maybe for the rest of her life. The scales have been unbalanced in our favor. If I don’t do something now to rebalance them even slightly, some terrible retribution may strike us in the future. I must pay for all this.

  Wade regards me doubtfully.

  “You’m sure, son? Seems to me you’re a mite attached to that paper.”

  “Take it,” I say.

  He takes it in his hands slowly, looks it over–then hands it back.

  “Nah. Franklin got plenty o’ books. I reckon he’m want you to keep this one.”

  “Please,” I say, trying to hand it back. Something presses on my eyes. I’m desperate. The scales must be balanced. The universe’s need for sorrow must be appeased. Wade studies us both and shakes his head. He steps in close, confidentially.

  “You know, it weren’t true, what the Doctor say,” he says softly.

  I frown at him, confused.

  “About the Fall,” he clarifies. “Oh sure, there’m be plenty of bad things. Earthquakes and wars and plague and whatnot–but all that’s just thirst after the drought. Ain’t why the world fell.”

  “Why then?” Echo asks.

  “Maude used to say: people went head-first, not heart-first. Only worry about what they’m gonna get, not how they be getting it. Not who it hurt. Sure, we all live for ourselves. That’s the way of it. But good folk live for each other too. Ain’t one or the other. ‘S both.”

  Then he boards the transport and rolls away into the dead city. Echo and I look at each other. My feelings are reflected in her eyes. Our three benefactors have done more than just restore our bodies and supplies–they’ve restored our hope.

  Chapter 11.

  Hope can’t stave off a horde of zombies, unfortunately.

  We move west, and always to the north there are roamers in abandoned villages and crumbling buildings. Always Echo is searching for a place to get through, her mind on Haven. We try to keep well away from the infected. I’m constantly scanning the horizon with my spyglass. Even so, it’s not long before we have to confront one.

  It comes out of the west, ahead of us, and we try to go around it–but it spots us. It’s not one of the slow ones. It rumbles toward us on high-stomping feet, mouth open, a strange desperation in its thoughtless gray visage, and we simply can’t avoid it. Still, we try. When it becomes apparent the thing will just keep running at us, I stop and raise the crossbow.

  “Careful,” Echo urges. She only has four bullets in the machine-pistol, so we’re not about to waste those.

  I breathe. I aim. The zombie is running full-tilt when the bolt takes it through the nose. I have a flashback of Ballard’s eye popping out. The head whips back, and the thing collapses. Shakily, I retrieve the bolt.

  Then it’s west again.

  Gradually, the z-line veers northwest. We follow it like the bank of a river, praying the waters don’t overflow. No one can say why the z-line exists. I’ve heard talk about magnetic lines and the path of the wind and crazier things, but that’s probably all nonsense. I assume it’s there because there were major population centers along its path, and this was just where the plague-walkers ended up thriving–but why wouldn’t they stray from the area over time?

  We kill a dozen zombies in the first three days. My bolts are actually getting dull. We find an old shovel in the rubble and add it to our arsenal. I have a knack for finding and exploiting hidden water-holes, but food is harder to locate. Sleep is harder still. We don’t dare rest with a roamer anywhere in sight, so before camping each night we head south at least a mile. We never lie down unless we’re well-hidden, and even then we’re paranoid and startled awake by soft noises.

  The land begins to change.

  Shrub-desert yields to fields of brittle brown desert-grass. There’s more small game, even full-sized trees here and there. Some grow right in the rubble of destroyed homes. Nature is retaking the world, healing the scars inflicted by humanity.

  The grass hides another danger, however. At one point, Echo almost steps directly on a roamer. It makes no sound. Its grasping hand brushes her ankle as she walks. She leaps five feet and screams, crashing into me. I trip backwards and we both end up on the ground. The thing’s legs are missing. It drags itself toward us, hand over hand in the dirt. We scramble up. Echo grabs the shovel. She smashes it over the head, roaring, until its skull turns to mush, like a broken pumpkin.

  She stands there, chest heaving, expression terrible. Slowly, she looks at me … and laughs–half from the shock on my face, half out of sheer relief. Laughing with the bloody shovel, spattered with gore, she looks like a blonde psychopath. From then on, we watch both the horizon and the ground at our feet.

  At night, there’s a new closeness between us. We both sleep under the blanket, not entirely for warmth. I get used to her there. There’s a fragile tension, however. My body wants more. I feel it in my hands, my arms, my stomach. I want to roll on top of her and hold her down, feel the savage press of her lips. When her fingers shift slowly on my stomach, when her breathing is deep, I imagine she wants the same. Other times, I think I’m delusional. Maybe I’m just imagining things. I remember Ballard. I remember how she offered herself to me. I remember what I said to break her.

  Thus, there’s an invisible barrier between us, and when we lay together at night, there are times the slightest movement threatens to shatter it completely. A turning point is inevitable. Yet we’re bound together, each the other’s sole remaining friend–how can we dare risk more? If something goes wrong, if she doesn’t reciprocate–or if she lets me only because she thinks she has to–all will be lost. A wedge will come between us. And in the wastes, even a mental wedge can lead to very physical dangers.

  So the barrier remains. But it’s increasingly hard to ignore.

  A week or so from Scargo–I’ve stopped counting the days–we come upon the village. The z-line is still running north-northwest. The bloody thing is endless. There are no significant breaks, no areas we could cross through without attracting the attention of a dozen roamers. The Doctor said there were a lot of people in the World Before, but this is ridiculous. How on Earth was there ever food and water for so many? Or maybe these are mostly modern victims of the plague, accumulated over time. In any case, we can take some roamers out if we need to, but if they build up too fast we’ll be screwed, so we have to be absolutely sure we can get through before we try.

  Several times, I try to convince Echo to strike out due west instead. I’m trying again when she stops and squints, drawing my attention forward …

  There are houses on the horizon. Not broken-down piles of rubble. Actual houses. Gleaming red and white. Roofed. Gaping, we turn to each other in wonder–is this one of the settlements Wade mentioned?

  The z-line doesn’t run straight. Roamers spread out in all directions, and it’s hard to tell if this precise location should be included in what we’ve come to think of as “horde territory.” We’ve been staying just south of the main thoroughfare. This village is directly west.

  Cautiously, we
approach the anomaly. I put a bolt through a roamer on the way there. Aside from that, none are even in sight. A bit closer, I use my spyglass. The houses look nice–but there are no people. No roamers either. It’s like a perfectly preserved ghost-town, though the streets are disintegrated, and desert-grass encroaches on the area.

  Warily, we close in.

  We enter the first house. Still nothing. No roamers, no people. The furniture is actually intact. Cushions have moldered and wasted away, but couches and chairs sit otherwise untouched. Even more astonishing, a lone book sits on a lacquered marble table. An old mystery novel. The pages are brittle. It’s as though someone just got up and walked away … a century ago. It might fetch something in trade; I pack it away in my bag.

  “The Blue Tower was still standing,” Echo points out. “Maybe these houses are like that. Newer materials. Didn’t rust or decay like the others.”

  I have to agree. The place looks abandoned, yet it’s still standing–and neither of us have ever seen a dead village this intact. In addition to any material advantages, its proximity to the z-line has probably helped keep the looters and crazies away.

  Back outside, we go exploring. The village is big. There are a few hundred houses, and almost all of them look the same. We pass a square plaza in the center of town lined with bigger, rectangular buildings. Some of the shops still have signs in their unbroken windows. We’re halfway through the square when Echo stops abruptly, listening.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Shh.”

  I hear it too. Music. Not just any music. High-energy electronic dance music. Can this be? No. Ridiculous. We’re in the middle of a ghost town on the edge of a zombified wasteland. Surely, I’m not hearing this? Yet I am. It’s blaring far and wide across the dead town. My grandfather showed me a small, ancient computer once that played music like this–music that couldn’t be reproduced by traditional instruments. A woman’s singing accompanies it. She has a beautiful voice. The whole harmony is strangely mesmerizing. With a sense of unreality, I and Echo stare at each other, listening. Should we be amused or horrified? We’re freaked out.

  “It’s coming closer,” Echo whispers.

  We reach one of the plaza’s corner-buildings, wide-eyed, flighty as scared rabbits. I have no idea what to expect. I poke my head around the corner–nothing. The sound must be a few streets over. We creep forward along the side of the building. I have to know what’s causing this. It’s getting closer now.

  “Tristan,” Echo warns, pulling at my arm. She’s had enough. She’s in flight mode.

  “Okay, let’s–”

  The music rolls over us in fresh waves of sounds. Its source crosses into sight ahead.

  Holy Mother of Crom.

  Fifty feet away is a circular aerial drone. It hovers fifteen feet above the ground, a fan spinning on its underside, speakers blaring. It drifts slowly down the center of a wide avenue … and beneath it, drawn by the noise, is a solid wall of zombies.

  They’re packed into a clambering throng, arms reaching vainly upward, drawn by the drone like a carrot on a string. Echo and I are already racing back the way we’ve come–but the bastards are good at sensing movement, and one was looking our way. I know this because when it first came around that corner, I was staring it dead in the eyes. As we round the corner leading back into the plaza, I glance back …

  … and a dozen or more have peeled off from the main group, coming after us. Too many to fight. We try the nearest door. Locked. No time to smash it in. We dart across the plaza. This one’s open. If we can just hide in time–

  The lead roamer is lumbering toward us, already in the plaza. More are streaming around the corner every second. Inside the building, I turn the lock. It won’t be enough.

  “Here,” Echo says. We’re in some kind of bar. A chair skids across the floor. I wedge it under the door. She’s throwing everything she can, and I’m piling it into place. Amazingly, the building’s wide windows are in pristine condition. The music is getting louder; the drone moves toward the square. I flip a table on its side and shove it against one of the windows just as something thuds hard against the door. I run for another table. More thuds follow. They’re slamming face-first into the building.

  Glass shatters. A roamer comes in through a window, tumbling toward Echo, face full of shards. A strip of skin hangs like torn fabric.

  “Run!”

  Like I have to tell her. Isn’t there a back door? Where the hell is it? The hallway we take dead-ends in an office, and when we turn back there’s a moving corpse six feet away, barreling toward us. As with that roamer in the closet, I’m mesmerized by the dead, bulging eyes. Reflex alone has me raising the crossbow, squeezing the trigger. The bolt passes through the right cheek and goes out the back of the jaw, missing the brain.

  The zombie keeps coming.

  It hits me full-force, one big organic hammer. I’m falling backwards. The thing is on top of me. The cold hands grip my arms with desperate urgency. The yellow teeth come forward in a silence more terrible than sound …

  And the head is smashed sideways by the shovel in Echo’s hands. The dead face collapses under further blows, spattering my new shirt with bits of gore. My priorities can’t be right, because a petty involuntary complaint creeps in: the Doctor gave me this shirt. It’s the only thought that penetrates.

  Then we’re up and moving, but more are coming in. A staircase on our right–take it. Scrambling, desperate … those yellow teeth will be in my nightmares … and before I know it we’re stumbling out onto a gravelly roof. The sun is insanely bright, incongruent with the chaos below. Echo closes the door behind us and backs away, staring at it, waiting.

  Nothing comes out.

  I don’t think they saw us duck through that last door. We’ve got a chance.

  The drone is still blaring music. It has already passed through the square and is turning down another street. We creep to the edge of the building and look down. The main throng still follows the drone. Slow and maimed undead trail the pack all the way across the square, like dust in the tail of a comet. About thirty plague-walkers are no longer attached to the horde, however. They mill about our building, distracted by the commotion. Some have already forgotten us. They stand stupidly in place or meander aimlessly or pluck up tufts of grass and chew it like cows. One crunches a broken board in its teeth. They’re not eager to go away, and even now others spot us on the roof and make a beeline for the building. Some try to climb the walls, clawing uselessly at the fading paint, fingernails breaking like eggshells, mouths upturned like baby birds.

  “What are we going to do?” Echo asks.

  We’re screwed.

  “Wait it out. They might drift away,” I say, backing away from the edge to hide from those below.

  The drone continues into the distance. It’s been out of the plaza fifteen minutes before the last of its maimed followers drags itself off the street in snail-like pursuit. But the others have stayed behind. The excitement of our flight has distracted them enough to break their attachment to the drone. Now they have no reason to go anywhere. I walk the roof’s perimeter, but their random wandering has spread them in all directions. It could be days or even weeks before there’s a safe route through. I’m angry now. The town only looked empty because of that damn drone drawing up all the stragglers.

  “The hell is that thing, anyway?” I ask, waving vaguely toward the machine.

  Echo gasps.

  Something new has come into the plaza. Someone, rather. A silver robot, perhaps seven feet tall, walks in the wake of the zombie-comet. In each hand is a silver sickle, glinting in the sunlight. It’s wearing plasteel body armor from the neck down. Behind the robot comes a boy, eleven or twelve years old, and behind the boy is a car-sized wagon pulled by a compact robotic tug. The wagon is loaded with treasure from the ruins.

  The boy and the robot can’t help but see the roamers lingering around our building. The newcomers look straight at us, taken aback. They cons
ult one another. The boy says something, pointing. He waves at us and smiles, then crouches behind the wagon, pulling a blanket down to hide himself.

  The armored robot moves into the plaza. The zombies around the building haven’t yet spotted him. He plants his feet wide apart, holds the sickles ready, and blasts a trumpet-like noise: da-tada-DAAA!

  Heads snap toward the sound. It draws the undead like gravity. Their various speeds mean they reach the robot in a kind of stream–and as they do, he lops off their heads with disturbing ease. Swift, efficient motions. They collapse all around him.

  When too many arrive at once, they begin to overwhelm him. They bite at his arms, they latch onto his legs, they claw at his torso. Their teeth can’t penetrate the plasteel. Still, they try. Their fingers break against his armor. One sickle gets lodged in the side of a skull. It’s pulled from the robot’s grasp. The other gets stuck in a ribcage. Then he’s crushing their heads with his hands and stomping them underfoot. He stumbles but never falls. When it’s done, the robot stands at the nucleus of a pile of thirty corpses. It looks as though a small bomb has gone off.

  He retrieves his sickles.

  The boy comes out from behind the wagon, checking carefully for stray undead.

  “Ahoy!” he calls up to us. “Anyone bit?”

  Echo and I share a glance.

  “No, we’re okay,” I say.

  “There may be more inside though,” Echo yells down.

  The robot enters the building. Noises follow. A decapitated head bounces out of an open window on the second floor, causing the boy to jump aside.

  “How about a little warning next time!” he says. Despite his age, there’s a gun holstered on his right hip. I check my crossbow and quietly load another bolt, just in case.

  “What are you guys doing out here? Didn’t expect company,” the boy yells up at us.

  “Just passing through,” I say.

  He cracks up laughing.

  “Passing through! Just strolling through zombie-central,” he says.

  “All clear,” the robot shouts. His voice is synthetic, not softly ambiguous like the Doctor’s but quite obviously robotic. The boy’s not controlling him and he’s too aware to be a programmed automaton, which means he’s a sentient being–a living machine, like Lectric, only smarter. Got a Tritium-Two or Microsoft Ultima, I’m guessing; maybe even a Tritium-Three.