Love, Death, Robots and Zombies Read online

  Toyota climbs into his wagon and signals his robotic bodyguard, which begins moving up the road. In moments, I’ll be alone again. I want to say something, only I don’t know what. He pulls his black goggles back down over his eyes and then stands smiling for a moment with his fists against his sides.

  “Yow Show Tchi, I tell you last time: if luck keep up, I find something just for you. Toyota keep his promise.”

  And then he tosses me something straight out of a dream. I catch it by instinct, and I simply cannot believe what I’m looking at: Conan’s grim face above a bloodied sword and piled corpses. Volume Seven. Is this a trick? A delusion?

  Words fail me. I would’ve traded everything in my pack just for this, and Toyota knows it. I’ve buried something of myself in these graphic novels. Finding a new one is like having a piece of myself returned to me. Toyota sits down laughing and urges the two white oxen forward. As the wagon rumbles over the road, I’m slack-jawed, frozen. I need to say something. Nothing comes out. What does he want for this? I can’t give him Lectric. The wagon continues forward, leaving me baffled.

  “Toyota!” I manage. He looks back, craning his head to one side.

  “Find something good. I see you next time!” he shouts.

  Suddenly it’s hard to breathe. There’s a pressure behind my eyes. Find something? What could possibly pay for this? Yet the request was almost an afterthought. He’s giving it me, this treasure, this irreplaceable rarity. I try to remember the last time anyone gave me anything. Crispin, perhaps, before the soldiers came. Or my grandfather? No. It was Annabel. Annabel Lee. I drown the memory. I stuff it under layers of mental strata. Best not to look there.

  Volume Seven.

  The walk home is something wonderful. The ruins hold an intricate beauty, bathed in the red glow of the sinking sun. Every shadow is artfully arranged. A smile sticks to my face. I have to stop twice to make sure I didn’t somehow forget my prize. I keep reaching back to feel the bulk inside the pack. I think about the ritual I’ll go through while reading it. I’ll hand-crank enough power for a dim bulb. But I must read the book slowly. Very slowly–to make it last. Maybe only one page a night. After all, it may be the last new volume I’ll ever find. The last in existence, for all I know. How many more can there be? Or maybe up north there’s a whole factory full. Maybe there were others and Toyota didn’t bother grabbing them. Who knows?

  And there ahead is the Library’s sturdy white facade, only half-standing but still the best shelter for miles around. Lectric has been trotting ahead. For some reason, he stops within sight of our home.

  “What …”

  Belatedly, I notice he’s growling. Something is wrong. A sudden panic floods my senses. I’ve let my guard down. What was I thinking? Blind idiot! I’ve been in a Conan-induced delirium. Are there raiders near? A roamer? Not this far south, surely. What then?

  The light.

  There’s a light flickering on the wall through one of the Library’s broken windows. Oh God, is it burning? Not again! No. It’s a controlled fire. And is that laughter echoing from within? Dear Crom, someone’s inside. Calm down, Tristan. Calm down. They haven’t seen me. Probably just some traders or travelers passing through. Or bandits.

  They’ll find my grill, my traps, my barrels of water. They’ll know someone’s been living here. Will they burn my supplies? How many are they? I need to know these things. At least I brought my crossbow. It’s a good thing Lectric was paying attention or I might’ve strolled right inside. Hey Guys. Nice to meet you. Oh, my life? Sure, take it!

  The safest thing, I decide, is to hide under some rubble within sight of the Library. There’s plenty of big pieces with shadows to conceal me. Then I can wait out the night and see if they leave in the morning. If not, things could get complicated. But perhaps first I should creep a little closer and try to get a look at them, see how many there are. How well-armed. I could–

  “Drop the crossbow or you’ll be breathing through the back of your head.”

  The voice is soft, unlike the barrel pressed to my skull.

  Chapter 2.

  My first thought is a non-verbal oh-shit-I’m-dead kind of thing. I have a terrible fear of guns, at least when they’re aimed in my direction. When you depend entirely on yourself, having someone else determine whether you live or die with a single twitch of their finger brings a soul-crushing fear. I should be angry, but I’m too scared for anger. Or maybe I’m just a coward. As if to confirm this, an uncontrollable tremble sets into my limbs.

  Even so, another part of me is as calm as unstirred ashes. My mind has split in two, and the second part knows I’d be dead already if that was my ambusher’s intention. I drop the crossbow. Lectric is growling in a demonic voice I didn’t even know his speakers could make.

  “Tell the ‘bot to stay,” my captor says.

  “Lectric, stay. Stay, boy. Stay.”

  Lectric stays. When I built him, I didn’t give him any special defenses, though he does have some sharp metal claws, if things get desperate.

  My assailant picks up the crossbow and backs away a few steps.

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  “I live here. Who are you?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tristan. Can I turn around?”

  “No. And put your hands on your head. What are you doing here?”

  “I told you, I live here,” I say, putting my hands on my head.

  “In that building?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else lives there?”

  “Just Lectric.”

  “The bot? Nobody else?”

  “Nobody else.”

  He’s silent a moment. Is he deciding to kill me? I didn’t even get to read Volume Seven.

  “Send your bot ahead. We’re going inside.”

  “Lectric–go. Home, boy. Home.”

  Lectric whines at me, then trots ahead. We start walking.

  “Does he have a shutdown code?”

  “No, he’s self-aware. He’s not a threat. Don’t hurt him.”

  “Shut up.”

  Am I talking too much? I wish I was more like Conan. He never gets taken unawares, and if he does, he starts killing things. If it was him in my place, he’d whirl around and cut this asshole in half. Then he’d climb through the window and pounce on anyone inside. Of course, there’d be some half-naked women involved too. But I’m just Tristan, fifteen-year old pushover. Didn’t even hear him coming. If I wasn’t so afraid, I’d be swearing at myself. Should I try something? Despite our proximity to the Library, I have time for a thousand different thoughts before we get there.

  Lectric enters ahead of us. There’s a mild uproar. Then I come in and things go quiet. A guy and a girl are sitting by a small fire in the middle of the Library’s largest undamaged room. They’ve piled bricks in a rough circle to control the blaze, apparently not happy with my fire-pit out back. Both are roughly my age. The guy looks a few years older. And is it weird that the first thing I really notice in the middle of all this is the tight interplay of the girl’s smudged white shirt against the roundness of her small breasts? Human nature, I guess.

  In the same breath, I become aware of a dozen other things. A gun in a leather holster on the boy’s left hip. The girl’s shoulder-length blonde hair. The insignia sewn into the boy’s leather jacket: an X made from a shotgun and a scimitar, circled by flames. The girl’s downcast face. The fire painting everything orange and black …

  And a third teen, who I didn’t see at first.

  He’s leaning against one wall, steeped in shadow, arms crossed, one leg bent so that his heel is flat against the wall behind him. His head is shaved down to stubble. His jaw is square. His gray eyes are cynical, malevolent: it’s all a joke, they seem to say. He doesn’t wear an insignia. He doesn’t need one. A bandolier crisscrosses his chest in a parody of the X on his companion’s patch, and he’s wearing an actual shotgun and scimitar strapped across his back. I can see the handles protrudi
ng above his shoulders.

  Kill him.

  This is my first thought. Strange, isn’t it? Sometimes our instincts are better than we give them credit for. Upon seeing me, the guy by the fire becomes calm, steady, prepared for anything. But the one against the wall has a strange gleam of anticipation in his eyes. He wants chaos to ensue. When the girl looks up, her blue eyes go wide. Parched red lips part in surprise.

  “What’s this, Fin?” the guy by the fire asks, measuring my worth. Right away, I know he’s the leader.

  “Our missing tenant. Found him creeping up with his dog. Had this on him,” my captor–Fin?–says, putting my crossbow on the ground and shoving it with his foot. The leader examines the crossbow and stands up. He asks the same questions Fin did. Then he says:

  “What’s in the pack?”

  Fin starts rummaging through my pack in answer. I’m worried he’s going to take Toyota’s gift, but he’s only checking for weapons. He pulls out my bolts and tosses them toward the crossbow. He examines the spyglass but stuffs it back inside.

  “Mostly ‘tronics and some kind of book,” he concludes.

  “More ‘tronics, huh? Where’d you get all this equipment?” Ballard asks, jabbing his thumb at the Library’s main desk, which serves as my workstation. Scattered across it are half-built traps, experimental circuits and unused electrical components.

  “I scavenge for parts in the ruins,” I explain.

  “How about upstairs? You’ve got traps, generators, all kinds of crap.”

  “Some of it I built. I’m good with electronics.”

  He grunts, bemused. I get the feeling he doesn’t know what to make of me. I guess you don’t find many lucid strangers living alone on the edge of the wasteland. I myself once encountered a hermit with a shock of white hair in a crumbling house to the north. When I waved at him, he screamed and ran.

  “Good with electronics, huh? Okay. I’m Ballard, Tristan. That’s Finnigan behind you. This is Echo, and that’s Cabal,” the leader, says. The girl, Echo, just stares at me. She has a three-inch scar along her left cheek. For some reason I find it hard it to look at her.

  “Now we’re acquainted. Would you like to take a seat?” Ballard asks.

  As if I had many options. I sit by the fire. Finnigan comes around. He’s maybe seventeen–dark hair, dark eyes, bronze tan. He’s holding a long-barreled pistol, possibly a particle-packet weapon. A hunting rifle is slung across his back. He’s no longer pointing a weapon at me, but the apparent civility does nothing to reassure me. If anything, it makes me more nervous. Honest threats I can understand. Smiles and secret intentions amplify my paranoia.

  “So. How is it that you live out here alone, Tristan?” Ballard asks.

  I shrug. He has to repeat the question. I try to focus on Ballard but I keep glancing at Cabal, the one by the wall. His half-smile and glittering gray eyes unnerve me. He knows it too. He drifts slowly along the wall until he’s somewhere behind me, and not seeing him is even worse than seeing him.

  “I, uh ... I’ve been here three years,” I say, trying to see through the back of my head.

  “Not really what I asked. Are you from Cove?”

  “Cove? No. No, I hate Cove.”

  Ballard’s eyebrows shoot up.

  “That so?” he asks.

  I nod. Why is he asking me all this? I notice black body armor beneath his leather jacket. Fin sits down with us and warms his hands by the fire; the night outside is turning cold.

  “What do you have against Cove? ‘The last great hope of freedom and equality in the new world.’ Isn’t that what they say? They want to reinvent America.”

  “They burned my village,” I say.

  Ballard chortles.

  “I guess they’re staying true to their intentions then,” he says.

  All three of the guys laugh, like he’s made a clever joke–but not Echo. Her wide blue eyes stare at me through the orange glare of the fire. Suddenly Ballard stops and looks at her.

  “Wait. Do you know him, Echo?” he asks.

  Slowly, she shakes her head, though her eyes continue to stare. After a moment, Ballard shrugs.

  “Must have been one of those towns further south, huh? Well, Tristan, Cove’s made more enemies than just you and Echo here. The real question is: how do you feel about Foundry?”

  “Foundry?”

  Did Cove burn more than one town three years ago? Stupidly, I’d never wondered about that. I guess some tragedies are so personal that it feels like you’re the only one they could ever happen to. The fact that such terrible things might happen all the time seems too cruel and senseless to be true.

  “Yeah. You’ve heard of Foundry?” Ballard asks.

  “A little,” I say.

  Actually, I’ve heard they’re ruled by a bloodthirsty dictator with cybernetic limbs; that he hosts gladiatorial games, crushes men with his bare hands, and has working oil rigs. Toyota has been there. Other than that, not much.

  “Well, you’re about to join their army,” Ballard says, stopping my brain from working. He laughs at my expression. I can’t speak. Join the army? The words don’t make sense.

  “I wanted to make sure you weren’t some kind of lookout for Cove, because that’s what my superiors are going to ask when they get here. And you’d better hope they believe you. Are you hearing me, Tristan? We’re not raiders. Not anymore, anyway. We’re scouts for Foundry. There’s an army headed this way.”

  An Army. Headed this way. Nope, not making sense.

  “We’re going to burn Cove to the ground,” Fin says grimly.

  “I can’t–I can’t join Foundry’s army. I live here. This is my home,” I try to explain, because they don’t seem to understand. Don’t they know I can’t possibly leave? Behind me, Cabal laughs. The sound is surprisingly girlish.

  “Not anymore,” Ballard says, though he’s not without sympathy. Unbelievably, he leans forward and claps me on the shoulder, like we’re friends now. He’s robbing me of my home and utterly changing my life, but it’s cool, we’re friends.

  “The thing is, we need people like you. People good with ‘tronics,” he explains. “And anyway, I can’t let you go. I’d have to kill you. Do you understand? I can’t leave you behind because the army would find you, and I’d suffer for letting you slip through the cracks. But I can’t send you ahead either, because you could warn Cove we’re coming. So you see? I’m doing you a favor, Tristan.”

  I just stare at him.

  “It’s really not so bad,” Ballard goes on. “If you can make those generators, you’ll make good pay. Better than most of us, anyway. And you don’t have to live alone in a rat-hole like this. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. Drink?”

  He takes a flask from Echo and holds it toward me. I’m staring at it without seeing it. Doing me a favor, he says. I’d like to put a favorable hole through his head. But Fin is watching me with a hunter’s eyes, while Cabal is somewhere behind me with his shotgun and scimitar.

  The flask is still out. I shake my head. And I was so thrilled about Volume Seven …

  “Do I get to keep my books?” I ask.

  Ballard and Fin look at each other, bemused. Fin chuckles.

  “If you can carry them,” Ballard says.

  We’re up a while longer. Ballard tells some kind of story about Foundry, but I can’t concentrate. I’m being drafted into some city-state’s army? The whole idea is absurd. And they’re already headed for Cove–we could all be dead in weeks. Come to think of it, Toyota was moving south, probably straight toward Foundry’s troops. I hope they don’t steal his stuff. But he knows how to handle himself. Hell, he’ll probably trade and come out ahead. There’ll be three white oxen next time.

  At some point, Ballard stands up.

  “Tristan? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to cuff you to that pole for the night. I don’t want you getting any bad ideas while I’m asleep. Bad ideas get people killed, understand?”

  Conan would t
ell him he was welcome to try, then smash his face in. I nod vaguely instead. My left wrist is cuffed to an old metal railing attached to the wall. Way to go, Tristan. Way to go.

  Of course, it’s impossible to sleep–which would be true even without the restraint. Eventually I slump into a sitting position, my pack forming a bulky cushion behind me, and watch the fire burn down to coals. Lectric curls up beside me, whining now and then. Ballard and Echo retire to one corner of the room, maybe twenty feet away. Then I notice they’ve dragged my bed out of my room to sleep on.

  The indignity of this simple act appalls me. I was lucky enough to salvage a halfway decent mattress from the ruins of an old house, and these–these people–are using it! This is my house. That’s my bed. Why am I the one cuffed to the wall? I’m still scared for my life, but in the darkness I nurse my anger, and it proves volatile.

  Fin and Cabal have their own sleeping bags in other corners of the room. Apparently the scouts feel safer staying in one room. Fin lays down holding his pistol across his chest, but Cabal goes outside to take watch. I assume he’ll be in the Spire–the remains of a crumbling eight-story building a block from the Library. The Spire is no good to sleep in but the stairs are still mostly intact. It offers the best vantage point for miles around.

  Ballard and Echo are in my bed now, but they’re not exactly going to sleep. Their constant shifting and soft sounds become impossible to ignore. Privacy is not much of an issue for them. I don’t know why, but it makes me even angrier. I couldn’t even look at Echo when we sat by the fire. Why? Because she’s the first girl I’ve seen in three years? Because I wanted her from the first peripheral glimpse? Or because she reminds me of …

  No one. She reminds me of no one.

  But memories are closer in the darkness, and soon it’s all breaking open. The dead are rising from the grave of my mind. Berkley, Crispin, Annabel. My best friends. My grandfather’s electronics store. The raiders. The army. The flames.