Accidental Evil (22 page)

Vernon took the axe handle in two hands, like a baseball bat. He stepped towards the thing and swung with everything he had. It was right against the wall, so his grip expected strong resistance to the blow. The middle of the thing crumpled with a solid clunk.
 

Vernon cocked the axe handle back again and admired the dent he had made. He was ready to swing again. It felt good to be exerting some control over the situation. Vernon aimed higher this time. He wanted to bash the thing near the curved top. Then he would hit it again in the middle. Whoever left the thing here would return to find it crushed like a soda can.

His second hit met more resistance. The dent wasn’t as big and the blow reverberated through his arms. Vernon set his jaw and pulled back for another swing.

A hatch on the curved top of the thing popped open. Until that moment, he had thought of it as maybe a storage container of some sort. The way the hatch slid up made him think that maybe it was electronic. There was a trash can in the office at work with a motorized lid. Maybe this thing was…

Vernon didn’t finish the thought. With a POP, something shot from the black space inside the metal object. As his eyes caught up, he saw that it was actually
two
things. They were little darts and they trailed thin metal wire. This realization came in the blink of an eye, because that’s all the time it took for the darts to cover the distance between the metal can and Vernon. One dart buried itself in the axe handle. The other one sailed right past Vernon’s shoulder. If he was right, he had seen things like that on one of those police shows on TV. If he was right, the two wires carried a giant load of voltage, intended for him.

Vernon didn’t waste any more time. Instead of trying to bash the can against the wall, he swung the axe handle so he could knock the thing over the side of the porch. His blow connected, and the thing flew towards the lawn. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. When it hit the grass, the thing rolled and Vernon was no longer looking at that black hatch. He went for the door.
 

Vernon slipped inside and looked through the window. The cylinder was stopped for a second and then it rolled another half turn. He cocked his head as it began to right itself. From lying flat, the cylinder somehow rose up until it was upright again. Then, even stranger, the cylinder seemed to evaporate. He had a sense that if he really studied the pattern of grass, he would be able to see the thing.
 

Vernon didn’t want to waste any time on that thing though. If there was another on the porch roof, there was no telling how many of the things were around his house. He locked the door behind himself and turned.

Room by room, he searched the first floor. Vernon checked through windows as he went, looking for anything strange out in the yard. When he got to the back door, he locked that too. They didn’t have much use for locked doors out where they lived. There was almost always someone home, and there just wasn’t a lot of theft. Perhaps people didn’t want to bother with a place like his when there were so many fancier houses in the area. Whatever the reason, until that day he had felt perfectly safe in his house. As he climbed the stairs, he wasn’t so sure that was true anymore.

He left Ricky’s room for last. George’s room was a disaster area, but it was always like that. The master bedroom was cool and breezy. Mary had left the ceiling fan on. She claimed it kept the air fresh to leave the fan on.

Vernon shut it off so he could hear better.

There was nothing but the sound of crows outside. He shut doors as he searched. Soon the only one still open was Ricky’s. He stepped carefully inside, trying to angle his body so he could see the porch roof through the window.

Wary of what might shoot out from the second cylinder, Vernon pushed aside the curtain with the axe handle and peered through. He saw nothing but porch roof.

He frowned.

Even in the corner, he couldn’t see a thing. The cylinder he’d seen from the ground was gone.

“Gone, or invisible?” he whispered.

Vernon tucked the axe handle under his armpit and pushed the latches so he could slide the screen upwards. It ran smoothly up the tracks—Ricky must have greased the rails. Every other screen in the house protested when he put them up in the fall. Ricky’s ran smooth.

Vernon slid his head out, glimpsed the roof, and pulled his head back in. There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. His axe handle wasn’t long enough to pull off what he wanted to do next.

Vernon dropped it on Ricky’s bed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. He snapped his fingers and then moved quickly to Ricky’s closet. The boy’s retired fishing pole was in there. It was an old green number, barely worth holding on to, but the boy was sentimental about such things. Vernon was glad for it, for once.

He slid the pole through the window and waited for a second before he followed the pole with his head. He had an idea about what might be going on with the metal cylinders, and he wanted proof before he gave up on the notion.

He jabbed the end of the pole into the corner where he had seen the cylinder. It didn’t make it. Something made the pole deflect at the last second and sent it into the side of the house instead of into the corner.

“Ha!” Vernon said. Then he remembered the darts from the other thing. He ducked back inside.

“Camouflage,” he whispered.

A new realization came to him—if they were camouflaged that well, they could be anywhere. Vernon spun slowly and regarded the room. He tightened his grip on the fishing pole as he closed and locked Ricky’s window. Maybe they hadn’t ventured inside. The doors were unlocked, but the things didn’t have hands, did they? They could shoot little darts at the end of fine wires, but did they have hands? The idea wasn’t impossible. It also wasn’t impossible to imagine someone coming to his house while he was at work and Mary and the boys were down at the parade. He imagined how easy it would have been for someone to stash the camouflaged cylinders right in his house.
 

Why would someone do that? Did they have cameras?
 

Vernon swept the fishing pole around like a blind man looking for a fire hydrant. He kept the tip low and moved it back and forth over the floor. When he was satisfied that Ricky’s room was clear, he shut the door and backed down the hallway. He had to repeat his search of the house. He started with the bedroom that he shared with Mary. The thought of one of those invisible cylinders watching over him at night was chilling.

Vernon only made it halfway across the room. The tip of the fishing pole caught on something and jerked to the side once it cleared the obstacle. Vernon swept back the other direction. For a second, he was convinced that the tip had merely caught the rug. The boys would always jump up and down, convinced they had a big one on the line when they had only snagged a log. Vernon was more careful than that. The pole hit the object going the other direction.
 

It was near his bureau, and it hadn’t been there that morning. He would have stubbed his toe on it if it had been. Vernon whacked the thing with the pole and heard it clink with the impact. He could barely believe it. The thing wasn’t just camouflaged, it was
invisible
. If Ricky could only come up with a magic trick that good, Vernon would never have to work another day in his life.
 

Vernon moved the pole to the side and reached forward with a trembling hand. He had to touch the thing—feel it—to believe that it was actually there. He shuffled forward, thinking that he must have made a mistake. His hand should have touched it already.

A blue spark lit up the room and every muscle in Vernon’s arm locked up. It was like touching a live wire. With a massive THWAP!, he was tossed backwards.

[ Fear ]

“D
ON
’
T
YOU
COME
NEAR
me,” she said. “Don’t you come near me.”

She looked down at her feet again, to verify that she was still centered on the black patch of asphalt. It wasn’t ideal. The surface was somewhat reflective of the sunlight and therefore not as black as she would like, but it was as close as she could get given the circumstances.

The man was gone—the infected man—but she still repeated her warning.

“Don’t you come near me.”

April Yettin turned a slow circle on her patch of asphalt, trying to figure out where she was. She struggled to tell one day from the next, and couldn’t put any context to the march of time, but she was sure of one thing—it hadn’t been this bad in a long, long time.

She remembered the kids. She remembered their frightened faces looking up at her from their school desks as she stood on the slope of the overturned chalkboard. She remembered the voices shouting down the hallways and wondered how they had known so quickly.

April snapped back to the present and verified her patch of asphalt again.
 

Another wave of puppy-sized robots streaked through the deep shadows cast by the noon sun. She had no idea why they liked shadows but wouldn’t step on black. It didn’t make sense.
 

A new feeling washed up through April. It was doubt. What if they had no regard for black surfaces at all? What if she had been wrong this whole time. It wouldn’t be the first time. She put her balled fists up in front of her mouth and her eyes grew wide. She saw one of the little robots pause and turn towards her. She saw its triangle of yellow eyes studying her. The thing crawled towards her with its clicking talons. April almost screamed. She barely managed to hold in the sound as the thing turned and ran off down the street.

Her legs were weak. She could barely stand up straight. April made another slow turn and wondered which direction her house was in. They were always moving her house. They hid it from her to try to confuse her. They wanted her to make another mistake so she could finally be locked away. That was their goal.

“No,” she whispered. Her out-loud voice always made more sense, so she listened to it. “They don’t want to lock us up. They want us to stay free so they can move through the world with impunity.”

Impunity came from the same root as the word “punishment.” The robots wanted to be free from punishment. That implied that they had been punished before. Maybe it was the wrong word to use, but her out-loud voice was rarely wrong.

April spun at the sound of footsteps. She heard them before she saw them. The lumbering steps could almost be felt through the hot pavement. It was more of a waddle than a walk. As they got closer, April saw that their eyes were closed. There were a dozen of the Summer People walking up the sidewalk, and not a one of them was bothering to look where they were going. As they got closer still, April knew why.
 

Each of the fat Summer People had one of the puppy-sized robots clamped onto them. The robots were making the decisions now. They were moving the people while they still had energy enough in their bodies to move. They were taking the people to a harvest point. April knew it was true. Her out-loud voice had told her so.

April lowered herself down towards the ground. There was easily enough room for her to sit on her patch of asphalt. It wasn’t like a car was going to come and force her to move. The roads were empty, and they would be all day. She didn’t need her out-loud voice to tell her that it was so. April could sense it.

April sat, saving her legs for when she might need to run, and reached out to the edge of her little patch of pavement. It wasn’t big enough for her to take a nap. If she stretched out all the way, one of the puppy-sized robots would surely pounce on her. Or, maybe they would finally figure out that April was sitting on firm ground. They only reason they hadn’t gotten her yet was because the black confused them. The robots couldn’t cross anything black because they thought that blackness was a hole and they would fall. At least that was April’s conjecture. Her out-loud voice hadn’t weighed in with a definitive
reason
yet.

April’s eyes went to the sky.

This was bad.

She heard the buzzing and then saw the shapes. When they were far away, they could have just been crows. As they got closer, April saw that there were no flapping wings keeping the things aloft. Those things were just as bad as the puppy-sized robots, and they were not afraid of falling into the black pavement.
 

She had to get home, but she had no idea where home was.

[ Flight ]

April peeked around the corner again. The thing was gone, but it wasn’t gone. She knew that trick. They tried to fool her all the time. She pulled back from the corner and tried to look through the window of the house. The curtains were drawn. It was only a matter of time before they got her. The puppy-sized robots had no qualms about invading a house. Even if she found a way in, she wouldn’t be safe. They would have her cornered before long.

What about water? Wouldn’t a robot hate water? Wouldn’t they be afraid that it would short circuit them, or, at the very least, rust them out?

It was worth a try. April was a good swimmer. Maybe she could swim to safety and then find a place to hide on the other side of the lake. Maybe she could swim to an island and stay there until winter. When she was a little girl, the islands in the lake had always fascinated her. A couple of them even had camps on them. Her father had always said they were impractical. No electricity and all the supplies had to be brought by boat. Her father hated inconvenience. Right at that moment, a level of inconvenience was exactly what April was looking for.

She just had to find the water.

It should have been easy. At its narrowest, the town of Kingston Lakes was just a thin strip of land between the big lake and the long one. In fact, the whole town was pretty much an island, surrounded by connected lakes. The only way out, aside from by bridge, was the narrow passage in the northeast corner.
 

The water was in every direction. She just had to find the closest water so she could get there before the skittering or flying robots found her.