Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame (23 page)

‘Smart arse. Ella, come with us. You’ll post up top and take out anything that comes near while we’re out.’

Ella grabbed her rifle and ran after them. ‘I kind of hope they do. I don’t think I got enough payback last time.’

‘Ella, you used to be such a sweet girl…’

~~~

It took Aneka a couple of minutes to pick off the chucks closest to the door with her rifle. The angle was difficult and getting a good line of sight took time. That meant that Shaw was back down in the foyer to help Cassandra open the door by the time Aneka signalled that it was clear.

The door opened and Al marched out onto the steps. There were still four or five of the creatures hiding under Gwy having run off as their fellows had fallen. Al waited among the bodies of their brethren until they charged forward, and then mowed them down with his rifle.

‘Vashma,’ Shaw muttered as Al stepped forward a few more paces and stood there like a statue, ‘he’s… brutally efficient. Is he a soldier or something?’

Cassandra smiled. ‘Oh no. He’s my sex toy,’ she said.

~~~

The sex toy was also a very respectable weapons platform. He ran backup as Aneka went building to building through the town cutting down chucks as she went.

Shaw suspected that there might be other people hidden in some of the buildings, so they went about the culling process slowly and methodically. Each building was checked for any sign of survivors. They were not having a lot of luck.

Al hosed down a doorway from which there seemed to be a near-endless supply of chucks. ‘Do you think anyone else
is
actually alive?’ he asked, speaking inside Aneka’s head.

‘Honestly? If there was someone I’d have thought they’d have tried for the university.’

‘Perhaps they did not realise there was anyone there. We would have been hard-pressed to find them if Mister Reman had not jury-rigged that transmitter.’

‘True, but… I’m trying not to be optimistic. If the entire town has been reduced to thirty people…’

‘Even I find it hard to believe we will find many more.’ The stream of chucks abated and Al shut off his rifle. ‘I need to change the magazine.’

‘Those things hold four thousand rounds!’ She fished another of the big, box mags from his backpack anyway.

‘And this weapon delivers them at a very high rate. You have had to change both magazines twice and you waste fewer rounds on hitting air. We are doing a lot of killing.’

‘Not killing,’ Aneka said. ‘They’re already dead.’

‘They seem to need reminding.’

‘Yeah…’

‘Hey!’ The voice came from above them and somewhere to their left and Aneka turned, looking in that direction. ‘Hey, we’re up here!’

A woman was half hanging out of a window on an upper floor of the next block. She looked somewhere on the young side of middle age, except that for a Jenlay that could have been anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty.

‘I see you,’ Aneka called back. ‘Wait there, we’ll come up.’ She glanced at Al. ‘We’re going that way,’ she said, grinning.

~~~

In all they found another fifteen people hiding out in sealed-off bunkers around the northern side of Chance. Many were looking malnourished, but they were alive and Gwy had supplies of food packs and rehydration salts aboard to help keep everyone fed.

Each time they found a few people, they had to escort them back to the university, which slowed down the process of clearance. By dusk they were fairly sure they had killed everything that was already dead in the northern part of the town.

‘We’ll need to go out again tomorrow,’ Aneka said as they gathered for the evening.

‘How many…?’ Shaw began.

‘I’m really trying not to keep count. Al could tell me, I’ve no doubt.’

‘Al is rather keen not to innumerate the toll either,’ Al replied. ‘I do have records of all the still functional identity transponders we’ve encountered. I can supply that list to you when this is done, Representative.’

‘That would be… helpful, thank you. I didn’t realise that you were a robot, Mister…’

‘It’s just Al. We assumed that the news regarding Aneka’s nature had reached this far.’

‘Oh… uh, yes. We saw the reports, of course. I think there were a few signatures from Sapphira on that petition that was raised. Well… I know there were, but… Wait, wasn’t the AI in that interview they aired called Al?’

‘One and the same,’ Al replied, smiling. ‘This drone body was constructed for me on Shadataga. My actual “mind,” if you wish, still resides within Aneka, but I can operate this body remotely, within range, which can be useful.’

‘Cassandra said you were her… um…’

‘Sex toy,’ Cassandra supplied.

Aneka and Ella burst into a fit of giggles.

‘One of the reasons for the construction was to allow me to have a more physical relationship with Cassandra, yes. We are both AIs. She is emergent, I was designed, but we are both capable of experiencing… emotions. It was rather complicated before I got this. Now we can actually behave like two Jenlay in love.’

‘If love is precisely the word for it,’ Cassandra said. ‘I wouldn’t even like to say that Al experiences the same reaction to me as I do to him. However, “love” is definitely the Jenlay equivalent of what we have for each other and I was very pleased when the Shadataga AIs agreed to supply Al with a body so that we could have a more direct relationship.’

Reman, looking a little pink around the cheeks, looked at Aneka. ‘And this relationship was ongoing while he was just an AI in your head?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka said, grinning. To be honest she was glad the subject had moved off dead chucks. ‘Like Al said, it was complicated. Mostly they just liked to talk. My sex life was a constant source of amusement to them.’

‘Not constant,’ Cassandra said. ‘I mean, you were off-world some of the time.’

~~~

Aneka had posted herself up on the southern side of the roof with her rifle. Occasionally she would lift it, sight carefully, and fire. The periodic loud cracks were stopping Ella from nodding off, mostly.

‘Five hundred and eighty-two metres,’ Aneka said after one shot.

‘You hit it?’

‘Watched its head explode. It’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but I expect they’ll give up soon. They don’t sleep, if I remember right, but they aren’t much use in the dark and all the street lights are out.’

‘Of course you remember it right.’

‘Turn of phrase. You’re right. I should stop using it.’

‘You’re very good with that thing though.’

‘I’m very good with a lot of weapons. I was before the Xinti got me. One of my instructors got pissed off at me for being the best marksman in the class he taught.’

‘He got annoyed at you? Why not the others?’

‘I did mention I left the Army partially because they were a bunch of pricks, right?’

‘I guess. I’m just not used to that kind of thing. I mean, people can still be sexist, but if you’re good at something you generally don’t get called out on it.’

Aneka raised her rifle and fired again. ‘Yeah, well… anyway, with this thing I could probably hit a gnat’s genitals on the horizon. It’s not exactly what I’d describe as a skilled job.’

‘Aneka,’ Gwy said into both their heads, ‘I am detecting rapid movement seven hundred metres south of you. Bearing one-nine-four.’

Lifting the rifle again, Aneka aimed it in the direction Gwy indicated, the scope zooming in on a group of figures running north. She lost them behind a building and then caught sight of them again as they appeared at a junction.

‘Shit! One of those is alive.’ She put her rifle on the ground and started for the edge of the roof. ‘Get downstairs and tell them we have an incoming guest.’ Then she dropped off the side of the building.

The fall might have been an issue for a normal person, but Aneka had the whole metal skeleton thing going for her. She landed, rolled, and was upright and running before Ella managed to get to her feet.

‘Wow…’ Ella said, watching her run off into the darkness. ‘Winter really did boost her running speed.’

It took Aneka a little over twenty-six seconds to locate the woman running at full sprint in the general direction of the university, guided by Gwy’s sensors. She looked like she was going to drop when Aneka arrived, and there were maybe ten chucks on her tail.

‘Lady, are you crazy?’ Aneka asked as she pulled her pistols, firing in the same motion.

‘Thought… they’d be… asleep,’ the woman gasped.

‘They don’t sleep. They don’t move much at night because they can’t see.’ The woman looked at her torch. ‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka said. ‘Toss it. I can get you to the university without light.’

To her credit, the woman turned and threw the heavy flashlight straight at the head of a chuck. It reared back, and then Aneka shot it in the face. As the street plunged into deeper darkness, Aneka holstered her pistols, grabbed the woman, slung her over her shoulder, and started back toward the university at a somewhat slower pace than she had come from it. Just not
much
slower.

~~~

‘Cam?’ Shaw asked as Aneka hustled the woman in through the doors. ‘Cam Forrester?’

‘Representative Shaw!’ Her exclamation was punctuated by a burst of fire from one of Aneka’s pistols and then the slamming of the door.

‘I’m glad to see you’re safe, but what possessed you to come running out here at night?’

‘I’d like to know that too,’ Aneka said, frowning in a distinctly disapproving way.

‘We heard the gunfire north of us all day,’ Forrester said, still having a little trouble with her breathing. She looked fit enough, and she was sort of dressed for running. The locals generally wore more conservative clothes than Aneka saw in the core, but Forrester was in a cropped T-shirt and running shorts. ‘We were hoping it would come south, but…’

‘We?’ Shaw asked.

‘Uh… there are about thirty of us. Down at the school. I was teaching netball there, like I usually do, when this big crowd of those things just… came out of nowhere. We’ve got twenty-two kids, a few teachers, one or two others who’ve found their way there. We had food, but it’s getting really low, and we had one rifle, but that’s out…’

‘Gwy, plot me a route to this school,’ Aneka said silently. ‘Al…’

‘I am prepping the rifle now,’ Al responded.

‘We’ll go out and get them,’ Aneka said aloud.

‘I’ll get my rifle,’ Ella said quickly, turning toward the inner door.

‘Ella…’

‘Thirty people. You’ll need all the firepower you can get and my eyes work just as well in the dark as yours.’

‘Damn… I can’t think of a reason why that’s wrong. Hurry. Tell Cassandra to get Miss Forrester vaccinated and prep a load more doses.’

‘On it.’

~~~

A few chucks had followed Forrester to the university, but they were dispatched within seconds and after that it was easy. They moved silently, communicating by radio if they had to, and at a fast walking pace. No running. Aneka had been very clear on that.

The school was a low building, constructed of Plascrete, with little in the way of decorative features. The windows seemed small to Aneka, and fairly high up. They had to give poor light inside, but they had probably helped keep the occupants safe. At least until now.

A gang of chucks were trying their best to get past barricades which had been put up at the back of the main entrance. Forrester’s exit had been noticed and some of the creatures had decided that there might be food which was not running like mad away from them.

‘You two watch for more coming,’ Aneka said. ‘Those weapons are likely to do as much collateral damage as intended.’

‘It’s a good point,’ Ella replied, a little sourly.

‘I’m sure you’ll get to blow up a few on the way back.’ Aneka stepped into the foyer and began firing. There was the ripping sound of her weapons spraying needles into bodies for a couple of seconds, and then silence.

And then part of the barricade was pulled back and a face appeared. A man, young, but not a teenager. He looked scared and relieved at the same time.

‘You… you’ve come to get us out? Cam made it?’

‘Cam barely made it,’ Aneka said, ‘but yes, we need to get you all to the university. Now. There’ll be more of them in the morning. They know you’re here and they’re tenacious bastards.’

‘We have children…’

‘I know. Ella, with me. We need to get this organised.’

Without any order, Al took up a position in the open front of the foyer, his eyes scanning the surroundings. He stood there, still as only a robot could manage. Aneka grinned, despite the situation.

‘I should have called you Arnie,’ she said, silently.

‘I’ll be here,’ Al replied, but he did not do a fake Austrian accent.

They had holed up in the gymnasium and, as Aneka had suspected, the high windows meant it was a dark room, but there was plenty of space for the kids, adults, and what supplies they had managed to collect. Aneka surveyed her charges: there were maybe sixteen in their teens, the rest younger, plus the teaching staff and a few strays.

‘All right… My name is Aneka, this is Ella, and we’ve come to get you out of here. We need to go now, so we’re all going for a walk. That is a
walk
. No one is to run, no matter what happens. We have another person outside who’s going to help us get through this. Nothing is going to happen so long as you all stay together. Does everyone understand?’

There were a lot of nods and mumbles in reply. One man actually spoke. ‘Those things… they’ll be waiting…’

‘And we’ve killed hundreds today. Do as we say and you’ll be quite safe.’ She looked around again. ‘Now, let’s get moving.’

Al and Ella took the lead, moving out from the foyer with their guns at the ready. They needed them quickly as chucks emerged from the nearby buildings, but the sudden dismantling of the creatures seemed to lend some courage, even to the man who had spoken up earlier.

Aneka brought up the rear where she could watch the sides of the procession and make sure there were no stragglers. Periodically she flicked one of her guns to the rear to check behind them, and that was how she spotted the trail of chucks they were developing. She turned, spraying needles toward them and half a dozen went down in the first volley. Most of the others stopped to make use of the more easily available food sources. Having stupid cannibals following you could be advantageous at times.