Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (21 page)

             
I have no idea what I’m walking into, if maybe the mines in the water were a warning to the robots, who might be waiting to attack the first sign of movement approaching from the city. But the explosions seem to be coming from somewhere much farther behind me. I wish I could stay in the water until the cover of night but darkness won’t be here for hours and I can’t take the risk of being blown up before then.

             
I emerge from the river to see a long line of robots, most of which turn to me when I suddenly appear. They’re all heavily armed, tiny wisps of smoke tailing the barrels of their massive guns. In unison they turn their guns on me. There’s no point running, no point hiding, no point offering any sort of resistance to so many weapons aimed at me. In that split second before I’m certain my life will end in a hail of bullets, I recall E’s warning about the heartless robots, about how words can’t stop them from doing anything they’re programmed to do, such as killing humans.

I close my eyes and wait for the end. I think of my son from my memory, then the picture of
both
boys I found in my folder. I’m full of regret for never learning more about them. It doesn’t take long before I hear dozens of weapons fired at once. I expect total blackness, total silence, my mind to turn off. But only the total blackness remains, at least until I open my eyes. The robots still have their guns raised but they’re aimed well above my head.

             
More shots are fired. I turn to look across the river, the top of the water still frothy. I see the area of wall I destroyed, though the destruction looks much smaller from so far away. The robots seem to be firing at the wall but I’m not sure any damage is being caused. Apparently my trip through the exploding water got plenty of attention from robots and humans alike, as both sides are now engaged in battle.

             
The robots fire hails of bullets but I only see a few unlucky humans on the ground, dead. Not even robots can shoot from this far away with any accuracy. Plenty of blue electrical pulses are fired from within the city wall and I’m tempted to run away. But none of the robots budge from their spots and I’m afraid running will be a clear sign that I’m not one of them.

Instead, I watch the deadly blue balls and realize why the robots have little reason to fear – not that they can
feel
anything. Though the pulses start off bright and fast when fired, they barely make it halfway over the river before slowing and fading, eventually disappearing altogether. It’s not long before both sides realize fighting from afar is worthless. When the electrical pulses stop, the robots lower their defenses and the world goes quiet.

             
I regret standing at the water’s edge for so long. With the battle stopped, I expect the robots to retaliate against the stranger emerging from the water. I take a small step forward and the nearest metallic warrior turns its lifeless robotic eyes at me. It looks me up and down; I worry it’s figuring out that I’m different. But just when I think it might shoot me, the robot does the exact opposite – it steps aside to let me by.

             
With a veritable sea of robots in front of me, there’s nowhere to avoid them. I’m forced to walk among them and fully expect a problem to arise. But no problem happens. I keep my human head down but that makes no difference as I walk past thousands of robots. I make no threatening moves toward them – give no reason for them to view me as a threat – so they simply ignore me.

By the time I reach the end of the robot forces, I stop to look back at the masses of metal. I see them in a completely new way than when I first walked out of the water. Looking at them, I don’t feel like an outcast. Obviously, it’s appalling that they’re trying to eradicate the human species. But the robots don’t treat me like the enemy, they don’t fire electrical pulses at the first sight of me. They accept that I’m like them, a different story than the humans even though I still have a human head and think human thoughts. But before I gain too much sympathy for the robots, I remind myself that they would’ve killed – without hesitation – my entire family if Henry, Jeremy and my wife were still alive.

I continue walking away from the robot army, occasionally glancing back to make sure my desertion isn’t noticed. I resist the urge to start running; I don’t want to do anything they might view as suspicious. After an hour of walking, the human city fades into the distance behind me. Most of the robot-occupied land is totally flattened, leveled during what I assumed to be past battles. But I eventually encounter the city suburbs, neighborhoods full of houses and roads and buildings, all in various degrees of decay and completely overgrown with weeds.

I’ve stumbled upon scattered human corpses during my journey from CIFPOL but as many human bones litter these suburbs as concrete debris. Any positive feelings I may have developed for the robots instantly disappears, especially when I see smaller human bones among the adult sizes.

Several robots patrol these suburbs. The sight of them still makes me nervous. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing them or walking among them. Luckily, their numbers decrease as I get farther from the city. I no sooner approach a crumbling on-ramp to a highway when I spot more movement. Instinct tells me to freeze but it must be more robots. When the movement suddenly ducks behind a pile of long destroyed vehicles on the side of the road, I somehow know this isn’t simply another robot patrol.

I don’t know if I’ve been spotted but I casually turn behind the burnt-out remnants of what was once a gas station. As quickly and quietly as I can, I circle behind the building and peer around the corner, making sure to remain in the shadows. I look in the direction where I saw the movement. Minutes pass slowly as I stare toward the highway entrance, toward my means of escape. I’m starting to wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me, if the nerves of escaping the robot army are getting the best of me. Even worse, could there be damage to my optical wires, making me see things not really there?

I’m about to step out of the shadows and continue on my way when the movement reappears. Nearly a dozen dirty, scrawny humans hurry down the ramp, all of them moving in tight formation. A few carry weapons but the way they run and hide makes it clear they’re not looking for a fight. They run toward a decrepit convenience store across the cracked street from where I’m hiding. They move quickly and duck into the shadows. They were out in the open no more than a few seconds; it’s obvious they’re used to moving around robot-controlled territory.

My path to the highway is now clear but I’m intrigued by this band of humans moving
toward
the robot army. Instead of escaping, I remain staring at the convenience store, awaiting their next move. I suddenly spot something down the road and see several robots emerge from the suburb’s residential section. I have a clear view of the robots from where I stand but several buildings block the humans’ view. I look back to the convenience store, silently willing the humans to remain in the safety of their hiding spot. But seconds before the robots are about to walk into their line of sight, the humans leave their spot, unknowingly heading in the same direction as the metallic killers.

I know what’s going to happen. I’ve known since the moment the robots appeared. I also know that the only way to protect myself is to stay put, stay silent, regardless of the slaughter soon to come. I doubt these humans would hesitate to destroy me. But I need to prove to them – and maybe even a little to myself – that I’m no robot.

“Stop!” I yell, stepping out onto the street. “You’re walking into a trap!”

The humans freeze and turn toward me. More than one of them wears a look of shock, though I don’t know if that’s from my sudden appearance or my ability to talk. Either way, they don’t heed my warning, which actually has the opposite effect of what I wanted.

“Head toward the city!” the human leader yells.

The humans still don’t see the robots, who turn toward me with their weapons raised. The human leader peels away from the group and rushes me, firing at the ‘enemy’ that just tried to warn him. I shake my head in disgust but not for long. Bullets spark the street around me. I leap to action, turning to run toward the back of the nearest housing development, hoping to shake the human leader
and
distract the robots long enough for the humans to hide again.

“Come and get me, bolt heads!” I yell.

I don’t see if they’ve heard me – or if I prevented a massacre – but more bullets strafe around me as I reach the front yard of the nearest house. I leap as high as I can and land on the decaying roof. My right foot punches through, stuck. The human below still follows and fires more shots. Bullets rip off the nearby chimney and I hear the shattering of several windows. When I try to free my leg, the rest of my heavy-metal body crashes through and into the house.

Somehow I land on my feet inside a bedroom. With the exception of the newly busted ceiling and shot-out window, the rest of the room isn’t in such bad shape. Pictures still adorn the walls and the bed is still made. I actually feel bad for causing such damage, though the human outside feels no such care. He continues to fire bullet after bullet. I rush from the room and head downstairs. The human must sense my movements as he continues to shoot into the house, coming closer to hitting me.

“Stop!” I yell, but there’s no time to tell him about the pair of robots he obviously hasn’t seen yet.

A few shots ping off my metallic limbs. The human’s constant gunfire is deafening, but I somehow hear pounding footsteps getting closer. More shots ring out but they’re not from the same kind of gun as the humans possess. The human finally stops shooting long enough to call out to his people.

“Finish the mission!”

I duck beneath a window but glance up in time to see the human leader running down the street, yelling at the patrol robot quickly approaching. The man shoots at the robot but doesn’t have nearly enough firepower. The robot returns fire, striking the human leader in the chest, which explodes like a bloody fountain. The man collapses in a heap but the robot shoots him several more times to make sure there’s no chance for survival.

Down the road, I see the second robot kicking in the door to another house, which is followed immediately by more gunfire. The first robot looks up from the dead human leader and begins to walk to the front door of my house. It doesn’t shoot, though I’m sure that would change if I tried to run and escape. I only have one option so I kick out the front door before it gets too close. The robot levels its weapon at me. Somehow I resist the urge to run or beg for my life or even close my eyes. I merely walk out of the house, as if that’s exactly what I’m supposed to do. The robot watches me as I walk by but it never fires. Once I’m passed it, the robot heads into the house to continue its search.

I move slowly, unable to keep my eyes off the dead body of the human leader. I glance farther down the street, where the second robot chases after another human, gunning her down in cold blood. I spot several fresh dead bodies strewn about the yards and feel terrible that I couldn’t prevent this. But it’s too late to help anyone else but myself. I head back toward the highway ramp without looking back.

Once I reach the highway, I begin to run, even though my escape from the city and shootout in the suburbs greatly diminished my power supply. I just want to put as much distance between myself and the city as possible. For a few miles I run and leap along the highway, passing nothing but destroyed cars, overgrown roads and scattered bodies, human and robot alike.

When I begin to feel safer again, I slow down and head off the road into a nearby forest, where I check myself for damage. Two of my solar panels have fresh cracks, one caused by a bullet, the other a likely result of the underwater explosives. No wonder my fresh recharge didn’t last very long. I should feel glad to be alive but knowing I’ll need to stop and recharge with greater frequency leaves me crushed. I put myself in such danger to save time but now I’ve prolonged my journey more than the few days it would’ve taken to circle the city.

Though I’m not comfortable touching any of my wires, I check the back of my head carefully, relieved to find nothing else loose. That relief is short lived. I hear the sound of wet slapping and realize my drenched bag slaps against my shoulder. I take it off my shoulder and find it ripped in several spots. It’s probably a miracle it stayed tied but water drips out of it and I’m afraid what I’ll find inside.

The folder holding the contents of my life is a clumpy wet mess. Panicked, I try to take the pages out. They’re all stuck together. I attempt to separate the pages but my pincers poke holes wherever I touch. My fingers aren’t soft enough to handle the wet paper, my coordination not delicate enough.

“No…no…”

I force myself to stop and put down the paper. I imagine taking a few deep breaths, imagine my beating heart and racing pulse calming. When I try again, I move much slower and don’t fully close my fingers together when grasping the corners of pages. I carefully peel the top form off the wet slab, keeping it intact though the ink has already smeared badly. I lay it on a section of forest floor where sunlight filters in through the trees above.

I proceed with form after form until a large section of the ground is covered with paper. When I reach the most important thing in the folder – the picture of my sons – I’m relieved to find the ink only slightly smudged, the photograph still salvageable. I place that in the brightest spot close to me. There’s nothing to do but wait for the pages and my bag to dry. I remain still, hoping to conserve what little energy I have left. A few tiny animals approach, not fearful of me at all. They’re focused on getting at the paper, which they nibble at until I shoo them away.

I don’t know how many hours pass but I have to rearrange the paper several times as the angle of the sun shifts. Several times I check the paper, hoping to find it stiffer, less pulpy. But the folder’s contents are slow to dry and I know there’s no way I’ll stay awake until the pages are ready to be put back into my bag. A slight breeze shifts some of the paper so I collect tiny rocks and place one on top of each page, holding them in place. The effort finally takes its toll on my body so I force myself into shutdown mode, hoping I’ll save myself some recharge time…

After experiencing my final – and only – memory yet again, my robotic circuitry slowly powers up my basic bodily systems. The first thing I hear is squawking and when I shift slightly, nearly a dozen birds fly off my body. A few are on the ground, poking at my pages, until I yell at them to get away.

Though not completely dark, the sun is low enough in the sky so that no direct sunlight reaches the ground. The pages still litter the forest floor in front of me but I quickly realize not all are in the same place I left them. A few sheets swirl in the wind, parts of them ripped away from beneath their rocks. I rush around to gather them into a neat little pile.

             
The papers are still damp but no longer on the verge of disintegrating just from touching them. I find the picture of my boys as well as the Special Instructions page with coordinates to the Heaven Box, the two most important pages from the folder. The papers will forever be crinkled and warped but I’m relieved beyond words that they somehow survived. I’m not sure if anything else is missing but I put the rest of the forms back into the folder and place it gently in my damp bag. 

             
Once I secure the bag to my shoulder, I turn in the direction that the GPS tells me and begin to walk again.