Robogenesis (35 page)

Eventually, we give up searching his code and do our best to repair the tank—he’s our ticket home, after all.

Cherrah and I ride up top, on a gunnery platform behind the main turret. The walker can lumber along as fast as twenty miles per hour, maybe even faster, but it’s jarring and loud and punishing. Instead,
we shamble gently down overgrown highways at a nonstop ten miles per hour. We stride through dewy morning mist and then under the pounding afternoon sun. Eating scorched MREs as the grasshoppers fly between Houdini’s legs and saplings brush against his belly. We are headed toward Gray Horse, toward our home, and sometimes we go for as long as fifteen hours a day.

Stopping doesn’t feel safe.

Each night, we make camp under the great walker while it squats down in bunker mode. An endless Rob battery that we still don’t understand hums in Houdini’s chest. Massive plates of leg armor fold down, and that stubby turret occasionally whines, shifting in the still night as Houdini watches the darkness. Cherrah and I are all too aware that even these thick, scarred plates can be clawed through with enough time.

Even so, sleeping under Houdini’s belly feels safe. I didn’t realize how much I missed him—my weapon, my vehicle, and my home. At night, the heat radiates down from his hull, warming our little pocket of safety. In the soft greenish glow of Houdini’s intention light, Cherrah peels off the polished pieces of her battle armor. Her dirty black hair cascades over freckled shoulders. We embrace in the dim light and I silently marvel at her transformation from soldier to woman.

We sleep huddled together, ears straining for furtive sounds out there in the empty wild. It reminds me of camping out with my brother when I was a kid—feeling the cold ground through my sleeping bag and hearing the strange night noises. The difference is that here there are no stars overhead, only Houdini’s hastily repaired mesh belly net. Lying on my back, I look up at constellations of supplies: ammunition boxes, ration cans, loose clothes, vehicle parts, extra helmets, gun cleaning supplies, web cartridge belts, ponchos, bandages, canteens, and coils of scavenged wires and cables.

Everything we need to live.

The New War swept away our lives. It carried us across the country in flashes of violence. Stole my brother from me and gave me Cherrah. But the war forgot to leave behind any purpose or meaning. Resting on my back with ten tons of metal overhead to protect me from an infinite
blackness crawling with mindless killing machines, I’m starting to find that I don’t understand this new world.

I don’t understand the point of it.

The only thing that makes real sense is the warm girl curled up next to me. The rise and fall of her breathing against my chest. She helps quiet all the bad thoughts that come slithering out of my head in the night. Fighting is easy. Sleeping is hard.

“The world is over, Cherrah,” I tell her, in the night.

“Yeah,” she says, head resting on a duffel bag that is her pillow.

“So now what?” I ask.

She is quiet for a long time, long enough that I assume she’s gone to sleep.

“I think this is just part of it,” she says. “Civilizations fall. People keep going.”

“Best case,” I say, “we scratch out a living hunting and farming. Hope every day for enough to eat. I don’t see the point.”

“The point of what?”

I don’t want to say it. Don’t want to put voice to such a terrible question. I know there’s no good answer. “The point of going on living.”

Cherrah shifts against me. She is shaking a little bit. I put a hand on her shoulder, concerned. Then I realize that she is laughing. She reaches back and roughly pats my ass. “Drama queen,” she murmurs.

“I’m serious,” I say, nestling my face into her hair. Sleep is almost on me now. The world feels huge outside. I’m crouched behind my own eyelids, both of them giant like the screen of a drive-in movie.

“Stop thinking, Cormac,” says Cherrah. “I need you. That’s enough.”

“Yeah,” I say, but I must not sound convinced.

“If you aren’t sure whether you want to live …,” she says, turning to face me. “Try dying. Get back to me with how that goes.”

We make human contact on a mountain pass in what used to be Washington. The roads are empty and we haven’t seen any sign of habitation for days. I’m half asleep on the gunnery turret, watching the snow-kissed
pines roll and sway. Houdini’s half-filled belly net is creaking rhythmically with each step, like the rigging of an old ship. We’re climbing in elevation and the wind is getting sharp, but I’m warm and drowsy inside my arctic-tested down jacket.

This overgrown highway cuts through endless columns of tall pines, climbing the pass one monotonous bend at a time. Mist creeps among the low branches on either side, nipping at the shoulders of the road. Looks like it’s been years since anybody came through here. Dirt and mud are caked in tidal pools. We tread over a thin, sandy layer of muck like the bottom of a shallow sea, with vivid green pines rising up around us like kelp stretching for the surface.

Every now and then, I can make out the rusting remains of a car flipped over along the side of the road or impaled among the trees. These are the victims of those first few minutes of the New War. Horrible yawning moments when a hundred million vehicles became coffins and our relationship with technology shifted violently.

Watching the trees is how I spot the hidden compound.

A rusted old gate, suffocated with brush, hangs over a dirt road that branches off the old highway. For a split second, the faded road lines up and I’m able to see all the way down it from my high moving vantage point. I make out the mossy, sloping roof of a camouflaged building in the distance. From the ground, I never would have seen anything. Another second and I would have missed it.

“Hold up, Houdini,” I call. Nothing happens right away. Not with a walker this size. He just starts moving slower and slower. Finally, Houdini takes one last wheezing step and comes to a stop. Birds call to each other over the rustle of the breeze.

“What’s happening?” asks Cherrah.

“Camp. Two hundred meters into the woods,” I say.

“Could be good scavenge,” she says.

“Or survivors,” I say.

“Way out here? Fat chance,” she says.

We both turn as something disturbs the brush. The moist leafy saplings next to the road shiver as something scrambles through them.
Or someone. Cherrah swings around the big-caliber machine gun, her hands wrapped tight on the grips. I lean forward, staring. I catch the silhouette of a child. The kid is wearing dark goggles. His sharp shoulder blades are flashing, dirty elbows pumping as the boy runs over damp pine needles toward that half-collapsed building.

“Ho, Cherrah,” I say. “It’s a kid.”

“No way,” she says, leaning heavily into the grips and pointing the barrel straight up. She wipes her hands on her shirt.

“Well?” she says. “You take point and I’ll cover, Bright Boy. Let’s go say hello.”

The primeval forest is still, a soaring cathedral, rich with the smell of earth and rotting leaves and chlorophyll. The rows of craggy trees are like silent, damp sentinels. The cold mist that glides among their roots forms a pale skirt that limits our tactical visibility.

Cherrah paces silently ten meters behind me, a light machine gun slung over her shoulder. She’s carrying only one extra belt of ammo to keep the weight down. With the injured leg, she’d rather lay down cover fire from a fixed position than run and gun.

That’s why I’ve got an M4 assault rifle on the low ready. Extra magazines of ammunition flop silently in the molly webbing on my chest protector.

“Rally point is Houdini,” I whisper.

“Right-o,” she says.

I glance behind us as the woods swallow Houdini. The big walker is standing as tall as it can to try to track us. His intention light glows a wary yellow. After about fifty meters, the narrow, soaring pines give way to fatter, lower hemlock trees that are covered in preternaturally green moss. Their branches reach down like shaggy claws.

I hear a bird whistle from Cherrah.

“Nine o’clock,” she whispers.

Glancing over, I’m just in time to glimpse the boy as he pops up and dives through thick foliage. Too far away to shout at. He’s intentionally
skirting around us. Heading for the gaping entrance of the largest building, the doorway a dark slanting mouth wreathed in ivy.

I signal to Cherrah to be careful. An old barbed-wire fence has fallen down ahead of us. We gingerly step over the rusting barbs. Our footsteps are swallowed by spongy mounds of fallen pine needles. It smells good out here. Clean.

Like life is on the rebound.

The rest of the complex comes into view. Cheap sheets of corrugated metal thrown together into rambling structures. Planks of local wood have been cut and nailed together into boardwalks that lead through the brush from one crumbling structure to the next. At this elevation, the ground must be either snow or mud for most of the year.

I lead us in a zigzagging route toward the largest building. This is where the boy was headed. Along the way there are no human prints. No camp smoke in the sky or on the breeze. No garbage or voices or human waste. No real indication that anyone lives here at all.

Which is exactly the way human survivors would like to keep it.

We stop at the tree line before a small clearing. The main building squats fifty yards away on a bare treeless patch, its mold-eaten walls leaning. Made of brown stone and wood, the building gives me the feeling that it grew out of the dirt. At some point it was an old house, something out of “Hansel and Gretel,” but now it’s been added on to. Scabby flakes of paint dangle from plywood additions. The front entrance is a double door with a half-moon window above it. The glass is broken out and rust has eaten the door hinges.

Something thumps against the other side of the door.

Cherrah and I hold position. Rifle up, I go to a knee behind the nearest tree. Dew soaks into my jacket shoulder where I lean into the bark. The door shudders, hit by something from the inside. I flick the selector switch to semiautomatic with my thumb. Hear a quiet snick as Cherrah deploys the bipod on her machine gun.

The front door handle turns and the door begins to swing open. I put up a hand to tell Cherrah to hold fire.
It could be the boy
, I tell myself.
Please let it be the boy
. A widening crack appears between the two doors.
There is only blackness inside and now I feel that old familiar horror climbing up the back of my throat.

A face pushes out into the light.

I swallow as two unblinking camera eyes appear, twin reflections of the crisp morning sunlight. They are embedded in pale blue plastic skin, molded into a perpetual screaming smile. The blue casing is freckled, blooming with age spots of mold. A stringy coat of moss grows like a rash across its chest.

The Big Happy domestic robot steps out of the doorway and onto the small porch. Cocks its head sideways and starts a scan of the clearing. My mind is hit with memories as I watch that permanent smile, a rictus, slowly turning. I thought these memories were gone. In Boston, on that first day it happened, my brother and I saw these smiles everywhere we looked. My brain tasted the horror of it and withdrew, refused to remember the atrocities.

The Big Happies. They’re filling the garbage trucks with bodies, Jack, and they’re dumping them off the bridge. The people are falling, Jack. Jackie?
Shut up, Cormac. Keep moving
.

I raise a hand and clench it into a fist. Extend my index finger and drop it twice.
Fire
.

Blow this fucker away.

Cherrah flops forward, resting the gun’s bipod on a fallen log. She yanks back the bolt and digs the stock into her shoulder. Takes a breath and then lets her gun stutter. A couple of dozen rounds climb the humanoid robot’s torso. Impacts chewing up the plastic shell, spraying the entrance with smoking shards. The Big Happy stumbles awkwardly and drops onto its chest, head still scanning.

“Hold it!” calls a voice from behind us.

“Six o’clock,” I say to Cherrah, already moving.

“Target down,” comes her clipped reply. She stops firing the big gun and I dart between trees to her position, eyes on the forest behind her. I’ve got my rifle on the high ready, elbow tucked and one eye peering down the gun sights, scanning the trees for targets. Down low, Cherrah has drawn her sidearm and left the bipod aimed toward the main building.

“Settle down now, buddy!” comes a shout. The voice is hoarse, strained. An older man, and I think I see his tree now.

I glance down at Cherrah. She shrugs, in a crouch, eyes on the woods out in front of our log. I’m watching the big tree behind us, gun out, waiting for the owner of the voice to appear so I can put a round in him.

“Hello?” I call.

“I’m just saying, don’t shoot unless you want to get shot at,” comes the reply. “Let’s all be friendly, how about?”

“There’s Rob activity,” I call.

A face slides out from behind the tree. A human face. An older man with shaggy gray-black hair and an unkempt gray beard. His hands are up, calloused palms showing.

“That’s just Hugh. We sent him over to take a closer look at you all,” says the man. He puts a finger onto his temple and talks lower. “Damage status? Got it. Repairs incoming. Joey, get over to Hugh and take care of him.”

I lower my weapon slightly.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask.

The man grins and turns his head. Part of his skull is hairless and metallic. It’s been removed and replaced with finely wrought black metal. “We’re modified,” he says. “And I hope you don’t mind, for your sake.”

I turn my rifle and let it hang from my chest strap. Help Cherrah stand up. She retrieves the machine gun, brushing dirt and pine needles off it. I point at the broken Big Happy and Cherrah nods, keeps one eye on it. It doesn’t pay to let down your guard.

“I don’t mind,” I say quietly. “A survivor is a survivor.”

“You two are from that Oklahoma army, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“I could tell from what’s left of your uniform. You all are good people. It’s why we haven’t killed you.”