The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (17 page)

06:20:34


Sector 3 analysis completed.  Moving onto Sector 4.


The Thinking Machine crossed the empty street, leaving one
decrepit falling into ruin neighborhood for another.  Sector 4.

Virus Learning Facility located within Sector 4.


Archived Satellite feed shows inactivity since Year Two. 
Resistance field hospital neutralized by Chemical Strike Hawkeye Delivery
System.


The Thinking Machine was in the middle of sweeping all eight
sectors surrounding the hill where the bounce array was located.  Once the
sweep was completed, it would then summit the hill and hack the bounce array. 
It was hoping, estimating was the way it thought of the word hope, that it
would find a direct fiber optic cable or another connecting live router in one
of the sectors adjacent the bounce array.  There was no cover up there and also
there was a high probability the bounce array was under Virus surveillance. 

The Virus would definitely be alerted to the Thinking
Machine if it tried to summit the hill.

Weapons on standby.


... scanning for threats.


... scanning IEDs.


... electronic device signatures.


Houses built in the 1960’s, ranchero-style, lay along the
street leading toward the site of the Resistance Field Hospital that had once
been an elementary school.  Where there had been lawns, now there were dry
greenish-brown weeds.  The weeds were breaking up the concrete and the asphalt
of the silent street.

The sun rose above the peeling and gutshot rooftops to the
east.

That there had been a raging battle here long ago, with
multiple firefights, was evident.  Bullet holes in the splintered and warping
garage doors.  Along the crumbling stucco walls.  Walls entirely missing in
some cases.  The machine cataloged various debris clusters on a background
subroutine process as it passed through the area.

Shell Casings.  247 count.  5.56mm.


... database checking.


... standby.


5.56 mm not used since Year 15.  Ammunition type consistent
with Initial Conflict Virus Contact 7457 00:184:22:43:14.


Archived Footage Available.


The Thinking Machine opened a small window in its HUD and
started the archive feed as it stepped into the blown-out remains of a small
living room.  The exposed beams of the roof latticed the gray sky above.  There
were six skeletons in the room.

GPS Synch.


Virus Contact Footage...


Archive Footage Reaper VH9, MainForce.


A first gen terminator, Reaper VH9’s HUD appeared.  On
screen, the sky was dark and overcast.  The POV slewed left and then right. 
Above, the marking lights of a Virus air vehicle came into view.

AH6 LittleBird.  Virus Asset.  VTOL Rotary Wing Vehicle. 
Armaments: Miniguns.  AGM missiles.


Reaper VH9’s POV slewed to the left, tagging another Reaper
unit behind cover inside the remains of a Virus dwelling.  Its skeletal
chassis, matte-black, reflected no light.  A quick diagnostic scan swept the
other unit and identified small arms damage across the chest plate. 

A diagnostic assessment scan pop-up announced the other
Reaper unit as “
Operational”.

The other Reaper fired a sudden burst from the large 20mm
MiniCannon it carried.  A red triangular targeting laser stabbed out briefly
from the Visual Optic Sensors located in the Cranial Processor Housing.

Incoming Message Reaper VH8:


Virus Terminated.


6 Hostiles Identified.


VH9 emerged from cover within the rapidly disintegrating
Virus dwelling, running out into the street.  The Virus Helicopter above was
decimating everything with both whining mini-guns.  VH9’s targeting reticle
identified hostile Virus units inside the house the Thinking Machine was now
standing in twenty-five years later.

Missile Launch detected.


The feed’s audio records a sudden static
Whooosh. 
VH9
pans upward and targets the AH6 LittleBird helicopter.

A message appears on the Reaper unit’s HUD.

VH8 Destroyed.


Then a directive from MainForce Authority.

Recover Chassis as per Tech Denial Protocol once Hostiles in
this area are eliminated.


Incoming Weapons fire... multiple hits...


...Internal hydraulic 105 OFFLINE


...Light Damage Armor, leg.


...Light Damage Armor, Chest.


...Light Damage Armor, Cranial Processor Unit.


Continue Mission.


Eradicate Hostile Virus Units this Sector.


VH9 hits the curb on the far
sidewalk, tracking three different sources of gunfire coming from the house the
Thinking Machine finds itself standing in, in the future.

Hostile Virus Unit, Male, Armed, M4 firing on Full Auto.
Estimate Magazine change in 3.5 seconds.


Hostile Virus Unit, Male, Armed, M248, engaging in burst
fire mode.  Magazine status unknown?


Hostile Virus Unit, Female, Scout Sniper Rifle with ranged
laser targeting optics.  Bolt Action.  Next shot in 1.5 seconds. 


Priority Elimination assigned High Value Target Status:
Sniper.


The female Virus unit was the most dangerous.  Sniper rifles
could take a Reaper down.  VH9 targets her and fires a short burst from its
MiniCannon, punching a large hole in her chest.  She disappears from the window
of the house.  VH9 targets the machine gunner and ventilates him as well as the
surrounding and background walls near the Virus’s cover position.  Then the
riflemen inside the dwelling.  In one fluid motion VH9 halts before the door,
raises the MiniCannon’s metallic butt and smashes it into the flimsy door,
taking it off the hinges.  It steps into the room and fires at three more
Hostile Virus units leaning intently over a laptop on the floor.  All are
terminated within 2.4 seconds.

It scans the room.

Virus units are bleeding.  Moaning.  Dying.

The feed ends.

It was thirty seconds long.

That room had been different.  Colors.  Fabrics. 
Paintings.  Life.

Now standing in the same room twenty-five years later, the
Thinking Machine scans the places where each of the Hostile Virus units had
lain.  The weapons, the bullet casings, the laptop... all of these things are
gone.  Either destroyed by the Reaper Unit or the Reclamation Units or taken by
the Hostile Virus units now called the Resistance. 

There is little left of the house.  The stairs rise to
nowhere.  The skeletal remains of the walls only suggest a home was once
there.  The furniture, the paintings, the life... all the things that once
were, are gone.

Only the bones remain, as six skeletons stare sightlessly at
the Thinking Machine.

Wan sunlight nears the zenith of its
day and there is a suggestion of actual warmth up near the bounce array on top
of the ruin-covered hill.  Cade looks out over surrounding neighborhoods
forever devastated, gray rolling hills, the distant gully where the old rail
lines lie, warped and rusting.  But the sky has decided to be that rare blue
one only remembers.  A blue Cade sometimes finds described in books about
better days he never really knew.  White bilious clouds speed across the sky. 

So the wind must be fast up there, reasoned Cade. 

But down here it’s a light breeze, he thought as he took his
‘nocs and scanned the burned-out homes and rusting cars and ruined streets that
spread away from the hill in every direction.  At the bottom of the hill is the
old school.

An elementary school, Bert had called it.

Cory watches everything too.

If the Scavenger is still in the area, there’s a good chance
they’ll see him from up here.  Or even see a fire if he’s cooking.  They wait
for an hour, watching over the remains of something Cade wishes were more
familiar to him.  Like a half remembered song.

What did they do there?

What was that building there for?

Who were the people who lived here and what were their lives
like?

And...

What happened to them all?

Cade thinks about Cory and the things the kid has said on
their way up the hill to the bounce array.

“Market,” when they passed the ruined foundation of a big
square of blasted concrete on the other side of the bridge.

“Pharmacy.”  And, “Doctor Liu,” when they passed the old
pharmacy where they’d put up one of the CCTVs to watch the area around the
library.

“Kevin Chung’s house.”  He’d said that one as they neared
the entrance to a small neighborhood they’d passed through to make their way up
onto the hill and the debris-littered heights guarding it.

Cory named places that held no meaning for Cade.  Ever.  As
though the places had actually once had names.  As if rubble ever could in Cade’s
world.  Every name for a place or thing was almost alien to Cade.  Almost. 
He’d been born a survivor, growing up in the years after such places had done
their final business on the last nuclear holocaust day.  The last day they’d
ever do business, and Cade never thought of them, of those places, by the names
the kid used.  Cade knew the names.  But not the meanings.  Or the history. 

Or who they were.

He wanted to call Cory’s naming “babble”.  The babble of a
simple man-child whose only comforts were a few relics from the Before of
fantasies that could save the world from any monster.  Fantasies called “Super
Heroes”.

Too bad they were never real.

Too bad the monsters were.

“Hey, did you live here?  Did you have a house around here?”
he asked Cory.  He could feel himself distancing from the kid by the tone of
voice he used...  de-personalizing the boy he’d need as bait to draw the
Scavenger out.  “House” was a word Cade only knew of.  No one in the resistance
had ever had a “house”.

Camps.

Outposts.

Tents.

Cardboard boxes.

“I slept in that drainpipe over there.  It was dry enough,”
was something Cade had said and heard too many times to ever be worth counting.

Those places.

Cory stood and pointed back down toward the neighborhood
they’d passed through.  His big arm was so locked it looked bent in a way that
wasn’t possible.  His thick finger straight and true.

Cade knew no one had ever lived down there, or anywhere
nearby, for a very long time.  Not since before the war, and the chemical
strike and the war that continued after.

As the only soldier in this area, Cade had scouted all over
and through it.  No one lived here anymore.

So then, how does he know the names of all these places?

He doesn’t, Cade answered himself.  It’s just babble.

Cory sat down cross legged, studying a dry, brown weed
between his legs.  His large finger traced its outline.

The day was turning to afternoon and Cade felt the sudden
chill of the wind.

Just a little while more, he thought, then we’ll head back
to the library for the night.

That’s when he saw the Scavenger.

Right below them.  The Scavenger emerged from the old
elementary school’s yawning blackness of a double door entrance long since
missing its doors.  The Scavenger walked across an open space between another
section of the building and entered the darkness again.

Cade tried to replay the sudden memory of the man. 

Were there any clues that it was a Terminator?

Nothing jumped out, he thought to himself.  Nothing.

But the Scavenger was down there.

“Hey,” said Cade, slapping Cory on the shoulder.  Cory
suddenly jerked.  Reacting as though he’d been stung.  But before he could do
more Cade said, “There’s a man down there.  I think he might know where your
Daddy is.”

Cory turned, following Cade’s finger.

“School,” Cory said.

Lucky guess, thought Cade suddenly, as if to close the loop,
or complete some unfinished melody.  Organize it.  Put it in a place one could
accept and maybe live with.  Because... how could this lost kid know that the
ruins below were once a school before he’d been born and the world had blown
itself up?

Cade had once seen a school.  In a refugee camp up in Idaho
one winter when they were giving the Cans hell as the machines tried to build a
high-speed railway across the plains to their memory factories up in
perma-frozen Canada.  That refugee camp “school” had been just three children
huddled around a book.  A lady Cade remembered to be pretty, except for the
scar on her face and a missing arm, was teaching them numbers.

That was school.

What he saw below, what Bert had told him was a school, was
just an old flat building surrounded by an overgrown field of dry weeds.  That
Cade knew they used the word “school” was only because “school” was a tactical
reference point on Resistance maps of the local area surrounding the library.

But that wasn’t the point.

Random Scavenger... or Terminator?  That was the point.

“You think you might go down there and ask him if he’s seen
your... uh, Daddy?”

Cade didn’t feel bad using Cory as bait.

When the world is the way it is, rust and ruin, humanity
barely hanging on, Cans every day and night never sleeping or ceasing in their
quest to eradicate what’s left of humanity, resources are not just precious,
they’re vital.  So yeah, you use a simple kid to lure a Terminator out ‘cause
the dog that can spot the Cans is much too valuable.

Or at least that’s what you tell yourself, thought Cade
somewhere in the back of his head.

Cory stood, dry weeds clinging to his corduroy pants.

And there’s another thing you’re not seeing, haven’t seen
Cade, he said to himself.  The clothes the kid wears.  You ever seen clothes
like that?  All clothing has become little more than rags in the twenty-five
years since.  Most pieces have been owned several times over by different
people, since the bombs. 

“Almost new” might have been the words he would have used if
he’d ever known what “new” meant.  What it looked like.  What a department
store full of clothing must have looked like.  The resistance had an outpost
inside an old mall.  There were no clothes there.  Hadn’t been for twenty-five
years.

Cory stepped out of the bare crumbling foundation of the old
place they’d been watching from.  Cade looked down, away, at the Barrett
resting on its tripod in the dirt nearby.

Cory started down the hill.

Cade reached for the sniper rifle, pulled back the bolt, and
checked to make sure that one of his prized uranium depleted electro-static
discharge rounds was in the chamber.  He took off his coat and spread it out in
the dirt.  He moved his elbows onto it, then moved the rifle in front of him.

He sighted the place where the Scavenger, or the Terminator,
had entered the darkness of the old school.  He adjusted the magnification and
cocked his head, feeling the wind.

“Nuthin’ to worry about at this range,” he muttered to
himself in the silence atop the hill.