Robotics and Necrotics (Book 1): As Nations Fall

by Vale, Silas

  "I knew something like this would happen." He swore, curses blowing past his lips. It was then he thought of something that he should have before they hid.

  "Shit. The kid."

  The color drained from her face, and her blood ran cold in her veins.

  "… Give me the gun." She held her hand out, even though it shook somewhat. "I used to do archery, and if I say so myself I’m a damn good shot. Get the kid, get the supplies, and we’ll leave out the back door, go up into the forest, and loop around back to the road." She looked up at him, determination working its way into the look of fear on her face. "We don’t have time. We have to go now."

  She went quiet, silently mulling over their options in her head. She shot a hand up to grab a lighter off of the counter. "You see anything flammable?" What on earth was she doing?

  Shaun looked at her, a wild expression lacing his face. He handed over the gun without much hassle, as he wasn't much of a shot anyway. He had only ever fired a rifle once, and he wasn't even much good at that.

  "Flammable? We're in a damn gas station, there are probably petrol cans lining the place." He said aloud, and proceeded to dig around under the counter. There were two partially filled gas cans, which scared him, because he had no idea what she was about to do.

  Shaun ducked behind the edge of the counter and rolled across the aisle, so he was only within view of the door for a fraction of a second. He ran to the kid, picking him up inside the sleeping bag and throwing both his and Aisling’s backpacks over his shoulders. The added weight almost made him fall over, but he kept his balance.

  He turned, looking to Ais, a pained expression on his face. "The hell are you doing?"

  "Making a distraction so we can book it. Grab the medicine and shit that’s here." She grabbed the cans and drizzled gasoline along the window sills. "When I light this, run to the back door and unlock it. I’ll meet you around back."

  She created a small trail from the window sill to the ground, creeping along the floor on her hands and knees. She backed up a foot or so, and leaned back on her legs. "… You ready?" She looked back at him over her shoulder, quirking an eyebrow. She was kind of scary sometimes.

  Shaun nodded. It was a good plan, though he didn't know how he would be able to fit anything else into the backpacks on his shoulders, while simultaneously carrying the kid. That was why Shaun was remarkably relieved when Iyce's eyes opened, and he began to speak.

  "W-What's happening?" He muttered, his tired eyes lazing about the store. What a sight it must have been; a girl, pouring gasoline around the store. A guy, carrying him as well as two large backpacks. And a man with two kids, coming up to the store doors and looking ragged and worn down.

  Wait. Two kids?

  "Daddy?" Iyce muttered sleepily, and Shaun looked to Aisling in disbelief.

  Aisling blinked. "You know who that is?" She stood up and turned towards Iyce. She held the gun firmly in one hand, still not willing to take any chances. "Are they nice people?" She bit her lip, and after a moment turned around.

  She stuffed the lighter into her pocket and cocked the gun, holding it by her side ready to raise it if need be.

  She stood in front of Shaun, less to block his view and more protectively. She was also short as hell, so that didn’t help. "Fuck. He has kids." She clenched her teeth, squaring her shoulders. "Should we let him in? Do you think it’s okay?"

  Shaun didn't know what to do.

  First off, the guy did have kids; a little boy and a little girl, by the looks of it. However, he did carry a high-powered rifle, and could blast either of their heads in if they so much as pipped something he didn't like. Shaun, therefore, posed a question to Iyce.

  "Are you sure those people are nice? That's your dad?" Iyce was wider awake now, and nodded vigorously. "Mmhm! We got separated but now he found me!" With that, he rushed towards the door, which gave Shaun a heart attack. He stopped Iyce just in time, though decided that it was as good a plan as any.

  Shaun took the gun from Aisling and then held it out to his side so show it was there, opening the door and holding Iyce by the shoulder so he wouldn’t run ahead. The man, who looked travel weary and had a bad five-o'clock shadow, looked up at Shaun in surprise.

  "Touch that rifle and he's gone." Shaun tried to sound malicious, but he was never very good at that. He simply waved the gun around and tried to look menacing. Apparently, it worked, because the man stopped dead in his tracks. Fear laced his pupils, which were already bloodshot. His face was puffy, from… Crying?

  "Iyce…? Buddy, is that you?" The man seemed genuinely glad, and Shaun eased up on the boy's shoulder. Iyce ran off toward the man and gave him a huge hug, which the man returned.

  "Oh, thank you. Thank you." The man was crying now, and it made Shaun uncomfortable. The two kids looked shocked, but glad, and they hugged their brother.

  The man looked up at Shaun, his eyes full of gratitude. "This is my son. Thank you for finding him." The man didn't say anything else, which Shaun found odd. He also didn't try to come inside the store, which he found incredibly odd. He simply turned with all three kids, and they retreated out into the snow.

  Shaun rushed inside and locked the door, wrapping the handles in chains.

  "We need to get out of here. Something wasn't right with that encounter."

  "… Yeah. That didn’t feel right." She took a few steps back away from the windows, furrowing her brows. "Something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but trust me, I had a dickhead for a dad and I can tell these things." She didn’t like talking about her dad often, which seemed to let the uneasiness she felt settle in a little deeper.

  She looked to Shaun. "Let’s run, yeah?" She grabbed her backpack from him and hoisted it on, kneeling down and grabbing as much Advil and medicine she could, stuffing it into the pockets of her coat before quickly jogging to the back door.

  She hesitated. "Do you think those kids are safe?" She was really sore about children getting hurt, for whatever reason. Probably something to do with her childhood, but she never talked about it much.

  "I don't know, but I hope what just happened is actually truthful. Iyce wouldn't have gone with him if he wasn't his dad, right?" Shaun let Aisling keep the pistol, because she probably was a better shot than him. He picked up the sleeping bag Iyce had slept in and repacked it, placing it in his bag.

  "Let's go." He said, walking towards the back of the store. He left Ais at the front counter, which was probably a good thing. It would have been hell if he had opened that back door with the both of them standing there.

  He saw that man outside too late. Because he pulled open the door.

  And it hit a pressure switch.

  And then.

  A.

  Bomb.

  Went.

  Off.

  In.

  Front.

  Of.

  Him.

  The Gas Station

  Aisling yelped and hit the ground, the force of the explosion and her own instincts partially to blame for it. Thankfully, the gasoline was close enough to the front of the store that it didn’t ignite.

  So loud.

  She spent a moment or two on the ground, eyes pressed shut and braced for pain that never came. The ringing in her ears was immense, and after a second she pulled herself up onto her elbows with a grunt.

  Her blood once again turned to ice in her veins when she realized Shaun was nowhere near her.

  "SHAUN!" She screamed, even though she could barely hear herself talk through the ringing. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, fuck, fuck…" She scrambled to her feet, stumbling into a shelving unit, before finally running over to the back of the store to assess the damage.

  Shaun laid on the floor, blood flowing freely from injuries lacing his body.

  One of his eardrums had most likely ruptured, as blood poured from one ear. His face was banged up, though mostly from debris, and burn marks were evident all along his flesh. His clothes had been scorched, though weren't burning, which meant it wa
s probably a crude, homemade explosive.

  He was evidently unconscious. But he was alive.

  At that moment, the man stepped through the door, a smile upon his face. The high powered hunting rifle was leveled directly at Aisling's head, and the three kids walked in behind him. Iyce had a sort of unusual look on his face, as if he didn't know why he was doing what he was doing, but had to do it anyway.

  "I think you'll be leaving this place very shortly." The father said, his voice laced with a cocky sort of arrogance.

  Ais put her hands up, less concerned with the gun currently aimed at her head and more so with Shaun’s condition. Her eyes examined him for a moment, tears clouding her purple irises as she looked back up at the man.

  A sinking feeling began to spread throughout her body. It was like a block of stone had been placed right on top of her chest, squeezing down on her ribs and pushing the air out of her lungs. It was an all too familiar feeling, one she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  "I- I- I-" She stuttered, taking a deep breath to try and keep herself from whimpering. "We- we weren’t planning on stayin’." Her chest shook as she took another stuttered breath. "J- just let me get him and we’ll leave. Please- please don’t hurt him."

  The man looked down to her, an ugly smile splitting his face into two equally sinister halves.

  "Oh, you care so much about him, do you?" He laughed, poking at Shaun with the barrel of the gun. He didn't stir. "Well, maybe he shouldn't come out of a store holding my kid in one hand, and a gun in the other." With that, the man thwacked Shaun across the head with the butt of the gun. He let out a small, pathetic grunt, and didn't move.

  "Must be your boyfriend, right? That why you care about him so much?" The man stood close to Shaun, though so did Aisling. And as Shaun came awake, and moved his hand slowly, slowly, painstakingly slowly towards her, neither of them noticed.

  "That's got to be it; the apocalypse comes around, you two horny teenagers finally have the privacy you need to fu-"

  Bang.

  Shaun had slipped his hand across the floor to where the gun had fallen from his grip.

  And got a shot off at the man's head.

  None of the three children reacted, like they thought this was normal. All they did was bolt, out of the back door, back into the forest. Shaun didn't open his eyes; he merely whimpered as the gun fell from his hand, and he forced out the words, "Don't… Talk to her… Like that."

  Aisling had jumped and gasped at the shot, instinctively raising her hands to protect her face. She sniffled, pressing her eyes shut and squeezing tears out and down her cheeks. After a second, she lowered her arms and examined the scene in front of her. She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth, quickly moving to Shaun's side and cupping his cheeks in her hands.

  Moments like these always made Aisling so thankful that her mother was so skilled in medicine, and that she had taught her some basic things. "F- fuck." She clenched her jaw and stared at Shaun's face for a moment, before she removed her hands from his cheeks and looked him over. "A- Alright. Don't move. Don't fucking move." Her breath hitched, and she took another sharp breath to try and keep herself together.

  She grabbed her sleeping bag from her backpack and grabbed the pocket knife Shaun still had on him. Shoving the blade between her teeth to hold it, she used both hands to unroll the sleeping bag, then took the knife to it. She cut it up as fast as she could with her trembling hands, and when she was done looked back down at Shaun. "Where do you hurt the most?" There was no inflection at the end, making it abundantly clear that she was just a little stressed out.

  Shaun held up a hand, a shaky hand, and held it to her cheek. She was crying, and she was stressed, and Shaun was just a little bit delirious after almost getting blown the fuck up.

  "Shhhh… Stop stressing…" His voice was a bit loopy, but it was still him, and a warm smile crawled across his lips. The smile, however, was laced with painful little pinpricks that all around made it look strained.

  "My torso… Burns pretty bad…" He noted the charred flesh making up his lower stomach and upper waist. It wasn't blackened, but it was a deep red, the kind of red only a chemical explosion could create.

  "I suppose things are pretty bad for me right now." He muttered, laying his head back down on the floor.

  "Shut the fuck up with your stop stressing bullshit, of course I'm going to fucking freak out!" She snapped at him, and then receded. There was the anger stage of things, at least. She grit her teeth and took a deep breath. "We need to get you to that settlement, fast. I- I can try and help you as much as I can, but otherwise you're in deep shit, uh-" She fumbled to her feet and darted to the front of the store, grabbing several bottles of water and sliding down onto her knees beside him as she ran back over.

  "Okay. Fucking listen to me, right now." She swallowed down the lump in her throat and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, even though the tears weren't stopping anytime soon. "It looks like a chemical burn, and luckily for you my mom showed me how to treat that shit since I was working with mechanics. What I'm gonna have to do is rinse off the burn, and then wrap it with the most sterile thing I can find so you have less of a chance of getting an infection." Talking rationally seemed to calm her somewhat, but only a bit. "What you need to do for me is try and move your arms and your legs so I know nothing’s broken and that you're not fucking paralyzed."

  Shaun gulped. He hadn't thought of that.

  Slowly, deliberately, he moved his left arm up and down. It was the arm he had shot with. He seemed to have full functionality of that limb, and relief washed over him. He was left-handed, and it would help him in the long run to not have to acclimate to changing that.

  He did the same thing with his right arm, which he also had a good amount of control over. Albeit, it hurt when he raised it too far, but other than that, the damn thing would do quite nicely.

  He didn't want to try standing yet, but he was able to move both legs across the floor without a problem, and concluded they probably weren't broken if he could do that.

  "This is… Amazing. I think I'm fine."

  "Okay." She breathed a small sigh of relief. "Shit, uh-" She fumbled with a bottle of Ibuprofen in her pocket, finally managing to pull it out and crack open the seal to get to the pills inside. "Take two of these. They won't do much for this scale, but they might help dull the pain." She held out two of the pills and an opened water bottle. "Fuck- now is not the time for this bullshit." She choked up and irritably rubbed her eyes on her shoulder to dry them, taking a stuttered breath in to try and relax.

  "… Okay, after you take those here's the plan." Talking seemed to help, so she began rambling again. "I'm gonna pull you up so you're sitting. I need to rinse off the burns completely, and it doesn't look very bad, so I think it's safe to wrap it. I'll clean it, then wrap it, and then I'll try and patch up what else I can so we can get you mobile and get out of here."

  She paused. "… Do you think there's a vehicle around here?"

  Shaun laughed, which actually sounded more like a pained bark.

  "If there is, the gas was probably siphoned for the generator long ago." He muttered, his voice still having that loopy sort of effect one gets when they're in massive pain. His body was in shock, and Shaun knew it, but he really didn't care. He took the pills, but at that moment, he didn't feel much pain anyway. The nerve endings in his skin were fried, and Shaun knew that was probably a bad thing. He didn't hurt very much though, so it was fine with him.

  "You're pretty." He said abruptly, poking her nose and smiling a wide, tired smile. He then fell onto his side in a sort of awkward position where half of his body was upright and the other wasn't. He faded in and out of consciousness, but eventually managed to pull himself upright.

  "Maybe if there's an empty car, we can use the generator gas."

  She stared at him for a second, a pink flush running up her cheeks. He’d never said that kind of thing before.

  She snapped out of it
after a moment and shook her head. "You're top priority right now. Okay?" She took a deep breath and cracked open a fresh bottle of water.

  "This might hurt, alright? But I have to do it, otherwise it's gonna keep hurting." She put her hand on his chin, tilting his head gently so she could hold his gaze so she knew he was paying attention. "You can’t move, you got that? If you need me to stop for a second, tell me and I will, but you can't move."

  With that, she held the bottle up to his chest. "You ready?"

  Shaun's gaze seemed to refocus. He was back.

  He realized what he had said a bit ago, and his own cheeks flared a bright scarlet. His intensity, however, did not recede. His eyes locked onto hers, and he couldn't help but realize that what he had said had been true.

  "Hell yeah. I'm ready." He muttered.

  This would fucking hurt.

  "Alright, here we go." With that, she tilted the bottle so the cool water ran down his chest. She quietly looked down to watch the water, seeing which spots were rinsed and moving the bottle accordingly to cover the rest. "This is gonna take a bit of water. I have to make sure I get everything." Her bloodshot eyes flickered back up to him, reading his expression to try and see if he was in much pain.

  Her eyes were bloodshot and red, her cheeks puffy and wet with tears, and her chest was stuttering every once in a while when she had to take another breath to calm herself down. Though justly so, as bombs going off and charring your friend is a fairly traumatic experience.

  Jesus fucking Christ water isn't supposed to burn.

  That was the only thought coursing through Shaun's brain as his entire body seized. The liquid was so cold, oh so cold, that its impact on his burning flesh brought tears to his eyes. The stinging pain caused every muscle to tense, and he bit his lip so he wouldn't cry out.

  Shaun couldn't breathe, the pain was so intense.