Ruined Cities

by James Tallett (ed)

  “It’s trying to reboot,” said Scranny.

  The fembot’s eyes were still open, twitching from side to side. Scranny crouched down, pressed her gun between its eyes and pulled the trigger. Her pistol boomed. The head jerked back and the fembot stopped moving.

  “Sad-eyes?” called Raisin.

  No barking. No jingle of the harness.

  I felt sweat trickling down the back of my neck and wiped it with my hand. It came back sticky with blood, not sweat. The tape was coming loose, blood soaking into my shirt.

  Scranny stood. “I guess the tomb’s alive after all.”

  “Where’s Sad-eyes?”

  “We’ll find her.”

  Gunner led the way down the stairs.

  Just past the half-landing turn, we found Sad-eyes, limp on the stairs. Scranny crouched beside her, searching through fur for a pulse. Raisin pushed past Ape-man and knelt beside her, gasping in pain as she jostled her sling.

  Gunner continued moving cautiously down the stairs. Ape-man followed, holding torch and crowbar.

  “She’s dead,” whispered Scranny.

  Raisin buried her head in Sad-eyes’ fur, sobbing.

  Gunner suddenly swore. He began firing, his pistol on full automatic.

  Scranny struggled to her feet.

  Gunner stopped firing, and I realized he’d emptied the entire clip. Forty rounds in two seconds, he’d told me over and over.

  Scranny joined him. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Her .45 shook the stairwell until her revolver was empty. The smell of gunpowder filled the air.

  “Go back!” Scranny waved to us. “Go back!”

  Gunner was still hurrying to get another clip from his pack, while Ape-man held his torch. Yoshio pushed Raisin aside, pistol in the air.

  “Save it!” said Scranny. “They’re swarming down there!”

  I led our panicked retreat to the fourth floor landing, stepping around the dead fembot. The torches were still behind and below me, but I shoved open the glass door and ran into darkness. It made no sense to go higher. The only way out was level two.

  Raisin followed me, holding her torch in her good arm.

  “Sorry about Sad-eyes,” I said.

  She swung the torch at me. “You fuckin’ robot!”

  I jumped back, afraid of her, afraid of the tomb.

  In the stairwell, Gunner was firing again, short bursts. Yoshio came through the door, then Scranny. Ape-man held three torches, and the combined flames reached the ceiling tiles. Scranny ejected spent casings from her revolver.

  “What do we do?” cried Raisin.

  Scranny fed a cartridge into the cylinder, then looked up.

  “This way.” She pointed.

  “No!” I said. “We came in at the other end.”

  Scranny looked at me suspiciously.

  “We got turned around in the stairs,” said Yoshio. “Which way is SR 520?”

  “We can’t stay here,” said Ape-man. “I trust Scranny.”

  “The corridors are a grid,” I said, remembering the layout of the clinic. “They have maps by the…” I looked by the glass doors, realizing the maps were off.

  “Maps?” asked Scranny.

  “They need power. Maybe if we hold a torch by the…”

  “We’re already powering the damn tomb with our torches!”

  Gunner burst through the door. “We can’t go down these stairs. Too many fembots.”

  “It knows where we came in,” said Yoshio. “There’s only one way out.”

  Scranny swore.

  Raisin was on the verge of crying.

  “There gotta be other stairways!” said Ape-man.

  “Look out!” said Yoshio.

  I saw fembots through the glass doors.

  Scranny snapped shut the cylinder and fired twice through the glass. I saw the muzzle flashes in the dark, the spiderweb of cracks in the safety glass.

  We turned and ran. Blue lights followed us on the ceiling. Scranny and Gunner were trying to reload on the run, spilling cartridges on the carpet.

  I was dying of thirst, wishing I’d grabbed a beer from the cart.

  “The tomb ain’t gonna let us down to two!” cried Raisin.

  “Maybe go up,” I said. “Set the treasure room on fire. Then…”

  “It’s already pissed,” said Ape-man. “You wanna make it madder?”

  “No. See, it has to put out the fire. And when the fembots do that, we sneak down…”

  “We’re not going up,” snapped Scranny. “We’d get trapped on six.”

  “But we’re trapped on four now!”

  “Two floors closer.”

  “I see stairs!” said Ape-man, still holding the torches.

  Gunner put the half-reloaded clip in his pistol and grabbed a torch from Ape-man. I looked back, seeing the fembots following us. They seemed incapable of running in heels. Maybe their shoes were part of their feet. Had they split off into other corridors? To the tomb, we were chess pieces: the losing side.

  Gunner pushed through the door and started down. Immediately he turned around, almost running into Ape-man. “More comin’ up.”

  “What do we do?” cried Raisin.

  I saw the elevator by the stairs. “Can we get these doors open? Maybe there’s a service ladder.”

  “I can’t climb a fuckin’ ladder!” shouted Raisin. She started crying.

  “I’ll help you,” I said, trying to redeem myself.

  Ape-man pushed the torches into my hands. He swung the crowbar furiously against the elevator doors. Heavy blows over and over. Then he forced the crowbar through the dented gap and pried.

  Scranny stood in the middle of the corridor, legs apart, and gripped her Colt in both hands. She began squeezing off shots at the girls coming down the hall. One went down, two were damaged. Then her revolver was empty again.

  Yoshio handed her his pistol and helped Ape-man with the elevator, both of them straining to pull the doors apart. I didn’t see a ladder.

  Gunner’s pistol fired, a staccato burst from the stairwell.

  Ape-man and Yoshio got the doors open. I leaned in with the torch. “I see it! On the left wall.”

  “Anything moving down there?” asked Yoshio.

  “Drop your torch in!” said Ape-man.

  I tossed it, and it spun end-over-end onto the elevator parked at the bottom. “No fembots,” I said.

  “Are you going or not?!” screamed Scranny.

  “Going!” shouted Ape-man. He swung in, grabbed the ladder and started down, torch and crowbar in one hand. Then he looked up. “Raisin! Come on!”

  “How do I…”

  “Just go!” screamed Scranny.

  I took Raisin’s torch from her. “Hold my hand.” Immediately, I realized I couldn’t hold her torch. I thrust it at Yoshio. “Start a fire!”

  Ape-man guided Raisin’s foot to the ladder and she started down tentatively, hanging onto me. I climbed in above her. Our hands were both damp with sweat, and I was afraid I’d drop her. I guided her hand to my belt. “Hold here!”

  We climbed down. Shots echoed in the elevator shaft. I heard Raisin breathing in shallow gasps.

  “Go! Go!” said Scranny.

  Yoshio swung onto the ladder above me, still holding one torch, and promptly stepped on my hand. I tried to hurry.

  Then Gunner squeezed onto the ladder above Yoshio. “Move it!” he shouted.

  “Level three!” called Ape-man. “I’ll force the door at two.”

  One more shot above, then the ladder shook again.

  “Down! Down!” shouted Scranny. Then she howled.

  I looked up to see girls’ hands on her arms and ponytail, dragging her from the ladder, out of the shaft.

  “Shoot me!” she shouted. Then she was gone.

  “Scranny!” cried Raisin.

  “Gunner?” called Ape-man.

  “I’m empty,” he replied. His voiced sounded hollow, too.

  Three identical girls peered down the shaft from ab
ove.

  Yoshio cursed them in Japanese. He stepped on my hand again. “Keep going!”

  Raisin and I descended past the level three doors.

  Clangs and grunts came from below, Ape-man trying to force open the doors on two. “No leverage,” he gasped.

  “Drop the torch,” I called. “We’ll get by with the other two.”

  I watched his torch fall onto the elevator, where the other still burned. More clangs as he swung at the door, then scraping noises as he tried to pry between the doors.

  He swore. The main scraping had stopped, replaced by an almost chittering noise.

  “What?” called Gunner.

  “Fingers. The fembots were waiting for us.”

  I heard muffled sobs from Raisin below me.

  “Go down!” I called. “We’ll get out at the bottom!”

  “But this is two!” said Ape-man. “What good does it do to go down?”

  “It buys us time,” said Yoshio. “They’ll just grab us on two.”

  “This is how the programmers died,” muttered Ape-man. But he started down.

  Raisin pulled on my belt, and I paced her down the ladder. When I passed the doors on level two, I saw over a dozen fingers in the gap, struggling to separate the doors. Their plastic flesh had peeled off, exposing carbon-fiber micro-struts.

  We continued our descent.

  Ape-man passed the level one doors, heading for the elevator below. He kicked the torches aside and opened the hatch atop the lift car. Then he dropped a torch in and climbed after it, dropping to the floor within with a thud.

  Raisin reached the car. Letting go of my belt, she picked up the other torch. “Should I…”

  “Stay up there,” said Ape-man. He swung his bar at the doors, furious blows, then pried. He panted. “Could use a hand, man.”

  I crouched at the edge of the hatch and dropped through. I swayed unsteadily for a moment, then pressed my fingers into the gap, pulling at the doors.

  Ape-man and I heaved together, and the inner doors slid open. He pried at the outer doors as we watched for fingers poking through. None this time.

  Doors open, we peered into the basement. Nothing moved in the corridor. Bare concrete floor. Pipes and cabling ran along the walls.

  “Clear,” shouted Ape-man. “So far. Hurry!”

  Raisin handed down her torch, and I lifted her down into the elevator. Yoshio and Gunner followed, Gunner handing me his torch so he could begin reloading a clip.

  I looked up at the ceiling. There were no blue lights. “No cameras in the basement?”

  “The fembots were watching,” said Yoshio. “They know where we are.”

  “Here’s the door to the stairs,” said Ape-man. “Go up?”

  “No!” said Gunner. “They must be on their way down by now.”

  “Okay,” said Ape-man. “Then we barricade it.”

  Equipment lined the corridor, and we dragged it against the metal door. We’d barely started when we heard a click from the door.

  As we hurried to drag more against it, a voice came from the other side. “Let me in!” called Scranny.

  Raisin laughed in relief. “You got away!”

  Ape-man started pulling things back from the door.

  “How’d she get loose?” I asked incredulously. “They had her.”

  “You bastard!” said Gunner, glaring at me.

  I backed away, holding my torch defensively. “I mean, are we sure who…”

  Raisin, who’d been about to hit me with her torch, hesitated and looked at the door. “Scranny, what’s the name of your horse?”

  “Open the door!” said Scranny.

  “What’s the name of your goddamn horse?!” bellowed Ape-man.

  “Let me in!” said Scranny. “They’re coming down the stairs!”

  Raisin looked as us, eyes wide.

  “It’s not her,” whispered Yoshio.

  “Help me, friends!” cried Scranny. “Open the door!”

  Raisin turned from the door, tears in her eyes.

  The door shifted, against far more weight than Scranny weighed. We hurried to pile up more equipment.

  “Let me in!” called Scranny. The door rattled violently.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Yoshio. “They’ll find another way.”

  “That way,” said Gunner. He pointed.

  It was the way Scranny had pointed on the fourth floor. I wasn’t convinced it was the right way, but I doubted it mattered. We’d lost when the tomb took Scranny.

  “Save a few bullets next time,” I said. “For us.”

  Gunner nodded. “Five?”

  “Five,” said Raisin, wiping her eyes. “And don’t just wing me like fuckin’ Miguel did.”

  Ape-man led the way, since Gunner was reloading. I carried Gunner’s torch. It looked like the basement was only for maintenance crews. There were no offices. Not that we were looting anymore.

  Ape-man paused at an intersection, cautiously peering both ways.

  “Look,” I said, pointing. On a wall was an old-fashioned printed map. Corridors were laid out like city blocks, and an X marked what I guessed was our location. A dotted red line led from the X to outside the building. Escape route, but not for us. There was an N for North, and beyond the building, the gang’s three favorite digits, 520.

  “We’re goin’ the right way.” I traced the corridors to the edge of the tomb where we’d broken in.

  “Except we’re two levels down,” said Yoshio. He studied the map. “This symbol is stairs. And here and here and here. Four ways up.”

  “Three,” said Ape-man. “We blocked one.”

  “We should go up here,” said Yoshio, pointing. “Get as close as we can from down here, where the tomb’s blind.”

  “It’s still gonna kill us,” muttered Raisin.

  Scranny would have given us a pep talk now, and we might have believed her. But we were on our own. Raisin was right.

  I saw a cabinet with a fire hose on the wall. “Water?” My mouth was parched. I opened the cabinet and turned the valve, which squeaked. No water, only air.

  “Whoa, look here,” said Ape-man. He lifted the fire ax from the bottom of the cabinet. “Now this is a weapon.” He handed his torch and crowbar to Yoshio and swung the ax experimentally. “Who needs a gun when you got an ax?”

  A door slammed ahead of us.

  We froze.

  “They’re coming down,” whispered Yoshio.

  “Get off the main corridor,” hissed Gunner. He gestured.

  We turned left, hurrying.

  “They’ll see the torches,” I whispered.

  Gunner swore under his breath. “We gotta ditch them.”

  “No,” said Raisin, her voice cracking. “I don’t wanna die in the dark.”

  “Take mine,” I said. “It’s mostly out. Dump the other three.”

  Yoshio took the bright ones and tossed them through the next door we passed. Raisin followed Ape-man, holding the remaining torch. My eyes adjusted to the darkness without a torch of my own.

  My hands were empty now. I hurried past Yoshio, catching up to Gunner. “Show me how to load.”

  “Almost done,” he said. “Only got two clips.”

  “But when you’re firing one clip, I can load the other.”

  He handed me the mostly filled clip and box of cartridges. “Like this,” he said. “You can do it with your eyes closed.”

  I might have to, if Raisin’s torch went out. I filled the clip with shaking fingers and handed it back, keeping the box.

  “We should turn here,” whispered Yoshio. “Stairs on this corridor, right?”

  Ape-man stopped and peeked around the corner. “Bring the torch closer, Raisin.”

  She stretched out her good arm, staying back. The only sound was our breathing. Just a few small flames and glowing charcoal lit the torch.

  “Clear,” whispered Ape-man.

  We walked forward as quietly as possible on the concrete floor.

&
nbsp; “Where are the stairs?” said Ape-man.

  We reached another intersection.

  “Map,” whispered Gunner, pointing.

  Raisin held the torch closer.

  Yoshio traced with his finger. “Stairs past the next crossing. We go up two levels. If the layout is the same, we came in there, right? See: SR 520. We must have gone up those stairs over there. So we just have to find where Ape-man marked the walls.”

  “And if we don’t?” said Gunner.

  “Then you better save five bullets,” I said.

  We stepped back from the map.

  “Look, another hose,” said Ape-man. He opened the cabinet and lifted out an ax.

  Yoshio took it, handing me the crowbar.

  Then we heard a faint clicking noise: high heels on concrete. I held my breath. The sound came through a cross corridor.

  Yoshio put a finger to his lips and gestured us forward. We panted in shallow, anxious breaths in the gloom. Raisin’s torch was almost out. It shook along with her arm. If she ended up alone in the dark, she’d go crazy.

  The intersection by the stairway was deserted. Gunner quietly opened the metal door. The stairs were carpeted. He climbed silently and we followed, our breathing loud in the stairwell. I was behind Ape-man, trying to stay close to Gunner if he needed to reload. Raisin was below me with the torch, then Yoshio with his ax.

  Gunner stopped. I bumped into Ape-man. Gunner was peeking at the level one landing.

  “Clear,” he whispered.

  We continued past the glass doors, seeing our ghost reflections in the light of the dimming torch.

  I tightened my grip on the crowbar, anticipating the girls at level two.

  But the level two landing was deserted. Maybe the tomb didn’t have as many fembots as we feared. We were playing a chessboard where we didn’t know how many pieces our opponent had.

  “It will see us as soon as we step in the corridor.” Yoshio pointed. “We run down here, then left on the fourth intersection. And if we get separated, that’s where you better end out.”

  “If we get separated,” said Raisin in a shaky voice, “somebody stay with the girl with the torch.”

  “Ready?” said Gunner.

  “You’re saving five, right?” said Yoshio.

  “Pistol’s on single. Stop me at thirty five on the second clip.”

  “Let’s go,” said Ape-man.