by Dena Nicotra
“Jake? Can you hear me?” There was no reply as I reached in to grab the steering wheel and pulled my way in. More blood, lots of blood. I pushed my fear down and climbed my way over to him. His small hand felt cold in mine, and my vision blurred as I wiped a trickle of blood from his ebony forehead. It wasn’t fair. I clenched my jaw to keep from screaming. He was gone, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I didn’t even have the energy or the resources to bury him. I found a blanket in the back, along with a pack of smokes and a lighter. After covering his body, I stood in the shade of the van, taking long hits from my cigarette. When I was done, I walked away, flicking my butt behind me. It took longer than I thought, but the sound of the explosion assured me that my efforts had paid off. The gas can I’d found under the blanket did the job. I didn’t look back. Another mile and a half up the road I found a pickup truck with the keys still in the ignition. When it started, I let out a victory cheer and floored it.
The freeway remained open for the next hour and then I was forced to slow down when I came up on a jackknifed tanker that was blocking several of the lanes. To the right there were several abandoned cars, but I figured I could get around them if I drove the shoulder. It was steep and ridiculously narrow so I took my time. When I saw it was clear, I coasted down the side on an angle to avoid rolling the truck. When I reached the bottom, I let out a huge sigh, and put the truck in neutral so that I could give myself a minute to take a sip from my water bottle. I was planning to allow myself a bladder break but that didn’t happen. My feelings of relief were quickly replaced by panic. In the distance, near the back side of the tanker were at least thirty simps all huddled together but they were not moving. They looked like mannequins, in assorted ages just standing there motionless. Some wore summer clothes, others wore business attire, and if they hadn’t been standing so strangely, I would have assumed they were human. This thought terrified me at some strange core place in my mind, because it occurred to me how easily they deceived us. Then all at once, they turned at the same time as if triggered by puppet wires. The hoard began moving toward the truck at an inhuman speed. I fought to find first gear and the truck gears screamed in protest.
“Come on you piece of shit!” I shouted at the stick shift before glancing back to see how close they were. The truck finally obliged and I drove on taking out the two that had made it to the hood. I swerved deliberately to hit another before I buried my foot on the pedal and left them in the distance. I had to dodge between abandoned cars for the next several miles, but I never dropped below fifty. I knew how fast those fuckers could move, and there was no way I was going to slow down and give them the opportunity to catch up with me. Finally, the road was clear again, so I lit another cigarette and picked up my pace. After another hour, the terrain began to change and the hillsides dappled with pines shifted to flat shades of beige and random Joshua trees. It was sparse and yet strangely beautiful. At the same time, the clouds began to roll with the promise of a desert summer storm. I stopped to relieve myself and stretch for a minute, then I lit a cigarette and climbed back in the truck. First gear was definitely going out and it took several tries to get it in gear. I decided I’d better not stop again unless it was absolutely necessary. Thankfully, the road was clear as far as I could see.
I rolled down the window to throw my cigarette out, and then decided to leave it down. The air felt amazing and it helped to keep me awake. Fat drops began to hit the windshield, and the scent of wet dirt and asphalt filled the cab. As I drove on, the random drops turned into a steady downpour that made it increasingly difficult to see. Combining that with an empty stomach, I decided I’d better watch for the next sign of civilization and get off the freeway in search of supplies.
That next opportunity came abruptly as I spotted a hotel off in the distance, on the opposite side of the freeway to my left. I’d have to circle back, but it held the promise of dry lodgings and food. The surface streets were long stretches of emptiness, in comparison with the city, and gave me second thoughts about being in such a desolate area. Supplies would be harder to come by here, and I wasn’t feeling very encouraged. I felt a glimmer of hope as I pulled in to the parking lot of the Trail End Inn and saw a new-styled motor home parked in the front. The hotel looked like six stories of rundown ancient history, but if I was lucky I would be able to find something to eat between the two. I drove around to the opposite side and parked, taking care to stuff extra ammo in my pocket before trekking out in the rain. I used the barrel of the gun to tap on the door and then stood back. When no one answered, I tried the handle but found it locked. Standing back, I aimed my weapon and fired at the handle twice. It was a waste of bullets, but worth it if I was able to get something to eat.
Inside I found some stale bread in a brown paper sack, and immediately shoved a large piece in my mouth. That’s when I heard the door open behind me. I turned with my gun in hand, and Mic immediately raised both of his.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Shit,” I said around a mouthful of bread, and set my gun on the counter. Without asking, Mic crossed the distance between us in short order and wrapped his arms around me, lifting me off my feet to twirl me in a quick circle.
“We thought you were dead, Lee. My God, it’s good to see you!” He set me down gently and cupped my face between his hands. His lips met mine in a swift motion and then he quickly pulled back, his arms dropping to his sides. I met his eyes and then quickly looked away.
“I’m sorry, that was rude of me. It’s just that – well, like I said…we thought you were dead.”
“Yeah. So, where’s everyone else?”
“In the hotel. We’ve set up on the second floor. Been here about two hours, and we’ve swept the place for simps.”
“Were there any in there?”
He nodded in the affirmative. “Six of them – all staff workers, but I was able to take them out with my app.”
“That’s great.” I wiped the crumbs from my shirt and shifted my feet.
“So what happened to you? Where’d you go?”
“I walked to town and stayed at the old church until I healed up.”
“In Frazier Park?”
“I guess. I don’t know the name of the town.” I shoved my hands in my pockets.
“Why, Lee? Why did you just take off without telling anyone?”
“If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t do people.”
“I get that, but did it occur to you that we’d be worried, that we’d come looking for you, and that maybe someone would get hurt in the process?”
I looked at him defiantly. “I never asked anyone to look after me. I really don’t need a guilt trip, either.” I looked away and waited a minute before I spoke again. “What happened to Jake?”
Now it was his turn to look away. He remained silent for several moments. His voice was unsteady when he spoke again. “We’d stopped to try to siphon some gas. The next thing we knew, we were overrun with simps. There were so many of them, Lee.” He shook his head, as if he needed to clear the images from his mind. I stood silently, and allowed him the time he needed to continue. “So, we made it back to the van and we locked the doors. I thought we’d be all right if I could just get the engine started and get us out of there, but then Giz suggested that I try my app.”
“And?” I prodded, when his silence continued.
“I should have gone with my gut and just gotten us out of there, but I didn’t. Giz thought I could link up from the Premrail station, but it didn’t work. Those few seconds cost Jake his life.”
“How?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
“They came on us so quick, and they flipped that van like it was a tin can.”
“Of course they did,” I spat. “So how did Jake die, Mic?”
“He’d climbed up front to sit in the passenger seat next to me. After they flipped the van, one of them broke the windshield while we were all scrambling to the back. I don’t know, Lee, it all hap
pened so fast. One of them reached in and grabbed him and she, twisted his neck like he was nothing more than a rag doll. The simp that did it looked like your average teenage girl. It was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said sarcastically. He continued, oblivious to my annoyance.
“At any rate, she threw him back through the front windshield when she was done. Barbara screamed until her voice gave out.”
“So how’d you get away?”
“I got my app to engage, and I set them all on a default pause mode. I know you don’t know what that means, but –“
“Actually, I think I do. I came up on a group of them that were all standing around like a bunch of mannequins. It was freaky as hell.”
“I know it’s very unnatural looking, but it was something I initially designed as a power saver mechanism. It’s motion sensitive.” He shrugged.
“Yeah, lot of good that does when you’re trying to escape,” I said.
“There’s a five minute window, Lee. It’s enough to get away, and it worked.”
“Not for Jake,” I said.
“No, you’re right,” he said sadly. The misery in his expression did little to melt my anger. Let him feel guilty for little Jake. Let him swim in it and get a good dose of karma, because as far as I was concerned, he’d earned that and then some. Clearly, time had not softened my feelings. As we stood there staring each other down, Giz appeared in the doorway. I shifted my gaze to him and gave him a half-hearted smile.
“Holy shit! I thought you were dead!” He made his way around Mic and gave me a brief but warm embrace.
“I feel like I am. Please tell me you have some food in there.”
“We do. Wow! I just can’t believe it’s actually you!” I laughed at the familiar squeal in his voice.
“I missed you too, Giz.”
“You’re a smart-ass, Lee.”
“Well, at least I’m consistent.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get the rest of our stuff and then get back inside. Alice made a nice soup with some canned chicken, and I know we had some bread still…” He spied the open paper sack on the counter, and what was left of the bread.
“Sorry,” I said with a laugh.
“Hey, it’s okay. We’ll divide what’s left and have a celebration. It will do Barbara good to see you.” As Giz talked, we gathered up the items that were useful, including some cans of stew and an ice chest that was filled with what they had brought from the house. Mic refused to meet my eyes as we worked, and that was fine with me. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing left to discuss. A little boy was dead because of his confidence in his fucking programming skills, which said only one thing to me: the man just refused to learn from his mistakes.
I followed the two men through the lobby and up the stairs, as they managed the ice chest between them. The place was old, and the humidity level, combined with the rain, magnified the musty smell inside. It reminded me of wet hay and horse piss. The carpet was a nasty shade of olive-green that was worn to bare wood in places, and probably had years of caked-in desert dirt. The heavy draperies were probably designed to keep the heat of the day out at one point, but now they were brittle with age and torn in places from the weight of the dust that clung to them. Still, it was better than sleeping in that truck, and the thought of food made me extremely happy. As much as I preferred to be on my own, I had to admit to myself that it felt kind of good to see them.
“We’re in two-o-nine,” Mic said, as we made our way down the hallway. The lights were flickering, which indicated that the power was on a faulty grid.
“Alice and I are in two-ten,” Giz added shyly.
“Oh yeah?” I said.
“Uh-huh.” Giz wasn’t one to get personal, and I respected that.
“Cool,” I said. Mic pulled a key card from his pocket and swiped it in front of the reader by the door. The little green light indicated that the lock had opened and then he turned the knob. “You guys won’t believe who we found!” He said as he entered with Giz in tow. I followed him in and as soon as Alice saw me, she jumped off the bed with a squeal and came to give me a tight hug. I embraced her back and tried to keep my expression peppy. Mic’s Aunt Maude was next. I noticed that she seemed to be having some trouble walking, so I made the attempt and met her halfway. She planted a quick kiss on my cheek and then stepped back. “It’s good to see you, Lee. You had us all convinced you’d been snatched up by a simp.” Her smile was warm, but something in her eyes revealed a deeper concern. Barbara sat on the double bed with her back to us and, when she didn’t move, I glanced at the others. Each gave me an expression that said she was far from okay. I moved around the others to sit on the bed beside her. “Hey there, Barbara,” I said softly, reaching out to pat her arm. Her vacant eyes met mine.
“Hi, Lee,” she managed. I didn’t have any words for the pain I saw in her eyes. She was obviously mourning the loss of Jake, and I understood that. Why would I expect her to be all bubbly just because I’d shown up? “I’m so sorry,” I said, as softly as I could. A tear slid down her pale cheek. “He was a good kid, and I know you loved him.”
She nodded, but didn’t respond. Desperate for a change in focus, I turned to Giz, who was as lacking in social graces as I was. “So Giz, tell me where you guys are with the digital battle. Have you written the perfect code yet?”
“Not yet, but we’re getting closer. As a matter of fact, Mic and I have been talking about finding a simp that we can test it on and—”
“Are you out of your key-clacking mind?” I snapped.
“I’m not out of my mind, Lee. It is the only way to take it to the next level, and we’ve all agreed to this by vote.” I turned to look at the others.
“Are you all seriously going to allow these two to capture a simp, to do their little testing shit? What if it doesn’t work? It’s a risk to all of you, and after what happened with Jake, I don’t see how you could agree to such a scheme.”
“It’s the only way,” Barbara muttered.
“We can neutralize a simp with the pause function. We’ve already tested that it works,” Giz shot back.
“Yeah, for what? Five minutes? Are you fucking kidding me? Five minutes won’t buy you enough time to do anything!”
“Yes it will, Lee,” Mic said.
“Mic, you are a narcissistic asshole.”
“Would you just hear me out, Lee?” I ran my hand through my hair and sat down.
“What could you possibly say that would make me think any differently, Mic?”
“I could say that I’ve already tried it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why do you think we left the house?” Maude said.
“Okay, could somebody please fill me in here?”
“We captured a simp and Micah and Giz worked to reprogram her. Or to pull out the bad virus that that idiot Sam Yen started,” Maude said. She was a sweet lady, and I didn’t want to shatter her delusions, but her nephew was the real villain here. Yes, Yen was the one who infected the simps, but if there were no simps we wouldn’t be in this mess.
“And?” I said, trying to hide my impatience.
“Well, we shut her down, wiped her memory banks, and re-installed her core program structures from a clean slate.”
“And?”
“And it worked.”
“No. It obviously didn’t if you had to leave the house so what went wrong? What are you not saying, Mic?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Giz croaked.
“Exactly my point!” I shot back.
“Wait a minute, before you go off on a tirade, Lee, we did make significant progress,” Mic said.
“I’ll say! She was cleaning my house like a banshee, and it was wonderful! I haven’t had that kind of help since the good old days!” Maude’s exuberance was almost more than I could stand. The good old days? There were no ‘good old days.’ There were the times before they started killing us. An
d let’s get honest here: during that time, they were stealing jobs from the working class. For anyone who wasn’t college-minded, well, they were just flat screwed.
“Well that’s just great! Your nephew turned a cyborg killer into a domestic housekeeper. Now we’ll all be saved!”
“Stop it, Lee,” Giz said, holding his hand up.
“No, Giz, let’s not be all protective of your hero, here.” I waved my hand at Mic. “His master-mind invention has fucking catapulted us into the Dark Ages. He’s not the Messiah, he’s the fucking anti-Christ! He’s the corporate sell-out that has brought about the Apocalypse!” I shouted.
That’s enough, Lee,” Maude said.
“I’m out of here,” I said.
“Where are you going to go? It’s pouring out there, and it’s dark now. Just stop it! Lee, just give them a chance,” Barbara’s face radiated exhaustion and pain. I felt a twinge of remorse for exploding in front of her.
“Barbara, I’m so sorry about Jake. I know that you are hurting and there’s nothing I can say or do to make that pain go away, but if you let them bring a simp in here, you could be jeopardizing your own life. Is it worth that to you?”
“If it means finding a way to make this nightmare end, Lee, I am absolutely fine with it, and I trust that Micah and Giz know what they are doing. We are blessed to be with these two. Why can’t you see that?” I shook my head.
“I’m sorry Barbara, I wish that I could be as gullible as you are, but I don’t trust simps. It’s as simple as that.”
“I’m not gullible, Lee. I’m desperate, and I’m tired.” She turned away and buried her face in her hands.
“If you want to go, go, but you’re not stopping us,” Giz glared at me defiantly.
“Whatever. I’ll go my own way in the morning.” I slung my pack over my shoulder and walked to the door. No one said a single word as I left.
