by Russ Linton
The beast scuttles up the hallway on four legs, each long and slender and ending in vicious points. Two shorter arms in the front sharpen their sword-like projections. A cluster of amber lights fans out above a mouth full of razors flanked by mandibles slicing the air in excitement. There’s a buzz as the terror drone turns to face us and thin metal sheets flutter along its back.
Eric squeaks and takes off in a dead heat, clutching the laptop.
I’m scared shitless and can’t move. At the same time, I’m hypnotized by the stunning assembly of tech poised to shred my insides. The glowing green-eyed drone that ambushed the bunker isn’t visible in this profile. The vaguely humanoid shape of the one that jumped us at Emily’s apartment is missing as well. The long tentacles of the massive robot that tore a swath of destruction along the Thames are absent, too, thankfully.
I hadn’t thought of that until now. Hell, an army of those giant beasts could have shown up this time. But this doesn’t look any more promising. And this time, there’s no television screen between me and the destruction.
“A German cockroach, yeah!” Hurricane laughs and his face lights around the toothless grin. “Get moving, Blaise! Be there shortly.” A final maniacal cackle, and the sheet rock on the wall behind him explodes into powder. He’s gone, followed by a crack like gunfire that echoes up the hall. At the sound, Eric screams and finds another gear, and I run to catch up.
Another crack issues behind us, and Hurricane’s voice whistles out, “Take that one to the Führer, ya Jerry cockroach!”
We round the next corner into the Whispering Pines lobby with Eric screaming the entire way. I flash back to his lost-in-the-hospital, I’m-an-Augment-no-really story. Maybe he does have a little Chinese girl inside. An odd noise bubbles out of my mouth, a laugh, that causes Eric’s bulging eyes to turn as I pass him.
We’re so close to death, I can taste it.
Hound’s propped up behind the reception desk with a Glock in his hand. At least that’s what he called the handgun. He said he borrowed it from the guard shack after sending Chuck out for “some grub”. Even Chuck, Super Mall Cop extraordinaire, was tired of the MREs that got left behind.
There’s a flash and a muted popping noise that pounds out in an even rhythm as Hound unloads on the creature. I grit my teeth, grab Eric’s arm, and dive through the sliding glass doors that we jammed open earlier.
The gleaming, VW-sized cockroach, as Hurricane called it, careens into the room and perches on the reception desk as Hound falls back firing. The bug stabs a spiked forelimb down, skewers the desk, and tosses the battered remains aside. Hound, visible in the wreckage, stands to run, pushing an office chair toward the beast. It tosses the chair with a vicious swat, and Eric yanks my shirt. I’m pulled behind the corner with him as the chair flies past us into the parking lot.
I brace against the corner and shout at Eric, “Do it! Now!” His frantic nods seem to shake his entire body as he fumbles the laptop open.
In that instant, the air thickens as a familiar shockwave rattles in my chest.
“Pussy!” Hurricane is outside at the edge of the parking lot hefting the discarded office chair. There’s an eardrum-inverting pop, and drifting brown pine needles fill the air as he disappears inside. I peek around the corner in time to see the chair appear out of nowhere, smashing into the bug with enough force to send it toppling over what’s left of the reception desk. Hound races for the exit.
Clicking angrily, the bug rights itself. I see a dent where the chair impacted at Mach whatever, and what at first glance appeared to be an extra antenna, I can now see has the wheels of a portable IV tree. The shiny metal pole juts out right behind the creature’s head and above the enormous eyes that are tracking Hound as he races toward us.
“C’mon, ya tin cockroach!” Hurricane appears across the room, away from the door. In a blur of motion, a food tray launches toward the bug and shatters in a puff of smoke, showering the room with plastic shrapnel. The drone scuttles to face him. “Got a sack full o’ DDT next.”
As Hurricane shouts, I can see he’s bent forward slightly, one hand on his thigh above his prosthesis. His chest constricts in tight breaths.
“Eric, hurry,” I shout.
Eric mumbles to himself behind me, his face lit by a greenish cast on the screen. He’s in a meditative trance, reading off the indecipherable collection of letters, numbers and, symbols. He doesn’t look up, but the mumbling escalates and words form between recited chunks of code. “Found the carrier signal.” His fingers join the trance, flowing across the keys with unerring certainty.
I stay low and peek under Hound’s bent knee as spent casings drop from his gun. Gunfire so close to my ear is muted by the ringing left in Hurricane’s wake. A dervish of pure destruction, Hurricane devours the beast from all sides and it lashes wildly, taking giant chunks out of the foundation and leaving furniture in shattered heaps. As he ejects an empty clip and reaches for another, Hound shoves my head around the corner.
“Hurry up, boys. We can’t hold this son of a bitch all day!” he shouts. As another spent clip drops, he loads another before the empty one strikes the ground.
Looking at Eric, I can tell asking him for more is pointless. Already, his stare has taken on a transcendent quality. He’s lost in that world of digital bits and bytes and all things numeric where we first met. A leap to baseball and centuries of stats wasn’t far. Number crunching, memorization, hacking other people’s systems to avoid talking about our own. Now though, I’m staring into the face of a Zen master of code-fu. As the world literally explodes around him, he tames digital chaos.
“Forget being an Augment! You are a fucking god, Eric! Get it, man! Do it!”
An unfamiliar grunt comes from the reception area followed by a sharp snap. Hound presses me against the wall even as I try to see past him. A metal prosthesis skids out through the doors.
“Hurricane!” I start to stand but Hound pushes me down and rises, stalking down the entry hall in plain view of the beast. Another clip strikes the concrete floor, and while he reloads, I make a break inside.
Hurricane lies flat on his back wheezing with the ginsu machine whirring above him. Blood trickles in a thin line along his arms and another across his chest. Defiantly, he grabs a nearby piece of desk and his arm becomes a blue blur as the chunk splinters in the beast’s face.
“Beetle! Over here!” I shout. “I’m the one you’re looking for! Come get me!”
The monster rears and when it settles, the bug eyes are locked on me. Unfortunately, I’ve got nothing to follow up the taunt.
“Drop, kid! You’re in my fire!” Hound yells.
Bullets whiz past and spark on the side of the metal beast’s face as I drop.
“Run!” Hound yells and before he’s finished I’ve scrambled to my feet and made several strides to the exit. As I get even with him, I feel him grab my arm. My feet practically leave the ground. I start to protest but see Hound standing perfectly still, his smoking gun level.
I regain my balance and whirl to face the reception area. Hurricane lies on his back, scratching his chin. Several hundred pounds of sharp, pointy drone loom over him, completely frozen in place.
“Well, good thing that worked,” mutters Hurricane. He fumbles in his gown and digs out his inhaler. He primes the cylinder with shaking hands and only gets an empty hiss. With a shrug, he tosses it aside and lays down, staring above and wheezing.
“How bad are you? Can you get over here, ‘Cane?” Hound is half-crouched and eyes the drone suspiciously. “Or you need me to come get you?”
“Been worse. Lost a leg once, even,” Hurricane cackles. “Gimme a minute, I’ll come to you.”
I slip out of Hound’s grasp and turn to see Eric standing in the doorway. His face drained of color, he speaks in an empty monotone, “I fucking pissed myself.” He stares absently in the direction of the drone. “Believe that? Pissed myself.”
Hurricane belts out another cackle from the floor
behind me. “Told ya, gettin’ old sucks, boys.”
Chapter 38
“I don’t know how the hell you did that.” My voice drifts upward as I stand in the robot’s shadow. Killer insect drone or the world’s creepiest lawn ornament; it’s a tough call at the moment. Eric refuses to get any closer. Hound took Hurricane off somewhere to patch up that nasty gash. Might’ve even cracked a rib, Hound says. Hopefully he’s okay.
“Well, the machine language for the nanotech kept trying to hit that address, the one I saw in Polybius’s room. I spoofed it and told the nanos that the laptop was that address. That gave me the opening to communicate with them,” Eric calls out from the doorway.
“You’re a genius, dude. A complete genius.”
Eric creeps forward taking slow, measured steps, the metal beast in his eyes. “Yeah, and you are crazy as balls.”
“I completely agree. So what the heck do you have the drone doing now?”
“Diagnostics. The nanos wanted to contact their base and give some sort of report. Checking all the systems for a diagnostic digs pretty deep into the drone’s resources. So I made it do that. Like a jillion times.”
“You fed a denial-of-service attack to a Black Beetle drone?” I say in awe. “Keep that in mind, forever.”
“Yeah.” He blushes.
“Will anything break the loop?”
“Not until you shut this down.” He waves the laptop. He then sets into briefing me on the syntax, and I start to see the labyrinth he was peering into more clearly. “You’ve got twenty percent left on the battery. That goes, I think the robot starts trying to kick the shit out of everyone again. So, you might want to plug that in.”
“Leave me with the laptop and the power cable. You go meet up with Hound and Hurricane.”
Eric checks the display. “Nineteen percent. Why don’t we both go see what they’re up to? Or maybe we can just get the heck out of here.”
“No, go. They should be down the hall, getting Hurricane bandaged up.” I shrug off my pack and dig out my multi-tool.
“What are you going to be doing?”
“Part two of Operation Phone-A-Friend.”
I snatch the laptop and he backs away. Eric looks down the hall where Hurricane and Hound disappeared. He sets his jaw and nudges a busted section of particle board, kicking a thin layer of dust into the air. Under his breath he mutters the same mantra of cuss words he spit out when I first talked him into this road trip. “Fine. But you better not be diced into little Spencer cubes when I get back, dude.”
“Don’t worry. Go check on Hurricane for me, those cuts didn’t look so good.”
He nods and disappears down the hall toward the infirmary.
Soon, I’m alone with my project. I nod and stride deeper into the shadows, eyeing the expanse of metal beneath the meat grinder mouth. The edge of a panel is visible, but with no obvious release. Walking behind the bug, I see the IV tree still jutting from its back.
I set the laptop down and scale the back leg. The metal plates are both impossibly thin and incredibly strong. This close, I can see fiber optic hairs covering the entire surface of the drone. I run a hand across them and they flex against my palm. Amazing. These filaments must act as some kind of external sensors. Maybe that’s how the one in the hardware store detected me?
Using the bent leg as a foothold, I climb to the base of the drone’s head. I’m sure Emily would have some kind of bug term, but she’s not here.
The IV tree has gouged out a perfect hole. I recall reading stories about hurricane-force winds, and tornadoes putting straws through telephone poles. It was all bullshit, I’m pretty sure. But not for the Hurricane. The IV tree is wedged solidly into the skin, carapace, whatever. I grab hold and shake, twist, yank then try standing on it. There’s finally a little give and the panel loosens.
A beep from below grabs my attention. Hanging on the IV pole, I lean out and see a light flashing on the laptop. Hopefully the battery in there isn’t a piece of shit. I go back to throwing my weight into loosening the panel until it gives way.
Even though the outside is one shade of insane killing machine past the other drones I’ve seen, the systems inside immediately appear familiar. The guts of the drone at the bunker are splayed open before me, only they’re configured slightly differently to fit the insect form.
All this time spent hating the Black Beetle—well, still hating the asswipe—but it’s impossible not to marvel at his creation. Tiny nanobugs are impressive, but most of the time, they don’t seem real. You can’t see them, smell them, hear them. This, though. This you can’t ignore.
About time someone put it to good use.
*
I strike a triumphant pose, one sneaker on the slicer’s head and my fists on my hips. Eric and Hound have competing expressions of skepticism on their faces.
“Say hello to my little friend.” I try to add a bit of Sicilian accent to the announcement. No laughs. Tough crowd.
“Spencer, you’re going to get yourself killed.” Eric’s skepticism is laced with fear.
Hound only shakes his head. His brand of skepticism pretty clearly shouts “dumbass”.
“Me?” I ignore the looks. “Cuddles and I’ll be just fine.”
“’Cuddles’?” Eric stammers.
“Yeah, I named it.” I flash a smile as I shimmy down the back leg. “Cuddles. It’s friendly and feel-goody. Might keep me from shitting myself while we’re in flight.”
“While you’re what?” There he goes again with the bulging eyes and the gaping mouth. While Eric’s face has moved on to abject horror, Hound keeps his cool.
It dawns on me, Super Mall Cop hasn’t shown back up. We’ve been alone here for a few hours while I wired up Cuddles. “When’s Chuck getting back?”
Hound starts to speak, but a fist of pressure slams into the room. Hurricane appears, clutching a wad of bandages to his naked chest. He’s wearing hospital scrub pants at least, but they’ve already started to fray along the inner thigh.
“He’ll be a while. Gave him a slow leak in both rear tires while he was yakkin’ with Hound,” says Hurricane.
“How are you?” I ask, keeping my eyes above Hurricane’s chest level for a couple of reasons.
“He’ll be fine.” Hound tries to sound nonchalant, but he’s checking out the bandages as he speaks and Hurricane pushes him away, his permanent grin growing wider. “He’s got skin thicker than cowhide. It didn’t open him up much. Ribs are bruised up pretty bad though.”
“Polybius?” I ask.
“He’s back to sleeping. Something us old farts need to do more of, eh, ‘Cane?”
Hurricane ignores him. “I hear you right? You gonna ride that bitch?”
“That’s the plan.” When I first had this idea, it sounded great, but seeing the excitement scrawled across Hurricane’s crazy face confirms he’s probably not the only one that’s lost his marbles.
Eric’s eyes are still locked on Cuddles with the same terror. Even so, he manages to speak. “How are we going to follow you?”
“You’re not.”
“What?” Eric advances into the shadow of the drone. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not coming.” I check Hound and Hurricane’s faces. “Neither are you guys.”
While Eric mutters incoherently, Hurricane jumps in. “Damn! I was really wanting to put my good foot up that Beetle’s ass!”
Hound only nods and reaches out a thick hand. I try a typical shake but his calloused palm slides up to my forearm. Staring down, his eyes narrowed, Hound says simply, “Good luck, son.” A final crushing squeeze and he’s walking down the hall toward the infirmary calling out behind him, “You aren’t goin’ anywhere, ‘Cane. Get back here so we can change out that bandage.”
I stare after Hound as he disappears down the hall, his solid physique bent slightly now, and suddenly he’s wearing his actual age. Hurricane hobbles up next to me.
“Aw, don’t mind him. He ain’
t any good at saying goodbye, yeah? Not to soldiers anyway.” Hurricane’s gnarled hands enclose mine. He looks at me with that permanent, toothless grin and whistles, “We’ll be rooting for ya! Come home in one piece, eh, Spencer?” Before the wink of his eye registers, I’m staggering backwards and he’s gone, the only sign of his passing, a light ripple in Hound’s stark white shirt.
“Did he just call me ‘Spencer’?”
Chapter 39
“Dude, I can’t let you do this,” Eric hisses, still standing with me in the shadow of the metal beast and its razored limbs.
“What do you mean? You just helped me do this!”
“Run off, alone, like you’re some kind of Augment.”
“I thought we were, man?” I’m not sure how that remark will play out the moment it leaves my lips, so I smack his shoulder playfully. The swat lands with a dull thud.
Eric blushes. “This day, this week, has been…”
“Batshit, off-the-rails insane?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Look, maybe we aren’t. You aren’t. Maybe I… I don’t know what to think. Spencer, I spent two years trying to find you. Why should I let you run off and get squished by the Black Beetle?”
“Because you’re not going to get on the back of that.” Eric glances up and realizing how close he’s come to Cuddles, takes his first half-step away before locking his feet in place.
“How do you know?”
“I know. And besides that, I don’t want you to get on there. This Augment crap has ruined my life. I’ve been trying to get away from it for years. Don’t let it ruin yours.” I don’t wait for the response as I scale Cuddles, but he only stares open mouthed. “Besides, I need you to do something else.”
“Yeah, man, sure.”
I dig through my backpack and toss him my iPod. “I’ve got a video on here. The one with Black Beetle and Crimson Mask on a Navy ship. All the data’s there too. Maybe Polybius can finish decoding if he ever comes to again. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, put this out there. Follow the trail to the IP you have, too, and get a name, address, whatever you can. Make everything public. I’m not even sure what the heck this Black Beetle is into, but people deserve to know the truth.”
