Human Element

by AJ Powers

  The next bedroom wasn’t faring any better, until he realized that the former occupant wore the same sized pants he did. The sopping wet clothes in the bathroom had belonged to Aaran since before the world had gone belly up. Though the clothes were ruggedly made, the bottoms of both pant legs were frayed past the point of repair, and there was a hole in the crotch from when he had clumsily climbed over a barbed wire fence. One of the pockets had torn off, and they hadn’t been washed since before he’d left home. Then, there was his most recent stumble to the ground back at the construction site, which had left a small tear on the knee that would only get bigger with each day of travel. Though he was a bit attached to them, it was time to retire the old pair of pants and get himself into something a bit newer—and cleaner.

  He leaned into the closet and grabbed two pairs of jeans, a couple of t-shirts, and a heavy green hooded sweatshirt. He was more than a bit leery about wearing another man’s skivvies, but he needed an upgrade in that department as well, perhaps even more than the pants. He grabbed a few pairs of briefs from the top dresser drawer and tried not to think about it as he pulled one of them up to his waist.

  After getting dressed, Aaran placed the fleece sweatpants back into the plastic bag and crammed the additional t-shirts and underwear into another. The spare pair of jeans were too big to fit into the gallon-sized bags, so he triple-bagged them with plastic grocery bags he found in the kitchen. It probably wouldn’t keep them from getting wet, but hopefully, it would prevent them from becoming completely saturated on a rainy day.

  Since he was now dry and dressed warmly and the house had been searched, Aaran sat down on the edge of the bed and tore open the venison jerky he’d found at the trailer. Nothing remained to occupy him, other than wait out Mother Nature.

  Chapter 4

  Aaran lay silently in bed, staring up at the dozens of water spots pockmarking the textured ceiling; puddles of soggy, wet carpet directly below. He debated on whether he would head out or stay put for another day. Aaran didn’t like to stay put, but the ache in his knee hadn’t improved a whole lot either. He had nowhere to go but was antsy to get there. Until he remembered just how miserable he’d been trudging through the rain. The rain made the decision easy. He wasn’t going anywhere, not unless things dried up in the next couple of hours.

  When boredom struck, Aaran found himself pacing around the living room and trying to recite all fifty states. He got forty-one, which he thought was impressive for a guy who had slept through most of geography. Or American history. Whichever class taught such things. When he was unable to name any more states, he moved on to the state capitals…

  He got six.

  Switching gears, he turned to exercise. Physical activity had become a way of life for Aaran since the last ten months had been spent walking. Whenever he was forced to go without it, his body would get restless. Pushing the coffee table to the side of the room, he started with jumping jacks. Once he hit fifty, he dropped to the floor and did twenty pushups. He got back up, did another fifty jumping jacks followed by twenty-five crunches. He repeated the set until he finally felt tired.

  Since he had worked up an appetite, Aaran retrieved another can of chunky soup from his pack and headed to the kitchen. After grabbing a semi-clean bowl and spoon, he wiped them both down with some paper towels sitting on the counter. He emptied the can into the bowl; eating his meals straight out of the can was getting a bit redundant.

  Since there was no dining room table in the small house, Aaran dragged the coffee table back to the futon and sat down to a nice, cold lunch. As he raised his first bite to his mouth, Aaran had an inspiration and reached into his pack for a crumbled, half-empty pack of crackers. He added them to his bowl before tasting his meal. “Not bad,” he said, appreciating the textural breakup—it was a needed change from the mushy contents he had come to expect from anything stored in a can.

  The bowl was quickly emptied, and Aaran belched loudly as he leaned back on the futon. He rested his hand on his stomach; he’d had more than his fill. Letting out an uncomfortable groan, he concluded that he should have stopped over a half dozen spoonfuls ago.

  On the cusp of slipping into a food coma, Aaran thought it would be best not to fight the fatigue. Sleeping would make the time pass much faster than twiddling his thumbs. And, as usual, he hadn’t had a great night’s sleep last night. The incessant drops of water splashing off the saturated carpet had nearly driven him to madness.

  Finally finding enough energy to get up, Aaran stumbled to his feet. He was hit by a sudden wave of nausea as he crossed the living room. Veering away from the bedrooms, he quickly searched the kitchen and the bathroom, hoping to find some antacids. No joy.

  After waddling down the hall to the bedroom, he climbed into bed and pulled the blankets up to his neck. Lying on his side relieved some of his abdominal discomfort—that is to say, Aaran no longer felt like he was going to explode. He checked his wristwatch and saw it was a little after noon. Knowing that if he napped too long, he wouldn’t be able to sleep come nightfall, Aaran hoped he would wake up by three.

  “Rhode Island!” Aaran exclaimed aloud.

  Forty-two.

  After the sudden revelation, Aaran started to drift to sleep. The rainstorm outside had downgraded to a light drizzle, and the sound of the rain slushing from the downspout just outside the window created a soothing soundtrack that was perfect for sleep. The distant rumble of a truck engine was almost lost in the sound of the flowing water.

  Almost.

  Aaran held his breath as he listened carefully. He hoped that his semi-conscious mind was just playing tricks on him. Or if he had heard a truck, that it was far enough away not to be a cause for concern. But as he listened, the noise got closer.

  “Not again!” he grumbled as he rolled out of bed.

  The sound began to vibrate in his bones, shredding all hope that the vehicle was just passing by in the distance. Aaran slipped over to the window and peeked from behind the curtains. The truck was coming up the street just a few houses from his front door. A fresh wave of fear and adrenaline coursed through his body.

  Aaran darted back to the bed and quickly collected his belongings. He uttered a prayer that the truck would just pass by, letting him rest in his squalid “hotel” room for the night, but he needed to be prepared to make a quick escape if things didn’t go as he hoped.

  The truck was closer. The engine, louder. Aaran rushed to the front door. Standing on his toes, he peered out of the window at the top of the door and located the approaching vehicle. His stomach sank when he realized it wasn’t a truck.

  It was trucks.

  “Crap, crap, crap, crap,” he uttered in a low, frantic tone.

  He watched a yellow box truck storm by, heading further up the road before turning onto a side street. But the Humvee trailing behind it crept to a stop just a few doors down. Aaran craned his head to the side, just barely able to see the military vehicle. Terror rocked his body when all four doors burst open in unison.

  A panicked groan escaped his lips, and he backed away from the door. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose while he fought to focus, but he was unable to formulate a plan. His mind was paralyzed. “This is not good. This is really not good.”

  He scurried to the bathroom, grabbing his boots before returning to the bedroom. The pain in his knee was protesting his rapid movements, but he didn’t slow down—he couldn’t afford to. After shoving his feet into his boots, he pulled the laces tight before tucking them inside the ankle, sparing no time to properly knot them. The boots were still completely soaked, but once he was in the rain again, it wouldn’t matter. That, or he would be lying in a pool of his own blood, so having wet boots seemed pretty trivial at that moment.

  Aaran’s already upset stomach churned with wrathful indignation while he stuffed the last of his essentials back into his pack. He took slow, deep breaths to prevent his lunch from coming back up; it barely worked. But each breath was hea
vy in his lungs, begging him to cough. He managed to stifle the coughs, and his lungs hated him for it.

  When Aaran tugged the zippers on his pack closed, two shadowy silhouettes were lurking outside the window. The ominous sight looked like it had come straight out of B-Roll footage in the horror film archives. There was no speaking… No radio chatter… No orders being barked by a commanding officer. Except for the idling diesel engine outside and the gentle rain, the world was its usual self: quiet.

  Aaran’s mind flashed back to a news piece he had watched after a Sunday night game several years ago. A chief scientist at the Pentagon had bragged about how he, along with the use of the Neuroweb, had created the ultimate future soldier. He’d taken an invention originally designed for medical purposes, and produced the most terrifying, highly efficient warfighter ever to be conceived. His soldiers would strike fear into the heart of even the most savage enemy and feel no remorse while doing it.

  There was one segment of the interview that Aaran remembered vividly: their silent communication. The NEU soldier—or Neuro Enhanced Unit—could relay coordinates, report squad vitals, and identify targets for surgical airstrikes in a matter of nanoseconds, all without so much as a flinch from their vocal cords. “The warriors of the future are just as silent as they are deadly,” the gray-bearded scientist had told the woman interviewing him. At the time, Aaran had laughed at the man’s choice of words, but as he now watched the soundless killers snoop around outside the house, Aaran struggled to find any humor in the statement.

  He threw his backpack over his shoulders and grabbed his Scorpion. Deftly moving down the hall, Aaran kept his carbine’s stock pressed firmly into his shoulder. Hugging the wall, he slid his way down the last few feet and peered around the corner. He gasped when he saw two Sentinels walking through the backyard toward the next house.

  Aaran’s rapid breathing induced a bad case of lightheadedness, and the thumping in his chest, which he also felt in his head, was only adding to the anxiety. After forcing himself to calm down, he shuffled to the opposite side of the hallway. He leaned around the corner to look out the front window behind the futon. There was no activity from what he could see. After a deep breath, he stepped into the living room and moved toward the door.

  With as hard as it had been pounding before, his heart seemed to stop altogether when he saw the door handle jiggle. No, no, no, no! he heard himself scream inside his head. He turned around and sidled back down the hallway, returning to the far bedroom once again. He snuck to the window facing the front yard and quietly unlatched the two locks before grabbing the handles at the bottom. A cold sweat beaded up on his forehead while he waited for the Sentinel to make his move. The silence was deafening, only interrupted by the rhythmic pounding of his heart. Each breath added to his anxiety. Straining his ears, he listened for the Sentinel’s progress, but the stillness persisted. Come on, already! he thought as he waited. Seconds passed like hours as he stood by the window.

  Then suddenly, the sound of cracking wood splintered the silence as the door gave way to the Sentinel.

  As if timing a gunshot with a crack of thunder, Aaran yanked up on the window, hoping the noise he’d made would coincide with the front door exploding open. He leaned out the window and looked toward the front door, observing a Sentinel walking inside, a battering ram in one hand, an AR-15 in the other. After doing a quick scan of his surroundings, Aaran made his move. He could hear footsteps coming down the hall when he climbed out the window and dropped to the saturated ground below.

  Outside, he did another quick scan. It was clear. Staying low and moving as fast as his knee would allow, Aaran crossed the street and ran behind a condemned house that looked like it was ready to topple over with the next gust of wind. Regardless of how flimsy the building appeared, he felt relief wash over him when he put distance between him and the Sentinel inside the house. But he knew he still wasn’t safe.

  More engines rumbling nearby rattled tension into every tightened muscle in Aaran’s body. They didn’t seem to be getting any closer, but they were coming from the same direction Aaran was headed. Since there was no chance in hell he was going to turn around, he continued forward.

  Aaran darted from house to house and made his way down the street. He spotted another Humvee and box truck along the way. Though he didn’t see any Sentinels, the Webbers were moving to and from the truck in perfect synchrony, carrying various plastic bins of supplies. He took just a moment to watch the Webbers, memorizing their timing, before dashing through the yard unseen. He waited until one man climbed into the back of the truck just as another jumped down from it, heading back into a house across the street. Aaran ran as if his life depended on it. Because it did. He waited several nail-biting seconds before he actually believed that he had made it to the next house without detection.

  Slowly and cautiously, Aaran made his way to the end of the neighborhood, managing to stay out of sight of the Nebula’s minions. Once he was standing behind the last house on the street, he was out of moves. The area was sprawling with activity. Crossing the main road to conceal himself in the dense woods would be risky. But staying in the area as Sentinels and Webbers tore the neighborhood apart was suicide.

  While he weighed his options, Aaran was forced to dive for cover behind a children’s playscape when a convoy of trucks drove by on the main road. As soon as the last one had passed, he pushed himself off the swampy ground and brushed the larger chunks of mud away from the eject port of his Scorpion. Time was running out. He couldn’t wait for the “perfect” opportunity. He was heading toward the road when suddenly he heard footsteps…

  Just as he spun toward the noise, a Sentinel came around the corner of the house.

  Time wrenched to a stop when their eyes met. The Sentinel’s eyes were hollow, and his gaze was empty, unfocused. He didn’t seem dead, nor did he seem alive. There was no surprise in his expression, no terror, fear, or concern in his appearance. The only indication that he’d been startled by Aaran was his suddenly still frame. His face was as expressionless as his eyes, while the Nebula and his brain worked in tandem to determine the threat Aaran posed. It was the first time Aaran had been so close to a Sentinel, and that detail was far more disturbing than he could have imagined.

  Only a second had passed since Aaran had first seen the man come around the house, but he was so fixated on the Sentinel’s vacant expression that his instinct had taken control. Without realizing he was even moving, the red dot sight of Aaran’s CZ Scorpion leveled on the Sentinel’s body, finally distracting him from the man’s haunting glower.

  “Citizen! Drop the gun!” The man wheezed out the command, his gravelly voice sounding strained and out of use.

  Aaran’s mind was void of thought when he heard the muffled pop of his suppressed nine-millimeter echo off the surrounding houses and trees.

  The soldier’s body flinched back for a fleeting moment before he attempted to raise his own rifle. Aaran fired two more shots, striking him in the chest and the arm supporting the rifle. The Sentinel stumbled back a little further, his rifle pointing toward the ground. Despite three direct hits, the man’s stone-like expression didn’t waver, nor did he so much as huff at the pain. His vacant eyes remained fixed on Aaran.

  “What the hell?” Aaran stammered in disbelief as he watched blood pour out of the man’s wounds. The damage was nothing if not substantial, yet the soldier was undeterred by the attack. He struggled to lift his rifle again, but before he could set his sights on the young man standing in front of him, Aaran dumped six more rounds into his chest. The carnage overwhelmed the man’s body. He stepped back again, but his legs gave out. He fell to the ground. Hard.

  Aaran ran over and kicked the rifle away while keeping his carbine trained on the Sentinel’s head. The soldier’s coat was saturated with blood, and his labored breathing was accompanied by a grotesque sound that could only be described as motor oil getting suctioned through a straw. His eyes, though…Unfazed. It was like his
brain was not processing the pain, as if he was completely unaware that he was dying. He just kept his eyes locked on to Aaran with calculated indifference, processing every last detail of Aaran’s appearance until he perished.

  Chapter 5

  Before the truth of the situation halted his adrenaline-induced trance, Aaran discarded his stomach’s contents next to the motionless body. He had just killed a man. And even though that man was about to do the same to Aaran, the guilt over the decision he’d been forced to make was awful.

  Though the altercation seemed to have lasted hours, it had been less than thirty seconds since the Sentinel had rounded the corner, and less than twenty since Aaran had first pulled the trigger; effectively signing his own death warrant. He knew the moment the soldier’s eyes had landed on him, that all the Sentinels in the area were aware of his presence. It was another feature the scientist had bragged about during his interview—soldier synchronicity.

  Towering over the dead man’s body, Aaran struggled to comprehend what had just happened, what he had just done. With a million worrisome thoughts going through his head, he finally heard the voice of reason yelling above the rest. A voice twisted with fear and dread.

  Run, you idiot!

  Obeying, Aaran took off toward the main road. He could already hear a battalion of angry vehicles closing in. There was no telling how many of them were charging his way, but he hadn’t heard so many redlines since his father had taken him to Daytona.

  It was the sound of death.

  When he approached the road, Aaran shot a look both ways before fully emerging from the patch of trees separating the house from the street. It was clear—for now. He dashed across the road, leapt over the guardrail, and planted his feet into the muddy terrain of a steep hill littered with trees all the way down to the lake at the bottom.