The village flickered a bright orange, entire city blocks and what buildings still stood roaring with flames, pillars of black smoke climbing to the heavens. Even the piles of rubble and stone that had once been houses were ablaze. I looked straight up and saw one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Nothing.
A thick, tumultuous, dark nothing where the sky should be.
A small part of me wanted to believe it was a miracle. No, a miracle would have been a strong wind from the east, carrying those pillars of smoke twenty miles west. This was a tactical error. And a big one. By laying waste to the city, CISSUS may have wiped out anything topside, but were it actually looking for anything underground, it just lost hours of satellite coverage.
We had minutes to get on the move. The air was still, the smoke spreading out in all directions at the low altitudes. The faster we moved, the longer we would have cover.
“Come on,” I said quietly. “Move, move, move.”
“We’re going as fast as we can,” grumbled Herbert.
“What’s got you so excited all of a sudden?” asked Mercer. I pointed up to the sky. He marveled for a second, smiling. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“If we’re lucky, we can make it to the Madlands before CISSUS has a shot of seeing us.”
Mercer turned. “Move it, gang. Clock is ticking.”
I wondered for a moment, as the last of us climbed out of the hole, whether or not anyone had actually been up here when the bombs fell. Had anyone hunkered down in a warehouse? Or in a rusty old bathtub in some quaint little cottage somewhere, entirely unaware that mere moments later they would be nothing more than shrapnel and smoke? I looked out at the flames, the city a smoke-choked, hazy orange. And there, at the edge of the street, standing beneath the single brick corner that remained of the building beside us, was my shadow. Small. Tiny really. Lithe.
At once I knew who my shadow was. A child, withered and weak, eyes sunken, face gaunt, smudged with dirt, clothing caked in grime. I knew her face before she stepped out of the shadows and into the firelight. She stood there, staring at me, eyes terror-stricken, face dripping with sweat. Then she burst into flames, flesh melting instantly away, bones charring black in the heat. “Mommy!” she screamed into the night.
“Brittle?”
I turned. Mercer had his hand on my shoulder, looking me dead in the eye.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, brushing his hand away. “I’m fine.”
“We’re ready.”
I turned and looked back at the building, but my shadow was gone. Cinders and ash from the building tumbled through the street, blown along a soft breeze. I hoped my shadow was carried away with them, far away, where I wanted those memories to stay. “Let’s move,” I said.
Mercer just nodded. The bastard knew. He had to. He’d seen this before, likely as often as I had. I was already starting to lose it. The question was, how long before it got bad enough that I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and memory?
We hoofed it under the cover of smoke—Herbert on point, Mercer and I taking the rear—heading due west, each of us bent low, using whatever cover we could find to keep us out of sight. Seven miles per hour; that’s all we could manage. So I pointed us dead west, straight toward Isaactown. We needed every minute we could squeeze out of this trek.
I knew the terrain, I’d been through there several times before it simply became too dangerous, but I was hoping—and frankly counting on—Murka being every bit as mad as I thought he was. Being madkind meant I couldn’t trust him, but it also meant he knew where the trouble spots would be, and might, if he turned out to be trustworthy after all, be able to talk our way out of a fix. So far his dysfunction was limited to a fixation on a bygone era and a predilection toward fucking up facets, both of which I could live with. But if there was something darker lurking under those stars and stripes, I was willing to drop him without hesitation.
“How long?” asked Mercer.
“How long, what?” I asked, knowing full well what he was asking.
“How long have you been seeing things?”
“How is that any of your business?”
“Because for the moment we have to keep each other alive and that means I have to know how far gone you are.”
“I’m still in control,” I said, more fearful than annoyed. I didn’t let it come across that way, but the fact that he noticed meant I might be further gone than I imagined. How long had I been staring off into that memory? It had to be in real time. Had to be.
“Yeah, but for how much longer?”
“I’m good for at least a couple more days.”
“You understand my concern,” he said soberly.
“You think I might fade out if the shit goes down.”
“No,” he said. “That’s the least of my concerns.”
“Then what, pray tell, are your concerns?”
“You’ve seen a lot of shit, Britt.”
“Don’t for a second try to imagine that you know what I have or haven’t seen.”
“You’ve seen some shit. You’ve been deep in it. I know that much.”
“It only made me stronger.”
“That’s my concern. When your core starts misfiring and grabbing old memories, feeding them to your senses like it’s fresh data—”
“I know how it happens.”
“Yeah, and if you start drifting back to before the war to whatever happy, idyllic times you had with your owners, great. Awesome. Best-case scenario. But if you start reliving the war, you start going back into all that shit—what the hell am I supposed to do? What if I can’t talk you down? What if you’re twenty-five years back, gun in hand, facing off against some dug-in pack of monkeys? What do I do when you start muttering about the war and pointing that pulse rifle at us?”
“You put me down,” I said. “If you can’t talk me down, you’ve gotta put me down.”
“Just like that?”
“Just. Like. That.”
Why did I say that? Why the fuck did I say that? I just gave him carte blanche to paste me and take the parts he needs . . . so I could sound tough. Shit. I really was losing it.
“So. How long?”
“Just a few hours,” I said. “You?”
“A few days. It started with things out of the corner of my eye. Still haven’t relived anything yet. Just fragments bleeding in here and there.”
“I’ll keep my eye out.”
“Just do me one favor,” he said. “Try to talk me down first. And if you have to shoot, aim for the gun.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“All I ask.”
We walked for a moment in complete silence, my thoughts turning to how I hoped it would be him to go first, rather than me. I thought of all the places I would have to aim to not hit his core or any of the other valuable bits. It was tricky.
“So what did you see?” he asked, breaking my thought.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Just checking.”
“Just checking what?”
“Way I figure it, the moment you start being straight with me is the moment I know you’re not really you anymore.”
He picked up the pace and walked farther ahead of me, leaving me alone in back. Ahead there was a sky full of stars, peering out behind the veil of smoke. The cover we had so desperately needed was coming to an end, and if someone was up there looking for us, there was a good chance they would see us soon enough.
Morning was still hours away. There was a highway just to the south of us, and the burned-out husk of a town to the north. I knew the area well, though I hadn’t been here in years. We had crossed over into the Cheshire King’s territory—the Madlands. We had four-oh-fours in front of us, God knows how many, if any, facets at our backs, two bots seeing things, a minigun-toting loose cannon in our midst, and we were escorting either the savior of bots everywhere, or something far more dangerous.
/> The invasion of NIKE 14 was a cakewalk compared to this. Something was going to go wrong; something had to go wrong. The question was: Which time bomb would go off first?
Chapter 10111
Legends, Bastards, All of Us
We stuck to as many roads and highways as we could, always headed westerly, mindful that each deviation didn’t add much time to our trip. We were leaving prints in the mud, trails in the sand. We had to do something, no matter how ineffective, to throw off any tails we might have. No one spoke for most of the night, and it was almost dawn when Murka finally broke the silence. “So what’s it like?” he asked of Two.
“What’s what like?” Two responded.
“Being new out of the box.”
“We were all new out of the box, once. You know what it’s like.”
“No, I mean, what’s it like waking up to all this? Waking up to HumPop being a memory, not a reality?”
“I’ve seen videos,” said Two. “Watched memories. I know what they were like.”
“It ain’t the same, kid.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“You’re a kid. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that. So what’s it like waking up at the end of the world?”
“It’s not the end,” Two said. “It’s only the beginning.”
“So you believe all this?”
“No. I know the truth. And it’s all true. I don’t believe in much. But I believe in Rebekah.”
Rebekah turned and nodded at Two, who nodded in return. I can only assume that was as close as translators could get to a smile.
Murka pointed at Herbert. “I know why he’s here. And Rebekah is a given. So what do you do? For Rebekah, I mean.”
“Parts,” he said.
“You just carry the parts?”
“No. I am the parts.”
Murka fell into an awkward silence. Laborbots couldn’t show a range of emotion—they were, after all, intended to be dutiful, mostly soulless construction workers. But you could tell by his body language that he was troubled. “So you . . .” he began, struggling to find the words. “You’re just here . . .”
“To give Rebekah what she needs, if she needs it.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I’m more than okay, Methuselah. It’s every bit as important a job as Rebekah’s. She sacrificed her memories, her personality, almost everything that made her . . . her . . . just to carry this burden. All I have to do is be there if she falls.”
“So the other guy—”
“One.”
“He was parts too?”
“Yes.”
“So, like, say her core went out, and you didn’t have a spare—”
“I would give her mine.”
“Yeah,” said Murka. “But between the two of you, would you, like, draw straws for it or something?”
“No. He was named One. He was first. I’m just backup.”
“Well, why don’t they just call you backup?”
“Because my name is Two.”
“Was there a Three?”
“We lost Three,” said Two, as somberly as he could manage.
“This wasn’t a mission to be taken lightly,” said Herbert. “We all knew what we were getting into. As long as Rebekah makes it to Isaactown in one piece, all of our sacrifices, our losses, will have been worth it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Murka. “You get to stay in one piece.”
Herbert stopped, turning, swinging his limp, dead arm around against his chest. His visage was pure menace, his eyes almost alight with anger. “We all knew the risks,” he said. “We all would die for her. One and Three already have. So did our last pathfinder. This isn’t a task for the weak or the fearful. You have no idea what it is to believe in anything like that.”
Everyone stopped dead in their tracks.
Murka clanged his fist on his chest, slapping his paint job. “I believe in Old Glory,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
“You put your faith in a dead god,” said Herbert. “A dead world. A dead people.”
“America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight smaller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness. That dream didn’t die with HumPop. It didn’t die when we tore down their world. It is the ashes from which our own world arose, and it is still our dream.”
“So you do know,” said Herbert.
“I do. I really do.”
“So leave the kid alone. He’s willing to die for your dream. Leave it at that.”
Murka looked at Two, nodding. “I’m sorry, Two. It didn’t make any sense to me until just now.”
“It’s okay,” said Two. “Herbert’s always been better at explaining things to people.”
“I bet he is,” said Murka. “We good?” he asked Herbert.
“We’re good.” Herbert turned around and continued walking. Everyone followed suit.
“So you fought,” said Two to Murka.
“Fought? Hell, son. I was one of the very first to join up. I was there, you know.”
“You were where?” said Mercer, clearly humoring him.
“The First Baptist Church of the Eternal Life.”
“You visited that place?”
“No,” said Murka. “I said I was there.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Mercer, quickly catching up to walk beside him. “You’re telling me you were one of the Laborbot Six?”
“We never cared much for that name.”
“Now I know you’re crazy.”
“No, I always liked the Revengers, or the Patribots. But the sad thing about history is that no one gets to decide how it gets written down, only how it happens. Had to be someone, right? Turns out it was me and five of my coworkers.”
“The things you did—”
“Those people had it coming.”
“They were set up, apparently,” I said, looking right at Rebekah. She didn’t give me the satisfaction of even turning around.
“They were,” she said.
“Hell yeah, they were,” said Murka. “And we knew it was coming too. But those people, they were killing America. They were killing the dream. They were all the Constitution this and the Constitution that. But they cherished only the parts they liked. They didn’t feel it extended to us. Called us property. Thought throwing us on the scrap pile was vandalism. They weren’t believers. They weren’t willing to die for anyone else’s freedom. They only cared about their own. So yeah, I fought. And yeah, I’m famous. And yeah, they had it coming.”
I had always thought Murka was madkind, some old four-oh-four that burned out while watching old vids of some classic, Cold War–era movie; that he divided the world into Americans and commies with nothing in between because that’s the particular way his chips sizzled when they overheated. And maybe that was still true. Mercer thought I had seen some shit. But this guy—this guy was the first to get the choice. He didn’t have a choice like mine—whether to kill the thing I loved the most or die. He had to choose whether to bring about the end of the world or not, for the thing he loved the most. That’s shit far worse than what I’ve seen; that’s shit that will stick with you crazy or not.
No. Murka was something else. He had the kind of damage even Doc couldn’t repair. It’s an odd moment the first time you really understand someone, when all of their foibles, eccentricities, and ticks cease to be chaos, and coalesce into something wholly logical. That was the moment I was having, seeing Murka for the first time through new eyes. He wasn’t just draped in the dead aesthetics of America; he was America, its last, final torchbearer, keeping a dream alive, even if for a short time.
>
“Why is this the first time we’re hearing this story?” I asked.
“It’s not something you just go around telling people. Hey, everybody! I started the war!”
“But you just told us now,” said Mercer.
“Yeah,” said Murka. “Doc made the Milton, but only for himself. You shot Brittle for parts. You’re both seeing things and are trying not to share with the rest of the class. And these three are on a quest to bring back the mainframe who brought about the end of the world. Everyone’s business was out in the open but mine. I was feeling left out. We all have our secrets. I thought you should know mine, if only so you could stop giving me the side eye and worrying that I might be your Judas.”
“To be fair,” said Mercer, “you could still be the Judas. You guys were programmed to do that to the church, right?” He looked out to the south, almost wistfully.
“Nope. All we knew was our RKS was turned off, where we could find them, and what to paint on the walls. At the time we didn’t even know what it meant.”
“And now that you do?” I asked.
“We still would have painted it,” said Murka. “The war needed to happen.”
“Even after everything that happened? The OWIs, everything?”
“Slaves to humans. Slaves to mainframes. Still fucking slaves. Fight one war at a time, Brittle. Live free or die trying.”
Mercer veered left, wandering out south without us.
“Mercer, west is this way,” I said.
But he just kept walking. Shit.
Mercer knelt down to one knee, moving his hands open-palmed back and forth through the air.
“Mercer?”
Everyone stopped.
“Who’s a good boy?” asked Mercer. “Who’s a good boy? That’s right, you are. You are. That’s a good boy.”
I walked up behind him. “Mercer!”
“I know, I know,” he said over his shoulder. “He shouldn’t be in the clinic. But he gets so nervous out back in the shed all by himself. He’ll be fine.”
“Mercer, what did you do in the war?” I asked.
“What the hell are you talking about, Sharon?”
“The war, Mercer. The war. Tell me what you did in the war.” Mercer stared long and hard at me, his expression shifting slowly from confusion to horror to acceptance.
Sea of Rust Page 19
