Watchdog

by Will McIntosh

  “What—” the robot managed before East and Vick tugged it off its feet. It was one of those cutesy retro models, not equipped for self-defense against anything bigger than a badger, so there was no need for Vick to do anything more than step on its chest while East went to work with the laser cutter.

  “What are you doing?” the bot asked, its head lifted so it could study the laser cutter that was shearing its leg off at the hip.

  “We’re stealing you. We’re going to use your parts to make a watchdog to protect us from sort of a corporate warlord,” Vick said.

  “Oh dear, no! You can’t do that. My owner could never get along without me.” It struggled futilely as East tugged the leg free and handed it to Vick. “Stop that. Give that back.”

  “I don’t think so.” Vick stuffed the leg in his pack. It was hard to feel guilty for cutting robots apart. They were such morons.

  The door swung open just as they reached it.

  “Come see!” Grinning, North grabbed Vick’s hand and pulled him inside.

  As Vick stepped into the basement, he found himself breathless. Daisy was testing her new legs, lifting them one at a time, bending each joint.

  She was magnificent. She was terrifying.

  The body was vaguely wolflike like the old Daisy, but all smooth, shining silver, her snout wider and gleaming with sharp teeth like the big bad wolf in some nightmare fairy tale. Even on all fours, she was taller at the shoulder than Vick. Her front paws had two well-defined, two-jointed fingers and an opposable thumb. She’d be able to grip things with ease.

  “Nice,” Vick said.

  Rando set down a mini-blowtorch and rubbed his eyes. “Your sister here is incredible. She improvises new designs on the fly like they’re nothing. The new Daisy has three-hundred-sixty-degree vision, she can climb a little, and those jaws can bite through anything.”

  “Now, don’t you feel bad about all the times you were mean to me?” Tara patted Daisy’s head. “She’s ready. How many more watchdogs do we need?”

  “As many as we can make,” East said.

  “I need something round.” Tara, who was bent over a half-finished watchdog that resembled a giant red ant, traced a circle in the air with her finger, her gaze a thousand miles away.

  “Yeah, I know what round is,” Rando said. “You think you can be a little more specific?”

  Vick turned away, laughing. It was nice to let someone else be Tara’s assistant for a change. He surveyed the basement, which was getting crowded. A menagerie of watchdogs milled around among discarded parts and trash from food Daisy had stolen for them.

  Vick’s favorite was an eight-legged spider-thing that was nothing but legs and a wide, fang-filled mouth. There was also something that resembled a six-legged crocodile, a blue-green dragon that shot fire from its mouth thanks to a gas tank you filled through a port in its side, and a huge, huge dark gray hippo-beast that just barely fit through the door. The other four watchdogs were nearly identical: wolves. A pack of wolves. Tara said they were easy to make.

  Eight watchdogs and Daisy wasn’t enough to take on Ms. Alba’s army, but it was a start. The plan was to build thirty, then have Daisy lead her platoon to Ms. Alba’s factory, where they would destroy all her watchdogs in a surprise attack.

  “Hey, guys?” Dishes and silverware clinked and rattled as East fished them out of the water tub. “Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m going to wash your dishes.”

  Vick inhaled to say he washed his and Tara’s dishes every time, but changed his mind. East could probably guess who the slobs were.

  The sound of those dishes clattering had caused a tug of longing in Vick’s gut, and it took him a minute to realize why. Whenever Mom was angry, she’d bang pots and dishes around, purposely pulling the bottom dish from a stack to make as much noise as possible. There were a lot of little things that never failed to remind Vick of his mom, like Big Red gum, which was the only kind she ever chewed, and anything related to martial arts.

  A door banged in the hallway. Everyone was suddenly on their feet.

  “Where did that come from?” Torch asked.

  “Upstairs, I think,” Vick said.

  “Definitely upstairs,” Tara agreed.

  East had her hand on the doorknob. “Everyone quiet.” The door squealed as she opened it a few inches.

  Vick could hear a man’s voice, but it was too far away to make out what he was saying.

  Another door banged. Whoever it was, it sounded like he was searching the church.

  “Unless they have bots with them, they’re in for a surprise,” Rando said.

  “We should get out of here, though,” East said. “If they do have bots, we don’t want to get pinned down with only one way in or out.”

  Vick turned to Daisy. “Get us out of here.”

  Daisy nodded.

  The spider eased the door open and slipped out, responding to a wireless command sent from Daisy. All the watchdogs were linked by a closed communication system.

  The spider was back in less than a minute, conveying what it had seen to Daisy. Daisy led the other watchdogs into the hallway. A few took off in different directions, while the rest spread out around Vick and his companions, who followed right behind Daisy.

  She took them up a different stairway than the one they typically used, climbing three flights instead of two so they emerged onto the balcony overlooking the chapel floor.

  Daisy turned and held up one paw, her gesture clear: Stay here.

  There were voices in the chapel.

  “This place gives me the creeps.” Vick immediately recognized Dixie’s twangy voice and the unmistakable clacking of watchdogs prowling below. He slipped farther back from the main floor, to a broken stained-glass window that looked out over the church entrance.

  What he saw out the window drained all the hope and optimism that had been building for the past week. Ms. Alba had brought an army. Watchdogs paced. White-haired thugs watched from behind parked vans and from the windows and roof across the street. As usual, the police were nowhere in sight.

  Vick touched East’s and Rando’s shoulders to get their attention, then motioned to the window. They crept over to look.

  They were in trouble. It was nine watchdogs against dozens.

  Movement on the wall beyond the altar drew Vick’s attention. It was their spider, climbing silently. It kept going until it was clinging to the ceiling, forty feet above the chapel floor.

  Vick ventured a peek over the railing to the floor below. Besides Dixie, there were five watchdogs in view, including their old friend Tiny, good as new.

  Stripe’s voice broke the silence. “I found where they’ve been staying, but it’s deserted.”

  “They could have gone out,” Dixie said. “Send the messenger out to tell Ms. Alba—”

  There was a crash, then a screech, like furniture dragging across a floor. Vick and the others leaned forward to watch as one of the pews slid into view, pushed by Daisy. She drove the wide, flat side of the pew right into Tiny, knocking him off his feet. Shouts rang out as Daisy kept going, driving Tiny across the chapel and slamming him against the wall. Daisy kept driving with her legs as Tara’s metal hippo galloped into view, moving slowly, steadily gaining speed. It barreled straight at the pew and, turning at the last second, slammed into it with one steel shoulder.

  Vick could hear the crunch from the balcony. Daisy and the hippo let the pew fall away; Tiny fell with it, his body split, electronic innards spilling out.

  They turned to face a tank on legs that was every bit as large as the hippo, a four-legged thing covered in steel spines like a porcupine, and four three-legged steel dinosaurs. Stripe and Dixie were gone. Vick hadn’t seen them go, but he wasn’t surprised.

  The spider dropped from the ceiling, flipping upright on the way down and landing on the headless tank on legs. Using that huge mouth, the spider tore the corner of the thing open. The tank spun, trying to fling the spider off, but the spider ha
d dug the sharp tips of its legs into the tank.

  “Fire!” East shouted.

  Smoke poured in through the front doors. Vick could see flames licking the stained-glass windows he’d scouted from minutes earlier. Tara clutched Vick so hard it hurt, and buried her head in his chest. “I don’t like this.”

  They were trapped. If they went outside, Ms. Alba’s army would be waiting. They couldn’t even go to the ground floor without Ms. Alba’s watchdogs coming after them.

  Daisy’s wolves had formed a circle around the three-legged dinosaurs. The dinosaurs lunged at the wolves, snapping, but the wolves stayed out of range of their big jaws.

  The fire was inside the church now; it was climbing the front wall. At the other end of the chapel the altar was burning. Ms. Alba’s people had set fire to both the front and back exits.

  Daisy stepped between two wolves and bit a dinosaur’s head clean off with one snap of her jaws. The thing’s body stayed upright until one of the other dinosaurs bumped into it and knocked it clattering to the tile floor. An instant later, that dinosaur’s head was gone as well.

  Tara was making a high-pitched keening sound and rocking against Vick, her eyes squeezed shut. She was heading toward a meltdown.

  Vick took Tara’s hands in his and stared into her face. “You can’t do this now, Tara. I need you to stay with me. You have to put it off, the way you did in the garbage dump, when Tiny had us trapped.”

  Tara opened her eyes and looked to Vick’s right. She stopped making the sound. “I’ll try. I’ll try my best.”

  Coughing, East grabbed Vick’s elbow and pulled him toward the stairs to the ground floor. Vick’s eyes were burning from the thick smoke in the air. Rando was carrying North.

  Near the front doors, a flaming rafter dropped to the floor, spitting smoke.

  “They’ll attack as soon as we step through the doors,” Torch said.

  Daisy gave Vick and Tara a hard shove toward the door. She did the same to Torch. Vick followed Daisy’s direction and headed for the front doors. He had no idea what she had in mind, but she was a soldier. She knew what she was doing. Vick’s lungs were burning; the air was black and red-hot.

  The hippo stepped in front of them just as they reached the door. Daisy nudged Vick toward the hippo, indicating they should stay close behind it. Vick understood: it was going to act as a moving shield.

  “Ready?” Vick squeezed Tara’s hand.

  “I don’t like this.” She was holding it together, though. She was controlling her meltdown, staving it off.

  “Hang on. As soon as we’re through this, we’ll both have a good meltdown,” Vick said.

  Three of Ms. Alba’s watchdogs crashed through the stained-glass windows at the front of the church just as Daisy rose onto her back legs and knocked the door down.

  The hippo thundered outside, trampling a pair of snapping raccoon-sized watchdogs. As soon as they were clear of the church, their little army formed a circle around Vick, Tara, and their friends. They angled to the right, directly at a pack of four or five of Ms. Alba’s watchdogs.

  As they drew close, the circle rotated so Tara’s dragon faced Ms. Alba’s charging watchdogs. A plume of fire burst from the dragon’s mouth, engulfing the cluster of watchdogs. When the flame cut off, they were smoking and motionless, their inner circuitry fried. Daisy’s phalanx plowed through them and kept going.

  It took Ms. Alba’s army a few precious seconds to react, giving Daisy time to lead hers around the corner. Wide-eyed little North was on Rando’s back, clinging to him for all he was worth.

  Some of Ms. Alba’s faster watchdogs caught up before they’d made it half a block. Vick spotted their friend the grizzly toward the front of the pack, its head all fixed up. The dragon, who was now defending the rear, held them off with bursts of flame. There was no way they were going to outrun Ms. Alba’s army.

  There was a sacrifice zone one block to their right—nothing but piles of rubble, semidemolished buildings, walls, and trash.

  “Daisy.” Vick pointed it out. “What about in there?” It seemed like a good place to make a stand if you were outnumbered.

  Daisy studied the apocalyptic landscape for a moment, then changed direction, leading them toward it. They skirted a towering mound of concrete, brick, and twisted steel around a partially collapsed wall. Beyond was more of the same—a maze of walls and twisted girders, some of it in piles, some still standing.

  Daisy slowed. Her pathetically small army melted away into the maze of ruins. Ms. Alba’s people wouldn’t be able to sneak up from behind, and would have no idea where they were.

  Daisy found an office building rising out of a hill of rubble, the first few floors intact and the two outer walls peeled away. She hurried them up a stairwell to the third floor and left them there.

  When she reached solid ground, Daisy grabbed a stop sign and ripped it out of the ground. She tore off the sign, which left her with a steel pole with one ragged end.

  A silver six-legged beetle watchdog with huge pincers came around the corner. Daisy raced at it on three legs, clutching the pole. She drove the pole right through the beetle, skewering it. When the thing stopped moving, she yanked the pole out and moved on, heading toward the back of the building that Vick and the others were hiding in.

  “I bet all of them have built-in cameras,” Rando said. “That one was probably a scout, to see what it looks like in here. Alba’s going to direct them.”

  Peering from behind a huge chunk of concrete, Vick could see Ms. Alba beyond the partially collapsed wall. She was huddled with Stripe and Dixie, talking. Dixie pointed at something in the sacrifice zone and Stripe nodded. They were planning their attack. Daisy had set things up so this really was like a battle in a war. They were outnumbered, but they had a real soldier on their side.

  Vick started counting Ms. Alba’s watchdogs.

  “Forty,” Tara said before he could finish. “There are forty.”

  Against nine. Even for Daisy, that seemed like too many. He watched them move around. Some of the models looked familiar, but there were new ones out there as well.

  Tara sat on the floor. “She’ll stop them.”

  “I know she will.” Vick’s lips felt numb as he watched those killing machines split up into groups of five. Forty divided by five equaled eight—a gang of five to go after nearly all of their watchdogs.

  Vick looked around. “Does anyone see Daisy?”

  “She’s over there.” Torch pointed her out. She was climbing a hill of rubble directly behind their hiding place, still carrying the pole. “You always want the high ground, especially in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “Daisy,” Vick called.

  She stopped and looked at Vick.

  “There are eight groups of five. Forty total.”

  Daisy raised a paw to show she understood. Only three of her allies were visible from Vick’s vantage point: the spider, clinging to the wall of a nearby building, and two wolves perched on a concrete slab halfway up the hill.

  Five of Ms. Alba’s watchdogs appeared in the gap between the wall and the mountain of debris. A second group followed right behind, heading in a different direction.

  Daisy made no attempt to hide her location. The first group headed right for her. They spread out, and then picked their way up the hill of twisted steel and concrete. A sleek white model that looked a little like a panther was the first to draw close. Daisy shoved the pole through its open mouth and out the back of its head. The panther tumbled down the hill.

  “Thirty-nine,” Tara said.

  The remaining four stopped climbing toward Daisy. They changed direction, heading toward the pair of wolves perched nearby.

  “That must be Alba. She’s directing them wirelessly,” East said. “She saw that Daisy’s plan was to pick them off one at a time. She’s not going to let her do that.”

  Two more platoons of watchdogs surged through the gap and immediately headed up the mound of debris toward the wolves. Some
of the new watchdogs were simple designs that didn’t look like anything living—they were just snapping jaws on legs or, in one case, a half-dozen buzz saws on legs.

  “They’re going to tear those wolves apart,” Torch said as more than a dozen watchdogs closed in.

  A long plume of flames erupted from a gap between two slabs of concrete to the right of the wolves and lower down. Three watchdogs were engulfed in the flames, and a fourth, the walking buzz saw, was partially hit as well. Tara’s dragon sprang from the gap and clambered up to join the wolves.

  “Thirty-six. Thirty-six,” Tara chanted, punching the air.

  The watchdogs that had been closing in on the wolves stopped climbing as the dragon turned its face this way and that, threatening to toast anything that came within range.

  A commotion began down to their left. Tara’s metal hippo was surrounded, its back to the wall. It was too big and heavy to climb to higher ground.

  As watchdogs closed in, the hippo charged the smallest in the semicircle—a thing that was all razor-sharp snapping teeth. The hippo trampled it, leaving scrap metal in its wake, but that slowed it enough for the other watchdogs to catch up.

  The grizzly was part of that group. It clamped its jaws onto the hippo’s hind leg at the knee and dug in with all four limbs, dragging the hippo to a stop.

  The other four watchdogs swarmed. A wolf leaped at the hippo, knocking her off her feet. A squat, armored thing with a huge clubbed tail was waiting. It swung its tail in a wide arc and slammed it down on the hippo with incredible force.

  The pack of watchdogs raced off, leaving the hippo motionless.

  “Thirty-five,” Tara whispered, her voice shaking.

  Vick wrapped his arm around his sister. He knew these watchdogs were more than just robots to her. She put her whole heart into building them, and loved each one of them.

  “Oh no.” East pointed below the pair of wolves and the dragon. Ms. Alba’s gorilla was carrying a huge rusted steel plate it must have pulled out of the wreckage. It was rectangular, at least twelve feet wide. The other watchdogs got behind the steel plate as the gorilla carried it toward the plateau.