SecondWorld

by Jeremy Robinson

  Murdock’s face slowly turned a deeper shade of red, but his weapon stayed trained on Adler’s head and his hate-filled eyes remained on Miller. One of the other four remaining men collapsed. Murdock glanced at him, a momentary fear springing into his eyes.

  Miller’s chest felt like it would explode, but he held his breath without fear. He’d faced, and beaten, this fate several times already and he’d be damned if it would claim him now, especially when it was Vesely’s doing.

  “Give the bastards a taste of their own medicine,” he’d said. He’d concluded the facility would be airtight, with its own air supply. The Cowboy did it, Miller thought. He’d not only found a way to shut the air off, but was quickly siphoning the air from the entire facility. Everyone inside would die.

  Miller had enjoyed the irony of the plan. Not so much now that he was experiencing it firsthand, but that would change in a moment.

  He looked at Adler. She’d known to hold her breath, but even though she looked better off than Murdock, her body would eventually take a breath on reflex and when no oxygen reached her lungs, she would drown in the open air.

  Just like the rest of the world if you don’t move! Miller’s subconscious shouted at him. According to Kammler, he had just twenty-five minutes before the air outside became so thick with iron that the world’s population would be poisoned and die gruelingly three days from now when the heavy metal settled deeper into their organs. If that happened, a quick death by suffocation would be a mercy.

  Murdock blinked, fighting unconsciousness.

  Two more of the soldiers fell. The fourth went to his hands and knees.

  Miller mimicked the man’s position, but instead of falling down, he was getting up. A jolt of pain ran up the left side of his body, immobilizing him. With his right hand, he reached back to his belt, opened a pocket, and pulled out a small vacuum-sealed pack. He lowered himself down, giving the impression that he was succumbing to the lack of air—which he would soon do if Murdock managed to stay upright and conscious much longer. With one hand he tore open the wrapper, plucked off the small rubber stopper on the end, and stuck himself in the leg.

  A wave of morphine warmth spread from his leg up into his torso and out through his limbs, washing the pain away. Even the burning in his lungs faded. He felt weightless. Time slowed. And once again, he laughed.

  This time when he looked back up at Murdock, the man looked terrified by Miller’s laughter. He looked ready to burst and his weapon was no longer aimed directly at Adler’s head.

  Miller shifted his gaze to Adler. Her face was bright red. Her eyes wide with fear.

  It was time to act.

  Miller dove forward, snatched up his silenced Sig Sauer, rolled to his feet, and aimed the weapon at Murdock’s head. The man looked stunned. He tried to move his weapon toward Miller, but his hand and arm shook violently. Anger filled his face a moment before Miller’s bullet froze the expression.

  Adler fell forward, catching herself on her hands. Her chest heaved, as she took in breaths of oxygenless air. Miller knew unconsciousness would claim her soon. He knelt down next to her, removed the small pony bottle from his supply belt, unfolded the collapsible mask, opened the air valve, and placed it over her nose and mouth.

  She breathed deep, gasping each breath. Miller felt relieved when he realized she’d make it.

  But then a pain gripped him so intensely that he felt it through the morphine. Air! The morphine had made him forget he couldn’t breathe, either. As blackness crept into the periphery of his vision and little specks of color danced before him, he lunged to Pale Horse’s body, found his pony bottle, fumbled to open it—and then dropped it.

  His chest ached. His hands shook as he searched for the bottle, his eyes no longer functioning.

  As the last bit of consciousness faded, he felt something press against his face. Adler’s voice followed. “Breathe!”

  He did.

  The first breath felt something like the way he imagined the experience of childbirth—agony mixed with elation.

  Ten breaths later, his senses returned. After another ten, the morphine began to work again. He stood and pulled the pony bottle’s elastic band over his head, holding it in place. “We’ve got about fourteen minutes left in these things, and just a few minutes more to stop that,” he said to Adler, pointing at the video screens. “Let’s get this done.”

  She nodded, still breathing too heavy to reply, and headed for the large octagonal control center. A sea of white-clad bodies littered the floor, but Miller hardly noticed them. Instead, he looked up at a huge array of displays the size of a movie screen. Each one showed a city. He recognized several of the skylines. London. Paris. Moscow. Los Angeles. New York. Sydney. Washington, D.C. Red flakes fell from the sky in each image. In some, smoke rose to greet it as a panicked world lashed out. The screen at the bottom right caught his attention last. Vatican City. But it wasn’t the gleaming domes, now hued pink, that held his attention. It was the crowd filling St. Peter’s Square. Thousands had gathered. On their hands and knees. Praying.

  And whether they knew it or not, they were praying for his success.

  Feeling a sense of purpose bordering on divine calling that was one part true inspiration and one part morphine, Miller shoved a lab coat–clad man out of his seat. Adler sat down at the computer station, which was already up and running, no password required.

  “Can you do it?” Miller asked.

  “It is the same system,” Adler said. “But I’ll need a minute to find my way around.”

  The monitor next to them exploded in a shower of sparks. Miller glanced over the top of the control center and saw at least twenty rebreather-wearing SS soldiers led by Brodeur filing out of the doors to Security on the other side of the vast warehouse area. Most of the men were armed, as usual, with World War II rifles and machine guns, which Miller’s UMP would put to shame in a one-on-one situation, but the SS could send a wall of bullets his way that would be hard to avoid. Even worse, the two men at the front of the pack wore body armor and masks like the guards in Antarctica, but the men looked tougher, bigger, like the armor was mechanized. When the two men each raised very large strange-looking weapons at Miller, he had no doubt.

  “Stay out of sight!” Miller said to Adler and then dived to the side. He heard a sound like an acoustic guitar string being snapped against the wooden frame as the weapons fired, but saw no effect. No computers destroyed. No ricochet. Had they misfired?

  Miller got to his feet and found that he’d dived right out into the open. The morphine that dulled his pain also made his decision-making abilities questionable. The two mechanized men adjusted their aim. Miller grabbed Murdock’s body and picked him up, hoping that whatever kind of rounds the strange guns fired would be stopped.

  The weapons twanged again. Miller felt no impact, but Murdock’s body seemed to be growing lighter. Miller looked down and saw multicolored goop draining from Murdock’s pant legs! He dropped the body and it turned to soup on the floor. Those guns had the same effect on the human body as the Bell!

  With no immediate cover, Miller thought, This one’s for you, Pale Horse. Time to spray and pray.

  Miller ran and pulled the UMP’s trigger. He drew a quick line across the SS men as they were about to unload on the control center. When the last round left the UMP’s muzzle and the magazine ran dry, five of the soldiers lay on the ground, dead and dying. But a body count wasn’t Miller’s goal. He was hoping for chaos. And he got it.

  While some of the SS men unloaded on his position, most ducked for cover, including Brodeur, who had unfortunately survived his initial volley. They hid behind the tall stacks arranged on either side of the large space—walls of wooden crates filled with who knows what. There were plenty of places for the enemy to take cover.

  The two big men tracked Miller as he ran toward the warehouse area. He heard two loud twangs as they fired, but his body didn’t turn to mush, so he assumed they’d missed.

 
He dove into an alley lined with crates on either side. The rows of wooden crates stamped with swastikas and SecondWorld symbols reminded Miller of a surreal Home Depot. But the maze of crates worked to his advantage; he could engage the enemy a few at a time. He laughed as his hastily laid plan came together, and realized the morphine was making him slaphappy. Of course, he could live with slaphappy if it didn’t affect his aim, a concern he put to the test by rising from his position and squeezing off two three-round bursts.

  Two men dropped. Several more ducked for cover.

  The return fire was loud and included two loud twangs. The wood around him shattered, but he wasn’t hit.

  Aim is still good, he thought, then dashed out from behind the control center and dove behind a very large crate. This thing is big enough to hold a car, Miller thought. When Miller saw a red stamp that read simply G4, he knew he was right. Hitler’s preferred vehicle had been the six-wheeled 1939 Mercedes-Benz G4. He’d read about the vehicle once when a collector auctioned three, which had belonged to Hitler, for three million dollars each. Only eight had ever been built. Looks like we know where the other five went, Miller thought.

  Two brave soldiers ran toward the control center. Miller gunned them down before they arrived. He crept around the big crate and slid through a gap, into the next aisle. He peeked down the aisle lined with crates. The left end was clear, but to the right he saw two men crouched, searching for a target. A morphine giggle slipped from his mouth. The two men spun toward him, but he let loose a barrage that cut the men down before a single shot was fired his way. At least my reflexes haven’t slowed, Miller thought as he slid out of his hiding place and ran toward the next aisle.

  He paused at the end, peeking around the corner. All clear. As he moved around the end of the aisle, a shadow—from behind him—shifted on the floor.

  He spun and fired.

  The bullet had no effect on the heavily armored, mechanized Nazi. Miller could only see the man’s eyes, but could see by the squint that he was smiling.

  Miller leapt to the side.

  Twang!

  Rebounding off a crate, Miller opened fire on the man, aiming for his head. The barrage stumbled the man back, but the suit he wore must have had a built-in gyroscope, because he remained upright.

  Twang! The man fired blind and missed. But he also swung his big, metal-covered fist out and struck the UMP from Miller’s hands.

  Miller drew his knife and dove at the man, getting in close where he couldn’t be shot. He stabbed the knife into the body armor, but it stopped against solid metal after penetrating an inch of bullet-resistant padding. These suits were definitely an upgrade from the Antarctic variety.

  The big metal arm wrapped around Miller and squeezed him tight. Pain flared from the wounds in his arm. He shouted and wriggled. He couldn’t break free. But he could still fight, and every suit of armor had a weak spot. He’d been able to strangle the guard in Antarctica. Maybe they hadn’t fully armored the neck, which was clearly flexible. Miller withdrew his knife and slammed it into the mech’s neck.

  The blade slid in.

  All the way to the hilt.

  He could barely hear the man’s gurgle through the suit, but he could see the startled expression in his eyes, which quickly became lifeless. The man’s arm fell slack, but the body didn’t fall over. It stood still, kept upright by design. Miller glanced at the weapon. It was attached to the suit, but was operated like any other handheld weapon, a finger on a trigger.

  Gunfire pinged off the suit. Two brownshirt soldiers ran at him, side by side, firing wildly. If they’d stopped to take aim, they might have struck him, but Miller wasn’t about to complain. He yanked up the dead man’s arm, aimed the weapon toward the two men, slid his finger over the dead man’s, and pulled the trigger.

  Twang!

  The two men turned to liquid as they ran. By the time their bodies hit the floor they were little more than multicolored puddles. The slop slid across the smooth floor and stopped just a foot from Miller’s body. He took a deep breath and was thankful the pony bottle mask kept him from smelling the liquefied men.

  The loud clomp of mechanized feet approached from the left. Miller spun toward the sound as the second mech exited the neighboring aisle. Miller ducked and spun around the back side of the dead man’s suit. Twang! The suit blocked the shot.

  The sound of the weapon firing was followed by a high-pitched whine, like a camera flash recharging. That’s why these guys aren’t just melting everything in sight, Miller realized. They have to recharge after each shot! Miller grabbed the dead man’s arm and shoved it toward the other mech. He found the trigger and pulled it. Twang!

  Miller watched the other man’s eyes widen for a split second and then explode into liquid. Bubbles rose up and the melting man’s body slipped lower into the suit.

  “Miller!” It was Adler. “It’s not working!”

  Miller picked up his UMP, but it was ruined, so he left it behind, drew his sidearm, and started back toward Adler and the control center. That’s when he heard the crackling hum that sounded an awful lot like the robotic sentinel they’d faced in the parking lot. And it was right behind him.

  60

  Miller flung himself to the left, ducking down the last aisle just as twin twangs sounded out behind him. Were there two more men in suits? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t hear any heavy feet behind him, just the crackling hum of some kind of bell device. When the sound grew suddenly louder, he knew that whatever it was had entered the aisle. He looked over his shoulder and nearly tripped.

  The thing was huge.

  At first, Miller thought he was looking at something organic. It had four metallic limbs—tentacles really—each at least fifteen feet long. They reached out and pulled the thing along, moving quickly. For a moment, he thought the limbs were holding it up, but that couldn’t be true, because they never really touched anything. They just wriggled hyperactively, moving only to avoid direct contact with the physical environment. The thing was floating.

  The body was shaped like an eagle’s head sans the curved beak. The base glowed with flickering energy as some kind of bell device kept it aloft. But it was the two weapons mounted on either side of the thing that held Miller’s attention. They were identical to the flesh-melting weapons the two mechanized men had carried. Of course, the two miniguns mounted to the bottom were pretty intimidating, too, but they weren’t firing, or even spinning up. Miller’s first impression was that he faced an automated drone like the thing outside the NSSB, but then he saw a pane of red-tinted glass at the core. Through the glass he saw a face. Kammler’s. The man looked amused. Miller fired three shots, but the rounds just ricocheted off the thick, curved glass. Kammler laughed, his voice amplified through a speaker.

  “What do you think?” Kammler asked. “We have thousands of them ready to search the country for survivors.”

  Miller knew the man was trying to make him think about talking when he should be running. It was a clue that the man was about to fire. Miller had fifteen feet before he reached the end of the aisle, where who knew how many soldiers waited for him. And he was boxed in on either side. He made the only maneuver he could—spun around and ran straight at Kammler.

  Both weapons twanged loudly. But missed.

  Miller noticed the miniguns had yet to power up and wondered why Kammler wasn’t using them. Were they not loaded? Then he realized the answer. The strange weapons melted flesh, but not other elements. If Kammler’s shots struck the relics stored here, they wouldn’t do any damage. But the miniguns, those would wreak havoc.

  “They don’t seem very accurate,” Miller taunted, but then had to dive to the side as one of the flailing limbs snapped down toward him. He caught a glimpse of the barbed tip as it took a chunk out of the polished stone floor. It looked like it had been designed to punch through a man, but then not come out, not cleanly anyway.

  Kammler’s voice echoed in his mind. We have thousands of them ready to search
the country for survivors. They were designed to quickly pick off or tear to shreds any survivors they came across.

  Including the Survivor.

  Miller ducked to the side as a second arm sprang toward his head. It cut a slice in his cheek, punctured the G4 box behind Miller, and stuck tight. Another arm shot out and missed, striking the box as well.

  Kammler let out a frustrated grunt.

  He’s new to this, Miller thought. He might know how to use the machine, but he’s not very good at it. Why would he be? Generals never get their hands dirty.

  Miller was slammed from behind as Kammler retracted the tentacles and yanked the wooden panel off of the large crate. For a moment, the heavy slab of wood covered his body, and if Kammler had been thinking, he could have easily crushed Miller beneath it. Instead, the weight lifted as Kammler tried to free the limbs. As the wooden panel rose up and away, Miller caught sight of Hitler’s big, black, solid metal, six-wheeled Mercedes G4, designed to tour battle zones and protect the Führer. The thing was a tank. Without a gun. But still a tank.

  Miller dove across the aisle, yanked open the car’s passenger’s side door, and jumped in. He slid across the seat to the driver’s side and found the key in the ignition. He hoped that the car had only recently been crated, perhaps transported from Antarctica with the rest of this stuff, and turned the key.

  The power came on, but the engine just coughed and died. He tried again. Nothing. Then he remembered. No oxygen!

  “Like a fox in a hole,” Kammler said. “No place to go.”

  But he didn’t strike, either. The car must be important. Miller shoved open the driver’s side door. It clunked against the wooden box, but there was just enough room for him to squeeze out. He got down and slid himself beneath the car, quickly finding the large gas tank. He rapped on it with his fist. The tank was full.

  “I can wait,” Kammler said. “In minutes, the world’s fate will be sealed and your failed heroics will entertain the Führer when he returns.”