by Ryan Schow
“Backdoors are now in place,” the talking heads on TV said. “Any remnants of AI are now going to be quarantined with multilayered firewalls and stricter control measures, and a shiny new oversight committee has been installed to safeguard against something like this ever happening again.”
Now this.
Robot planes attacking the city.
If there was ever a time he prayed the firewalls would work, it was right then, in that very moment. The longer this persisted, however, the more he found himself short on hope. He was a money man not a technology man, which is to say, he knew he didn’t know enough to logically assume anything.
Or he could be totally wrong. It could be that the drones are North Korean drones, or Chinese drones, or Russian drones.
Up ahead, in the heart of Chinatown on the corner of Washington and Stockton, a gigantic hovering craft the likes of which he’d never seen before (so much so that he wondered if this was some sort of an alien ship) started dropping bomb after bomb on the twelve story apartment tower over the Bank of America building.
A pair of huge drones zipped in, launching big black missiles into the sides of the tower. One of the smaller drones suddenly appeared from up the street heading straight for him. The building under attack buckled, toppling not only on the traffic jam below, but on the incoming drone.
Breathless, chalking this up to divine intervention, Stanton turned down Waverly Place, a tight looking one-lane, one-way street that in itself was rife with chaos. Throttling down, he did his best to navigate the street and a dozen obstacles without crashing into a trio of shelled cars and…a mob of agitated chickens.
WTH? Chickens? Really?
The path was made more difficult by the steel parking poles painted red, the ones that stood two and a half feet tall and lined the edge of the sidewalk on the right hand side. He stopped the bike for a second, searching for a way out while the beefy sounds of the Harley’s engine echoed and amplified off the building walls towering three stories on either side of him. In his rear view mirror, he saw a pair of drones round the corner onto Waverly Place. In that very moment, a man with an automatic weapon began firing on the scourge. Stanton turned and watched the massive mid-air explosions of the incoming drones and decided this was not an act of God as much as an act of courage.
He gave the man a thumb’s up, and the man returned the gesture.
Weaving his bike in and out of the chaos, clipping cars here and there, he continued forward on high alert. He survived the mayhem of Waverly Place thinking he could take Sacramento Street. It wasn’t clear by any stretch. In fact, the whole left side of it all the way to Stockton was on fire, but there was a clear enough path for him to at least hit the top of second gear. Holding his breath, he juiced the bike and went for it. He zigged and zagged uphill until he hit the Stockton Street tunnel. There were cars jam-packed in there.
Not broken down or destroyed.
Just hiding.
Clearing a lot of the smoke, he continued uphill, worried about passing in between the twenty story apartment buildings flanking the narrow street itself. Plus the road was packed. Totally gridlocked.
He had no choice.
Pulling into an alley to the side of 945 Sacramento, he stopped the bike, tucked himself into a storefront and tried to call Cincinnati. The smoke was bad, but not so bad he couldn’t take a second to see if he could reach his wife.
He got a recorded message. An emergency alert letting him know all the phone lines were down, but would be back up shortly.
“Let’s hope so,” he mumbled, ending the call.
Looking up, he saw someone trying to take his Harley.
“Hey!” he screamed
Stanton broke into a run just as the guy was using some device to hotwire the bike. He was a big Asian man with a potbelly and a gun tucked into his back pocket. With nothing to attack the thief with but his cell phone, Stanton mentally prepared himself for war.
There was no way this guy was taking his bike!
Stanton was ten feet away when a projectile hit the would-be thief and half his chest blew out backwards onto the street. Stanton stopped in horror. Both the dead rider and the bike toppled over, one crashing down on the other.
Smaller more lethal looking saucer-like drones hovered into view, moving over the body for a second before racing off.
How many kinds of these things are there?!
Hiding from the drones, he’d pressed himself so hard into the recessed storefront, the bones in his back were starting to protest.
“Go now,” he told himself, low and firm.
Summoning his courage, gearing up for the rest of the road to Macy’s school, his mind screamed Go! and he went. Moving fast, looking all around for signs of new threats, he hustled to his toppled bike and the mangled thief.
Looking up Sacramento (no drones in sight), then down Sacramento (to where the other drones had flown), he saw the coast was clear. Dragging the man and his opened torso out of the way, he stood the Harley up and that’s when he saw them: the two unmanned crafts hovering over the two largest apartment towers.
The last remaining buildings.
Like a rabbit just belting out pellet after stinking pellet of crap, these things dropped two dozen bombs just like that. Stanton mounted his bike, thumbed the starter, but the Harley didn’t kick right away. The bombs ignited in a spectacular display of soul crushing fire power. The entire top two floors of both buildings exploded outward. Finally the engine caught, the loud, meaty roar a welcomed relief.
He spun around as more bombs dropped and the towers collapsed completely, a horrific dust cloud trailing down the street toward him. He headed for Stockton Street, but the hot cloud of debris rolled over him so thoroughly he couldn’t even see.
He let off the throttle in time to slam into something hard enough to launch him off his bike. Airborne, he sailed God knows how many feet until he hit the asphalt and skidded under something huge. A delivery truck or a bus. His shoulder blade caught the undercarriage, pinning him to the asphalt as the choking dust and smashed bits of the apartment towers blew over him.
The coughing fit to follow was perhaps the worst pain he’d experienced to date. His body protested the entrapment, and each time he hacked, he drew in more dust, more filth, and more pain where his body was jammed in between the vehicle and the street. Nothing was broken, though, and eventually the coughing jag worked him loose.
He worked his way out from underneath what was an actual bus, covered his mouth and nose, squinted his eyes. Visibility was better, but not by much. He could only see a few feet in front of him. It was better than being blind.
Making his way back to his motorcycle, he found that he’d hit a small car trying to get to the Stockton Street tunnel. Fortunately he wasn’t going a million miles an hour. Wrestling it up, still coughing, his eyes burned something fierce. All the good air in his body was quickly being replaced with something hot and toxic, and this of all things concerned him the most.
The Harley’s handlebars were bent, the forks turned slightly, but other than that, the American made hog was built like a tank. It started after a few tries. The Fat Boy hobbled down Sacramento going the wrong way, the bike starting to feel worse for the wear now that Stanton was demanding more of it. He turned the wrong way up Grant and headed for California Street, which was much wider and less congested with rubble and exploded cars.
Here, the air was better.
Finally.
He worked his way into second gear, but the speed wobble had him fighting the front wheel hard. Half a block later, he stopped fast and hopped off the bike, not caring that it fell over. Convulsion after nasty convulsion rocked his already battered body as he sunk to a knee and began puking.
With each violent ejection of his grit-coated lunch—and eventually the wet remnants of breakfast—he felt better, less sullied.
After a few soul draining minutes, he stood, gathered his wits about him, pulled up the Harley and continued up
California, keeping an eye ahead for possible alleyways and side streets in case the drones decided to surprise him yet again.
Within ten minutes, he was on Page street, only a few blocks from Macy’s school. That’s when he saw the Predator drones unloading missiles into the child development center on the corner of Page and Masonic. A sweeping wave of vertigo rocked him so hard he nearly blacked out. Something popped off the motorcycle’s forks and the speed wobble doubled.
The bike turned hard and toppled, Stanton jumping off just in time to not get caught underneath it.
The child development center (what Cincinnati called “the CDC” with a bit of humor) was the building right next to Macy’s school. But that wasn’t the only problem. Behind the CDC, a fleet of drones strafed the top of Macy’s school where a dozen or so kids had gathered either for safety, or a better look at what was happening.
Half the kids went down from being shot while the others looked like they went down for cover.
His world drew to a swift, jarring halt.
This isn’t happening, he told himself. But it was. All of it was happening and it was worse than even he could imagine.
Pawing the dust from his eyes, he fought the urge to panic. Just before the CDC blew up, just before drones lit up the children, he thought he saw Macy on the roof.
He was sure of it.
Dissecting his memories, the girl he’d seen had long blonde hair (just like Macy), a red sweater over a white blouse and a short black skirt (the same outfit she’d worn to school that morning). When the girl went down (please God don’t let it be my Macy!), he couldn’t tell if she was dropping for cover or falling down dead.
Drones were suddenly everywhere.
If he tried to get to Macy, he’d be shot in the street for sure. He was testing the limits of his bravery, but he wasn’t suicidal. Racing up the staircase of one of the homes a half block away he hid, leaning out enough to—
“Stanton?” a woman said.
He flashed a crazed look left and saw Cincinnati. She looked like hell, but she was here, alive! He raced down the staircase to meet her. Sobbing, her entire body quaking under the strain of the day, she nearly broke down in his arms as he dragged her up the steps to suitable cover.
“Is that your blood?” Stanton asked, looking at her face.
In shock, his wife shook her head back and forth.
Oh, thank God!
“They just shot up the school,” he said, not wanting to tell her, but not wanting to keep it from her either. “We need to get up there. I…I think—”
“What?” she asked, frantic, her hands digging into his arms, her mind maybe gone from all this. “What is it you think?!”
“I think maybe she might be hurt,” he admitted, wiping fresh tears from his own bloodshot eyes. “I think she’s up on that roof. Or…that she was a minute ago.”
“No,” Cincinnati cried, her eyes boiling over with terror.
Through the smoky haze and flames of the just destroyed child development center, he saw the drones circle once and then fly off. Kids and parents flooded out of the center, most of them injured, some of them burnt, all of them slow moving and crying.
“Let’s go!” he said, taking her hand.
Together they hustled down the stairs, running toward the throng of survivors and praying with all their might that their daughter was still alive.
Chapter Four
Class let out for lunch and everyone moved into their respective groups, laughing, gabbing, trading food, ignoring apples and celery and raw broccoli. A deep concussion suddenly vibrated the building and the loud chatter, the white noise of a regular high school, dropped an octave or two before slowly starting to pick up again.
Then another boom. Two. Closer to the school than before. Three, four and five got everyone’s attention.
People began looking around, Macy included.
They asked questions and made quizzical looks. People were now getting up, heading outside. Macy, Trevor and Janine got up and joined them.
“We can get on the roof!” Gracie Price said, pointing to a ladder laid on its side from when the building was painted. Janine sidled up to Gracie, the two of them familiar with each other but not friends.
Gracie was popular and so in love with herself it made half the school sick. The only reason she suggested going to the roof was because she was wearing jeans instead of a miniskirt and she wanted everyone to see her butt.
“Help me get the ladder,” she said out loud, not moving so much as a muscle to help. Really what she meant to say was, “Ew, someone lift that thing.”
Janine tried, but the ladder was too heavy. She stood back up.
Of the twenty or so people gathered outside, two boys came forward, lifted the extension ladder and set it up on the side of the building leading to the roof.
“Look!” someone said, pointing.
Macy looked.
Rising into the soft blue sky were several plumes of smoke. The bursts and echoes of nearby explosions were hitting at more regular intervals now.
“Is it sturdy?” Gracie said as she shook the ladder with her hands.
The full population of males were so focused on how her jeans hugged her rear so perfectly that they never stopped to consider what would happen if she fell off the ladder and landed squarely on said backside.
“This is sad,” Macy whispered to Trevor, until she looked up at him and saw him staring as well. She hit him and he startled.
“What?”
“It’ll hold,” James Rutherford finally said, clearing his throat and looking away nervously seeing as how Gracie just caught him ogling her.
“It better,” she said with a smile, moving one foot on the ladder, then the other.
Leaning in, whispering into his ear, Macy said to Trevor, “It’s like she’s sauntering up the ladder, trying to get everyone to stare like a bunch of sex-starved animals.”
“Awe,” Trevor quietly teased, “Macy hates Gracie.” And then he gave a soft chuckle. Macy didn’t care for what he was saying, but he wasn’t lying.
Macy did hate Gracie. In fact, everyone hated Gracie.
She was beautiful, talented, dating some boy from college and apparently getting ready to save the whales, end world hunger and restore global peace, but only if reruns of Keeping Up With The Kardashians wasn’t on TV.
People started following Gracie up the ladder, but a few of them stayed behind, saying things like, “No way, I’m scared of heights,” or “I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“Are you going?” Trevor asked.
His face was pure anticipation. He wasn’t one to get into trouble, but he wasn’t a no-sack-Patrick either. He had that daring streak to him, but mostly what happened was he dared himself to play a lot of video games and change what used to be a healthy diet to Red Bull and Funions with Ding Dongs for dessert.
He was only going because Gracie was going.
By now ten or twelve people were heading up the ladder. The other students left already, so all that remained were her and Trevor.
“The door or the roof, Sunshine,” Trevor said. “What’s it gonna be?”
Turning, her breath high in her throat with a bit of fear, she looked at him with serious, serious eyes and said, “I’ll go if you do, but you have to catch me if I fall.”
“I will,” he said matching her intensity.
“And don’t look up my skirt or I swear I’ll kill you.” He recoiled, giving her that as if! look. “I’m not kidding, Trevor. You have to promise you won’t look.”
“I promise, I promise,” he insisted.
It was starting to sound like the fourth of July fireworks and they were missing the show. She could see the agitation in his face, how he wanted to be up there…with Gracie.
Whatever.
She started to go and he followed. She stopped, looked down (he was looking straight ahead, working with all his might not to look up), and said, “Remember, you promised.”
/> “I’m not looking, jeez. Go already, my freaking ankles are hurting.”
She was almost up the ladder when the child development center next door exploded in a giant fireball. Macy almost fell. Trevor’s foot slipped.
The ladder shook hard from them almost falling, then steadied out. Macy could hardly breathe, while Trevor was swearing under his breath below. He looked up to see if she was okay just as she was looking down to make sure he hadn’t fallen.
It was a completely instinctual thing to do for both of them.
“Trevor!” she screamed.
He looked down, slammed his eyes shut and said, “I didn’t…I was just…I was afraid you were going to fall.”
“You motherfu—”
Another huge explosion rocked the building, but this time the ladder didn’t shake. They were hanging on for dear life already.
Freaking out, Macy hurried unceremoniously up the ladder, trying to tuck her skirt under while stepping off the ladder and onto the roof. Trevor stood still, his attention fixed on the burning building to his right.
“Trevor!” she called. She was worried if something happened to them, Trevor would fall and she couldn’t take that.
When he finally made it to the roof, she was there with an extended hand.
“You’re going to pretend to help then let me fall,” he said, sheepish, but red-faced with fear.
“I told you not to look,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him up so they could both look at the building next door.
