by Ryan Schow
He’d always done better on his own anyway.
Breaking free of the departing majority, he coughed and blinked away the acrid sting of smoke as he staggered into the marbled daylight. A cacophony of noise rose up over the ringing in his ears: car alarms, fire alarms, screaming and sobbing and exploding armaments.
Blinking back the tears, he caught sight of the main road just outside the conference center, E. Harbor Drive.
It was a war zone.
The streets were bad, but across E. Harbor, the thirty-something story twin towers known as One Hundred and Two Hundred Harbor were much worse. Both buildings were engulfed in flames, and both buildings were being struck repeatedly by projectiles being launched from dozens upon dozens of drones. Why were they trying to take the towers down?
Who was doing this anyway?
Marcus stopped under a shot of dizziness. Two people shoulder-checked him on accident, knocking him forward, pushing him out of the departing flock. That syrupy feeling of losing equilibrium caused his world to swim once more. He took two stuttering missteps, barely even registering the acres of broken glass crunching underfoot. Hit with a wave of vertigo, he tilted left then right, causing his mind to roll, but only for a second. He slapped his face, once, then twice. He needed his senses. His instincts.
Looking across the main hall, he realized with all the glass blown out, inside was now outside, too.
Barely able to attune to the moment, he told himself he had to go, to move, to find cover. Everything was happening lightning fast, yet super slow at the same time. This was the fog of war. Like taking uppers and downers in a single swallow, then suffering the conflicting highs and lows while knowing he had to be on point, regardless.
He remembered his first surge into a hot zone. This was Afghanistan. One minute he was standing still, the next minute he was racing down corridors in his mind, out of breath, his heart hammering in his chest before he’d even taken his first step into hell.
It was like that.
Outside, the screech of some speeding car’s brakes startled him, followed an instant later by the brutal mêlée of one vehicle smashing into another. Marcus forced himself to move.
His legs weren’t working so well. Everywhere he looked, chaos supervened. The violence enveloped him, like stuffiness and claustrophobia, pulling at him, dragging him down into old memories. Malicious memories.
Sick memories.
As he stumbled forward at the behest of the departing horde, he tried to stamp these memories down, bury them once more in the fields of denial. But they were persistent. The horrors of days gone by were just there, roaring back, swallowing him into a past chock-full of the savagery of warfare.
Marcus knew combat.
But this wasn’t combat as much as it was a coordinated attack. The kind of attack he hadn’t seen before. Not this side of it, anyway.
Outside, drones zipped through the air like swarming flies, firing on anything and everything. They were hunters, mercilessly eliminating anything dense with human life. But to what outcome? And who did America piss off this time?
That’s when he realized he went right when he should have gone left with everyone else. Right was a wanton massacre. Dozens of people were bursting into the hallway from the next door conference hall. They were blood soaked and squawking, pushing and shoving and stumbling away from something inside the hall. The main attack?
This was where the first sounds of gunfire had emanated from.
More weapons-fire exploded through the walls, cutting through flesh as easy as if it were ripened fruit. This was why everyone was heading left. This was why he’d been foolish to have gone right.
Seeing the throng of survivors running right at him, his eyes flashed wide and all he could do was turn and brace himself for the imminent clash. He was quickly hammered by a force of bodies who didn’t care that he was standing, falling, being trampled upon, his face and beard stained with blood, his beaten body still reeling from the bomb blast he barely survived.
The screaming people started dropping, landing on him, pressing broken glass further into his arms, his side, his legs, his face. His instincts kicked in but it was too late. He was pinned to the floor, booted, stepped on, fallen upon.
Then something gigantic smashed through the wall, turned and unloaded a chain of ammunition into the sallying masses.
The metallic run of ammo obliterating flesh was as nasty a sound as he’d ever heard. He couldn’t plug his ears. Or stop screaming. He couldn’t move or get away. The next thing he knew, the gunfire stopped and the robotic beast proceeded forward, stepping on bodies, shoving them out of the way with its enormous metal feet.
He dared not move, lest he be discovered. A lady sprawled out in the broken glass beside him, her mouth hung open, eyelids at half mast. He saw his reflection in her deep brown eyes, eyes that were now glazed over, eyes that saw everything and nothing at all.
The fog in his head had cleared, however, and he was sober. The Terminator-like robot with the massive gun moved past him, the sides of its feet shoving Marcus out of the way. Marcus lay there, dead to the world, the murderous machine moving after those in front of him. Those from other rooms scrambling for safety only to find a world on fire.
It began firing again.
Marcus used the cover of fire to get to his feet, wincing at the pinch and sting of dozens of pieces of glass cutting into him. He got to his feet without hesitation the way he’d been trained for years, and then he decided to go after the robot.
His focus narrowing, all he saw was the machine.
The rudimentary automation was massive and ugly, a backpack box of ammunition strapped to its back from neck to tailbone. The machine wasn’t finished off, though. There were exposed wires and plugs accessible along the joints, the torso and the legs. These were the wires Marcus would be targeting.
He worried about crunching on broken glass, but the glass sat on carpet instead of concrete and the machine was making one hell of a ruckus, enough to provide cover. Taking out his covert issued metal-detector-proof Reaper2 knife, Marcus tapped into his stores of energy, then dropped his shoulders and ran, launching himself at the thing with the full force of his two-hundred twenty-five pound, six-foot two-inch frame. He hit it high where the beast carried the greatest bulk. The weight and force of him slamming into the machine pitched the robot far enough over center to off-center it.
To Marcus, it was like ramming his body into a wall of metal pipes. The machine tumbled forward, its stabilizing capabilities offset by an impact of such brute force. Marcus rode the thing down, hitting hard, flopping to the side into a portly man who was lying face down in glass and obviously dead.
Marcus scrambled onto the machine’s back as it tried to get up. The machine gun stopped firing as Marcus opened his blade and both cut and sawed through whatever wiring he could find. Finally he hit something critical and the robotic monster stopped moving.
There were more of these robots. He heard them firing in multiple bursts back in the same conference room this one originated from. Fighting to get to his feet, he happened to see outside. The amount of drones had doubled. One fired on him as he broke into a hobbled sprint. Further down, a missile penetrated the building. A fiery explosion shook the foundation, the blast wave punching him with enough force to send him skittering sideways down the open hallway.
When he stopped staggering about and fighting for balance, he felt his mind starting to crack. There was no way out!
If he stayed inside he was dead. If he ran outside he was dead. So where the hell was he supposed to hide?!
Thinking quickly, he saw a bathroom door, made a break for it. He moved inside, waited a second, then closed the door behind him. One fluorescent tube was on, one was blown out and two were flickering. Panting, silently cursing, dripping blood all over the white tile, he tried to wrap his head around all this. Then a stall door opened and a familiar face emerged.
He and the pretty-boy from the sales conf
erence now stood eye to eye. Nicholas? A second later, the gorgeous brunette’s face popped up behind him.
Wasn’t it Bailey? Isn’t that her name? It’s either that, or something like that, he thought to himself.
Marcus had his eyes on the two of them, but his senses were attuned to the outside world, tethered mostly to the noise and the possibility of new, direct threats. He glanced down for a second. It was enough. There was a multitude of splotched blood spots on the tile floor. This was his blood. He thought about how bad of shape he must be in, but he didn’t have time to consider any of that now.
Bailey stepped around Nicholas and said, “What’s going on out there?”
“The end of the world by the look of it,” Marcus growled as he stepped inside the stall next to them. “There are assault robots out there. That’s what killed everyone.”
“You saw one?” Bailey asked.
“I killed one.”
“You’re cut up pretty bad,” Nicholas mentioned to Marcus after a moment. They were looking at each other through the stall doors. No smile, no expression, just two guys trying not to become the next casualties in this unexplainable attack.
More gunfire erupted outside, causing both men to flinch. Gunfire tore through the bathroom door, causing them to shove their stall doors shut and duck down inside.
Nick and Bailey had the handicap stall, but Marcus was two stalls forward from theirs, another critical error. Before he could even take his next breath, the shot-to-smithereens bathroom door was kicked in so hard it all but broke in half, the top piece crashing down on the tile, the corner of it still attached to the lower half of the door.
Marcus flexed his jaw, clamped his teeth together and stopped breathing. At the rate which his heart was galloping, holding his breath for long was impossible. He gathered his breath as high up in his chest as he could manage, keeping it shallow and quiet, which was saying something considering he felt like he was damn near close to hyperventilating.
With the door broken and flung wide open to the outside world, the sounds of the E. Harbor bedlam flooded in. Marcus carefully slunk down to his hands and knees, peeked under the stall, saw the giant metal feet of another robot. That beating heart of his came to a sudden, grating halt before double- and triple-timing its pace in response.
Damn.
A grinding, mechanical blast of gunfire punched a dozen, smoking holes into the metal stall walls. Marcus peered up a few inches, saw seven holes in the metal above his head and thought, the hell with it. He scooted down, pushed himself sideways under the stall as quickly and as quietly as possible. Stuffed inside one of the stalls just beside the toilet, he saw a dead woman.
He had to keep moving backwards, away from this thing.
More bullets flew, peppering the stalls, blowing off pieces of the wall, tile, shards of porcelain. The toilet tank in the stall he just left exploded, dumping water all along the floor. He moved over the woman’s legs, slunk under the next metal partition, then found Nicholas and Bailey huddled between the toilet and the back wall. They were pressed together as low as they could be, but it was clear to Marcus they were sitting ducks. All of them were. Then the press of silence. Then the three of them waiting out the machine for what felt like forever.
Another burst of strafing gunfire tagged the walls, one round catching the drape of Bailey’s hair. She drew her hand to her mouth, terrified, tears leaking down her cheeks, fractions of a second away from squealing.
Any minute now, Marcus thought, and she’s going to lose it.
Wide eyes, a red face and a sort of squirming panic infected her. Marcus put a finger to his lips, effectively shushing her. She nodded her head then made the mistake of looking down. The lock of hair blown off her head sat on the thigh of her pants, making all of this real. A few inches over and her head would have been splattered all over the back wall.
Nicholas wasn’t doing much better of a job holding himself together. The plastic wall behind him was pocked with a line of gunfire that started near the girl’s head and trailed across the wall away from them. Nicholas had to know how close he’d come to dying. Marcus held the man’s eyes. The stern, steadfast look in his gaze drilled into Nicholas until the pretty boy’s expression hardened and he, too, managed to calm himself enough to clear his face of emotion.
Marcus was grinding his molars, withdrawing his knife in a clenched fist, preparing to strike, to defend, even to die, if it came to that, which it might.
When the mechanical monster turned and went out the broken door, Marcus rolled under the stall and went after it. He popped his head outside enough to see the robot walking toward the black smoking ruin. How many more of them were out there? Would he kill one and be ambushed by a dozen more?
Looking at the distinct lack of shelter, the field of broken glass and the thick wall of smoke moving their way, he knew the element of surprise would already be lost. The robot would be able to turn fast enough. He took three deep breaths, convinced himself he was a nutcase through and through, then fell into kill mode and went after it.
Upon hearing him, the beast tried to swivel and turn but Marcus hit it hard and high, just like the last one. This time, though, the machine was turning, swinging its gun around.
Marcus caught a ridge of the beast’s shoulder, but with his momentum, this only served to fling his legs around and cost him his grip. His legs went skyward and he dropped square on his back. Looking up, all he saw was the foul, blight of a creature. The robot reared up a foot to stomp him to death, but Marcus rolled through the glass, barely out of the way by the time the mammoth foot smashed into the floor.
Just then another body hit the robot, taking it down. With no time to spare, Marcus scampered onto the thing, mounted its back the way a grappler does when it takes the dominant position. Savagely, he started yanking and cutting exposed wires and tubing.
Within seconds, the robot stopped moving.
By then, Nicholas was beside him, all his weight on the thing so it couldn’t get an inch of leverage. Outside, on the street, a cobalt blue Dodge Charger skidded to a stop and started honking, causing both of them to look up.
In the driver’s seat, Marcus saw the guy they were sitting next to in the conference. The nerdy dude with curly hair who most likely was crushing on Bailey. Quentin. He was waving them down, eyes on Nicholas and Marcus. Bailey, however, was already sprinting toward him.
“Let’s go!” Nicholas said as he took off after Bailey.
Just as Marcus was standing to follow him, another robot appeared in the hallway. It made its way through the oily black smoke fifty feet away, lifting its fully-automatic rifle, pulling the trigger.
Marcus leapt through the front of the building that was once glass, sprinted through bushes and down the walkway then dove into the open back door as the guy revved hard, dumped the clutch and blew through first, second and third gears.
“How the hell did you get out of there?” Bailey asked the driver as they raced down the cluttered road. People, cars and most of a long row of decorative palm trees were on fire. The sky was black and filled with drones attacking hotels, apartment towers, the convention center.
“I was about to ask the same thing,” Marcus shouted over the roar of the engine. Outside, the orange blaze created by burning palm tree fronds was beyond mesmerizing. A testament of what was to come, if anything.
Quentin tapped the breaks, dropped gears, then bumped and smashed and grinded his way through the congestion of shot-to-hell traffic. He nudged and pushed through cars, nicking two fleeing people and one stray bench as they played smash-up derby all the way up E. Harbor.
When he was clear of the wreckage, Quentin stomped on the gas again, moving like a bat out of hell. The good thing was, the guy seemed to have no fear of driving; the bad thing was, if they wrecked, they were pretty much screwed.
“Up there,” Marcus barked, pointing to a Hilton. “On the right!”
“That’s where I’m staying,” Bailey said over the
noise.
“Is that a parking garage?” Nicholas asked. “Because it looks like a parking garage.”
“Not sure,” Bailey replied, “but I think so.”
“Your name’s Quentin, right?” Marcus asked.
“Good memory,” the nerd replied. He was a halfway decent looking guy, and not nearly as obnoxious as he could’ve been had San Diego not been under fire and sustaining irreparable damage.
They blew past Fifth Avenue and through a red light on Salida Loop leaving hotel row and the downtown district behind.
Just then a drone zipped overhead, but it didn’t fire on them. That’s when Quentin swerved hard to the right, bumping up on the curb jarring everyone, and hitting the grass. He’d seen what Marcus just saw: a track-driven mini-tank sitting in the street. The autonomous, pint-sized tank opened fire on their car, but managed to miss most of it until a back tire blew and they started to slide sideways on the grass. They kicked up mud and green turf, slip-sliding past some crazy metal sculpture of half a face painted in bright reds, greens and yellows.
Marcus held on for dear life, as did Nicholas and Bailey. The blown tire on soft earth made the big car hard to control, and it didn’t help that Quentin was still on the gas but losing speed.
“Watch out, watch out, watch out!” Nicholas shouted as he gripped the door and shoved a palm to the ceiling to keep from bouncing all over the place.
The back end of the fishtailing muscle car clipped a decorative cluster of trees kicking the Charger back the other way. This sent them into a high speed tailspin as they shot off the grass, onto the street and sideways into a curbed center divide which they hit just right.
The rims and tires slammed into the cement curb, rolling them several times before dumping them upside down on the other side of the median directly in front of the Hilton.
For a long second, Marcus lay there, upside down with Bailey’s body flung on him and everything hurting. Suddenly a door was pulled free of the car and he felt something drag Bailey off him. The next thing he knew, a strong pair of hands grabbed him and hauled him free as well.
