by Mark Harritt
Mike stepped back, “It doesn’t look like it did them any good.”
“Well, maybe not, but they took one to hell with them.”
Everett spoke, “This place keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“As if it couldn’t get weird enough with the damn dragons,” Rob added.
Mickey the brawler, the man who started bar fights, settled them, then used his combat medic skills to stitch up his adversaries, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then back again, agitated. “This place gives me the creeps,” his voice rumbled.
“Yeah, me too. Let’s get the hell out of here,” Mike pointed toward the larger street behind them. They walked back to the street and turned back in the direction that would take them out of the town.
They walked toward the edge of town. As they walked, the wind picked up. A sudden, cold wind whistled through the street, making Mike shiver.
“Damn, that wind’s cold!” Rob exclaimed.
The sun was getting low in the sky. Mike was uneasy about the town, but anything that happened here, happened long ago. The thought of sleeping out in the open tonight, in the cold, made Mike think that staying in town might not be a bad idea. He turned to Everett, “What do you think about staying in one of the buildings tonight?”
Everett had to think about, but then he acquiesced, “I don’t have a problem with it.”
Mike turned to the team, “What about you guys? You have a problem staying in town tonight?”
“I think that’s a good idea, Mike,” Tom answered. Mickey and Rob agreed. Matki looked around at the town, then shrugged his shoulders. It looked like they were going to stay in town.
On the far edge, they found a two story building. There was no problem getting in, the the warped door knocked from the frame, lying inside the room. The first floor was trashed, with broken tables, chairs, and other debris on the floor. There were stairs in the corner made from stone. Mike walked to them to scope out the upper floor. The railing had collapsed and was strewn across the stairs. Mike kicked it out of the way and walked up, his rifle pointed up, leading the way. The second floor was better, much less debris, though the remnants of a bed had collapsed in the middle of the room. The bedding and mattress were junk, well on their way to becoming dust. The rafters were still in place, but the roof was mostly gone. Shuttered windows were placed across the walls.
Mike walked back down the stairs and hooked a thumb up towards the second floor, “I think this will be the best place.”
The team followed him up, and everybody staked their claim to a portion of the floor for the night. Mickey and Rob pitched what was left of the bedding out the window, the dust making everybody sneeze. The bed frame was too big to bother with, and could be used for a fire, so they stacked it up in the corner. Tom rounded up kindling from downstairs and started a fire for dinner. He stacked the wood, and then, when it was lit, he used a stick to move the wood around to get the blaze going. Matki started making tea for everyone.
Tom poked the fire with a stick, “You guys ever been to Bamiyan?”
“You mean in Afghanistan?” Rob asked.
Tom nodded, “yeah, where the Taliban blew up the faces off of the Buddha’s.”
Rob shook his head, “No, I never got up there.”
“Genghis Khan’s grandson was killed there. The hill where the locals fought the Mongols is called the hill of one thousand screams. Genghis Khan killed every last person, even the women and children.”
Rob picked up a cup of tea from the fire, “I guess this is the city of a thousand screams.”
Tom kept poking the fire. People retired to their sleeping bags, and the night grew quiet.
----------------------------------------------------
He felt the hand go over his mouth, and he reached for his knife. The other hand clamped down on his wrist so that the knife couldn’t leave the scabbard. He opened his eyes. Everett looked down at him. When Everett was certain that Mike wouldn’t pull the knife, he slowly let go, then placed one finger across his lips. He pointed downstairs, and put his hand to his ear to mimic listening.
Mike listened, and he heard what Everett was concerned about. Something was moving through the debris on the bottom floor. Mike nodded his understanding. Everett slowly moved around the room, waking each person, making sure they were fully awake before he moved onto the next one. Mike slowly pulled on his boots, and laced them up. He looked over and saw Tom’s silhouette, his rifle pointing at the top of the stairs. Mike could see a faint glow of green cast from Tom’s starlight monocular around the left eye. Mike knew there was an infrared laser tracking Tom’s aiming position.
It was impossible to shoot at a target at night and have any great expectation of hitting anything with any accuracy. Because of this, Special Operations had developed a technique back in the nineteen-nineties, when Starlight NVGs were first used. The primary weapon, in this case, Tom’s rifle, had an IR laser attached to it. The laser was usually zeroed to hit about a hundred, hundred and fifty yards out, the expectation being that the bullet would still hit anything even though the curvature of the ballistics could send it two to three inches higher or lower from the aim point, depending on how close the enemy was. Tom knew this, and aimed accordingly.
Mike wasn’t able to see what was happening without a monocular. He didn’t see the IR laser, and he wasn’t able to see what Tom shot when he pulled the trigger. The rifle thundered, the muzzle flash momentarily illuminating the room.
“Got it!” Tom exclaimed.
Everett flicked on his flashlight. The light played over the destroyed remains. The .338 Lapua had done major damage. The head was destroyed, the shock from the round causing the head to explode. Fluids leaked out. Even from where he was, sitting on the ground, Mike could see the construct. The team got up and walked over to the robot. It wasn’t exactly like the one they found previously, but Mike could tell that the same engineer had designed it. This one didn’t have jaws and claws. Instead, it had extra sensors clustered around the head. The same black cloth hid the mechanism within. They made sure it was really dead, then Rob kicked it down the stairs.
“This ain’t good,” Mickey said.
Mike shook his head, “No, it’s not good at all.”
“What do you want to do?” Everett asked.
“I think that we should grab that warped door downstairs, drop it over this stairway opening, and then set the remains of that bed on top of it,” Mike answered. “It won’t be much, but they won’t be able to sneak up on us.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel as secure as I did five minutes ago. I think that’s probably a good idea,” Everett concurred.
They did a tactical clear of the bottom room, none of them willing to take any chances. Tom and Rob kept their rifles trained on the doorway as Mickey and Mike carried the door up to the second floor. Tom and Rob fell back and one, then the other went up the steps, covering each other. When they were back on the second floor, Mickey levered the door over the open hole that led downstairs, then the four of them drug what was left of the bed over. The side rails snapped, so Mickey picked up the head board, and dumped it on top of the warped door. It wasn’t much, but they felt a little bit better about their situation.
“Guys, two on watch at all times. I don’t know where that thing came from, but I want to make sure we’re prepared in case another one comes by.”
Nobody had problems with that. They were all jumpy, the shattered skeletons of the necropolis firmly in their minds. Now, the appearance of the second robot made everyone wish they had never found this place.
----------------------------------------------------
Chapter Six
Tom and Matki settled into first watch. Everett sat down close to Mike.
“What do you think?” Everett asked.
Mike shook his head, “Who knows. Not enough information.”
“Well, there’s one good thing.”
Mike looked at Everett, “What’s that?�
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Everett hooked a thumb in the direction of the mechanical construct, “There has to be some kind of industrial base on this world. Robots don’t grow on trees.”
A look of comprehension flooded over Mike’s face, “So, if we find out where the robot was made, we might find people that can help us.”
Rob broke into the conversation, “I don’t know. If the people who built the robot are willing to slaughter all of these people, I’m not sure I want to let them know we’re here.”
“You may be right, Rob. Still, if they have the capability to manufacture a robot, we may have to seek them out,” Mike replied.
Everett pulled some jerky out and started eating, “Maybe we can do a sneak and peek.”
Mike agreed, “That may be the best idea. Hopefully we can. We may have to liberate a few things from them as well. If the robot was autonomous, we might be able to sneak up on them. If it was a scout, it may have sent back a message already.”
Everett completed the chain of logic, “And there might be more on the way.”
Mike nodded, “Yeah, there might be.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah, crap indeed.”
----------------------------------------------------
Mike woke up with the morning light. He could smell meat roasting. He rolled over, grabbed his boots, and pulled them on. He stood up and stomped his feet to get the boots adjusted. He sat back down and tied the laces.
He looked over at door on top of the stairs, but nothing had changed from the night before. He looked over at the fire. Everett and Rob were cooking breakfast. Rob looked over at him and flashed a smile. “Hey gringo, you want some breakfast?”
Mike walked over and squatted down next to the fire, “What’cha cookin’?”
“The last of the smoked jerky.”
The huachi was gone, so they were using jerky to flavor some soup. Hopefully they would get lower in the mountains and find more food.
“What’re we going to do today?” Everett asked.
“I don’t know about you, I think I’m done with this place. I want to get out of here,” Mike offered.
He got nods of agreement from both of them.
Everett took a sip of tea, “Yeah, I want to put this place in the rearview mirror for sure.”
“Anything stirring?”
“No, nothing. We’ve been looking out the windows, and I haven’t seen a thing. What about you Rob?”
Rob shook his head, “No, nothing out there.”
Mike ran his hand through his hair, trying to tame the wild locks. It didn’t work, the locks falling back to the position where they’d started from, “Okay, when I get packed, I’ll take watch.”
They rousted Mickey, Tom, and Matki. They grumbled and groaned as they rolled out of their sleeping bags. The smell of breakfast quieted them, and they wandered over to the fire.
Mike brought them up to speed, “We’re pulling out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to get the hell out of here before something else shows up.”
Mickey looked up at Mike and shook his head slowly, “Man, I can’t believe you said that.”
Mike thought about it, “Why?”
Mickey nodded, “Tempting fate, Mike, tempting fate. Murphy’s always listening.”
Of course, Mickey wasn’t talking about Staff Sergeant Patrick Murphy back at the compound. He was talking about a different, none existent Murphy. If there was truly a god of the military, it was the mythical Murphy. Murphy was the set of rules/laws that seemed to rule the ordinary lives of the American soldier. ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,’ was the guiding rule of the Noncommissioned Officer, which is why they spent countless hours not only figuring out how to fight the enemy, but also how to counter the good intentions of privates and officers. The rule had branched into many corollaries of the original law, such as, “If your attack is going extremely well, it’s an ambush,” or “no plan survives the first contact intact,” each rule defining the perversity of the universe.
“Well, hopefully not. At least, not here, and not today,” Mike answered.
Everybody was packed and ready to go. Tom did a sweep of the second floor to make sure they didn’t leave anything behind. Mickey wrenched the remains of the bed aside. Mike covered the door as Mickey lifted it up. Mike could see all the way down the stairs, and there wasn’t anything on them. He led the way down, the muzzle of his rifle leading the way. Rob and Everett had their rifles at low ready as they followed him down the stairs, ready to engage if anything tried to jump Mike.
Mike swung his rifle around to cover the room as he moved down. He got to the bottom of the stairs, and didn’t see anything, and yelled, “Clear.”
The team came down behind him. Mike moved to the door, and looked out.
The wind had died down, and the mist was there, fogging the streets, though it didn’t decrease visibility too much. They were able to see about a few hundred feet out, so they could see any ambushes.
“Hopefully,” Mike thought. Mike looked left and right, and then down the street in front of them. The door to the building was slightly offset to that street. Mike didn’t see anything, so he stepped out, with Everett and Rob right behind him, both of them watching the side streets to the left and right. Tom, Mickey, and Matki stepped out behind them.
“Mike, which way do you want to go?” Everett asked.
“Well, the shortest way out of town is down this street. At least I think it is,” Mike pointed down the road in front of him. So, I think we go straight out.”
“I agree.”
“Rob, you’re in front. Tom, I want you up next to Rob. I’ll follow, Matki behind me, Everett, and then Mickey.”
Rob and Tom walked forward, Tom slightly behind Rob, standing off to the side so that he could get off a shot if needed. The rest of the team fell in behind them.
“Alright, Rob, move out.”
The wind was gone. The fog was heavier today, unmoving. The moisture dampened noise, making it eerily quiet. Their footsteps crunching across gravel and bone was the only sound heard. Dust kicked up around their feet, hanging low in the air with no wind to disperse it.
The first indication that something was wrong came from Rob.
Rob spoke up next, “Boss, problem up here.”
“Damn, ten minutes, and we’re in the shit again,” Mike thought.
“What is it?” Mike asked.
“One of those robots.”
“What kind?”
“Not sure, it’s down the road a bit.”
“Anyway around it?”
“Not that I can see. Check that, there’s a side street up here. We can go down that.”
Mike walked up to scope out what was happening. The street opened, visibility shifting as he walked forward. Rob and Tom both had their weapons at low ready. Mike stopped next to Rob, and he could see what Rob was concerned about.
The robot was barely visible in the mist, a shadowy figure. Mike couldn’t make out details, but it was roughly the shape and size of the one that they found back at the city center. Rob motioned with his rifle to the right. Just in front of him, to the right, there was an opening to a side street.
“Mike, I’ve got a problem back here.”
Mike cursed, then yelled back to Mickey, “What’s the problem, Mickey.”
“Robot on our six. It’s at the end of the street where it tees, right before our RON position.” RON meant, Remain Over Night.
Mike cursed, then thought, “Damn you, Murphy!”
“What’s it doing?”
“Nothin’, just following us.”
“If it comes toward you, shoot it.”
“You got it boss.”
Mike had a bad feeling. He called out over his shoulder, “Everett, what do you think about a situation when two streets are blocked, but one is wide open?”
“Mike, I’ve seen movies like that, and they never end well. I’m thinking ambush.”
That wa
s exactly what Mike was thinking. That side street was just a little too convenient. Mike thought about their options. He didn’t know how many robots were out there. The worst thing that could happen to them was to get caught out in the open with those things surrounding them.
Mike made up his mind, “Okay guys, this is what I’m thinking. We need to get back to where we spent the night. We can barricade the top of the stair, and then shoot them from the windows.”
He paused to let that sink in, “Here’s what we’re going to do. When I yell go, Tom and Rob take out the one in front, Everett and Mickey take out the one in back. I’m with Matki. Matki, as soon as you see me go past you, you fall in behind me. Make sure you stay with me, no matter what. Get your ass back inside the building as quick as possible. Do you understand?”
Mike turned to Matki to make sure that Matki was clued into what was about to happen. He caught Matki’s eye. Matki grinned and gave him a thumbs up. Mike couldn’t help but grin back at him.
“Deep in the shit, possibly going to die, and he still has a good attitude. Total badass,” Mike thought.
Mike started laying down everybody’s course of action, “Guys, I’m going into the building with Matki. I’m going to clear to make sure there’s nothing in there.”
Mike turned to Tom and Rob, then continued, “Tom, Rob, you’ve got our six on the way back. If you run into trouble, let me know.”
Mike got a “Roger” from Tom and a “WILCO,” for will comply, from Rob.
Mike turned back to Everett and Mickey, “Ev, Mick, I need you two to clear the street left and right at the tee, make sure it holds until we get Tom and Rob back in, okay?”
Mickey nodded.
“You got it, Boss,” Everett replied. He moved back until he was even with Mickey.
Nobody spoke. They didn’t need to. They were waiting for the go signal now.
Mike walked back and placed his hand on Matki’s shoulder. Matki turned back in the direction they had just come from, and was ready to run.
