Soon the thing closed its mouth and the squealing stopped. The Dreadnaught’s neck rotated from side to side, its telescoping eyes searching. It took a clunking step forward and I cowered further beneath the instrument panel, hoping to shrink away beneath the overhang. It gaze passed over my head and rested firmly on Silas.
The boy had moved away from Paul. He hunkered on all fours, lips peeled back, revealing pink, unblemished gums and human, non-threatening teeth. His nose became a shriveled prune in the middle of his face as his brow pleated downward. When he’d been a dog I’d only seen this pose twice before. Even as a human it frightened me.
The image of the wolf-girl, with Big Guy’s sword embedded in her skull, popped into my head as the giant mechanical beast stepped off the platform. I felt a sudden rush of shame, hiding while a naked young boy held his ground. I stood up on quaking knees and dashed from my secluded spot. In my rush I forgot about the seven-foot obstruction sprawled out before me. My foot thwacked mannequin man’s side with a tinny clank and I toppled over. The floor came up too quickly for me to protect myself, and my chin hit it with a sickening crunch. I chomped down on my tongue and blood poured into my mouth. I spit it out and cursed the useless thing I’d tripped over.
My head spun around and I stared at mannequin man. More to the point, I stared at the thick wire attached to its head. That had to be what Paul wanted me to unplug – hell, it was the only thing left in the room that I could. I smacked the steel floor and moved in to examine what I was dealing with, and upon testing the clamp that held the cable in place, my spirits lifted. A tiny bit.
When I glanced up, I saw that Silas now stood in front of me, blocking my view of the thing from the plinth. A subsonic wail discharged from its general direction. The gear-grinding noise became louder, and it was followed by the metallic clang of its feet hitting the floor. The dais was only thirty feet from us at most, but the thing seemed to move very slowly, so I did my best to ignore it. I wrapped my hand around the cable and pulled. It seemed to give a little, but didn’t come off. I tried again, and got it a little looser. Two more yanks, I figured, and it would be free.
It turned out those were two yanks too many, because the sound of a giant blowtorch filled the air and the room got really, really hot. I glanced up in time to see Silas run at the great steel beast, which now floated in the air and flapped its wings while a plume of fire spread out below it.
“Silas, no!” I cried.
My boy was quick, but adrenaline made me quicker. I stopped trying to dismantle the cable from mannequin man’s head and dove for him. I caught his ankles as he left the ground and he fell. At that moment the Dreadnaught soared past us. Its razor hand swiped, missing Silas by mere inches. If I hadn’t reacted so quickly…
I had no time for that sort of thinking. I jerked Silas to me by his calf and looked him dead in the eye. “Get back,” I ordered, gesturing to mannequin man, not sure if he’d understand what I wanted him to do. “Go pull the wire from its head. Now.” He nodded, eyes wide, and scurried off.
Our attacker’s telescoping lenses followed him. The mechanical beast was now on the other side of the room and had lifted a good fifteen feet off the ground. Its body angle flattened and there went that blowtorch noise again. It started forward, picking up speed as it flew.
What happened next took only seconds to complete, but in my mind it lasted forever. When I saw the thing flying in Silas’s direction I bent my knees, measured the distance between us, and jumped. I might have been a large man, but the impact of my body into that thing barely changed its course. I grasped its torso and held on for dear life. It started flying in circles. I managed to pull myself onto its back and hunkered down between the flapping, rubber-like wings. I plunged my free hand into the mess of exposed wires that went from its neck to the back of its head. When I yanked, they popped loose with a sizzle. The beast swerved to one side and pitched me off like a rodeo bull. Somehow I landed on one knee and one foot. I watched the thing veer sharply to the left and crash head-first into the far console. Its massive weight caused the wall to buckle.
I stood still and panted, my heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. A quick glance over my shoulder told me that Silas was trying to detach the wire from mannequin man’s head.
I ran a hand through my sweat-drenched hair. Is it over?
It wasn’t.
The hulking machine of death emerged from the hole in the wall it created and tossed aside the console which had fallen on top of it. It rose again into the air and its eyes found me. The smashed bank of computers behind it sparked and fizzed. The smell of exhausted fuel filled my nostrils.
“C’mon, make a move,” I muttered, bouncing on my feet like a boxer. The beast complied, but it didn’t come for me. Its rocket boosters lit up and it sped at Silas with wings outstretched. My boy noticed at the last moment and tried to leap out of the way, holding the now-freed cable from the back of mannequin man’s head. He wasn’t quick enough. The beast caught him with a glancing blow, knocking him off to the side. The back of his head smacked against the floor not once but twice, and then he lay still, eyes closed, while the monster circled around, preparing another strike.
“NO!” I screamed.
I covered the distance between us in two steps and shielded Silas with my own body. The Dreadnaught swept past me and lashed out with one clawed appendage. My chest exploded with a volcano’s worth of heat. Blood gushed from four new gashes in my chest. I fell to my knees, the coppery taste of my life’s fluid bubbling over my tongue. I couldn’t breathe. The room spun around me. My eyes rolled back. I collapsed on my side, unable to move.
I thought I was a goner, but I harvested enough strength to open my eyes one last time. When I did I saw the Dreadnaught, all eight feet of perfunctory, callous murder, make one last turn. Its dagger-filled mouth opened wide and it charged.
My mind played tricks on me. In my fading vision I saw an angel rise up – a tall, wiry fellow wearing gray overalls. He hurdled toward the attacking monstrosity, his body a portrait of fluid elegance, and struck the beast hard with his fist. The sound of the impact reverberated through my brain.
The angel then struck the beast again, knocking it from the air. It skidded across the ground, gouging the floor with its heavy steel frame. Still graceful, my savior skipped into the air and landed with both feet on the beast’s head. I heard the crunch as its metal skull was crushed beneath the divine weight. Even in my fading consciousness, I was ecstatic. I tried to call out to him, to this angel, but all that came out was a wet moan.
The angel must have heard my call, however, for he turned around and stared at me with the most brilliant, glowing blue eyes I’d ever seen. I chuckled lightly and tried to smile. I couldn’t. The pain was too great.
I allowed nothingness to take me. With my world a swirling kaleidoscope of pain, to surrender felt exquisite.
54
Past mistakes disguised as flamboyant, fat businessmen with the overstuffed face of Ricky Davenport chased me. I ran through a dense thatch of woods. They wouldn’t catch me, I told myself, because I ran with the speed of a Porsche. Branches pelted my face, drawing thick gouges that bled down my neck. Silas sat on my shoulders, his little-boy thighs squeezing my ears, his arms wrapped around my forehead. I splashed through puddles, trudged through mud, and slipped on oily scraps of dead leaves. My heart pounded in my ears, and that, combined with the laughter of the boy on my shoulders, became the most wonderful chorus in the world.
Though the demons of my personal history were on my heels, this was no nightmare. To the contrary, this felt like liberation. I chortled with glee, just like my boy, while my feet pulverized the ground. I was going to outrun them all. Pain. Doubt. Loneliness. Regret. All would be left behind in their rotting Ricky Davenport carcasses before long. They were tubby bastards, after all, grown fat with the gluttony of past, of loiter, of surrender, and that made them no match for my heart’s newfound song.
My toes
struck a regrettably positioned root and I slid to my knees, skimming between two thick elm trees at amazing speed. The wet leaves beneath me became like snow saucers, kicking me onward with even greater velocity. Silas squeezed his knees tighter but didn’t stop laughing.
We slid through the maze of the forest with the exactitude of a world-class bobsled team until we reached a vast clearing. The land formed a bowl and in the center was a single tree, illuminated in sunless, moonless dream-lighting. It had metal plates instead of bark and a hundred crisscrossing spires, each branch ending with spinning saw blades. It was an aberrant monstrosity, this tree, emblazoned with a symbol that looked like a pair of parallel, snaking lines with hash marks striking through the center of each and a dot placed at either opened end of the hash marks. Just as with the demons behind me, though, I didn’t care what it was or what it meant. We simply raced toward it, giggling like mad men, until the first of the spinning blades ripped Silas from my shoulders.
I couldn’t stop snorting, even as a cavalcade of twisting razors scored through my chest. I heard Silas continue his crazy guffaw somewhere in the near distance, though now it sounded stifled. The pain of the invading steel blades grew, zigzagging through my veins in a steady crescendo.
Defying all laws of gravity, I passed beneath the death-tree, leaving it behind and gaining speed as I rose up the other side of the bowed clearing. After scaling the crest I didn’t so much stop as become frozen in time. Silas, now half boy and half dog, materialized above me, as did Joe and Jacqueline Talbot. They all shook their heads in disappointment, and then, not from behind but below them, emerged Bridget Cormier, her face puffy and bloated, with worms wiggling in her empty eye sockets. The ghastly wound in her neck oozed with pus and maggots. She leaned over me and opened her mouth. Spiders decanted from the orifice. All sense of levity departed, and the sensation that replaced it was…nothing. I felt no emotion, no fear or revulsion. I’d become dead, just like her.
Stinking bile erupted from her throat, soaking my face. I closed my eyes and shut my mouth, somehow knowing it would be the end of me if I swallowed it. Even though I felt lifeless inside, I still wanted to live. I kicked and punched at the dead girl, but never struck her even though she was only inches from me. I’m going to drown, I thought, oddly serene. And then I’ll never get back.
Then the light came, and the dream vanished.
Radiance pierced my eyelids like a cleaver through paper. I turned away and slapped at my wet cheeks. Planting my feet on the ground, I tried to push myself backward. A sharp pain answered my attempts at escape, and an upsurge of agony drove a tree trunk through my chest and across my back.
I opened my eyes.
Silas sat a few feet away from me, cowering like he’d been scolded. His silken black fur shimmered in the intense sunlight. Sunlight. I glanced up. The tree line was distant, at the top of a steep cliff, forming a horseshoe of brown and green. The huge red sun cast its heat down upon me. The sky was as blue as a robin’s egg and a few puffy white cumulus clouds passed along it, random travelers urging their marshmallow carriages across the atmosphere. It was beautiful.
I tried to crane my neck and another spasm of torment drove a spike through my head. Images came to me, memories I never wanted or asked for. My mind gradually lifted from its haze and my first thought was, how long have I been out? It had to have been quite a while, for the position of that great, hot sun said it was early afternoon, at least.
I racked my brain for answers. The last thing I remembered was that giant robot monster attacking me. It had slashed me, right across the ribcage. I gritted my teeth and managed to glance down my torso. My shirt was off and my upper body was swathed in white bandages peppered with crimson Rorschach blots. It seemed someone had bandaged me up.
In the silence I heard a low vibration, but put it off as the ringing in my head. Then came the patter of Silas’s paws as he trotted up to me and sat by my side. He leaned his snout into my face and licked me, soaking my eyes, nose, and mouth with slobber. I giggled a bit – even that hurt – and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Hey, boy, how’s it hanging?” I asked in a hoarse voice. It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t human anymore, and with that realization I sensed a confliction of relief and sorrow. He nuzzled into me and I returned the sentiment, pressing my face into his while fighting off the wrenching pain that cycled through me. “It’s okay, Silas,” I whispered. “I love you no matter what you are.”
“Oh, my, is this not an adorable scene?” asked a male and strangely prim voice. I arched my back to see who spoke and that tree trunk of torment pummeled me again. Silas yelped and hopped to my side. I felt his tail above my head, swooshing back and forth. A low, menacing growl pulsed in his throat.
“Now, now,” the prim voice said, “there is no need for that.”
I sensed Silas back away, and he sat down with his rear end touching my nose. His body wiggled, but not of his doing. Someone was petting him. He moaned with pleasure. Then it stopped and I heard the thump of footfalls on pavement. Heavy footfalls. I shielded the sun with my hand, and the image of what stood before me came into focus.
The way the thing stood, framed against the backdrop of distant trees and cliffs, made it look gigantic. My eyes traced it from the bottom up. A pair of shiny, slender feet, nothing but slats of curved and rippled metal, attached to legs thin as bamboo with oblong, circular links for knees. The legs grew steadily thicker as they rose up, which led to motorized ball joints resting in wide hips of rounded steel. The waist above those hips was nothing more than a tube one foot wide and sectioned off every few inches by what appeared to be knocks of coil. The waist then disappeared inside a heavy chest-plate. The torso shield was smooth and marked only by a seam down the center and two letters – BQ – engraved to the left of the sealed ridge. The arms were much the same as the legs, long and thin, though with a much more flexible-looking hinge at the elbows. Those arms ended in hands attached to wrists that were thick orbs, like ball bearings. The fingers on the hands I’d seen before, but I couldn’t quite remember where.
My sight worked back up the arms and then to the shoulders, then to the neck, a segmented steel rod. At the top of the neck was a strange, though somewhat human-shaped head. It had no mouth, only a circular speaker. A lump protruded above the mouth-speaker in the postulation of a nose, and above that were two cylinders lit with blue fire.
Silas yipped, his tail wagged unremittingly, and I wanted to say something, maybe crack a joke to break the tension, but I couldn’t. It felt like a ball of wax had formed beneath my uvula.
The robot’s metal fingers clicked against its hips. It then clasped its hands together and cocked its head in an insightful way I didn’t think possible.
“Well, Mr. Lowery,” it said, the prim tones coming from the speaker, “it is very nice to meet you.”
It came back to me all at once: Paul; the prone mannequin man; the fight with the Dreadnaught; the savior angel. I looked down at my bandaged chest and felt a sudden rush of panic. I slapped at the bandages, biting through the pain while I searched for the telltale cylindrical lump. Silas backed up a step.
“Get it off!” I screamed. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“I have done nothing but repair your wounds,” replied the robot, sounding concerned. “Please calm down.”
I dropped my head into my hands and the ache caused my eyes to well up. “There’s nothing,” I said, my tongue feeling swollen beyond belief. “Nothing there.”
“Should there be?” the robot asked.
I took deep breaths to calm myself and said, “I don’t know, but after seeing what happened to Paul…”
“Ah, I see.” The pedantic tones coming from the speaker box returned to their calm state. “No, I did not place a regulator inside of you. I find that sort of thing off-putting, to be honest.”
“A regulator?” I asked. “Is that what was in Paul’s chest?”
The tall silver man nodd
ed. “Yes. The device weaves its threads through the nervous system and attaches itself to the cerebral cortex and heart. It then regulates the wearer’s thought patterns, controlling them. It is usually a last resort for only the most uncooperative of subjects, and removing the device is fatal.”
My head dropped. “So I killed him.”
“No, Mr. Lowery,” the robot said, “you saved him. Paul Jacob Nicely was near death when he arrived here. The regulator did nothing but prolong the inevitable.”
I gargled and raised my hand to feebly wave him away. Silas barked.
The robot was having none of it. “Enough of that,” it said. “Let me introduce myself.” It folded one hand over the other before tilting at the waist in a bow. Gears clicked and whirred as it moved. “My name is Benjamin Queen, Instructor Class TS-196833, designed by Doctor Robert Queen in a year unknown to me at this time.” It – he – tilted his head. His eyes dimmed as if to convey sadness. “Unfortunately, there are many aspects of myself I have not been able to access in quite a while.” The eyes brightened, the head lifted. “But all in due time, correct? I am still alive, and that alone is something to give thanks for.”
The serene and proper tone the robot used soothed me. Soon, memories of what became of Paul were forced to the back of my mind. The lump in my throat reduced to a sliver and I uttered, in almost a chuckle, “It’s nice to meet you…Ben.”
“As, yes. Ben. Such a pleasant sobriquet. I have not been called that since…”
His glowing blue eyes once more darkened and he veered away. A low humming came from his speaker-box. It sounded like a groan. Then his head whirled in my direction with such speed that I startled, causing jolts of pain to cascade across my chest. I winced. Silas licked my face. The robot Ben stepped forward with a hand outstretched.
Silas: A Supernatural Thriller Page 22
