Love, Death, Robots and Zombies

by Oliver Higgs

  We talk about what’s to be done. Doubts creep in. Doing this in town will be different than it would be in the wastes. Hapsburg keeps a small security force, and we don’t want to get caught. Then again, Cabal might not even be here anymore–would he really want to stay with Cove’s soldiers around? He could’ve hit the road the moment he left the bar.

  I nurse my anger to combat the doubts. Half of that anger is toward myself; for my cowardice, for letting him walk all over us. Conan would never let this happen. We have to do something. At some point I notice the handle to the door in our room is brass. That gives me an idea. Brass conducts electricity. I have copper wire in my pack. I could set up a device, wrap it around the handle to Cabal’s room, knock and leave. When he goes to open the door, he’ll be electrocuted.

  Echo makes me realize all the problems with this scenario. It will work–if the other inn’s door-handles make a good conductor, and if I can find a battery to provide enough power, and if Cabal answers the door, and if he’s still in town. Too many conditionals. The plan is untenable, but I try to work it out for a while, reluctant to let it go. Annoyed, Echo snaps at me to forget it. We argue.

  Sometime after midnight, we decide to make a move.

  I have a bad feeling. We’re not well-prepared. Anything could happen. Fear tugs at me. But we can’t just sit here. Something must be done. Before leaving, we put out the lamp and peek out a corner of the window, searching for hidden watchers in the alley below. We can’t find any. We leave by the same window.

  We’re on the second floor, but it’s low enough to hang-drop. I hit the ground and look for an ambush. Will we be shot as soon as we show our faces? Cabal won’t kill us in front of the soldiers, but if he could snipe us in an anonymous street-ambush, I’m sure he would. In my head, it’s already happening. Despite this, we remain among the living.

  In the alley, Echo grasps my hand. We move fast, hurrying down the alley, trying to locate the second inn through gaps in the buildings. The streets are empty. There are rainclouds overhead. It’s drizzling, and everything has a reflective sheen.

  “There,” Echo whispers. The inn is on the opposite side of the main thoroughfare. We stop in the alley behind the corner of another building. Most of the inn’s windows are dark. I check them all with my spyglass.

  “See anything?” Echo asks.

  I shake my head. Even so, we watch for a while. My stomach is tied in knots. How are we going to do this?

  “Maybe we should we circle around and go in the back,” Echo says.

  “Let’s do that,” I say.

  One step and I freeze.

  Someone else is approaching the inn–a man in a blue coat. A Coven soldier. We draw back into the shadows. The man stops by the inn’s front door, looks around, makes some signal. Another blue-coat joins him from our side of the street. Apparently he was right in front of the building we’re perched behind, blocked from view. Four more soldiers come from up the street. Two wait outside while the other four enter the inn.

  I and Echo exchange uncertain looks. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe Cove will do our work for us. We watch in silence. Minutes pass.

  A loud bang and a flash erupt from inside the inn, making us jump. Was it a shotgun? Echo grasps my shoulder. Shouts follow. One of the soldiers standing guard outside rushes into the inn. The other crouches warily and scans the streets with his rifle.

  “Tristan, let’s get out here,” Echo says.

  “Not yet.”

  “That bang just woke a lot of people up. Whatever’s happening up there, it’s probably not good. Those soldiers are bound to come looking for more, whether they’ve got Cabal or not. We don’t want to be found lurking in this alley when that happens.”

  I look at her but I don’t want to leave. I’ve got to know, dammit.

  “Tristan, please,” Echo urges.

  Then I remember she was attached to Foundry’s army, reluctantly or not. We can’t risk a confrontation with Cove’s soldiers. I whisper a curse.

  “Fine.”

  I follow her back down the alley toward our inn. We move as quietly as we can, sticking to the shadows. We’ve only gone a short distance when movement draws my attention. I keep looking back for the soldiers. Toward that end of the alley, a man drops down from the roof of a squat one-story structure. Another one already on the ground. A third comes down behind them. They’re barely discernible in the darkness, but one turns our way …

  Cabal.

  Liquid-blue fire flashes past on my left, leaving a long burn-streak in a building somewhere beyond us. We flinch and duck right together, but I overbalance in my haste and tumble to the wet ground behind a concrete refuse-bin. Echo crouches low, peering over the top of the bin.

  “Come on,” she says, pulling me up.

  “What about–”

  “They’re gone.”

  Just like that, our attackers have fled. It had to be Cabal. Some kind of plasma-hybrid weapon. We race back to our inn now. We can’t be seen. Mercifully, the lobby is empty. We make it to our room and close the door behind us, shaken.

  It’s only now the implications sink in. Cabal wasn’t in the inn. He was watching it. He must’ve lain up on that building with his friends, waiting. If we’d crossed that street, we’d be dead. But what about that bang? And why did the soldiers show up?

  Noon the next day, the answers come. We leave our room reluctantly for food, and I buy some delicious sugary bread from a street-vendor, who gives us the news of the day: Cove’s soldiers are gone.

  “Seems they lookin’ f’r a feller up at the Red Roof,” he says. “Only this feller know’d they was comin’. I hear tell he rigged a shotgun to his door. First man to kick open that door got a blast full in the belly. Didn’t survive but a few hours. Rest of them soldiers go stormin’ out in a rage, looking for them who done it. Now they on the road somewhere … Bible say ‘those who take the gun shall perish by it.’ Guess that feller learnt that the hard way.”

  We retreat to our room and hide out until dinner.

  I vomit once. Something dark and empty is left inside. Echo doesn’t say much. That soldier was killed in our place. We don’t know his name, we’ll never see his face–and sure, he was from Cove, but that seems less important now, because he died for us.

  Cabal didn’t leave much to chance. He rigged his room and waited in ambush. If we’d come openly to the inn, he’d have burned us down. If we’d snuck through the back and broke down the door, we’d have triggered the shotgun. We came very close to doing both of those things. I try to imagine what it was like for the soldier: kicking the door in, the flash, the pain. I start to feel sick again. To combat the feeling, I think of Farmington, how it burned. Was the dead soldier there? Maybe he deserved it.

  And now, once again, Cabal is out there somewhere–waiting.

  “One day I’m going to kill you both.”

  It’s decided, almost as an afterthought, that we’ll take the caravan on the morrow. Most of the rest of the day we spend in our room. Neither of us feel hungry–we eat only the sugary bread–and I make only one trip out alone, for a distraction. There’s a tech store in town. I load up on all the cheap electronics I can. Normally such a move would be cause for celebration. Today it’s unnaturally subdued. Still, I’m glad to have the parts. I don’t know what I’ll make, but it’ll be something.

  Something better than a shotgun blast to the belly.

  The caravan is due to leave shortly after dawn the following the morning. With the sun peeking above the horizon, we meet Jarvis and Starbucks on the way to the lobby. Little is said. Jarvis clearly wants to talk. His eyes are slightly wide and he keeps glancing at Echo, but I guess he doesn’t know what to say.

  Then a suspicion hits me–but I keep it to myself for now.

  The caravan waits by the gate into town: two big passenger wagons, plus a third filled with supplies. They’re a mixture of old and new, though the old parts are new and the new parts are old, oddly. The supply-wag
on, for example, is probably the oldest of the three, though it’s built from some indestructible light-weight carbon and pulled by a robotic tug the size of a small bull. The passenger wagons, by contrast, are made from wood and tethered to live horses, despite the fact that they’re of a more recent manufacture.

  The world is going backwards.

  The driver of the lead wagon is a Plastic Person. The caravan originates further south, so I assume either this driver was hired out of Hapsburg or there are more Plastic People in nearby towns. He/she wears a flowery summer dress, with long brown hair sewn into the rubbery scalp. Gaudy makeup is smeared across its face. The effect is truly horrifying. I can’t stop staring as we go to pay.

  Nearing the horses, it’s easy to see how enormous they are. They’re Redbacks, or Kentucky Bloods, I’m told, which is a genetically modified breed that didn’t exist until a few years before the Fall, when screwing with nature was a fond pastime. Each can do the work of two or three smaller horses, and each passenger-wagon has two up front.

  Paying for our passage takes the rest of the coins from Hapsburg, along with two books and a small mirror Echo found in zombie-land. Even then, we’re apparently getting a deal. Starbucks is ahead of us. The caravaners allow Jarvis’s smaller wagon (along with one other) to be towed at the rear, forming a small train.

  In my paranoia, I’m half-expecting to find Cabal or the soldiers aboard one of the wagons, but neither is present. We climb in behind Jarvis and find ourselves in a compartment with eight other people. Abruptly I’m sitting across from a stunningly attractive girl with long, wavy blonde hair and green eyes. She’s gorgeous. There’s no other word for it. Her skin is shockingly clean and smooth, and as our benches face each other, I find it impossible not to stare.

  There are some sounds on my right that don’t register. Words. The girl has delicately puffy, cherry-red lips. I’m jolted out of my reverie by Echo shaking my shoulder. I turn to see her staring at me. It’s clear she’s said something, but the words are lost to history.

  “What?” I ask, annoyed.

  She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, turning toward the window. I glance back at the girl. It’s obvious now that I’ve been staring at her. She’s suppressing an amused little smile as I meet her eyes. Some magnetic power repels my gaze, forces it away. I swallow. My face burns.

  “Unappreciated beauty is one of the world’s great tragedies.”

  It’s a teenage boy who says this. He can’t be much older than me. He’s clean cut, with short brown hair, and he’s sitting across from Echo, looking at her with a secretive smile. Echo frowns at him.

  “But then, what can you expect from your … brother?” he asks, turning the statement into a question.

  Echo’s frown deepens in confusion. She has no idea what he’s talking about … until she does, and then her face lights up.

  “Ohh, you mean–no, he’s not my brother,” she says.

  “Cousin?” he says, eyes flicking to mine.

  “God, no,” says Echo.

  “Oh. Forgive me then. I didn’t mean to offend you. Either of you. Sorry.”

  Echo and I frown at each other before we realize what he’s implying.

  “Oh, no! No, we’re not–I mean, we’re just … friends. Travelling together,” Echo says.

  “That so?” the stranger asks, puzzled, looking at me.

  “Yeah. Travelers,” I say, risking a look back at the girl across from me.

  “Oh, good then. No harm done. I’m Byron. Pleased to meet you both.”

  We introduce ourselves. The blonde girl gets pulled into the conversation.

  “Octavia,” she says.

  I’m smiling dumbly at her by the mere fact that she spoke. Her name is like candy. I immediately want to do everything possible to impress her. I would literally dive through the window of this wagon if she only hinted it was something worthy of praise.

  “This is my brother Ambrose. Ambrose, say ‘hi,’” Octavia adds, elbowing the boy on her other side. Ambrose is what they used to call “special” in Farmington, though it’s not any kind of special you’d want to be. His features are kind of squished together. His eyes are too close and his lower lip juts forth.

  “Hi,” he says loudly, staring open-mouthed at me. I’m a little put-off by the blunt observation. I smile and nod, but he just won’t look away.

  “Ambrose, don’t stare, it’s rude,” Octavia whispers, but he does anyway.

  Meanwhile, Byron is pretending to look through his jacket. He comes up empty-handed, scratching his head. Echo is watching him.

  “Now where did I–oh, yes!” he says, as if suddenly remembering, and a purple flower appears in his hand, sprouting out of thin air. Octavia rolls her eyes and looks away; she’s seen this trick once already.

  Echo’s eyebrows go up, but it’s Jarvis who’s the most impressed.

  “How’d you do that!” he shouts from my other side.

  “A good secret is worth keeping,” he says, extending the flower toward Echo. “For you, Mon Cheri.”

  “Mon-what?” she asks, hesitantly accepting the gift.

  “It’s French.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “You know, I haven’t the slightest idea. ‘Beautiful,’ I think.”

  Echo is flattered now, though she tries not to show it, and I feel an unreasonable stab of anger. She likes that cheap trick? It was up his sleeve, for Crom’s sake. I bet he wouldn’t call her “beautiful” if he saw her spattered with zombie guts. If he saw the way her chest heaved in and out after she hit that one with the shovel, eyes enlivened, yellow hair askew. If he’d seen the fear in her blue eyes when she’d looked back at me in the alley that night, tiny droplets of rain glistening on her skin. Or even that pouty face she makes when she’s sad and moody in the ruins … when she brushes her hair back behind her ear and tilts her head very slightly to one side …

  No, not beautiful at all.

  “We’re going to Apolis,” Ambrose announces, unnecessarily loud.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Us too,” I say, and looking in his direction brings me back to Octavia. I wish I had a flower and a cheap trick for her.

  “Momma’s gonna meet us in Apolis. How come you don’t wear no makeup?”

  Ambrose directs this last question to Starbucks, who is staring out the window.

  “Excuse me?” the big robot asks.

  “Kitra has a dress and makeup. I’ve seen lots of robots wear makeup. How come you don’t have any? You don’t have no money?”

  Kitra is the lead wagon driver, the Plastic Person at the reigns, and Ambrose is evidently impressed by her colorful appearance. Starbucks’s expression is the robotic equivalent of utmost astonishment and disgust. Jarvis looks as though his birthday has come early. He cracks up laughing.

  “Ambrose, what did Momma tell you about asking strangers questions?” Octavia asks.

  “They don’t like it.”

  “So should you be doing it?”

  “But makeup might make him pretty.”

  There’s no stopping Jarvis after that. Octavia apologizes profusely.

  “Come on Star, where’s your makeup?” Jarvis asks when he can breathe again.

  Starbucks turns slowly back to the window and sighs.

  “Ignorant waterbags,” he mutters.

  Apolis is a good distance from Hapsburg–something like three hundred miles, first west a ways, then north. The caravan drivers vary the route they take to avoid ambushes, though in fact the caravan is well protected.

  First, there’s a big robotic turret mounted on top of the supply-wagon. I don’t know what it fires, but if the answer is anything at all, it’s bound to be deadly. Then there’s the mech walking alongside us. It’s a bulky, armored, gun-wielding robotic shell, as tall as Starbucks but thicker around, always with an operator controlling it from the inside. Finally, all the drivers have weapons and can double as guards.

  Any attack strong enough to destroy the mech and the turret
will likely kill us all in the process. That’s better news that it sounds. There are groups out there with enough firepower to annihilate us–but if they have to destroy the wagons to reach the wagons, there’s no point in attacking. Raiders are in it for profit, and you can’t sell a pile of ashes. Thus, the assured destruction acts as a deterrent.

  So we hope.

  The trip is due to take ten to twelve days. I’m a little surprised, actually. We could almost walk there in that time. Of course, we wouldn’t be pulling a thousand-plus pounds. Even the Redbacks need food and rest. They can only pull us about thirty miles a day if they’re to be of any use the following morning.

  I’m paranoid about Cabal the first few days–he could hide out somewhere and snipe us from a distance–but the expectation is unreasonable. There’d be a lot of logistical problems from his perspective, and he’s probably more concerned with hiding out from Cove’s soldiers right now. Still, I wonder where he’s gone.

  On the way west, we cross big tan grasslands. Heading north, however, we get into greener country, and more forests start to appear. There’s always a pond or a stream for the horses to drink from, and we take breaks to hunt for game.

  At night, we arrange the wagons in a triangular perimeter around a big campfire. This is my favorite part of the journey. There’s something about campfires that reach into our past as a species. The orange glow, the heat, the sparks curling up into the vast blackness; a campfire is an island not only of warmth but of time and space as well. It separates us from the animals of lesser abilities. It focuses, connects and mesmerizes those who circle and gaze into its depths. It draws to itself some intangible variety of magic, which adheres like condensation, suspending disbelief, and dissipates with the morning sun.

  Not to mention the fact that Octavia is positively enchanting in the flickering light. Her skin seems to glow from the inside. As the days pass, I learn a lot about her. Her mother is a seamstress. They’re moving to Apolis because her father died of an illness a few years back and the mother can no longer support them, even with Octavia’s help. Apolis has a bigger marketplace and offers better prospects.