Love, Death, Robots and Zombies

by Oliver Higgs

  Finding the device, I decide to hold onto it. If nothing else, I’ll salvage it for parts. I make sure the batteries are dead first though. I don’t want it capable of sending out a signal. I’m guessing it’s got some kind of locator mixed in, else how would the Grass Man have known exactly where and when to strike?

  With the turret out of action, the automatons chased down anyone who ran, locking their legs around them–this is what Starbucks tells me they’re designed for. Then the Grass Man came up with his sled and caged everyone, even some of the Plastic People.

  “The further north you go, the less they like humans. Cyberia lies in that direction, and that’s robot-only territory. To them, the Plastic People are even lower than the infected. They’re traitors to their people,” Starbucks says.

  But all I can think about now is Byron and how I should’ve killed him. I didn’t like him already but this is hatred on a whole new level. The device in the turret means he’d planned the betrayal from the start. Someone working with the Grass Man must’ve approached him in one of the towns to the south. Someone had planned it out, given him the tools. What did they pay him? That hidden laughter always playing about Byron’s eyes: this was his great joke all along. Maybe the payment didn’t even matter.

  A good secret is worth keeping.

  That son of a bitch. Maybe he’s already getting his just rewards. Thrown in with the others–he hadn’t planned on that!

  “There’s no point staying longer,” Starbucks says.

  He’s right. We should bury Ambrose, or build a cairn, or do anything except leave him in the grass, but every minute we linger is another minute we fall behind. We carry him to one of the wagons and leaving him covered with a blanket. We lay Kitra and the turret operators beside him. Maybe whoever finds these wagons and takes the goods will have the decency to bury the dead.

  There’s never any question that we’ll go after the Grass Man. The only question is whether or not to involve Apolis. Starbucks could raise a posse there–but we’d lose time and possibly their trail, and if that happens we’ll likely never see our friends again. That decides it. We’ll go after them alone. We need to catch the Grass Man before he gets too deep into hostile territory, or we risk losing them forever.

  On the verge of leaving, Starbucks pauses and looks back.

  “The drone. We may need it to cross the z-line,” he says.

  He unhooks Jarvis’s wagon, along with the big robotic tug at the head of the supply wagon. The tug escaped the reach of Byron’s device. He hooks them together. Then he tosses out almost all Jarvis’s treasure to reduce the weight. He keeps the aerial drone, water and food. We pick up abandoned weapons left by the caravaners and toss those in too. Along with his sickles and my crossbow, we end up with a shotgun, Echo’s machine-pistol and two laser rifles. Volume Seven and the electronic components go back in my own pack, having been removed to make room for artifacts. The black dice go in there too; they’re small and might be useful in a trade. Finally, we jog north-northwest, followed by the tug pulling Jarvis’s wagon.

  The Grass Man’s path isn’t hard to follow. The grass has been flattened by his passage. We leave a fortune in goods behind us–not only Jarvis’s treasures but the wagons, mech, and a good deal of supplies. The next group to stumble along will be only too happy to avail themselves.

  “What would a robot want with human slaves?” I ask along the way.

  “Same thing a human wants with human slaves. Free labor. Reproductive functions. Someone to kick around. Depends on the person. But robots aren’t the only ones who buy from these markets.”

  “People too? You said they hated us up north.”

  “The further north you go, yes, but there are still humans as far as a hundred miles north of the z-line. Sin bonds stronger than species. Besides, they have a saying in the flesh markets: ‘gold is brighter than carbon.’”

  By the end the day, we’re far west of the road, traversing a series of rolling green hills. Small lakes dot the land. I’m dead tired and my legs feel like jelly. We’ve had no sight of our quarry. At least the tug has managed to keep up. I ask Starbucks more about the Grass Man.

  “They say he rides some kind of sled pulled by robots–probably the same kind we saw back at the wagons. Other than that, there’s not much I can tell you. Heard rumors in a few places, been up near the flesh markets a time or two, but I wasn’t even sure this ‘Demon of the Grasses’ was anything more than smoke until today … Now he has Jarvis,” he finishes quietly.

  “And Echo.”

  And Octavia and her soft, wet lips–but when I lay in the grass with my head on my pack, it’s Echo I miss most. Only a day ago she was here, right here, sleeping next to me. Now her absence is pervasive. She’s gone from my eyes, from my ears, from my arms. She’s even gone from my dreams. When I fall asleep, I’m still running with Starbucks, only we never seem to get anywhere. We spot the Grass Man and Byron far ahead, forever out of reach.

  “Oh, they’re gone now, Tristan. They won’t be back,” Kitra tells me, a deluge of blue liquid spilling from her guts. It keeps coming out, and suddenly it’s everywhere, it’s all over me, I can’t get it off. It fills my mouth and my eyes–but then it’s not Kitra’s blood; it’s Echo’s.

  In the morning, we’re back on the trail. My muscles ache. How long can I carry on like this? Starbucks is pushing himself too. His body is overheating. He has to intake water as a coolant, which he accomplishes by sucking it in through a tube above his right hip. My mind deals with the strain by resorting, seemingly of its own accord, to the poem read to us by Franklin the Ferryman.

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know,

  By the name of Annabel Lee…

  On it goes, over and over again, a litany against fear, against change, against disaster. It distracts me and sustains me. A thousand times it repeats in my head.

  As we approach the z-line, the roamers start to show themselves. The first one gets decapitated at a run by one of Starbucks’ sickles. We pass others in the distance. I’m wondering where we’ll sleep.

  Out here, the main body of the z-line is marked not by the ruins of a city or infested suburban sprawl, but by a forest. The roamers are spread thinner too. We could almost run right past them. It’s a deceiving notion, however. We’d likely have a small horde pursuing us by the time we hit the other side. Starbucks has to kill a dozen stragglers who wander in from the distance before we even near the main line.

  The Grass Man’s tracks stop near the edge of the forest. They lead toward a bush … which isn’t a bush at all. It’s the vehicle we’ve been following, empty and concealed by shrubs and fallen branches. The “sled” is a wide metallic cart, mounted on treads with a big cage in the back. The hull tapers toward the front, where there’s a seat and eight coiled metal wires.

  Leashes, I think, examining the wires. He must hook them to his bots; they pull the vehicle behind them. Apparently the Grass Man couldn’t get the sled through the z-line, so he abandoned it, taking the captives with him.

  But where did he go?

  We spend time examining the area. We find a number of tracks, but they don’t lead anywhere. The whole group may as well have vanished. I can’t figure it out. Meanwhile, dusk is only an hour or two off, and our movements draw occasional zombies from deeper into the forest. We accumulate a small pile of heads from the whirl of Starbucks’ sickles. I’m looking up at the trees, thinking how we’ll have to climb somewhere high to sleep, when dead leaves crunch beneath my boots, and I become cognizant of an aberration. The ground just doesn’t feel like it should. Less solid somehow. I walk around and confirm the feeling. Crouching, I brush away the leaves, twigs, and dirt. My hands hit something artificial.

  It’s a wooden construct, timbers woven together into a solid frame, almost like a raft. I call Starbucks. We clear it off and lift the thing. Beneath it is a hole. More precisely, t
he entrance to a tunnel.

  “You think this goes all the way through?” I ask.

  “Wouldn’t be much use if it didn’t,” Starbucks says, marveling.

  The tunnel is too narrow for Jarvis’s cart. We have to leave it behind. We conceal it with more branches and leaves, just as the Grass Man did with his own vehicle. Then Starbucks climbs down, takes out his sickles, and ventures into the dark. I still have my flashlight from all the way back in the Library, so I fish it out and flick it on, piercing the gloom ahead.

  It’s eerily quiet. Muted. Like being buried. The walls of the tunnel get so narrow they scrape my sides. Roots stick down from the ceiling. At the end of the tunnel, we push up another wooden cover.

  We emerge cautiously just north of the forest. A slow-walker comes in from the distance. Starbucks cleaves through its neck. Otherwise, there are few roamers in sight. This side of the z-line, I’m expecting some kind of immediate change–and there is, psychologically; a greater sense of threat hangs invisibly in the air–but the land looks much the same.

  The tracks lead to a dirt road. From there, they intermingle with others, but we can see the general direction of their passage.

  “If I have our location right, the nearest market should only be a few miles from here,” Starbucks says.

  “Will the Grass Man stop there?” I ask.

  “Seems likely. He’s a procurer, not a collector. No reason to hold onto cargo unless he’s got a specific buyer in mind.”

  The road branches north, along with the tracks. A sign is posted:

  *

  Mudcross–2 mi.

  *

  Starbucks and I look at each other. If this is his goal, the Grass Man has definitely reached it before us. The question now is one of procedure. Starbucks is familiar with the general area but doesn’t know much about Mudcross itself. We decide to leave the road and proceed north through the countryside, hoping to spy out the area and learn more before contemplating any rescue attempt.

  An hour later, we’re lying atop a grassy rise with my spyglass trained on Mudcross. The sun has gone down, but the moon’s gentle light assists us in our efforts. The market-town is a collection of squat buildings clustered around a central plaza, all enclosed by a fence-like barricade of tall, spiked timbers. Armed robots stand on platforms beside the two gates, moonlight glinting off their silver hides. If our aim was to take the slaves by force, we’re hopelessly outmatched. It’s hard to tell much else in the darkness. We retreat a mile east and camp in a remote copse of trees. I’m exhausted, but sleep is slow to come.

  Things look different in the morning light. The name for the place becomes clear, and it’s neither articulate nor creative. The field on which Mudcross is stationed has been churned to mud, and two roads intersect just beyond its northern gate.

  The grassy rise yields a decent viewing-angle into the village. I can see an auction block and various trade shops. A few people–robots, mostly–are moving about the streets. I’m sweeping the spyglass to and fro–when my heart stops. A concrete building sits near the central plaza. Its windows are small, high and blocked by thick steel bars. One such window frames a flash of blonde hair…

  Echo.

  One glimpse and she’s gone. She must’ve boosted herself up on someone’s shoulders. But it was her … wasn’t it? Could I have been imagining things? No, I’m sure. Which means they’re probably all in that building.

  I tell Starbucks. We back down from the rise and swing around to see the town from another angle. The building looks secure. The door is guarded too. We watch for a while. We talk about our options. The list is depressingly short. We could try to break them out–“somehow.” We could simply walk in and buy them, but we don’t have the goods to trade, and they prefer gold in the flesh markets. Or we could wait for someone else to buy them, then ambush the buyer on the road–but here there are too many uncertainties, and it’s likely only one or a few of the slaves would be purchased by any single party. There’s simply no viable option.

  We watch Mudcross. It’s an hour before I spot him. Tall. Spindly. A black metallic hide covered with long, plastic tufts of imitation green-brown grass. It couldn’t be anyone else. A chill goes through me.

  The Grass Man.

  His face is hidden behind a mask that appears to have been fashioned from a human skull. He’s added long curving goat-horns for greater effect. Despite his robotic nature, the Grass Man seems a creature of the wild, no more than an infrequent guest even in a back-country town like Mudcross. He disappears inside a building and doesn’t reemerge during our watch.

  Starbucks uses the spyglass a while. We ruminate over vaguely plausible plans. I keep coming back to the breakout idea, working at it, only to conclude that it’s hopeless. We’d need an army to invade this place. The phrase sticks in my head, repeats itself on its own.

  We’d need an army … we’d need an army …

  Then it hits me.

  I know exactly what we’re going to do.

  Chapter 16.

  It takes most of the day to implement my plan.

  First I lay out my blanket in the grass at the base of a lonely tree east of Mudcross. Then I pick out tufts of grass and plaster them to the gray fabric with a light layer of mud. Leaving it there to dry in the sun, the two of us return south to the underground passage straddling the z-line, where we retrieve the aerial drone from Jarvis’s wagon. It hasn’t been used in weeks, so its solar cells have long since reached full capacity. Starbucks shows me how to operate the controller. Soon the drone whirs into the air. When it’s in the trees, I press a button for the audio. Dance music shatters the silence of the forest.

  Immediately, roamers come. They stretch eagerly but vainly toward the bait. I send the drone west. It has basic object avoidance programmed in, so I don’t have to pay attention to every branch and tree. It collects the infected like a magnet through metal shavings.

  For hours, we trawl the z-line. As it did in the ghost-town, the tail of the “zombie-comet” begins to stretch far behind the main group. The two of us are forced to retreat to the northern edge of the trees, almost out of sight. We move parallel to the drone, watching through my spyglass. Starbucks makes short work of the stragglers who head our way. After several miles, the trees thin out, and there’s a dead suburb thick with fresh recruits … if you can call a zombie “fresh.” They join our cause, as does the next suburb after that.

  “You think this is overkill?” I ask, looking at the enormous horde trailing Jarvis’s drone.

  “Definitely,” says Starbucks, smiling grimly.

  “Should we stop?”

  “Nope.”

  By the time we do, a veritable city of undead is following us. The drone better not run out of power. Starbucks has assured me it won’t. We return east with our subjects, then lead them north out of the forest and straight up the road to Mudcross. The sun is sinking again. Will they still follow in the dark? I hope so. The strange thing about the z-line is that idle undead always seem to return to it. Our active bait should keep them interested long enough for our purpose, however.

  A mile from the market-town, Starbucks takes the controls.

  “Go,” he says.

  I run east through the tall grass. I circle the town, leaving Starbucks far behind, looking for the lonely tree where I left my blanket. Crom, where is it? A stab of panic hits me–wasn’t this the tree? No. I have to find the right one quickly though. Oh thank God, there it is. My blanket is waiting. The mud has dried reasonably well, enough to keep the grass in place.

  Quickly, I drop my pack beneath the tree. Taking only my crossbow, four bolts, a sparker, and the grassy blanket, I hurry back to the rise we used the night before. The sun has finished its descent. A rich, deep blue encroaches on the pink smear of horizon. A patchwork of clouds hides the moon–even better. I can barely see the nearest sentry, who stands on a platform above the wooden posts. Hopefully that means he can barely see me.

  I’m wearing dar
k clothes, and I’ve smeared my arms and face with mud. Still, my heart is pounding hard. From the top of the rise, I slither forward through the grass, creeping toward Mudcross. I’m a shadow in a field of shadows, but if that sentry is paying particularly good attention, he still might spot me. You can’t outrun a laser.

  The drone should swing into view any minute now. Closer to Mudcross–perilously close–I cinch the blanket over my back and lie still, listening. The wind whispers a secret song. The walls of the town are barely visible through the tall grass. An odd blue beetle passes inches from my nose, oblivious. It’s funny–there is no World Before, no artifacts, no tragedy for such a creature; as far as the beetles are concerned, the world is the same now as it was before the Fall.

  Finally, a distant echo reaches across the plain. It’s the voice of a long-dead woman singing her heart out. Sound pumps through the drone’s speakers. I shift slightly, enough to see the nearest sentry’s dim silhouette. He stands, peering south toward the road.

  Not yet.

  Inside Mudcross, a sentry shouts. Another shouts back. The music grows closer. The drone must be visible by now. I raise my head slightly, high enough to see above the grass–and yes! Our own personal zombie army is marching on the southern gate of Mudcross. Their numbers are awe-inspiring. We have may have outdone ourselves. Thousands are coming up the road. The drone is a regular pied piper of the undead. A shot rings out, presumably at the drone. It speeds up in response, zooming toward the market-town. The faster plague-walkers take the lead, speeding after it.

  Now.

  I already have a bolt loaded. A cloth bulb full of kindling is tied to the sharp end. The bulb is soaked in the oil from a lamp in Jarvis’s wagon. With the sentries’ attention diverted, I use the sparker to light the bolt. It flares up faster than I’d like. I’m turned away from Mudcross, shielding the fire from view, but it still feels dangerously bright, a beacon for attention. Quickly, I turn and loose it toward the town. It thuds into the soft mud at the foot of the gate.