I Am Automaton 2: Kafka Rising

by Edward P. Cardillo

  I Am Automaton 2

  Kafka Rising

  Edward P. Cardillo

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, events, and dialogues either are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Edward P. Cardillo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my wife, Sandra, who has been my editor, coach, and agent and never let me succumb to self-doubt. I would also like to thank Charlene Nunez, James Nunez, Alan Basso, Arno Kolz, Robert Rubicco, Jack Daly, and Jim Taylor for their feedback and support. Thanks again to Gary Lucas at Severed Press. Thank you to my son, Alexander, who keeps my imagination wild.

  In memory of Genghis Cardillo

  Prologue

  Days passed and Captain Carl Birdsall was beginning to encounter more and more terrorists within the recesses of the mountains. He had seventeen more kills, bringing his total to fifty-two.

  He came around a sharp bend, where there were bright lights and voices echoing off of the cave walls. Carl tightened his fist and telepathically urged the undead infantry drones forward. They began to pick up the pace, and as their footsteps thundered in the cavern, there were sounds of panic from the lighted area.

  Gunshots rang out and people hollered. Carl turned the corner in his sea of undead drones, and as terrorists became visible, he took them out. Return volleys took down several infantry drones around him, but Carl was unharmed and unafraid. The drones swarmed the area, toppling over lighting, computer equipment, and a video camera.

  Daylight crept in on the other side of the cavern from an opening to the outside. Several terrorists ran towards the exit, but Carl cut them down. After several minutes of gunfire and cries of terror, the room was once again silent. Carl rewarded his drones by letting them feed. This was the mother lode, some twenty odd terrorists, bringing his count to around seventy-two.

  He saw the camera equipment lying sideways on the floor. Apparently, they were working on broadcasting something. They always did, to rally their men around the world or to claim credit for an attack.

  Carl, worn out from wandering the caves for two weeks, picked up the camera on its tripod and righted it. The red light was still on. It was recording.

  Carl backed up and stood in front of the camera, assault rifle pointed up towards the ceiling in bravado, and telepathically ordered some of the drones to stand behind him in the shadows.

  Then he began to speak.

  “This is a message to all of those who are enemies of freedom around the world. For decades, you have planned attacks on the free world while in hiding, cowering in these caves. You’ve massacred many men, women, and children in the name of your perverse ideology. It has been said that you do not fear death, as many of you have extinguished your own lives for your cause.

  “All that has changed. I have found you in the recesses of these White Mountains, cowering like swine. You need not fear death, but you will fear me.

  “I have come for your lives, and I have claimed many. There is nowhere you can hide that I will not find you. My men do not tire, they do not thirst, they do not sleep…but they hunger for your blood, and they will not be satiated.

  “Heed this warning: disband, immediately. Your reign of terror is at an end. For every attack made on free soil, I will claim fifty of your heads. I will not stop until the attacks do, or until there are none of you left. I vow this from your own back yard. You will answer to the dead. Not only to your victims, but also to those in life who counted themselves amongst your ranks. You owe the free world a profound debt, and I am here to collect.”

  Then he lowered his rifle, trained it on the camera, and shot it to pieces.

  Part I

  Aftermath

  Chapter 1

  The situation had spiraled out of control and Lieutenant Peter Birdsall felt powerless to help. There were tourists running around screaming as ravenous zombie infantry drones pursued them. Peter’s infantry drones. The very infantry drones that he was now fighting.

  The resort in Xcaret was in chaos, and Peter was trying desperately to organize his men. Without any firearms, they were backed into a mirrored workout room, barring the glass door against the undead onslaught.

  Peter looked outside the room, and in the melee, he saw her. “Mom. MOM.”

  But she couldn’t hear him. She was wandering around in between careening tourists and charging undead, like a lost child in the crowd at the mall searching for her parents, oblivious to all around her.

  There was a flash of light…and she was gone. They were all gone.

  The undead began to advance on the workout room, smearing torn limb and bloody jowls on the glass wall. A few began to pound their fists on the glass door, eager to claim their hot meal.

  Peter looked around the room for an escape or anything they could use, but all he saw were the milky eyes of the undead gazing into him, unblinking and terrible.

  “Barnes…BARNES.”

  Barnes didn’t respond. When Peter called to him again, Barnes turned toward him, face mangled and hands reaching out as he moaned.

  He turned to his brother. “Carl—”

  However, Carl was peering at him with those glassy, clouded eyes, wheezing and gurgling.

  Peter backed away towards the far mirrored wall, the waist high handrail jutting painfully into his lower back. He raised his baton in a futile gesture as his once human squad closed in on him, the others watching outside the room in fiendish bloodlust.

  They all stopped a few feet away from him and stood there…waiting. Peter lowered the baton and waited for his demise, but they did not advance any further.

  Something inexplicable, an inner voice perhaps or a feeling, made him turn around and look at the mirror. He looked at his reflection and shuddered in horror.

  His reflection looked back at him with those cold, vacant eyes that he feared so much. His squad hissed and spat in mockery of their commanding officer. He smashed the mirror with his fist…

  Peter awoke with a start in his bed. It took his eyes a few minutes to adjust to his surroundings and the stark realism of his dream to evaporate in the early morning air.

  A nurse who was making her rounds entered the room. “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”

  Peter blinked a few times and wiped the perspiration off his face with the palm of his right hand. “Bad dream.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “May I have some water please?”

  “Of course. I’ll be right back.” She left the room.

  His mouth was dry as a bone. He saw on the clock beside his bed that it was only 02:00 HRS. The army base hospital was dark and quiet. He missed his own bed in the barracks. He was only there for observation, but he was looking forward to being discharged in the morning. There was so much to do. Carl…

  The nurse returned with a plastic disposable cup of cool water.

  “Thank you.”

  After the nurse left the room, he sipped the cool water. When he finished it, he placed the cup on his nightstand and lay back down, his body still aching from his ordeal with the Navajas cartel. He had escaped by the skin of his teeth.

  When he turned the drones on them in one of their would-be training exercises, he had barely made it out of the
re in one piece. Nevertheless, that was what they got for holding him prisoner and actually trusting him to train them in using the infantry drones.

  He remembered the video his one captor showed him of the drone in the wedding dress menacing his brother, their leverage to get him to comply with teaching them. He wondered what became of his brother after the botched mission.

  After he escaped, he searched for Carl. When he found the shack where the video was recorded, he found the traitorous Sergeant Lorenzo dead inside, torn apart. His partner, Sergeant Lockwood, was in the same condition right outside. Those bastards got their just desserts for striking a deal with the Navajas. However, there was no sign of Carl.

  He would have to wait until morning. He couldn’t wait for his next therapy session with Fiona. He had more questions for her. Major Lewis was dead, apparently some kind of suicide. That son-of-a-bitch was in on it with Lorenzo and Lockwood after all, but she and Carl had seen to it that Lewis was dealt with. Now Carl was in Afghanistan.

  Peter’s mind raced with possibilities and he feared for his little brother, who was now out there on his own flushing terrorists out of caves with those monsters that turned on them in Xcaret.

  He didn’t understand much of what Fiona was telling him about Carl’s new…what did she call it…ability. He had developed a brain tumor that afforded him some kind of understanding with the undead drones, and he was exploiting it at that very moment in Tora Bora.

  Peter suddenly became exhausted and his body ached. He just wanted to close his eyes so he could pass the night quickly. In the morning, he would get some answers from someone. He would make sure he saw Fiona. She was sure to know more about this.

  He closed his eyes, and within minutes, sleep took him.

  ***

  Landi Kotal

  Pakistan

  07:22 HRS

  Captain Carl Birdsall of the United States Army lay on a concrete slab in a decrepit cement parking structure, surrounded by his undead entourage of infantry drones. Somewhere between waking and sleeping, he contemplated his situation.

  In quiet moments, his mind unfailingly drifted to memories of his mother. Her smile, her cooking, the way she nagged at him to soldier on when he felt like he was spinning his wheels, attending a college they could no longer afford.

  However, Carl left that life behind, and although his departure was somewhat recent in the grand scheme of his life, it felt like another era. His childhood died with his mother, and that door could never be opened again. When the woman who brought you into the world dies, a part of you goes with her.

  As a hot tear streamed down the dust on his stubble, he knew that everything he had done since was for her. She always told him that he would find his purpose, but in his innocence, he had never imagined that it would be hunting terrorists with army sanctioned zombie drones.

  He thought back to his brother, Peter, and everything that happened during the Xcaret mission. Carl remembered the terrified look on his big brother’s face in the exercise room of the resort, when they were surrounded by the reflections of those very undead drones that now protected him…with those things that he now shared a psychic connection.

  He found it ironic that he would find purpose in those things that took everyone he loved away from him. The reality of this filled his heart with a stony, bitter resolve. He still had his father left, but Carl was on the other side of the globe, unable to do anything to help him.

  Nevertheless, he was helping him, wasn’t he? That’s what this was all about. Keeping the world safe from terrorists and drug cartels. Using monsters to hunt monsters, fighting fire with fire.

  He slipped into a semi-conscious state and into a waking dream. He saw himself in front of Fiona London’s office. He submitted to the retinal scan, and when he entered her office, the therapeutic ambience program conjured up the living room of his childhood home, a setting that filled him with warmth and comfort. Peter was standing behind her desk and Fiona was behind him with her arms around Peter’s shoulders in an embrace.

  Carl was immediately filled with jealousy at the sight, but Fiona spoke to him. “Open your eyes, Carl. You must open your eyes.”

  He opened his eyes and heard the staccato chopping of helicopters—Black Hawks he thought—in the distance, but rapidly growing nearer. His detection of the sound caused a ripple of response in the undead drones standing protectively around him. He felt eyes on him.

  Carl craned his neck and looked between drones and out of the structure to observe his surroundings. As a tattered white tarp propped up by two wooden poles hung stagnant in the still air, the street beyond was quiet. Several broken down cars sat dormant in the middle of the street, strewn about as if the drivers had en masse suddenly decided to abandon their vehicles.

  However, that was Pakistan. What Carl had seen of it reminded him of a set from an epic post-apocalyptic movie. The sounds of the aircraft were close, and the dust outside the three-level parking structure now rose up in dry clouds.

  Carl stood up, his back and joints sore from the concrete floor, as soldiers slid down ropes from the craft hovering above. He could tell from their uniforms that they were American.

  Carl did not have time to identify himself; the soldiers raised their weapons and began to open fire on the infantry drones. Before he could process what was happening or send a command to the drones, heads began to explode around him.

  Why were they shooting at the drones? Did they realize who he was? He had been incommunicado with his team for days…or had it been weeks? They had to know he was out there.

  Not taking any chances at the moment, Carl ran in the other direction. He instructed the drones to form a wall, but that was it. He didn’t want innocent American soldiers hurt.

  As he ran between cement pillars, dodging protruding rebar, he heard shouts as more soldiers began to swarm the complex. The drones formed walls, flanking Carl. He thought of his big brother playing football, running through lanes created by blockers.

  He shot out an opening in the side and behind a deserted car. Looking back, he saw the last of the drones executed and the squad fanning out in his direction. That was it. He was now all alone, weak and fatigued from his ordeal in the Tora Bora cave system and the tumor working on his body.

  He summoned the strength and, half crouched, ran from car to car. There were shouts behind him, but no one opened fire. If they were going to shoot at him, they would have done it by now.

  He ducked into the bottom of an abandoned building, a primitive cement structure with the side blown out. He hurtled a half-crumbled wall and ducked down an alleyway, his dry throat choking on the dust.

  He unslung his rifle from his shoulder and held it at the ready as he meandered from structure to structure, between pillars and behind piles of rubble.

  It reminded him of how he and his Peter used to go paint balling. The course was similar to this, only the structures were made of plywood, but his brother was dead in Mexico and this was no game.

  He heard more shouts and footsteps against the dry dirt and gravel all around him. It was only a matter of time before they were going to catch him. He thought it best to try to identify himself.

  “I am Captain Carl Birdsall of the US Army!”

  He heard more scurrying, and then a call from somewhere nearby. “Captain Birdsall, this is Colonel Betancourt. We have you surrounded. Lay down your weapon and surrender yourself to our custody. If you do not, we will use deadly force.”

  What? Why were they treating him like the enemy? Deadly force?

  “Okay, Colonel,” he threw his rifle down on the ground, “I am coming out unarmed.”

  He stepped out of the structure he was hiding in slowly. He saw several soldiers crouched behind cars and rubble, all with rifles trained on him. Boy, they caught up to him faster than he thought.

  A large, rather stern-looking black man who could only be Colonel Betancourt stepped out from behind a pillar. “Captain Birdsall, we are taking you into custo
dy. Do not resist.”

  “I won’t resist.”

  Carl put his hands up as two soldiers cautiously approached him, rifles trained at his head. Colonel Betancourt approached with a small, odd-looking pistol and raised it, pointing it at Carl.

  “Wait a minute,” Carl blurted out in panic, “I said I wouldn’t resist.”

  Suddenly the popping of gunfire erupted all around them.

  “TAKE COVER!” Betancourt shouted.

  He and Carl ran into the back of a building and took cover behind a wall pockmarked from a prior firefight.

  “I told you I wouldn’t resist,” Carl barked.

  “It’s not us,” Betancourt stated, “OIL has moles in the Pakistani Rangers. They must’ve gotten a tip you were in the area.”

  “Give me a gun,” Carl insisted.

  There were loud booms outside as grenade launchers blew holes in the already chewed up cover and the Americans answered with machine gun fire. Betancourt looked at Carl, sizing him up.

  “I’m not the enemy,” Carl said with urgency. If they were going to fight their way out, he didn’t want to be unarmed.

  Betancourt pulled his sidearm out of its holster and handed it to Carl.

  “Are you kidding me?” Carl snapped.

  “It’ll have to do for now, Captain.”

  “I hope you have a plan since you executed all of my drones, sir.”

  “We’ll stick to the natural cover and wait for air support. There are plenty of cars and trucks lying around out there. We have two Black Hawks in the area waiting for extraction.”

  Carl nodded, and Betancourt spoke into his mouthpiece attached to his helmet. “Sergeant Hill, column formation, two-by-two through the parking lot we have outside. Use the natural cover.”

  He waited for confirmation from Sergeant Hill, and then he turned to Carl. “Let’s go.”