by Ryan Schow
Marcus scrambled onto the machine’s back as it tried to get up. The machine gun stopped firing as Marcus opened his blade and cut and sliced through whatever wiring he could find. Finally he cut something critical and the robotic monster stopped moving.
There were more of these robots, though. He heard them firing in multiple bursts back in the same conference room this one originated from. Fighting to get to his feet, he happened to see outside. The amount of drones had doubled. One fired on him as he broke into a hobbled sprint. Further down, a missile penetrated the building. A fiery explosion shook the foundation, the blast wave punching him with enough force to send him skittering sideways down the open hallway.
When he stopped sliding, he felt his mind starting to crack. There was no way out! If he stayed inside he was dead. If he ran outside he was dead.
So where the hell was he supposed to hide?!
Thinking quickly, he saw a bathroom door, stood and made a break for it. He moved inside, closed the door behind him. One fluorescent tube was on, one was blown out and two were flickering. Panting, silently cursing, bleeding all over the tile, he tried to wrap his head around all this. Then a stall door opened and a familiar face emerged.
He and the pretty-boy from the sales conference now stood eye to eye. Nick. A second later, the gorgeous brunette’s face popped up behind him. Was it Bailey? Is that her name? It was either that, or something like that, he thought to himself.
Marcus had his eyes on these two people, but his senses remained attuned to the outside world, tethered mostly to the noise and the possibility of new, direct threats. He glanced down for a second. It was enough. There was a multitude of splotched blood spots on the tile floor. This was his blood. He thought about how bad of shape he must be in, but he didn’t have time to consider any of that now.
Bailey stepped around Nick and said, “What’s going on out there?”
“The end of the world, by the look of it,” Marcus growled as he stepped inside the stall next to them. “There are assault robots out there. That’s what killed everyone.”
“You saw one?” Bailey asked.
“I killed one.”
“You’re cut up pretty bad,” Nick mentioned to Marcus after a moment. They were looking at each other through the stall doors. No smile, no expression, just two guys trying not to become the next casualties in this unexplainable attack.
More gunfire erupted outside, causing both men to flinch. Gunfire tore through the bathroom door, causing them to shove their stall doors shut and duck down inside.
Nick and Bailey had the handicap stall, but Marcus had one two stalls down from theirs, another critical error. Before he could even take his next breath, the shot-to-smithereens bathroom door was kicked in so hard it all but broke in half, the top piece crashing down on the tile, the corner of it still attached to the lower half of the door.
Marcus flexed his jaw, clamped his teeth together and stopped breathing. At the rate which his heart was galloping, holding his breath for long was impossible. He forced his breathing as high up in his chest as he could, keeping it shallow and quiet, which was saying something considering he felt like he was damn near close to hyperventilating.
With the door broken and flung wide open to the outside world, the sounds of the bedlam from E. Harbor flooded in. Marcus carefully slunk down to his hands and knees, peeked under the stall, saw the metal feet of another robot. That beating heart of his came to a sudden, grating halt before double- and triple-timing it in response.
Damn.
A grinding, mechanical blast of gunfire punched a dozen holes into the metal stall walls. Marcus peered up a few inches, saw seven smoking holes in the metal above his head and thought, the hell with it. He scooted down, pushed himself sideways under the stall as quickly and as quietly as possible. Stuffed inside one of the stalls, he saw a bigger woman.
He had to keep moving backwards, away from this thing.
More bullets flew, peppering the stalls, blowing off pieces of the wall, tile, shards of porcelain. The toilet tank in the stall he just left exploded, dumping water all along the floor. He moved around the woman, slunk under the next metal partition, then found Nick and Bailey huddled between the toilet and the back wall. They were pressed together as low as they could be, but it was clear to Marcus they were sitting ducks.
All of them were. Then the press of silence. They waited for what felt like forever.
Another burst of strafing gunfire tagged the walls, one round catching the drape of the Bailey’s hair. She drew her hand to her mouth, terrified, tears leaking down her cheeks, fractions of a second away from squealing.
Any minute now, Marcus thought, and she’s going to lose it.
Wide eyes, a red face and a sort of squirming panic infected her. Marcus put a finger to his lips, effectively shushing her. She nodded her head, but made the mistake of looking down. The lock of hair blown off her head sat on the thigh of her pants, making it real. A few inches over and her head would have been splattered all over the back wall.
Nick wasn’t doing much better of a job holding himself together. The plastic wall behind Nick was pocked with a line of gunfire that started near the girl’s head and trailed across the wall away from them. Nick knew how close he’d come to dying. Marcus found and held the man’s eyes. The stern, steadfast look in his gaze drilled into Nick until the pretty boy’s expression hardened and he, too, managed to still himself enough to clear his face of emotion.
Marcus was grinding his molars, withdrawing his knife in a clenched fist, preparing to strike, to defend, even to die, if it came to that, which it might.
When the mechanical monster turned and went out the broken door, Marcus rolled under the stall and went after it. He popped his head just outside the bathroom door, found the robot walking toward the black smoking ruin, then measured his actions in fractions of a second. How many more of them were out there? Would he kill one and be ambushed by a dozen more?
Looking at the distinct lack of shelter, the field of broken glass and the thick wall of smoke moving their way, he knew the element of surprise would already be lost. The robot would be able to turn fast enough. He took three deep breaths, convinced himself he was a nutcase through and through, then fell into kill mode and went after it.
Upon hearing him, the beast tried to swivel and turn, but Marcus hit it hard and high, just like the last one. This time, though, the machine was turning, swinging its gun around.
Marcus caught a ridge of the machine’s shoulder, but with his momentum, this only served to fling his legs around and cost him his grip on the beast. His legs went skyward and he dropped square on his back. Looking up, all he saw was the foul, blight of a creature. The robot reared up a foot to stomp him to death, but Marcus rolled through the glass, barely out of the way by the time the mammoth foot smashed into the floor.
Just then another body hit the robot, taking it down. With no time to spare, Marcus scampered onto the thing, mounted his back the way a grappler takes the dominant position. Savagely, he started yanking and cutting exposed wires and tubing.
Within seconds, the robot stopped moving.
By then, Nick was beside him, all his weight on the thing so that it couldn’t get an inch of leverage. Outside, on the street, a cobalt blue Dodge Charger skidded to a stop and started honking, causing both of them to look up.
In the driver’s seat, Marcus saw the kid they were sitting next to in the conference. The nerdy kid with curly hair who most likely was crushing on Bailey. He was waving them down, eyes on Nick and Marcus. Bailey, however, was already running toward him.
“Let’s go!” Nick said as he took off after Bailey.
Just as Marcus was standing to follow him, another robot appeared in the hallway. It made its way through the oily black smoke fifty feet away, lifting its fully-automatic rifle, pulling the trigger.
Marcus leapt through the front of the building that was once glass, sprinted through bushes and down the walkway then dov
e into the open back door as the kid revved hard, dumped the clutch and blew through first, second and third gears.
“How the hell did you get out of there?” Bailey asked the driver as they raced down the cluttered road. People, cars and most of a long row of decorative palm trees were on fire. The sky was black and filled with drones attacking hotels, apartment towers, the convention center.
“I was about to ask the same thing,” Marcus shouted over the roar of the engine. Outside, the orange blaze created by burning palm tree fronds was beyond mesmerizing. A testament of what was to come, if anything.
Quentin tapped the breaks, dropped gears, then bumped and smashed and grinded his way through the congestion of shot-to-hell traffic. He nicked two people and one stray bench as they barreled up E. Harbor away from the nightmarish scene.
When he was clear of the wreckage, he stomped on the gas again, moving like a bat out of hell. The good thing was, Marcus realized the kid seemed to have no fear of driving, but the bad thing was, if they wrecked, they were pretty much screwed with an F.
“Up there,” Marcus barked, pointing to a Hilton. “On the right!”
“That’s where I’m staying,” Bailey said over the noise.
“Is that a parking garage?” Nick asked. “Because it looks like a parking garage.”
“Not sure,” Bailey replied, “but I think so.”
“Your name’s Quentin, right?” Marcus asked.
“Good memory,” the kid replied. He was a halfway decent looking kid, and not nearly as obnoxious as he could’ve been had San Diego not been under fire and sustaining irreparable damage.
They blew past Fifth Avenue and through a red light on Salida Loop leaving hotel row and the downtown district behind.
Just then a drone zipped overhead, but it didn’t fire on them. That’s when Quentin swerved hard to the right, bumping up on the curb jarring everyone, and hitting the grass. He’d seen what Marcus just saw: a miniature track-driven mini-tank sitting in the street. It opened fired on their car, but managed to miss most of it until a back tire blew and they started to slide sideways on the grass. They kicked up mud and green turf, slip-sliding past some crazy metal sculpture of half a face painted in bright reds, greens and yellows.
Marcus held on for dear life, as did Nick and Bailey. The blown tire on soft earth made the big car hard to control, and it didn’t help that Quentin was still on the gas but losing speed.
“Watch out, watch out, watch out!” Nick shouted as he gripped the door and shoved a palm to the ceiling to keep from bouncing all over the place.
The back end of the fishtailing muscle car clipped a decorative cluster of trees kicking the Charger back the other way. This sent them into a high speed tailspin as they shot off the grass, onto the street and sideways into a curbed center divide which they hit sideways just right.
The rims and tires slammed into the cement curb, flipping them several times before dumping them upside down on the other side of the median directly in front of the Hilton.
For a long second, Marcus lay there, upside down with Bailey’s body flung on him and everything hurting. Suddenly a door was pulled free of the car and he felt something pull Bailey off him. Then next thing he knew, a strong pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him free as well.
Nick.
“You okay?” he asked, frantic, checking the skies, zeroing in on him, then checking everywhere else again.
“Yeah,” Marcus said, slow to his feet. Bailey was already up and moving toward the Hilton, which sat right beside a long, five story parking garage. Quentin was right beside her, hobbling here and there but managing to keep up.
“I think it’s attached,” Bailey called out as they all ran for cover. The garage was a lot closer to the hotel than the hotel was from them. They made a bee-line for the nearest entrance, Marcus’s head on a swivel, praying not to be killed, but seeing the skies crowded in places with swarms of drones.
“They must only care about hotel row,” Quentin shouted.
“More people there,” Nick replied.
Is that what was going on? Deep down, Marcus knew it was. He knew the drones and whomever was controlling them were attacking the places promising the greatest loss of life. The only problem was, Marcus knew they were our drones, our mini track-driven tanks, our robotics. He knew that from his time in combat.
Inside the parking garage, they made their way to an elevator and Quentin said, “Which floor?” to Bailey.
“The twentieth.”
As they were waiting, a drone blew into the open garage causing them all to duck down behind cars and walls. Bailey crawled under a Jeep Cherokee wile Marcus slid behind a Toyota Camry and Quentin and Nick tucked themselves behind a concrete wall.
Within seconds, the drone raced out of the parking garage and fired a missile at the overturned Dodge Charger, which exploded in a bloom of fire and pillowing smoke.
The elevator door dinged and they all stepped in, suddenly aware of each other like they hadn’t been before.
“Which floor again?” Quentin asked, index finger hovering over the buttons.
“Twenty,” Nick said.
The lift took them to the twentieth where they got out and followed Bailey down the hall to her room. She was smoked out. Her hair was a mess, she had cuts all over her body and Marcus could see at least three big bruises that had her looking worse for the wear.
She reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out a bent door card, slid it in a couple of times until the inner latch released the door. She looked back at them, then walked inside. The three men followed, moving past the bed, heading straight for the large picture window.
Four faces were suddenly plastered to the glass overlooking the coastline of San Diego. Inland, the skies were filthy for as far as they could see.
“It’s the whole city,” Nick said, humbled.
No one said anything until Bailey spoke. Looking at Nick and Marcus, and finally Quentin, she said, “Well this whole trip isn’t going the way I thought it would go.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” Marcus said, looking at his bloody hands and arms.
Chapter Ten
President Benjamin Dupree was ushered down to the Presidential Emergency Offices Center under the East Wing of the White House by his Secret Service detail. The urgency was a queasiness in his soul. It was the feeling that everything going wrong was now unfixable.
At that point in time, he didn’t even know whom to trust. Members of his detail were dead. There were bodies and blood stains in and outside his office, the office he just abandoned. And the command center? Pure chaos.
The room was filled with harried people and the shouting of information, theories, ideas. Agitation putrefied the air like an infectious disease. He was no longer in control. Not under circumstances as broad and as lethal as these.
He looked first to Generals Slater and Root, then to his Chief of Staff, Monica O’Malley. There were a dozen other members of his cabinet and staff present, but three of them had fallen suspiciously quiet. He looked at them. Studied them. These three exchanged conspiratorial looks, not a one of them seeming the slightest bit startled by what was happening.
To Ben, it was as if they expected this.
The President understood this was a coup d’état. But was it a human coup as well as an AI coup? And why? How? How did this infect the White House and his secret service so quickly? Or was that always the plan? The next thought chilled him to the marrow. He couldn’t stop the thought that if he routed out a few, there would still be more in hiding.
How deep did all of this go?
He caught the eye of the nearest agent in his Secret Service detail. The President gave the man the slightest nod, beckoning him over. The agent approached, leaned in so the President had his ear.
“Bancroft, Wetzel and Grimes need to go,” the President whispered. “Get them into a secure room and prep them for interrogation.”
The agent stood and looked dow
n at the President, a slight expression of shock followed by a raised eyebrow. The nuances were slight, but the President read his agent’s look. Uncertainty followed by direct orders. This was not an unexpected reaction from his agent.
“Are you sure, sir?” he asked.
“Modestly sure.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent said, once again composed. There was no more hesitation in his voice, even though Ben knew his Secret Service knew exactly what this meant.
An overthrow was underway.
Nothing fouled the White House like a coup d'état. Loosening his tie, the POTUS zeroed in on Senator Wetzel—the Judas goat, the turncoat—and he didn’t even blink. Behind the President’s amiable face, a storm was brewing. If these traitors thought they could rise against the Republic, they were sorely mistaken!
His Secret Service agent spoke into his comms unit, then descended on Wetzel while the other agents took Bancroft and Grimes into custody. The white noise of powerful men out of their depth fell to a hushed whisper as all eyes locked in on the three conspirators.
“What in God’s name is the meaning of this?” Grimes barked.
Senator Grimes was an older man, a war veteran with mixed loyalties when it came to party lines. Bancroft was looking at Wetzel who was looking at Grimes who was staring at the President as if he had the audacity to soil the good man’s name. As far as the President was concerned, the traitor soiled his own name if he was involved in any way in this.
“I’ve watched you posture and argue and vote for years, Senator Bancroft, so I know all your tells. Yours too, Senator Grimes, Senator Wetzel. That’s why your manufactured outrage looks a lot like the behavior of men who are suspects who fear they’ve been caught but aren’t willing to admit anything just yet.”
“These are difficult times,” Senator Bancroft said, forcing composure, “but we must stand above the turmoil, especially with each other. Reason must stand for something. It must mean something!”
“The conflict is all over your face and it’s making whatever lies you are prepared to spew look like admissions of guilt, so save me your manufactured pomposity.” To his agents, the President said, “Take them away. I’ll deal with them later.”
