Boy Robot

by Simon Curtis

  Watching you grow into who you are today has been the greatest gift a father could ever hope to receive. I’ve cherished every moment with you and could not be any more proud to call you my son.

  He opened the card to the inside flap.

  Happy 18th birthday.

  In pen after the printed script, was written, Love, Dad.

  He closed the card and withdrew one of the comics from his bag. After his mom had died, the comics were what brought them together. His dad collected them, and he loved reading them. They finally had a bit of common ground. It wasn’t much, but he’d always felt like their entire relationship was forged in the battles of the heroes they used to read together. It was never anything like how his mom used to read to him, but it was something, and it meant everything once she was gone.

  He zipped up his bag, opened the truck door, and winced. He felt a buzz in the back of his head, like the beginning of a headache.

  One that had been building for days.

  • • •

  His fingers were clammy with sweat as he pulled into her driveway. He didn’t know if he could do this. He wasn’t nervous about the dance; something felt wrong. The headache had grown into a tremendous, head-splitting pain, and he couldn’t seem to shake it. A buzzing, like millions of bees, kept intensifying in waves. Each wave left him unsettled and slightly nauseous.

  He wasn’t going to disappoint her, though. He still couldn’t believe that she’d asked him in the first place, that he was getting to take her, but here he was, in her driveway, sweating in a rented tux and debating whether or not he should turn around and go home.

  There was no way that was going to happen.

  He hopped out of the truck, wiped his forehead, and walked up to the door. He could feel his heart pounding as he rang the doorbell.

  Her mother let him in and before she could even speak, there she was.

  She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. A simple, pale blue dress hugged her athletic frame and made the color of her eyes almost electric. Her honey-colored hair sat in loose curls on her bare shoulders. Everything about her was radiant.

  It was almost enough to make him forget about the headache.

  Almost.

  He winced in pain.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. Her mother didn’t look convinced.

  “You guys be careful, okay? No drinking, no drugs, keep your phones on you . . .” She looked at the two of them and then let out a pensive smile. “And if you do get drunk, please do not do anything stupid. I’ll come pick you up. Just promise me you won’t do anything dumb.”

  She gave them a knowing look as her daughter rolled her eyes and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  • • •

  He leaned back in the passenger seat and moaned in agony as she brought the truck’s engine to life. He’d only made it through a few songs before he passed out on the dance floor, and when he came to, he insisted on going home instead of to the hospital. She was reluctant but did as he asked.

  He faded in and out of consciousness as she drove, the pain was so great.

  He couldn’t be sure, but whenever he opened his eyes, he thought he saw a pair of headlights behind them, making all of the same turns, following them.

  • • •

  He moaned and yelled and writhed in pain for hours. Fevered visions came to him of a beautiful angel helping his dad keep a cool, damp washcloth on his forehead as he tossed and turned in agony on the couch in the living room. In a moment of clarity, he opened his eyes, saw her sitting above him, and let out a weak smile.

  “I like you.”

  He was barely able to whisper the words, but he’d said it.

  He’d spoken to her for the first time.

  A warm, joyful smile spread across her face as she gently caressed his forehead and then leaned in to kiss it.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  • • •

  He woke up in a cold sweat. She was draped across his chest, wearing some of his sweats. He could see in the bright moonlight that his dad was in the armchair across from him, fast asleep. He gently slid out from under her. He’d woken thirsty and ravenously hungry.

  He tiptoed into the kitchen, downed a glass of cold water, and scoped out the fridge. There was some leftover spaghetti from last night.

  He ate the entire bowl and walked down the hallway to the bathroom. The moon was so bright streaming in through the glass patio doors in the kitchen behind him that he could see his shadow, long and lean, in the tile below his feet.

  Another shadow crossed behind his own.

  His blood ran cold and a chill went up his spine.

  He ducked into the pitch-black darkness of the office next to him. The room was hardly visited since his mom had died; they used it for storage now. He crouched behind a stack of boxes and stared through the tiny space between them and the wall so that he could see down the hallway.

  He listened.

  He could hear the blood pumping in his ears, his heart pounding. The sound of the patio door sliding open, slowly, echoed down the hallway from the kitchen.

  Hushed footsteps filed into the kitchen, and he heard a rustling in the bushes outside the window next to him. The handle of the front door clicked as someone jiggled it from the outside. The faint sound of glass breaking upstairs was followed by heavy footsteps.

  His house was being invaded.

  He was paralyzed in fear, worried that the heavy thump of his heartbeat would give him away.

  He suddenly remembered that she was asleep on the couch, and his father in the armchair, in the living room. Vulnerable. Exposed.

  He began to shake as panic coursed through him. Before he could do anything at all, he heard a shuffle in the living room.

  “Hey, are you . . . ? Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  A muffled gunshot rang into the darkness.

  Then another.

  He stared through the tiny crack, shaking in fear, and saw them—people, dressed in black, filing down the hallway. They hurried past the office.

  Without thinking, he shot up, bolted out from behind the boxes, and sprinted toward the patio door in the kitchen. It was wide open. As he leaped across the threshold and into the night, he turned and saw what remained of his father’s head, splattered in a dark, circular spray against the white wall behind the armchair, illuminated by the moonlight.

  A voice called out from behind him as he bounded down the patio steps and sprinted toward the trees. He crossed into the woods just as the first strange, whizzing shot buzzed past his ear.

  He raced into the trees as thudding footsteps and rattling guns pursued him. He charged up the hill, hoping he’d be able to lose them among the rocks, but it sounded like they were gaining on him.

  He knew that if he could make it beyond the clearing at the top of the hill, he could lose them past the creek. Then he would work his way deeper into the forest, where he’d be hidden, and safe. He’d been hiking and playing in these woods for years now, and there was no way these men knew them better than he did.

  The moon lit the clearing like a bright, blue sun. He leaped to the other side, pushing his body until his legs were a blur. He jumped over the fallen log at the other end and felt his ankle snag on a branch hidden in the shadows. He tumbled into the grass, face-first.

  He could hear the people in black filing into the clearing, just on the other side of the log. His mind swirled, his heart raced, and every nightmare he’d ever had came flooding back to him. The other mother was chasing him, her monstrous, glazed-over stare and her bony fingers reaching for him through the darkness, desperately screaming for him to love her as she pressed burning cigarettes into his face. The flesh sizzled as the face of his dad exploded onto the white wall behind his favorite armchair. The body of the beautiful girl, the first to ever seem like she might understand him, sprawled out in a growing pool of crimson that spilled off the couch and onto the floor be
low.

  Say it.

  He heard the footsteps.

  Say it, damn it!

  They were coming right for him.

  Tell Mama you love her!

  He heard the rustling of metal in their hands and knew their guns were raised.

  The world was always so loud. He just wanted it to end.

  Tell me you love me, goddammit!

  He screamed.

  The sound from his mouth pierced the open air and shook the fabric of his entire being. He could see the men in the clearing drop their weapons. Some began to fall to the ground themselves. He kept wailing, his voice a vibrating beast, as he rose up from behind the log. He saw the men before him crippled over, vomiting violently, uncontrollably, into the grass. Some screamed in agony, the sound completely muffled by the blast of his roaring voice. Energy coursed through him. He let the power crescendo, felt it jolt his very bones, as the men began to convulse. Blood poured from the cracks between fingers clutched futilely over their ears.

  The sound droned on, drilled into his head until his brain was nothing but an empty, numb void, just like it had been so many times before this night. Too long had he allowed the world to silence him with its endless chaos, its endless noise, and all the pain it caused him.

  He finally let his voice be heard.

  He closed his mouth when none of the men had moved in several moments. He collapsed onto the grass beside the log and surveyed the clearing and roughly a dozen men, bloody, frozen in contorted positions of violent agony, lying in pools of their own vomit.

  Dead.

  He tried to catch his breath as his eyes welled with tears. All the tears in the world couldn’t wash away the horror of what lay before him, of what he’d done, of what he’d become. He thought of the woman who’d given birth to him, his first mama, Jim, his real mother, the girl lying dead on the couch back at his house, the pile of bodies before him.

  Anytime I open my mouth, somebody dies.

  The silence of the night enveloped him as he softly cried into the darkness and wished his mother, his real mother, would come to him, wipe the hair gently from his brow, and sing him back to sleep.

  He looked up toward the branches above him.

  They were covered in little white flowers.

  CHAPTER 5

  ISAAK

  The taste of the red liquid chokes me and I jolt awake. It spills out of my mouth and onto my chin as I sit up and gasp for air.

  I’m in the car. We’re driving again. I can feel the tires vibrating on the highway below.

  Azure is next to me in the backseat, holding one of the sports drinks. I wipe my chin off and grab it from her. It tastes incredible. Life blooms in my stomach and spreads out into my veins as I guzzle it down.

  “Welcome back, buddy.” JB gives me his signature grin. He’s even charming when he’s patronizing.

  I gulp down the last of the red drink and finally breathe once again. “What was that? What happened?” I turn from Azure to Kamea. I don’t know what I did back there, and I need answers.

  “We were hoping that you’d tell us, actually,” JB says.

  I look to Azure. She watches me with silent, curious eyes. I look to Kamea in the seat in front of me. She watches back through the vanity mirror in front of her, trying to read my face.

  “You guys think I know how I did that? I don’t. I don’t even know what I did.”

  I can’t tell if they believe me or not.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” Azure says. “Right now we need to disappear, and fast. What happened back there will have every southwest unit of the SHRF on us in a matter of hours. We need to hide.”

  I look out the window into the desert. The violet twilight is fading into a deep, inky blue. It’s that weird time of day when the very last bit of light somehow makes it seem darker than pitch-black.

  “Where can we go?” I ask, looking out at the last bits of desolate landscape around us in the dying light.

  “Take the next exit,” Kamea says to JB.

  A green sign reflects brightly in the headlights ahead of us.

  RT 66

  “I know a place.”

  • • •

  It’s completely dark by the time we see the first sign.

  EL MAPAIS NATIONAL MONUMENT

  “Down there,” Kamea says to JB.

  He takes a left down a dirt access road reserved for park rangers. The car bounces harshly on the rocky terrain. Hybrid sedans aren’t made for drives like this.

  We bump along for what feels like ages.

  “Behind that outcropping over there.” Kamea points to a large rock formation visible in the moonlight.

  JB takes us off the road. I don’t think the car will make it.

  The tires lumber over shrubs and rocks and finally come to a halt on the other side of the giant boulders.

  “Grab everything,” Azure says.

  I get out, and a chill creeps up into my sleeves. It’s colder than I expected.

  We get everything out of the car—Kamea’s small armory in the duffel and all of the gear we bought at the store earlier in the day—and start hiking back toward the road.

  “Wait.” Azure stops and sets down the bags she’s holding. She reaches into my side pocket and grabs the stick weapon.

  Before I can ask what she’s doing, she walks back toward the car and tosses one of her glass orbs at it. It smashes on the windshield, and the gel substance inside gives off a soft purple glow. She flicks her wrist, and a blue dome surrounds the car as it explodes in a fiery blaze.

  Crickets chirp in the shrubs around us as the car is silently decimated in Azure’s dome.

  When the explosion subsides, the dome disappears. A wide, black circle of mangled car and charred dirt lies up against the boulders in the moonlight.

  She aims the stick at the debris.

  I can’t see the rippling orb it releases in the darkness, but within seconds the remnants of the car blast toward the rocks behind, dirt spraying up in every direction. Rocks burst and launch into one another until the entire rock formation has crumbled down on top of what used to be the car.

  Nothing is left visible. Nothing that looks like a car, at least.

  “Now we can go.”

  She hands me the stick and picks up her bags.

  We follow Kamea into the darkness.

  • • •

  I didn’t realize how well my new eyes are able to see in the dark until now. Kamea had to let Azure take the lead about a half mile back, instructing her to find a large pillar formation of rocks that looks like a tower. I can see it plainly ahead of us, but keeping Kamea and JB from stumbling over rocks and running into the tiny cacti has made it very clear that I’m operating on a different level than they are.

  Azure stops.

  I grab JB’s arm as he slips and look up. We’ve made it to the pillar. At least ninety feet tall, the massive rock monolith sits right at the edge of where the brown dirt and shrubbery changes to a landscape of jagged black rock.

  I hope that’s not where we’re going.

  “Where now?” Azure surveys the landscape ahead. I think she has the same concerns about the terrain that I do.

  “Southwest,” Kamea replies. “About two miles from here. We’ll be able to camp safely.”

  A puff of my own breath drifts out into the frosty desert air as I take another look at the flat, black expanse before us.

  Great.

  • • •

  We’re still walking about an hour later. Kamea and JB can’t keep up with us in the dark over these sharp rocks, and it’s understood that flashlights aren’t an option.

  I’ve been watching the horizon and have yet to see anything but a vast basin of black rock and junipers. The valley is lined with mountains and cliffs, but from where we are currently, they have to be about eight miles away. There’s nothing near where Kamea directed us, and now we’re two miles out into a jagged minefield of black nothing with nowhere else to go.
>
  I open my mouth to voice my concerns right as Azure comes to a halt in front of me.

  “Watch out.”

  She takes a cautious step forward and begins to descend, sharply.

  “It’s steep. Be careful.”

  I take a step forward and follow her down.

  • • •

  After the tents are set up, I take a seat and join the others around the small, crackling fire and set my journal on my lap. I finally have a moment to examine our surroundings. We’re in the middle of a deep, bowl-shaped crater. The sides are lined with jagged black rocks, but the basin is covered in soft brown dirt. A small copse of gnarled piñons sits at the far end, about twenty yards away from the two tents.

  “This whole park is a volcanic field,” Kamea says.

  “How did you know about this place?” I turn to face her across the fire and slip my journal back into my pocket. I can’t clear my head enough to write anyway.

  “I’ve been with the Underground a long time,” she says, her eyes gleaming in the reflection of the flames. “The last mission of my first year, we were pursued from Albuquerque on I-40.”

  Azure prods the fire with a long stick and tiny sparks dance up above us.

  “The Sheriffs blocked the interstate just before the exit for Route 66,” Kamea continues. “It was the middle of the night, but traffic was at a complete standstill. They were going down the rows of cars on foot. We had no choice but to get out and run, which is exactly what they were hoping we would do.” A pack of coyotes howls in the distance. “It was a massacre.”

  Her eyes are lost in the flames.

  “How many?” I ask.

  “Twenty.”

  Chills crawl up my arms.

  “I was the only human in the group,” she says.

  “Did anyone else survive?” I ask.

  JB and Azure remain silent and avoid eye contact with us.

  “One Robot. He’d manifested the day before.”

  Azure prods the fire again, harder this time.

  “So what happened?” I ask, watching Azure as she becomes visibly restless.

  “We ran. We ran until we couldn’t run anymore. Then we walked. By the time we found a place to hide, I was carrying him, and both of us were covered in blood and sweat and dirt. It was right here in this crater.”