They couldn’t shoot at the tall robot now, Eric was tangled with it. Tony stopped running and focused on the short one, aimed and unloaded his semi-automatic with 6 loud cracks. They swear a bullet ricocheted off one of the tires, but another bullet popped a different tire. 2 shots missed, hitting the dirt in front of the little robot, Tony’s minor adjustment corrected that and the last 2 shots were direct hits. The robot launched a rooster tail of dirt again as it put the pedal to the metal and peeled out. It took off, directly at Tony. Tony had a few more shots and blasted the thing at least 4 times as is sped towards him. Arms reached out from its short body and grasped at the air like it wanted to grab Tony. Perry saw all of this and took a few steps towards Tony, aiming and waiting for the right moment.
About fifteen feet from Tony the little robot hit a bump and caught air. Or did it
spring up by itself? No matter, it was now flying through the air, reaching its little arms at Tony wanting to grab his face.
Perry’s shotgun roared from their left, blasting the flying R2D2 robot with a spectrum of shot and knocking it off course. Tony was trying to head fake and dodge to the left, but the boom of the shotgun forced him to dodge right. The flying robot and Tony’s head collided, both fell back. Tony’s hands reached up to his head and he fell face down in the dirt. The robot landed on its wheels, like the damned thing always seemed to, and zipped off back towards the warstore.
The humans now focused on the tall robot, who seemed to be watching the
action, but was still tangled with Eric. One of its hands grasped Eric’s body, his lower stomach on the right side and raised him up over its head. Two big metal fingers on each side of Eric’s body. It looked painful and awkward to be picked up like that, like a vice squeezing and picking your body up by the side of your stomach. The fingers again squeezed with scary effortlessness. The skin on Eric’s stomach ripped and popped, blood spilled across his body. With the sound of more ripping, Eric’s body twisted, his skin tearing, holding up his weight. The robot’s grip closed even more, cracking ribs and crushing organs into paste. Eric’s body separated into two pieces, one piece was the right side of Eric’s stomach with a few organs and cracked ribs, still held in the robot’s grip raised above its head, the rest of his body fell a long way to the ground with a slapping thud. Part of Eric’s intestines were caught in the robot grip and they unwound from his body as he fell, like the chain of an anchor being thrown into the sea. When he hit the ground this time there was no grunt.
The robot brought the chunk of Eric it was holding up to its own “face”, looking at the chunky mash of oozing human parts with a detached robotic curiosity. Then it looked down, its eyes slowly following the intestine trail to Eric’s unmoving body.
Perry was no longer wielding a shotgun, he was holding something in his hand
and he hurled it at the tall robot. “Eat it shit bag!” He taunted.
Tony and Eric both had played countless hours of online gaming with Perry, they all knew when Perry said “Eat it shit bag!”, he was throwing a grenade. Tony turned to run, he was probably far enough away, but he wanted to be sure. He gestured at L, “Get down.” She already was. Eric’s body even rolled over, blindly taking cover after the audio clue.
The grenade flew at the robot, but it was a bad throw and it started sailing up. It was about to miss the robot and go over its head. Suddenly the gore covered hand of the robot jerked up, catching the grenade in mid flight with amazing agility. Slowly the robot brought the grenade down and looked it curiously. It probably had never seen anything like this grenade from the Vietnam era. The robots grip tightened, it was going to crush the grenade just as easily as it had ripped apart Eric’s body. As the robot’s grip tightened, the grenade’s outer shell twisted and snapped.
“After all these years, a dud.” Went through Perry’s head.
The robot seemed to be gaining pleasure by crushing the grenade right near its
face, examining it. Just as the robot’s fun was about done, the grenade exploded. It shred the arm and hand that was holding it, bending metal backwards towards its elbow. The robot’s head was ripped open and ripped off, it popped backwards and bounced a few times before stopping, blankly looking up at the sky. The nearly 8 foot body froze, balanced for a few moments and then plunged backwards to the ground like a statue. Its massive weight sinking it deep in the dirt, dead as a door nail.
They all ran over. Eric was face down, not moving. The big hole in his right
side was gore filled and what could only be called “things” were sliding out. Perry rolled him over, half expecting him to deliver a grenade joke like Eric always did. Instead, he rolled over to a corpses face, teeth gritting, blood everywhere it shouldn’t be, a dead stare.
“Awww, fuck!” Perry rolled him back over. “He’s dead.”
Tony was looking at the tipped over, headless tall robot. Its severed neck was
almost like a human throat, but with black oily liquid instead of blood. There was blood spattered on the robot’s chest, probably Eric’s. Then he saw a bit of blood drool out from behind a cracked piece of its metal outer shell. He reached down and tried to peel a piece of its outer armor back, it was thin but tough and didn’t want to bend. He pulled harder but it wouldn’t bend. He kicked at it, it ripped his shoe.
“Fucking piece of shit!”, Perry ran over and blasted the robot corpse with a
point blank shotgun blast to the chest.
The corpse barely moved, but a chunk of its outer armor ripped off. It was bloody underneath.
They all exchanged glances of disbelief and got closer. They could see skin, at parts interwoven with tubes or machinery. They dug at the metal, uncovering as much as they could. There was a human in there, or at least part of one. It was a human chest, all the way up to the neck, then above that it was all robot. The chest went down to around the belly button level, it didn’t have a belly button. but below that is was all machine also.
“Fuckin thing’s a cyborg!”
“A robot with a human chest inside it? What the hell?!”
L noticed, “Look how long it is.” She pointed at the side of the chest and her
pointed finger rose as she began counting each rib. She got up to 20 ribs before being too grossed out to continue. “It’s not human. Not a real human.”
About 100 yards away the forest floor lit up in spots, search lights shining through the forest cover. Two drones were heading their way.
No one had to say anything, they all took off in the general direction of running up the hill, they all knew to meet at Camp Rawk 2, hoping to see Fozzie waiting for them.
Eventually they made it back to camp, Fozzie was sitting there, almost with a
smile, but panting heavily. The drones didn’t follow them past the dead bodies.
“Holy shit! Where are we? In some fantasy world? Cyborgs, cannibals,
seriously?!” Perry let out.
“Should we turn around?” L asked.
Tony just shook his head, he didn’t know.
Perry was opening his Fear and Loathing suitcase, got out a mirror, lined up a
bunch of white stuff and did a giant line. He stood up and danced in a circle after, motioning to L and Tony it was their turn.
“Woooo whooo.” His nose grimaced, “It’s what Eric would’ve wanted.”
They obliged. Perry grabbed the mirror and held it out for Fozzie, she licked it
clean. Her nose wrinkled after, and she made a questioning face.
Perry’s eyes were wide open, his face you could say looked wide open, “Shit
just got reeeeeal.”
They stayed up for most of the night, talking about the best course of action. It
seemed they all wanted to stay and go on. They were on a quest now. A quest to at least see this mysterious tower. They were Gunslingers, like Roland, they had not forgotten the face of their father. They were in a fantasy land after all, some strange forest that had been here all a
long. They all agreed, some Lobstrosity meat would be great right now.
15
GROUND SUPERIORITY
The group went to sleep right before sunrise.
Inside an Elossa warstore cockpit, there was a quiet “woosh”-ing sound. A door opened and the Captain walked confidently in, clicking his new shoes on the new cockpit floor. Two armed guards close behind.
“Are they here yet?” He asked impatiently.
The supervisor who seems to be in charge is caught off guard,“Um,” He looked
around,”No sir. Not yet.”
The Captain is not happy. “Why did you say “Um?” He asks evilly.
This time the supervisor is not caught off guard,”I was awaiting a new report, Sir!” He said confidently.
Lazily the Captain replies in a high voice,”I don’t like “Um””. He pointed at the supervisor and his guards grab him and drag him away.
“Are they here yet?” He asked again, to everyone in the cockpit.
An eager employee, not in a supervisor uniform jumped up and said loudly,
“Yes, sir. They are on radar. What do you want to do Sir!?”
Like the Emperor from Star Wars the Captain replied,”Promote him. You are now in charge when I’m not here.” He continued like a snake,”Test out the new AI.”
The eager employee’s chest badge changed to an new color, now he is the top
supervisor.
The new 2nd in command yelled out,”Initiate combat AI 1.0”
The group weren’t asleep more than an hour before being woken up by the
extremely loud sound of a fighter jet flying by them. They all jumped to attention. Perry was packing his stuff before being fully awake.
“Ohh shit, look!” Tony noticed something, pointing down where the warstore
was.
It was moving.
They scanned around everywhere, trying to figure out what was happening. There were two jets circling the area. The jets had US symbols on them. It was the stand off before a fight, warstore VS the US Air Force.
“It’s going down!” Perry grabbed some binoculars out of his pack, jumped up
on a tall rock and looked through. “We got front row seats to this shit.”
The one jet that didn’t just buzz them was far away on the other side of the
warstore, lowing. A quick burst of smoke and it released a missile, heading directly at the warstore.
“Ohh shit!”
Three lines of swirling smoke quietly launched from the warstore’s chest. They
intercepted the missile and blew it up, roughly half way between the fighter and the warstore. They saw the fiery mid-air explosion, then a few seconds later heard it. The jet adjusted its vector for a strafing run, and the line of fire went right into the warstore. The fighter laid into the warstore with everything it had, guns blazing. From the vantage point of the group they saw some puffs of smoke come from the warstore.
The second jet was coming in for an attack run now, from behind the warstore.
“Ohh shit, they’re fucking it up!”
Same thing, jet fires missile, warstore’s anti-missile system shoots it down. But
after that this time, something that looked like a flock of birds emerged from the warstore. No one knew what they were looking at, metal birds, flying robots, they wouldn’t be surprised if it was dragons after the last few days. The flock of birds turned towards the vector of the jet. The jet unleashed its guns and took out a bunch of the metal birds. As the flock got closer they finally made the connection, it was a flock of drones. As many of the drones that the jet destroyed, new ones filled its place. On the second pass of the jet, all the drones in the drone wall launched tiny missiles. In a flurry of smoke and pit pat tiny explosions, like flak popping all around the jet, the jet took hits. The jet flew straight through the popping smoke and came out the other side on fire and going down. It smashed into the side of the mountain at full speed and made a big, movie like explosion. They could almost feel the heat from across the valley.
The first jet was back for another run, it fired one more missile which hit the
drone wall this time and exploded. The explosion took out most of the drones, but they did their job protecting the warstore. More drones filled their spot without hesitation and in perfect formation, a new drone wall was carrying on the fight within a few seconds. Soon the second jet suffered the same fate as the first and went down in a hail of drone mini missiles and flak. The pilot ejected, Perry watched the ejected pilot through binoculars. If he had a sniper rifle he could probably get that really hard Titanfall achievement “Pull”.
“Woops” Tony said.
“That thing just owned the US’ best planes in just a few minutes?” Perry questioned.
“And it will just roll over any tanks.” L added.
“What the hell can stop that thing?”
“It seems unstoppable. And they’re gonna roll out a new one every week.”
“Nothing’s unstoppable. We all know that. But they are going to roll out a new one of those every week. That’s a gnarly thought.”
“We’re in a fucking sci-fi movie.”
L looked at Perry and Tony,”Your dreams have finally came true.”
Perry interjected,”This ain't my dreams woman. You don’t wanna see my dreams.”
Back in the Elohssa warstore cockpit the Captain raised a lip after watching his AI in action.
“Excellent.” He said in his best Mr Burns impression. He then stood up and walked out of the cockpit, slowly clicking away. He stepped over the body of the previous supervisor and waved at it like “Take this dirty thing away.”
16
CANNIBAL ROCKY MOUNTAIN OYSTERS
After the warstore was long gone they went down to bury Eric’s body. The tall
robot body was gone, tracks leading into the forest. Eric’s body wasn’t. They buried him right there, dipped into Perry’s suitcase and told stories about Eric all night. It was like he was there with them, laughing the night away.
They camped for a few days, not hiking. They were uneventful days, which was
good, they needed to recharge their souls a bit. Friends were dying left and right, their reality had been shattered and they were thrust into a real life, kill or be killed R rated science fiction movie, or maybe it would be rated NC-17.
They decided to start hiking again. Sadly, they had to scavenge Eric’s pack
before leaving.
“He has 2 glocks in there and a lot of ammo.” Perry noted. “L, you should probably be armed from now on. No one’s fucking around out here”
L went into the pack and grabbed the pistols and a bunch of ammo. “Here.” She said and looked at Tony holding out a handful of boxes. “There’s too much for me to carry. Are these the same type of bullets your guns use?”
“Yeah,” Tony said, grabbing the boxes. He started making room in his pack. “They’re all the same guns. 9 millimeter Glock 19s. They all have 15 shots per magazine, just so you know. Have a few magazine’s loaded so you can quickly switch them out. You don’t want to have to load 15 individual bullets when someone is shooting at you.”
L pulled out a magazine, not for the gun, it was an old porn mag, she laughed. “Anyone want this?”
“Haha Eric was old school.” Perry grabbed it and started flipping through the
pages, “Maybe I’ll keep this for those cold dark nights when my cell is dead.” He saw something he liked, “Nice.” And he shoved it in his pack.
“Want this?” L asked, pulling the old Mr Bungle shirt out Eric had borrowed
from her. “It smells now.”
“Fuck yea!” Tony yelled. “Toss it here!”
The only thing left was Eric’s underwear and socks, and he was known to be a dirty guy who never showered. After a week in the wilderness, no one wanted to touch those things.
“The Bear Grylls in my mind is saying we should take everything. In a survival
> situation everything counts.” Tony thought out loud.
“Ok then you take it.” Perry laughed.
They restarted their trek North, leaving the sad little pile of smelly socks and underwear in their wake.
They hiked for days. Nice, but sometimes eerily uneventful days.
“How big is this place again?” L asked. “I heard like 3000 square miles.” Tony pulled out his phone and looked it up.
“Yea on wikipedia is says about 3000 square miles.”
Perry did the math out loud,”If that’s a big square, how big would that be?” He made math sounds, “50 miles width by 50 miles length would be 2500 square miles.”
“Yea somewhere around that, a little bigger.” Tony agreed.
They had noticed their cell phones GPS stopped working as soon as they entered
the fence. They all silently did the math of how far they thought they had hiked, all coming up with various wrong answers. Fozzie was closest.
On the 3rd night, they saw a fire a few miles ahead of them. It was small,
probably a camp fire. They laid low that night, putting out their fire once they noticed. On watch, each person stared at the fire intently. Waiting for any sign, ready to wake up the others. But the entire night was uneventful.
In the morning, they discussed what to do. The only other fire they ever saw
was the first time they saw the cannibals get burned by the drones.
“We should go check it out.” Perry stated.
“Maybe it’s a cannibal camp.” L said.
“Either way, we should check it out. But not walk up to ‘em and announce our presence.” Tony continued, “I say we check em out, stay undetected, see what they’re up to. They might be cannibals, but they might be like us.”
L and Perry looked at each other in confirmation. They got up, got ready and
The Search for Ball Zero Page 10
