Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Kayla is in the air. Behind her, the tree she climbed sways back, bending from the force of her leap. The drone is coming in low and hard, closing the distance. Kayla’s whole body is a curve, sword high, feet extended. An Olympic gymnast committing beautiful, graceful suicide.

  Closer. With each millisecond, closer.

  She snaps the sword down.

  And misses.

  For the first time in my life, I see Kayla miss.

  The drone dances away, spins down between trees, a defiant barrel roll. Its guns still blaze. Paving a path of bullet holes.

  Kayla slams into the ground behind the drone, skids through the dirt, never losing her balance for a second. She stares after the machine in hatred.

  I pull up my gun, but my eyes aren’t on the drone. I’m looking for Felicity. I’m making sure she’s OK.

  And there she is, performing a pirouette of her own, as her cedar tree becomes a stump. She comes around the toppling trunk, pistol raised, barrel barking. A beautiful economy of motion.

  God, my girlfriend is a badass.

  Then the drone speeds by, outpaces her ability to aim, sweeps low. The air cracks in its wake and it banks hard, seeming to skid through the air.

  And Tabitha. Tabitha, momentarily forgotten in the confusion. She stands at the foot of Clyde’s grave. Frozen there. Staring at the drone devouring the distance. She’s got one hand up clamping her hat to her head.

  I snap my eyes from Tabitha to the drone. Lead the target. Felicity’s words echoing in my memory. I’ve been putting in a lot of time at the range since Clyde died. Failing to save the life of your friend tends to cause that sort of behavior. And Felicity is keen for me to not follow in his footsteps. Her voice: lead the target.

  I lead it. I fire. The gun cracks and jumps in my hand. Again.

  Bullets eat the ground before Tabitha. Eight feet away. Six. Four.

  I fire again. Again.

  Tabitha flings herself backwards, through the air. Down. Down into Clyde’s grave.

  Three feet.

  Again. Again. Three shots until the magazine runs dry.

  Two feet.

  The last shot leaves my gun.

  One.

  The path of the drone’s gunfire deviates, swings wildly away. The angry chatter of the guns clicks to an abrupt halt. The pitch of the drone’s engines scales octaves. And smoke. There is smoke in the sky.

  I hit it. Jesus. I actually hit the bloody thing.

  It screams out of the air. Less a meteor now, and more a wounded bird. It plows toward a wall, low stone marking the cemetery’s boundary. And then it detonates. The percussive blast ripping through the air. Shrapnel scours through damp earth. Fire billows—a phoenix’s last flight.

  Felicity. My first thought is for her. I move forward. My shoeless foot skidding through the mud.

  She climbs up from behind the destroyed cedar tree, grabs me. “Nice shooting, Tex.”

  I kiss her, heart and pulse hard in my throat. Hold her to my chest. All around us: the wreckage of the attack. Steaming chunks of metal embedded in shattered gravestones. The priest lying in the fetal position praying at the top of his lungs. Me and my girlfriend, holding each other, holding smoking guns in our spare hands.

  No question. Weirdest funeral ever.

  2

  “What, in the name of all feck, was that?”

  Kayla is pissed. Well, Kayla is always pissed, but she appears to have slid closer toward the rabid-animal-fury end of the scale than usual.

  “A drone,” I say. “It was an attack by an unmanned drone.”

  Kayla glances at me, then Felicity. “I honestly do not have a feckin’ clue what you see in him.” To me, “Of course it was a feckin’ drone. Feckin’ why?”

  Somehow, knowing that Kayla is on my side is never as reassuring as I think it should be.

  I shrug.

  Felicity steps away from me, gives us both a slightly suspicious stare. “If either of you pissed off any governments recently, now is the time to come clean.” It strikes me as a little sad that she’s not joking.

  I try to clear my head, but adrenaline is still flooding the engine. I want to just shoot or run away from everything. “A malfunction?” I manage to suggest. “Some test gone horribly wrong?” It has to be something like that. Drones don’t just attack people.

  Felicity shakes her head. “The government doesn’t test armed drones anywhere near major urban centers.”

  Kayla nods. “What Wales is for.”

  I reach up to the anarchy cap, still perched slightly absurdly on top of my head. “I’ll check in with the versions. See if they’re picking up any chatter.”

  “No!” a voice screams.

  We all spin to stare at Clyde’s grave. There is Tabitha, dirt-spattered, splinter-strewn, clambering out of… Jesus. That’s… I don’t even want to think about it. She was in her boyfriend’s grave. Why on earth could I not have hit that damn drone a moment or two earlier?

  “It’s him,” she says. She’s wild-eyed, hanging on to her hat with one hand, using the other to flap madly at us like a grounded fish. “It’s them.” She glances up at the skies, while heaving herself bodily out of the grave. “The versions,” she hisses.

  “Oh.” Felicity’s face is a mask of sympathy. “Tabitha. No.” She goes toward her, arms out. “It’s not them. You’re safe. It was just—”

  Except I don’t get to find out what it just was, because at that point a Mercedes plows through the gap blown in the cemetery wall by the detonated drone, and careens between the graves toward us.

  3

  The Mercedes—a silver, growling thing—bucks over the sodden ground, over uprooted stone, through shrapnel-dug trenches. It rears over Clyde’s grave. Felicity seizes me around the waist, flings me sideways. I bite dirt. The car crashes down.

  A tire buries itself in the open grave, spins wildly. The back tires kick, the Mercedes lurches forward, twists, tilts down, drives itself into the earth. The rear tires kick once more, but one’s up in the air now, and the other just sprays mud.

  Lying sprawled, I grab my gun, jab it at the car. I stare down the barrel. But I don’t know who to shoot at. What to shoot at. The car is empty. The driver’s seat void of manic ne’er-do-wells with kamikaze urges.

  “What in all hell?” Aliens I have dealt with. Sorcery has become more than passing familiar. But homicidal machinery? That is a new one.

  In the face of this weirdness, I hit upon a reliable battle plan. “We have to get out of here,” I say.

  “Well put.” Felicity clambers to her feet then gives me a hand up. “We figure out what the hell this is later. Right now we just bail.”

  Tabitha is staring at the car. “It’s them,” she wails. “It’s Clyde.”

  But it’s not. It can’t be. Clyde is dead. And I was just talking to the versions. They are far from homicidal.

  Except something did just autopilot a car at us. Something… hell, it must have hacked into the car’s computer, taken more control than I thought it could.

  But who?

  I think back to Felicity’s question. Have I pissed off any major governments? I did cancel my subscription to a few junk email lists I’d found my way onto. But I can’t imagine that any major retail chains would take that this badly, even in this economy.

  We need to get out of here. But can we even trust our own cars? Will Felicity’s Satnav turn rogue? Try to instruct us to death? Turn left off this cliff now?

  I’d rather not chance it. In fact I’d rather be a good mile from anything with a computer. Except we’re in the middle of a city, the countryside nowhere in sight. The whole options thing is looking very limited right now.

  The best hiding places I can figure are the houses, shops, across the road that rings the cemetery. They at least would provide moderate cover from vehicular projectiles while we plan the next step.

  “OK,” I say. “We’re getting out of here,” I say. “Whoever’s trying to kill us, needs to
try a damn sight harder.”

  This seems a popular suggestion. We move. Kayla accelerates past me, leaps up on what’s left of the cemetery wall, surveys the scene. I keep pace with Felicity. Tabitha is between us, wide-eyed and silent now—a state bordering on catatonia. She’s not bleeding heavily from anywhere obvious, but the fact that she just spent some quality time in her semi-dead boyfriend’s grave could account for the symptoms, I suppose.

  Another crunch of steel and stone from behind us. I glance back. A Jeep has breached the wall and is struggling over the craters and liberally strewn grave markers. I point my pistol, open fire. Smoke starts pouring from the Jeep’s hood.

  The rest of us make it to the wall ahead of the floundering Jeep. We vault it. And then we pause and we stare at the road. At a road full of even more cars. Our only route of escape looks remarkably like a death trap.

  Vehicles have slammed to a halt in the middle of the road. People stand around open car doors staring. They have cellphones and bewildered expressions.

  Surely not every car has a computer in it. And those that do… well, they can’t all control the steering. I think.

  Hell, I don’t have any better plans right now.

  Plus, beyond the cars lies a store selling televisions of the dubious knock-off variety. A widescreen monstrosity in the window shows a slowly revolving shot of the Statue of Liberty staring imperiously out at the world. Shelter.

  I point at it, using the universal language of fleeing. We lunge into the street. Concerned citizens approach us. Kayla punches one in the throat. They stop approaching.

  Their cars, however, don’t.

  A parked Honda lurches forward. I see its owner gesticulate wildly, mouth open in what must be a yell. His car is silver, in need of a wash, and aimed directly at my legs.

  I jump, take the hit on my hip. Pain shoots through me. My shoulder comes down on the hood and I roll up the windshield. The car barely had time to accelerate but on top of everything else it hurts. I seriously need to restrict the things coming at me to cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol.

  Then a second car shoots forward. The pedestrians are panicking now. Driverless cars slam together. Something crashes into the Honda, sending me rolling to the tarmac. A van bears down. I roll more, try to align myself between tires. Keep my head down.

  The van thunders over me, hits something else and shudders to a stop. I lie, face in the tarmac, breathing in short gravelly breaths. I am alive, I remind myself. Still alive. I need to move.

  Something plows into the van’s side, shoves it sideways. Tires bear down on me. My rolling takes on a desperate edge. Something crashes from the opposite direction. My cover becomes distinctly narrower.

  I scramble forward. My fingers rasp against asphalt. More impacts all around me. The car above my head shaking and shuddering like an epilepsy victim. Then I’m beneath another car, this one slung closer to the ground. The exhaust pipe scorches me through what’s left of my jacket.

  Then the curb is before me. Full of milling feet. I get an arm out. A shoulder. Someone grabs my hand, heaves. I slip up and out, shoulder protesting.

  Felicity is there, holding my hand, helping me from my knees to my feet. She grabs me in a savage hug. And I’m not the only one in this relationship fearing for the other’s safety, I see.

  It’s always nice to have something to live for so clearly defined for you.

  Then a sound from behind. Another screech of metal, a grunt of over-exerting engines.

  Someone grabs me around the shoulder, bowls me over. I roll, come up staring at where I just stood.

  A car vaulted the others. Its hood now occupies the space where my head used to be.

  I stare at my rescuer. Kayla. She holds both Felicity and me. “Feckin’ idiots.” She shakes her head.

  Tabitha stands in the store doorway, still staring and wide-eyed. I depart Kayla’s grip, shove Tabitha forward and in. We need to get away from the display window. I don’t want some errant vehicle sending death-sized shards flying at us all.

  The store is dark, narrow, mostly illuminated by opposing walls of TVs. They all show some laminated-looking presenter standing in Times Square, being assaulted by neon and billboards.

  We push deeper in. A terrified looking man with too much gel in his hair and too little slack in his T-shirt stares at us, wide-eyed. We stand, eyes locked for a moment. Like panicked gunslingers at high noon. Slowly he extends his left arm, points to a TV.

  “You want a Sony?”

  Then every screen in the store goes white. Everything in the store is suddenly cast in bright unflattering light. The reflection from the man’s greasy hair is almost blinding. There’s a high-pitched whine building in the room. I see Felicity’s hand go to her mouth. I’m glad I was too vain to get metal fillings.

  Then an explosion behind us. We spin as one. A TV blown out. Glass shards scattered on the floor. Wires spitting sparks in the set’s empty corpse.

  Then another. Another. A whole column of them on one side of the store. Then the column facing it. And then, racing down the store, closing down on us, detonation after detonation. The whole store filling with flying glass and plastic shrapnel. TV remotes fly across the room. Circuit boards spin like shuriken.

  I could really use a break from running away from things, right now.

  4

  I move. Something whips through my hair. Over my head. I stumble, roll, scramble up. Something opens up the back of my hand, and it stings like I jammed it in a bee hive.

  There’s a back door in front of me. Kayla kicks it open. I slam into an office. I kick the door shut. MI37 members and a terrified television sales man mill about the room. Just to add to his confusion, I grab the computer sitting on the man’s desk and fling it out the window.

  “What the hell?” he screams, high-pitched enough that I expect Felicity to check her fillings again.

  Kayla cocks a fist and looks at Felicity. She shakes her head, but the man backs up fast.

  “Are we safe here?” I scan for threats. But obvious shelter is starting to look pretty sparse on the ground.

  “Wireless signal. Somewhere without one.” Despite the syntax, it still takes me a moment to realize it’s Tabitha’s words that I can just make out. She stands apart from the rest of us, still not making eye contact with anyone, staring out the shattered window, into the despondent concrete yard beyond.

  She’s still thinking it’s the versions. And it’s not them—I’m sure of that—but that doesn’t mean it’s not something like them. Someone who’s in the machines, hacking at computers. And it doesn’t mean Tabitha’s not right about shelter. We do need to be somewhere without wireless.

  The countryside is still too far away. Houses and stores are now clearly out of the question.

  Where the hell else?

  I scan the depressing little yard behind the store. And there, in the middle of it. Our answer. A manhole cover.

  “Underground,” I say. “Beneath the earth. The sewers or something.”

  Felicity looks at me. It’s not a happy look. Which is fair enough. No one likes going into the sewers. But at least we get paid for it.

  So up and through the window we go, with an eye to the heavens in case anyone wants to send another drone at us or hurl a 747 at us for good measure. But nothing breaks the cloud line.

  Kayla heaves the manhole cover loose with a burst of rust and stone dust. Insects scrabble to hide from the sudden light of day, like tiny mundane vampires. I stare into blackness and try to focus on my desire to prolong my life until lunch time.

  I jump. My feet hit the floor in a splash of cold water. The smell hits me right back. I blanch and think that maybe taking a Mercedes to the face wouldn’t be so bad.

  Kayla lands almost on top of me. Felicity and Tabitha opt to take the ladder I missed. We stand together, huddled, all trying to breathe through our mouths. Felicity leans against me, her head resting on my shoulder.

  After five minutes it seems like
no one’s trying to kill us anymore.

  “What the hell was that?” My voice sounds tinny in the tight dark space. Not that I really expect an answer. But this much confusion and bewilderment—I can’t keep it inside. What could we have possibly done to piss off someone that powerful?

  “Clyde,” Tabitha says. She’s changed, here in the dark. Her silhouette stands taller now. She is held more rigidly. Her voice has changed too. It doesn’t tremble. It’s flat and cold. “It was Clyde.”

  “It can’t have been the versions,” I start.

  “It—” Tabitha starts.

  “Not here,” Felicity’s voice cuts her off sharply. “Not now.” She pushes away from me. “What we do now is we concentrate on getting out of this, very literal shithole.” She looks about her, points off in one direction. “The office is this way.”

  There’s not much else to be said. We start walking.

  ONE UNPLEASANT HOUR LATER

  We haul ourselves out of another manhole cover remarkably close to MI37 headquarters, near the Oxford train station. We are shivering, stinking, bleeding, and somehow, I realize, all of us are still wearing Tabitha’s tinfoil hats. Felicity’s bonnet resembles a drowned scarecrow draped over her head.

  I touch my baseball cap as Felicity punches the six-digit code into the office’s unassuming front door. Tabitha flinches as I do it.

  “How the hell has this not fallen off?”

  Tabitha shrugs. “Slight electromagnetic field. Your body has one. Everyone does. Opposite charge. The hat has. Static cling basically.”

  An angry goth on the cusp of some severe psychological scarring she may be, but Tabitha has got some serious mad professor skills.

  “You OK?” I ask her.

  “The versions. Just need to delete them. Then I’ll be fine.” She says it flatly, like she’s telling me she needs a cup of coffee.

  “No,” I say. “This wasn’t them.”

  She’s not looking at me. “Today. Burying all of it. Buried him. Going to bury them. No more Clyde.”

  “They would never try to kill you,” I say. “They—” Her look cuts me off. They love you, I was going to say. But she doesn’t want to acknowledge that. And even now I’m not quite willing to force the subject.