by Elisa Hansen
God, how could he keep talking through the stench in the air? Emily could barely open her mouth. Was this a zombie thing? She made herself ignore it as she moved on from the shelves to search the stalls on the left while Scott glanced through those on the right. Dark unrecognizable rotted chunks of meat and bone lay scattered throughout the slimy hay. Uggghhhh. Caving, Emily’s fingers clamped her nose.
“She can keep her personality,” Scott continued. “The bitchy one. Though she lasts even longer in Robot Slave Mode.”
A snort of laughter blew past Emily’s fingers. “I can’t believe you call it that.”
“Not my name. Nick always said if you’re going to take away a sentient being’s free will, you should call it what it is. A ‘Compliance State’ command won’t work on her.” He knocked his gun against one of the stall doors. “But, anyway, don’t ask her to run too many programs at once, calculate anything crazy, or use any of her communication servers, and she can hang on to that extra juice for a while.”
“Wait, can she contact New York?”
It was Scott’s turn to laugh. “There aren’t any servers left she has access to, so no.”
“What about radio?”
“Nothing that long-range.”
“But isn’t she an army robot?”
“They wish. She’s an LS model, yeah, but Carol is a one-of-a-kind Nick Sullivan original. I mean, her local network’s all right. A few miles reach.” He juggled his shotgun to his other arm so he could pull something out of the bulging pocket of his too-loose jeans. “She can reach me on this.”
Emily had to break into the six-foot radius just a little to see what he held, but Scott didn’t object. The touchscreen wafer in his palm reminded her of a watch phone without the band.
“Like a walkie-talkie?” If she unpinched her nose, she’d sound less like a chipmunk, but it was so not worth it.
“It’s more like an extension of her.” He flipped it over to wipe the smudged screen on his shirt. “She’s in this as much as she’s in her own head. I can’t use it to access her hard drive, though. Not even any shared files. Nick made it that way to ‘respect her privacy.’ It’s more like a glorified baby monitor. For her to use on me.”
Emily peered at it over her knuckles. “She’s listening to us right now?”
“It’s off.” Scott slipped the ancillary wafer back into his pocket and gave her a mischievous smirk. “Got to save power, right?”
“Right.” She smirked back, then realized too late he couldn’t see it past her hand. But they reached the end of the stable, and she forgot the awkward moment as she broke into the open air beyond the doors.
Oh, god, so much better! She kicked the door closed to lock in the stench. Uggghhhh. And they hadn’t even found anything inside. She took deep breaths of the hot dry air, extra relieved when they didn’t make her choke like before.
She was getting the hang of this zombie breathing thing!
Fuck.
“Okay, so, we drive until we find a place with power,” she recapped to distract herself. “Then wait there an hour or two until your android’s at forty percent, and then we can get moving?”
“If we can hold out longer, it would be better. That way she’d get her laser back.”
“But she’s got those other guns.”
“Her aim’s better with the laser. And it works great on vampires.” Scott’s suntanned expression brightened as he went on. “If she gets a square hit, sometimes they burst into flames. It’s really cool. When she gets a zombie in the face, its chomping days are over. Doesn’t beat a shotgun for blowing their heads off, obviously. Though it can get strong enough to slice through flesh and bone. But if she turns it up that high, a few blasts, and she needs to charge again.”
“Uh huh…” If chattering to Emily about his robot and guns was what put the guy at ease, let him go. She followed him, six feet behind, into the largest of the sheds. Bins and tanks lined its shelves. Jackpot! They took opposite walls to go through them one by one. The stuffy air simmered at least ten degrees hotter in the closed room, but after the stable, Emily wasn’t about to complain.
“They tried to get it to work on a solid stream like a laser knife,” Scott continued as they searched. “So she could slice off vampire and zombie heads left and right, but battery life was a joke. She can rip into them with her bare hands faster. Just as long as there aren’t too many. She was overwhelmed in a room of them once. They buried her. I don’t know if they thought they could eat her or if it’s more like self-preservation. Know what I’m talking about? When they’ll like bite your gun because you’re whacking them with it. Like a hive mind thing going on? But I guess you would know about that.”
It took Emily a moment to realize what he meant. Seriously? She looked up from the plastic bins to glower at him. “Actually, I wouldn’t.” She definitely didn’t feel any kind of special zombie connection to the ones she encountered at the border camp.
Scott ignored the comment and shoved aside a tub to reach another behind it. “But anyway. She was no match for a big pile of them. And they never could get the androids strong enough to be worth the cost, even with the military contract.”
“Who’s they?”
“Curisa Robotics. Nick’s people?”
“Oh, right.” She mentally whacked herself. She supposedly knew Nick, after all. The information Death’s screen gave her about Scott all had to do with the lives and deaths and locations, past and present, of his relatives. Either his device didn’t include employer names, or he chose not to share. But Emily needed to fake it better before Scott noticed.
“Before Nick got her hands on her,” he rambled on, “Carol was an experimental LS for the zombie studies. Except she didn’t have her personality then, so I guess it wasn’t really her. But she still remembers it all, so kind of? But they threw too much at her, and she got messed up pretty good, so the battle test guys left her behind when they abandoned the facility.
“Nick and her crew didn’t fly out with the first evacuation. I moved in right around then. We really should’ve gone, but you know how engineers are. When Nick found Carol, she rebuilt most of her body. She was super hardcore into Robot Rights stuff. That was the main reason she wouldn’t take that first airship to New York. She refused to leave all those androids behind. It was a total waste though. Like six months later, they all got destroyed anyway.”
“Except for Carol?”
“Obviously. Nick installed this illegal AI her, uh, friend, Kim made before she died. Like seriously illegal. The LPI even banned Kim’s software. Nick said they—the government or whatever—were especially afraid people would use it with LS’s. Which is exactly what she did. I guess it lets them make any choices they want? And they can have a full range of human personalities, from good to evil. Nick was all about that.”
She couldn’t recall when it happened, but Emily had stopped searching and just watched him now. The thick heat made her brain feel mushy. And when Scott’s eyes lit up while he spoke about his sister, it brightened the whole room.
“Nick said it was the same as genetically selecting baby traits, you know?”
“Uh huh.” God, the shed smelled so much better than the stable. Anything would have smelled amazing after that, but there was something about this room in particular.
“To her, robots were people and deserved to be treated with as much human rights as us.”
“Sure.” Like the best anything had smelled since Emily could remember.
“But also not like Nick wasn’t totally narcissistic about it. The program still needs to start with a base personality type, right? She put her own in Carol. Or at least what she thought was her own. To Nick, Carol had every trait of the ‘perfect female.’ To me, she’s just annoying. Shows you how subjective it all is.”
What was it? So fresh and…pure smelling. Definitely pure. Maybe one of the bins held scented candles or something?
Oh, he’d stopped talking. Emily should say somethin
g. He was looking at her now.
“Why…” Um… His sister. Right. “Why do you keep talking about Nick in the past tense?”
“She…” His gaze fell, and then he turned back to his shelf. “I don’t know. I mean, I try to believe she made it safe. It’s just, she was supposed to come back, or send someone back for me, and she never did.”
“But she made it. I mean, I know she made it.” Death’s device knew absolutely Scott’s sister lived in Manhattan, but Emily didn’t want to admit her source. “How would I know she’s at headquarters if she didn’t make it?”
“But who knows what’s happened since? That was months ago. What if she’s like you or something?”
“She’s still alive. One hundred percent absolutely still alive.”
He shrugged and shoved aside another bin. Emily wondered if he was one of those people who liked to dwell on the worst possible outcome to avoid being surprised by tragedy. He didn’t strike her as generally pessimistic, but did it provide a coping strategy where his sister was concerned?
Though she didn’t see how anyone could be negative in a room that smelled so nice. But maybe, like in the stable, he couldn’t smell it like she could?
Or maybe he just couldn’t smell himself?
Emily’s entire frame went rigid. It was him she smelled. And the longer they stayed in the closed room, the more it magnified, filling every corner.
“Blegh.” Scott leaned against the shelf and wiped at his glistening forehead with the back of his wrist. “Can’t you prop that door open or something?”
“Sure.” But she didn’t move. A bead of sweat slipped along his hairline, twinkling like a diamond in the dusty sunlight streaking through the high windows.
She blinked and strained to look away, but more droplets gathered at his temple, caught under the arm of his sunglasses. They shimmered like a string of crystalline pearls. She could smell them too. Each little drop. They smelled… It sure wasn’t sweaty guy smell. No, it was crisp. Fresh. Like he oozed purified mountain spring water.
What?
Emily’s brain did a little recoil.
Gross.
…Right?
But it emphasized how cottony her mouth felt. Her chapped lips burned, tight like they would crack in a hundred places if she smiled. Some clear, fresh, clean, pure water would be so good right now.
Could she ask Scott for a sip from his bottle? Would that squick him?
He left his shelf to move around the work table in the center of the room. Where did he keep his bottle? In his backpack? As she moved to the table, she realized he was talking again. Crap. She should be listening, pretending to care, but the thirst plugged up her ears, the smell of it all putting her to sleep.
Wake up. She licked her lips and shook out her head.
Scott was staring at her. He wasn’t talking anymore. Was she getting too close? The radius was more like four feet now.
Should she back off? She should back off.
Emily lifted her hands, about to apologize, but Scott cleared his throat and moved to the end of the table.
Ask him a question.
Right.
“So, um,” she started in what she hoped came off as a conversational tone. “You never said. How did Carol get out from the zombie dogpile?”
“Oh, the Curisa guys opened up the room and lured them out.” He took the edge of the stained drop cloth covering the table. “As soon as they noticed a human, they left her alone.”
Flipping the cloth aside, he craned sideways to peer under the table. The muscles in his neck stretched, and the shaggy ends of his hair fell away from his collar. Emily’s foot slid forward.
No…
This was the opposite of backing off.
But she didn’t have to get close enough to make him uncomfortable. Just a little closer, to see under the table too. There had to be something interesting down there. The way the tendon rose from his hairline surely meant there was something to be seen.
Scott’s head snapped up, and Emily froze. He peered at her, then pointed across the room. “Check out that cupboard.”
She nodded and turned to go, but something in her gut twisted at the effort it took. She told herself it was because his story was just so, so interesting. “Did…” A hazy curtain rose behind her eyes, like a fog machine in her brain. It’s the heat, she reminded herself. Be cool. You’re fine.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head to clear it. “Did they ever…” What was she going to ask?
Whatever it was, going all the way across the room to examine a cupboard and possibly not hearing his answer felt like the worst thing she could do at the moment. Her voice sounded too loud to her own ears as she forced the question out. “Did they put her in there again?”
“They were going to.” A hollow metallic clatter came from under the table as he rooted around. “Never got the chance.”
Maybe he wouldn’t mind if she asked for some water after all. She’d pour it from above, not let the nozzle touch her lips. He’d just have to hand it to her. She’d try not to touch him when he did, she really would.
Although, would it be so bad if his fingertips brushed her skin? Maybe he’d feel that her flesh wasn’t so different from his. She might even feel soft to his dude hands. And his fingertips might feel like snake scales rubbed the wrong way. A tingle ran up her arm as she imagined it.
No. Gross.
She made herself go to the cupboard, but the fragrant, fragrant brain fog worked its way through her sinuses, filled her throat. She smacked her lips, forced it down as she looked over the racks inside.
“Nothing useful in here,” she called over her shoulder, the words sounding a mile away. As she closed the doors, a tucked-away corner of her brain registered that she couldn’t have told him a single thing in the cupboard if he asked.
But he didn’t ask. He pulled his sunglasses out of his hair and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He set them by his butter-brown boot to sort big round metal canisters from under the table one by one.
“Who the hell would keep so many used propane tanks?” As he leaned sideways to reach deeper, Scott kept his head up, his gaze flicking in Emily’s direction every few seconds.
“Yeah.” Her feet were sliding over the gritty floor again as if they hoped the rest of her wouldn’t notice. Did the six-foot radius really matter anyway? It’s not like the robot could see her. And for the moment, Scott didn’t seem to notice. When he bent down, the tan line on the back of his neck crept out of his over-washed t-shirt. His skin below it was so creamy. Like pudding. So pure and puddingy.
Emily blinked and shook out her head again. “I mean, um, recyclers?”
“Yeah, right.” His voice rang against the empty cans. “The environmentally conscious.”
His shoulder blades moved under his shirt like wing tips. Above them, the tag stuck up out of his collar. Emily was still a few feet away, but even through the heat of the room, she could feel the warmth radiating off his back. Actually feel it. Was warm pudding a thing?
So warm… She ran her dry tongue over her parched lips once more. She reached out. Her fingertips stretched, yearning to just…just fix his tag for him. That was all. Just…tuck it back in.
The radius became two feet… One…
Scott jerked around and smacked the air in front of her hand. “Hey!”
“Sorry!” she gasped. The room’s hot air shot down her throat and dissolved into a fluttering in her chest that felt more like a trapped swarm of defrosting flies than any heartbeat she ever knew in life.
Scott flailed backward, cans flying in every direction.
“Sorry,” Emily repeated, making herself slide away from him. The grit under her boot soles scraped, so loud. “You had a…” She swirled a hand in the air above the back of her own neck.
“What?” Scott jumped to his feet. “A bug? A spider?” He swatted at his collar without looking away from her.
She shook her head and labored to gulp up
some moisture into her aching mouth. Where had her words gone? She tried to focus on his eyes, to meet them levelly.
You are in perfect control of your senses. Let him see it in your calm, collected, completely and totally and absolutely focused gaze.
Bloodshot webs laced Scott’s eye whites like spidery hands holding the dark green crystal balls in their center. If Emily had dexterity enough to pluck out each of those full veiny vessels and squeeze them of their fluid, turn his gaze back to clear, to blank, pure white, drained of color, his color, his warmth, his moisture, she could help him with that. He had too much, clearly. Squishy. Oozing. He couldn’t possibly be comfortable with all that excess, all those juices.
Scott’s eyes narrowed, and he took a step back, lifting his gun. “What? What is it?”
Emily pushed her hands to her face and rattled a breath into her hollow lungs. “Sorry, I’m just…” What was that word? That word… “I’m zoning out? It’s so hot in here. But you’re fine. No spider. It’s gone.” She forced her cheesiest grin.
“Augh! Don’t do that.”
“What, smile?”
He nodded.
She was just smiling. Just…
She must look like a nightmare.
She was supposed to be putting him at ease.
God…
“If you’re not going to help, then go back out to the yard.”
And leave him? But— Ringing in her ears underscored the twist in her stomach. Somehow, she tore her feet from the floor step by step. “I’ll just…I’m going to check out that other shed.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
“Right.”
Right…
God.
23
Specter
Outside, Emily managed to make it around the shed’s corner before she had to stop. Slumping against the fiberglass siding, she dug the heels of her palms into her eyes until they felt about to pop out the back of her head. She should return to the stable. The rot smell and buzzing flies would flip her stomach and squash out any particles of sweetness lingering in her nostrils. Snap her out of it.
