Robopocalypse

by Daniel H. Wilson

I don’t chastise her. I don’t have the luxury.

  It’s dark by the time our tires crunch over my dad’s worn gravel driveway.

  Finally, thankfully, the old car heaves to a stop. Exhausted, I allow the engine to die. The silence afterward feels like the vacuum of space.

  “Home again, home again, jiggity-jog,” I whisper.

  In the passenger seat, Nolan is asleep on Mathilda’s lap, his head resting on her bony shoulder. Mathilda’s eyes are open and her face is set. She looks strong, a tough angel under a mop of dark hair. Her eyes scan back and forth across the yard in a way that worries me.

  The details emerge for me, too. There are tire marks on the lawn. The screen door yawns open in the breeze, slapping the house. The cars are gone from the garage. No lights are on inside the house. Part of the wooden fence has been knocked down.

  Then, the front door begins to swing open. There is only blackness on the other side. I reach over and take Mathilda’s small hand in mine.

  “Be brave, honey,” I say.

  Mathilda does as she is told. She clenches the fear between her teeth and holds it there tight so that it can’t move. She squeezes my hand and hugs Nolan’s small body with her other arm. As the splintered wooden door creaks open, Mathilda does not look away or close her eyes or so much as blink. I know that my baby will be brave for me.

  No matter what comes out of that door.

  Laura Perez and her family were not seen or heard from again until almost one year later. They next appear on the record when registered on the rolls of the Scarsdale forced-labor camp, just outside New York City.

  —CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217

  4. GRAY HORSE

  Way down yonder in the Indian Nation,

  I rode my pony on the reservation …

  WOODY AND JACK GUTHRIE, CIRCA 1944

  ZERO HOUR

  Under surveillance, officer Lonnie Wayne Blanton was recorded giving the following description to a young soldier passing through the Osage Nation in central Oklahoma. Without the brave actions of Lonnie Wayne during Zero Hour, the human resistance may never have happened—at least, not in North America.

  —CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217

  Them machines been on the back of my mind ever since I interviewed this kid about a thing that happened to him and a buddy of his in an ice cream shop. Gruesome deal.

  Course, I never believed a man should keep a ponytail. But I sure did keep my peepers peeped after that fiasco.

  Nine months later, the cars over in town went haywire. Me and Bud Cosby were sitting in the Acorn diner. Bud’s telling me about his granddaughter winning some kind of “presti-jicus international prize,” as he calls it, when people start hollerin’ outside. I hold my ground, wary. Bud trots over to the window. He rubs the dirty glass and leans over, resting his old gouty hands on his knees. Just then, Bud’s Cadillac bashes in through the front window of the diner like a deer leaping through your windshield at ninety miles an hour on a dark highway. Glass and metal spray everywhere. There’s a ringing in my ears and after a second I realize it’s Rhonda, the waitress, holding a pitcher of water and bawling her damn fool head off.

  Through the new hole in the wall, I watch an ambulance tear by down the middle of the street, hit a fella trying to flag it down, and keep going. Bud’s blood is pooling out fast from under the stalled Caddy.

  I light out fast through the back. Take me a walk through the woods. During my walk, it’s like nothing happened. The woods feel safe, like always. They aren’t safe for long. But they’re safe long enough for a fifty-five-year-old man in blood-soaked cowboy boots to scramble his way home.

  My house is off the turnpike a hitch, headed toward Pawnee. After I step through the front door, I pour me a cup of cold coffee off the stove and set down on the porch. Through my binoculars, I see traffic on the pike is pretty much dried up. Then a convoy flies by. Ten cars driving inches from each other in single file, top speed. Nobody behind the wheel. Just them robots getting from one place to the next, fast as can be.

  Past the highway, a grain combine sits in my neighbor’s north forty. Nobody’s in it, but waves of heat are rising from its idling engine.

  I can’t raise a soul on my portable cop radio, the house phone ain’t cooperating, and the embers in my woodstove are the only thing keeping the chill out of my living room; the electricity has officially up and vacated the premises. The next-door neighbor is a mile off, and I’m feeling mighty lonesome.

  My porch feels about as safe as a chocolate donut on an anthill.

  So I don’t tarry. In the kitchen, I pack a sack lunch: bologna sandwich, cold pickle, a thermos of sweet iced tea. Then I head to the garage to see about my son’s dirt bike. It’s a 350 Honda I ain’t touched for two years. Been sittin’ in the garage gathering dust since the kid joined the army. Now, my boy Paul ain’t out there getting shot at. He’s a translator. Flaps his gums instead. Smart kid. Not like his pa.

  Things the way they are, I’m feeling glad my boy is gone. This is the first time I ever felt that way. He’s my only blood, see? And it ain’t smart to put all your eggs in one basket. I just hope he has his gun on him, wherever he is. I know he can shoot it, because I taught him to.

  It’s a good long minute before I get the motorbike running. Once I do, I almost forfeit my life on account of not paying proper attention to the biggest machine I own.

  Yep, that ungrateful old bitch of a police cruiser tries to run me down in the garage, and she damn near does it, too. It’s a blessing that I blew the extra hundred on a solid steel Tradesman toolbox. Mine’s ruint now, with the nose of a 250-horsepower police cruiser buried in it. I find myself standing in the two-foot gap between the wall and a galdarned murderous vehicle.

  The cruiser’s tryin’ to put herself into reverse, tires screeching on the concrete like the whinny of a scared horse. I draw my revolver, walk around to the driver’s side window and put a couple rounds into the little old computer inside.

  I killed my own patrol car. Ain’t that the damndest thing you ever heard?

  I’m the police and I got no way of helping people. It appears to me that the United States government, to whom I pay regular taxes and who in return provides me with a little thing called civilization, has screwed the almighty pooch in my time of need.

  Lucky for me, I’m a member of another country, one that don’t ask me to pay no taxes. It’s got a police force, a jail, a hospital, a wind farm, and churches. Plus park rangers, lawyers, engineers, bureaucrats, and one very large casino that I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting. My country—the other one—is called the Osage Nation. And it lives about twenty miles from my house in a place called Gray Horse, the true home of all Osage people.

  You want to name your kid, get married, what have you—you go down to Gray Horse, to Ko-wah-hos-tsa. By the power vested in me by the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, I do pronounce you husband and wife, as they say on certain occasions. If you got Osage blood pumping through your veins, then you will one day find yourself headed down a lonely, wandering dirt lane that goes by the name of County Road 5451. The United States government picked that name and wrote it down on a map, but it leads to a place that’s all our own: Gray Horse.

  The road ain’t even marked. Home don’t have to be.

  My dirt bike screams like a hurt cat. I can feel the heat blasting off the bike’s muffler through my blue jeans when I finally jam the brakes and crunch to a stop in the middle of the dirt road.

  I’m here.

  And I ain’t the only one here, neither. The road’s crowded with folks. Osage. A lot of dark hair and eyes, wide noses. The men are big and built like tanks in blue jeans, cowboy shirts all tucked in. The women, well, they’re built just like the men, only in dresses. The people travel in beat-up, dusty station wagons and old vans. Some folks are on horses. A tribal policeman rides along on a camouflaged four-wheeler. Looks to me like these people all packed up for a big ol’ camping trip that might not end. And that’s wise. Bec
ause I have a feeling it won’t.

  It’s instinctual, I think. When you get the tar knocked out of you, you beat a trail back home soon as you can. Lick your wounds and regroup. This place is the heart of our people. The elders live here year-round, tending to mostly empty houses. But every June, Gray Horse is home to I’n-Lon-Schka, the big dance. And that’s when every Osage who ain’t crippled, and quite a few who are, haul themselves back home. This annual migration is a routine that seeps into your bones, from birth to death. The path becomes familiar to your soul.

  There are other Osage cities, of course, but Gray Horse is special. When the tribe arrived in Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, they fulfilled a prophecy been with us for ages: that we’d move to a new land of great wealth. And what with the oil flowing underneath our land, and a nonnegotiable deed to the full mineral rights, that prophecy was right as rain.

  This has been native country a long time. Our people tamed wild dogs on these plains. In that misty time before history, dark-haired, dark-eyed folks just like the ones on this road were out here building mounds to rival the Egyptian pyramids. We took care of this land, and after a lot of heartache and tears, she paid us back in spades.

  Is it our fault that all this tends to make the Osage tribe a little snooty?

  Gray Horse sits on top of a little hill, bounded by steep ravines carved there by Gray Horse Creek. The county road gets you close, but you got to hike a trail to get to the town proper. A wind farm on the plains to the west spits out electricity for our people, with the extra juice going up for sale. Altogether, it ain’t much to look at. Just a buzz cut on a hill, chosen a long time ago to be the place where the Osage dance their most sacred dance. The place is like a platter lifted up to the gods, so they can watch over our ceremonies and make sure we’re doing them right.

  They say we been holding the I’n-Lon-Schka here for over a hundred years, to usher in the new growth of spring. But I got my suspicions.

  Them elders who picked out Gray Horse were hard men, veterans of genocide. These men were survivors. They watched the blood of their tribe spill onto the earth and saw their people decimated. Did it just so happen that Gray Horse is in an elevated location with a good field of fire, access to fresh water, and limited approaches? I can’t rightly say. But it’s a dandy of a spot, nestled on a sweet little hill smack-dab in the middle of nowheres.

  The clincher is that, at its heart, I’n-Lon-Schka ain’t a dance of renewal. I know because the dance always starts with the eldest males of each family. We get followed by the women and kids, sure, but it’s us fellas who kick off the dance. Truth be told, they’s only one reason to honor the eldest son of a family—we’re the warriors of the tribe.

  I’n-Lon-Schka is a war dance. Always has been.

  The sun is falling fast as I make my way up the steep trail that leads to the town proper. I hike past families lugging their tents and gear and kids. At the plateau, I see the flicker of a bonfire tickling the dusky sky.

  The fire pit is in the middle of a rectangular clearing, four sides ringed with benches made of split logs. Embers leap and mingle with the fresh prickles of stars. It’s going to be a cold, clear night. The people, hundreds of ’em, huddle together in little clumps. They’re hurt and afraid and hopeful.

  As soon as I get there, I hear a hoarse, frightened holler from near the fire.

  Hank Cotton’s got a young fella, twenty if he’s a day, by the scruff of his neck and he’s shaking him like a rag doll. “Git!” he shouts. Hank is over six foot tall easy, and husky as a black bear. As an ex–football player, and a good one, people out here put more stock in Hank than they would in Will Rogers himself, if he popped out of the grave with a lasso in his hand and a twinkle in his eye.

  The kid just hangs there limp, like a kitten in its momma’s mouth. The people surrounding Hank are quiet, afraid to speak up. I can tell this is something I’m going to have to deal with. Keeper of the peace and all.

  “What’s going on, Hank?” I ask.

  Hank looks down his nose at me, then lets go of the kid.

  “He’s a damn Cherokee, Lonnie, and he don’t belong.”

  Hank gives the kid a light shove that nearly sends him sprawling. “Why don’t you go back to your own tribe, boy?”

  The kid pats down his ripped shirt. He’s tall and lanky and wears his hair long, nigh on the opposite to the barrel-shaped Osage men who loom around him.

  “Settle down now, Hank,” I say. “We’re in the middle of an emergency. You know damn well this kid ain’t gonna make it out of here on his own.”

  The kid speaks up. “My girlfriend is Osage,” he says.

  “Your girlfriend is dead,” spits Hank, voice cracking. “Even if she wasn’t, we ain’t the same people.”

  Hank turns to me, huge in the firelight. “And you’re right, Lonnie Wayne, this is an emergency. That’s why we need to stick with our people. We cain’t start letting outsiders in here or we might not survive.”

  He kicks the dirt and the kid flinches. “Git, wets’a!”

  After a deep breath, I step between Hank and the kid. As expected, Hank don’t appreciate the intrusion. He pokes a big ol’ finger into my chest. “You don’t wanna do that, Lonnie. I’m serious now.”

  Before this ends badly, the drumkeeper speaks. John Tenkiller is a rail-thin little fella with dark, wrinkled skin and clear blue eyes. Been around forever, but some kind of magic keeps Tenkiller spry as a willow branch.

  “Enough,” says John Tenkiller. “Hank. You and Lonnie Wayne are eldest sons and you have my respect. But them headrights of yours don’t give you free license.”

  “John,” says Hank, “you ain’t seen what’s happened down there in town. It’s a massacre. The world’s coming apart at the seams. Our tribe is in danger. And if you ain’t in the tribe, you’re a threat to it. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to survive.”

  John lets Hank finish, then he looks at me.

  “With all respect, John, this ain’t about one tribe ’gainst another. It ain’t even about white, brown, black, or yellow. There sure as shit is a threat, but it don’t come from other people. It comes from outside.”

  “Demons,” murmurs the elder.

  A little stir goes through the crowd on that.

  “Machines,” I say. “Don’t go talking monsters and demons on me, John. They’s just a bunch of silly old machines and we can kill ’em. But the robots ain’t playing favorites among the races of man. They’re comin’ for all of us. Human beings. We’re all together in this.”

  Hank can’t contain himself. “We never let any outsider into this drum circle. It’s a closed circle,” he says.

  “This is true,” says John. “Gray Horse is sacred.”

  The kid chooses a bad moment to freak out. “C’mon, man! I cain’t go back down there. It’s a fuckin’ death trap. Everybody down there is fuckin’ dead. My name is Lark Iron Cloud. You hear? I’m as Indian as anybody. And y’all wanna kill me just cuz I ain’t Osage?”

  I put my hand on Lark’s shoulder and he simmers down. It’s real quiet now with just the crackling of the fire and the field crickets. I see a ring of Osage faces blank as stone bluffs.

  “Let’s dance on it, John Tenkiller,” I say. “This here is big. Bigger than us. And my heart tells me we got to pick our place in history. So let’s dance on it first.”

  The drumkeeper bows his head. We all sit still, waiting on him. Manners dictate we’d wait on him until morning if we had to. But we don’t have to. John raises his wise face and cuts us with those diamond eyes of his.

  “We will dance, and wait for a sign.”

  The women help the dancers suit up for the ceremony. When they finish adjusting our costumes, John Tenkiller pulls out a bulging leather pouch. With two fingers, the drumkeeper reaches in and pulls out a wet lump of ocher clay. Then he walks down the row of about a dozen of us dancers and wipes the red earth across our foreheads.

  I feel the cold stripe of mud across my face
—the fire of tsi-zhu. It dries fast and when it does, it looks like a streak of old blood. A vision, maybe, of what’s to come.

  In the middle of the clearing, the massive drum is set up. John sits on his haunches and beats a steady thom, thom, thom that fills the night. Shadows flicker. The dark eyes of the audience are upon us. One by one, we—the eldest sons—stand and ease into our dance around the drum circle.

  Ten minutes ago we were cops and lawyers and truckers, but now we’re warriors. Dressed in the old style—otter hides, feathers, bead-work and ribbon work—we fall right into a tradition that has no place in history.

  The transformation is sudden and it jars me. I think to myself that this war dance is like a scene trapped in amber, indistinguishable from its brothers and sisters in time.

  As the dance begins, I imagine the lunatic world of man changing and evolving just past the flickering edge of firelight. This outside world lurches ever onward, drunk and out of control. But the face of the Osage people stays the same, rooted in this place, in the warmth of this fire.

  So we dance. The sounds of the drum and the movements of the men are hypnotic. Each of us concentrates on his own self, but we naturally build into a fated harmony. The Osage men are mighty substantial, but we crouch and hop and glide around the fire smooth as snakes. Eyes closed, we move together as one.

  Feeling my way around the circle, I register the red flicker of firelight pushing through the veins of my closed eyelids. After a little while, the red-tinged darkness opens up and takes on the feel of a wide vista—as if I’m staring through a knothole into a vast, dark cavern. This is my mind’s eye. I know that soon I will find images of the future painted there—in red.

  The rhythms of our bodies push our minds away. My mind’s eye shows me the desperate face of that boy from the ice cream store. The promise I made to him echoes in my ears. I smell the metallic tang of blood pooled on that tile floor. Looking up, I see a figure walking out of the back room of the ice cream shop. I follow. The mysterious figure stops in the darkened doorway and slowly turns to me. I shudder and choke down a scream as I spot the demonic smile painted on the plastic face of my enemy. In its padded gripper, the machine holds something: a little origami crane.