Love, Death, Robots, and Zombies

by Tom O'Donnell

  Chapter 19.

  Barabas does have a knife, as it happens. I find it on his corpse and trade it for the pistol. I can’t get an angle at my own bonds, so I cut Echo’s first. I’m not really involved in the actions of my body, however. I’m shell-shocked. It’s not easy to watch someone die, especially when you’re killing them. The adrenaline is coming down now, the heart settling, and the shakes set in. But there’s stillness beneath, an immovable bedrock. It’s not like before. We’ve crossed a line. We can’t go back.

  Echo watches me. When her bonds are cut, she takes the knife and returns the favor. Then her arms are around me. It wakes me up a little, but I’m still distant. I can’t engage.

  “You did what you had to do,” she says, squeezing me tight. She says it several times.

  We collect the weapons and fill our packs with rations. We check Sampson. Surprisingly, he’s still alive. He moans when Echo moves him. His skull is intact and he’s not bleeding too badly, though a lump is developing. He’ll recover soon. Which means we have to decide what to do with him.

  “He’ll tell them about us at Last Bastion. He’ll give them our names and description. They’ll send someone after us …” Echo says.

  If we let him go.

  She leaves that part unsaid. We both know what Byron would’ve done. It’s both logical and ruthless. It’s what we should do for our own safety. If Sampson never makes it to Last Bastion, no one will ever come looking for us. Eventually someone from his battalion could return home and ask around for the missing soldiers, but all they’ll know for certain is that the five of us disappeared en route. They’ll probably blame Cyberia.

  Sampson isn’t Byron, however. He’s just a simple-minded man, a soldier on escort duty. He even fought against the Grass Man. Finishing him off may be better for our survival, but survival isn’t everything. You have to live with yourself too.

  “I’m tired of killing people,” I tell Echo. She nods.

  We talk about tying him up, but out here that would be worse than shooting him. He’d starve or die of exposure. We leave him some rations and supplies instead, and we disappear into the west before he wakes.

  West is the simple choice. South would bring us to Commander Bellring’s battalion. To the north lies Last Bastion. East–well, who knows what lies further east, but there’s definitely something to the southwest…

  Haven.

  The Doctor said it was west of Pillar, which we passed coming north. First we just want to put some distance between us and the scene of our escape, but there’s no denying Haven lingers in the background of our intentions. I’ve adopted Echo’s goal for myself. Now that we’re so close, there’s no reason not to pursue it.

  The sun was already setting when Byron picked up that rock. It’s past midnight when we finally stop. We’ve been running on fumes, tripping over rocks and fallen branches in the dark. My shoulders ache from my pack. We sleep almost as soon as we halt.

  It’s not until noon the next day that we talk about where we’re headed.

  “We can’t abandon Jarvis and the others,” Echo says.

  I agree, but we have no idea how to find them. We decide it would be best to go to Apolis and enlist Jarvis’s family. According to Jarvis, they’re well-connected. They might be able to raise a force to liberate the missing caravaners. Of course, that means going south, and going south means passing close to Haven.

  I’m the first to suggest stopping there. It’s on Echo’s mind–I know it is–but it would be too self-serving for her to suggest. It would feel like a betrayal, seeking what she desperately wants when it could mean abandoning our friends to a life of slavery or worse. I sense that she grew closer to them during her time as a captive, even Octavia–or especially Octavia. She feels a strong loyalty to them, a need to see them free, whatever the cost.

  After I talk about Haven, her face lights up. She’s found a thought to reconcile desire and necessity.

  “Maybe Haven could help. The people there might know something about who took them–like groups that operate in the area. Yes, let’s stop and ask. But if we don’t get anywhere, we’ll go to Apolis. We can’t just leave them, Tristan. We can’t,” she says, wide-eyed, as if I suggested doing otherwise.

  “We won’t,” I assure her.

  So we make for the one place I never thought we’d actually reach.

  We head south. When we hit the road that runs past Pillar, we stop and backtrack into the forest. Given that the area is dominated by robots with an anti-organic agenda, it seems prudent to stay off the main routes.

  Byron and Starbucks and Mudcross are on my mind as we walk. I don’t regret shooting Byron. It had to be done–just as it did with Fin and Ballard. Still, the images stay with me. The stillness afterwards is what strikes me most. The difference between animate matter and dead cells is the difference between zero and infinity. What happens to that unseen motivator? Does it spill into the ether or vanish entirely, as if it had never been?

  Despite these thoughts, my mood can’t exactly be called “bad.” Heavy, at times. Complicated. But steadily improving. We’re free, after all, and it’s I and Echo against the world again.

  Annabel Lee, who lives by the sea…

  My mental litany begins again–the poem, over and over, playing on a loop. Echo is still worried about Jarvis and the others, but competing with that weight is the promise of her long-awaited goal. She feels guilty for any excitement. She has to repeat her justifications aloud, reassuring herself that we’re only stopping at Haven with the aim of finding our friends.

  At night, she lies next to me again. Gratitude fills me. It wasn’t fair that Starbucks died. It’s not fair that Jarvis and Octavia have been enslaved. But I’m here, and Echo is here, and that’s no small thing. Big Troubles make the rest easier to appreciate. Sometimes you can’t stop the fears, the worries, the memories from interfering. But when you manage to let it all go, when you can enjoy what’s around you, life becomes worth living again. Wandering the forest with Echo, no past, no future; I could live like this. A simple life–who needs more?

  One night I’m lying next to Echo, spooning her in the chill night air, when suddenly I’m wide awake, entranced by the curve of her delicate neck. Scattered moonlight filters down through the trees; she’s awash in pale white light. The depth of my attachment is suddenly impossible to ignore. I don’t like to acknowledge these feelings–I don’t want to need someone–but the feelings impose themselves. I can’t shut them out. I do need her. I–

  Love her.

  Is it true? I push the thought away. I don’t want this. Love is a terrible word. Only sadists have a use for it. When you love people, they die. But the knowledge is there. How did this happen? When? It accumulated when I wasn’t looking. Now it feels more real than my own body. A body can die, but love is a force of nature. You can’t kill gravity; all you can do is fall.

  I know by her breathing that she’s awake. One hand shifts subtly, a nervous repetition. There’s a tension in her body she can’t fully suppress. Her hips shift slightly. I know she can feel me against her. I know that she knows that I know. The space between my lips and her neck is both enormous and miniscule–and then there’s no space at all. She breaths in sharply but makes no move to stop me. She tilts her neck. She waits for more. There’s a subtle intensity to each delicate press of my lips against her skin. It facilitates an enlivening awareness, a focus narrowed to each inch-wide pasture of skin. The fact that she welcomes it feels like more than I deserve.

  She turns, and her blue eyes fill the world. My mind takes a picture, stores it in the secret place, as it did in that far-away rubble where the solar cycles passed us. I remember too that day in the desert, when she offered herself to me. This is different. There’s no doubt, no confliction in her desire now. Her skin is like ivory in the moonlight. Glorious.

  We kiss.

>   The parting of her lips is a soft mystery, unfamiliar but immediately appealing. It feels almost like I’ve tricked her–doesn’t she know I’m not worthy of this? The universe doesn’t give such gifts. The universe only barters, and most of its trades are poor. But that’s not entirely true, because once in a while, it does give something, and these are the moments that make the rest endurable. The moments in which one can glimpse life’s hidden magic, so rarely seen, so easily missed–yet once perceived, never entirely forgotten.

  The kiss evolves with a desperate intensity, yet gradually too, willingly restrained. Clothes are shed. I’m hyper-focused, trying not screw things up. Her nudity is breathtaking. The chill air raises bumps along her arms. I want to taste and touch every inch of her. I want to own her, to possess her…

  It’s over all too soon.

  So we start again.

  Afterwards, there is no thought. Energy ripples through my muscles like rain falling in a fertile field. Sleep comes fast.

  The next day, Echo is quiet, almost shy. I don’t think she regrets it. She’s just cautious, worried. I feel, if anything, freer somehow. Like a waypoint has been reached. We have trials to face. We have to find Haven and search for Jarvis and Octavia, but that morning nothing can dampen my spirits.

  Or so I think–until we reach it.

  We’re still staying off the road, paralleling the western path that runs past Pillar, when the forest thickens into a field of impassable brambles. We try to push through, but the change in flora covers a large territory. Instead, we trek south around the brambles until the road appears. We take to it to it reluctantly, watching for other travelers, resuming our westward course. In a few hours, a narrow dirt-road branches north.

  “It’s got to lead somewhere, right?” I say.

  Echo shrugs. We decide to check it out. The path cleaves through the brambles like a laser, straight into the forest. We’ve gone less than a mile when the tangled trees and shrubs give way to a vast clearing. At the edge brambles, we stand awestruck.

  Flowering white trees stand in two neatly planted rows, one to either side of the path. The road is carpeted with soft white petals, and the branches arch over it, giving the illusion of a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, some distance ahead, is a gate. A walled community. Echo and I look at each other.

  This could be it, her eyes say, but fear and suspicion keep the hope in check.

  We pause, considering. My spyglass reveals nothing new about the gate. There’s no cover in the clearing aside from the twin rows of white trees. We circle at the edge of the brambles for a less obstructed view. The town’s wall is circular, gleaming white, built up from stone blocks. The place is maybe two-thirds as large as Mudcross. There’s no way to approach it by stealth. Unless we wait for nightfall.

  Then I see the sentry. He sits in a chair atop the wall near the gate, manning a turret with a barrel as tall as himself. I can’t make out a lot of detail, but one thing is certain–he’s human. It’s an encouraging sign. I hand the spyglass to Echo for a look.

  “Tristan–top of the wall, to the right of the turret. Is that another weapon?” Echo asks. I take another look.

  “No. Lights. Spotlights,” I say, surprised. Well, that rules out nighttime stealth.

  Echo stares at me. She always claimed Haven had electricity. That doesn’t mean this is it. Cove and Foundry and other settlements have at least limited power. Still, it’s promising.

  “What should we do?” Echo asks.

  Honestly, I want to go back into the forest and forget it all. But we didn’t come all this way just to turn back.

  We approach cautiously beneath the trees, treading on silken white petals. I’m watching for traps, mines, armed men. There’s nothing but the sentry. My paranoia is up. What if something goes wrong? We can’t outrun that turret. But how else can we know if this is really Haven? Most settlements won’t open fire on passing travelers without a warning. It should be a defensive turret. Sometimes the difference between “should” and “is” gets people killed.

  As we get closer, I can see the sentry better. He’s wearing a big smile, not paying much attention to the path. Does he even see us? I look at Echo, take a deep breath, and shout for attention. The sentry sits forward, almost startled, like we’ve drawn him out of a daydream.

  “Who are you? What are your intentions?” he shouts down at us.

  “Travelers seeking trade and shelter. What is this place?” I ask.

  “Where are you coming from?” he asks.

  “South. A long way south,” I say.

  “Go on in then. Welcome to Haven.”

  The name hits us like a physical blow. We look at each other in wonder. Echo’s eyes are glazing over. A thrill spreads down my spine. I’d all but convinced myself this wasn’t it; that it was some isolated human fortification, maybe even another slaver-town. But we’re here, for Crom’s sake–we’ve made it!

  There’s a sound, and the gate parts from the wall. It opens from the top, like a drawbridge. Echo is laughing. Tears spill down her cheeks. She covers her open mouth with her hands. She never really believed we’d get here. She does a kind of dance and throws her arms around me. I’m gladder for the look on her face than for our actual arrival. It’s her dream, after all; I only borrowed it. Ever since Farmington burned, this is the place she’d told herself she’d reach. Her hands are shaking as they cover her mouth again.

  Beyond the drawbridge, a cobblestone road leads inside. Trimmed green grass. Stone buildings. A fountain with a carving of a robot and a human shaking hands. People are visible. They’re all smiling. Someone’s waiting just inside to greet us. She’s smiling too. Blonde hair. Red dress. Barefoot. Beautiful…

  And as we cross the drawbridge, I stare at her. I know this face, those eyes, those lips. Echo and I slow to a stop, dumbfounded.

  “Octavia?” I whisper.

  “Welcome to Haven!” Octavia exclaims.

  But it’s the greeting of a stranger.