Robopocalypse

rotates quickly, stops. Long antennae quiver. The machine leaps forward and gallops toward us, sharp feet cutting into the dirt and pavement like a rudder through water. Those front claws hang off its belly, up and ready, light glinting from countless barbs.

The kid stares, blank.

I grab him and shove him through the window, then dive in after him. We get on our feet and hustle over moldy carpet. Seconds later, a shadow falls across the rectangle of daylight behind us. A clawed arm shoots through the window frame and rips downward, gouging out part of the wall. Another clawed arm follows. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s like a tornado hitting.

Lucky for us, this is a safe building. I can tell because it’s been hollowed out pretty good. The facade is demolished, but inside it’s passable. We do our homework in NYC. I steer the kid toward a pile of cinder blocks and a hole in the wall that leads into an adjacent building.

“That’s us,” I say, pointing and pushing the kid toward the hole. He stumbles along like a zombie.

Then I hear carpet ripping and the crunch of wooden furniture. The mantis has somehow made it in through the window. Crouched small, it’s squeezing its gray mass through the building, tearing stained ceiling tiles down like confetti. Crouch walking, the thing is all flashing claws and screeching metal.

We dash for the hole in the wall.

I stop and help the kid crawl over the mess of rebar and concrete. The passage is just a black gaping hollow, only a few feet wide, that leads straight through the sandstone foundations of both buildings. I’m praying it’ll slow down the monster behind us.

The kid disappears inside. I climb in behind him. It’s dark, claustrophobic. Kid’s crawling slow, still cradling his hurt hand. Near the entrance, steel rods of rebar jut out like rusty spearheads. I can hear the mantis closing on us, destroying everything it touches.

Then the sound stops.

There isn’t enough room to turn my head and see what’s happening behind me. I just see the bottoms of the kid’s shoes as he crawls. Breathe in, breathe out. Concentrate. Something slams into the mouth of the hole hard enough to rip off a chunk of solid rock, by the sound of it. It’s followed by another bone-jarring slam. The mantis is scrabbling frantically, chewing through the concrete wall and into sandstone. The noise is deafening.

Everything around me turns to screaming and darkness and dust. “Go, go, go!” I shout.

A second later the kid is gone; he found the other end of the tunnel. Grinning, I turn on the juice. Moving full speed, I tumble out of the hole and fall a few feet and then scream in surprised agony.

A finger of rebar has pierced the meat of my right calf.

I’m on my back, propping myself up on my elbows. My leg is caught on the mouth of the hole. The rebar sticks out like a crooked tooth, sunk into my leg. The kid stands a few feet away, that blank expression still on his face. I take a shuddering breath and let out with another animal scream of pain.

It seems to get the kid’s attention.

“Fuck, get me off this thing!” I shout.

The kid blinks at me. Some life is coming back into those dead brown eyes of his.

“Hurry,” I say. “Mantis is coming.”

I try to lift my body up, but I’m too weak and the pain is too much. Elbows digging painfully into the dirt, I manage to raise my head. I try to explain to the kid. “You gotta pull my leg off the rebar. Or get the rebar out of the wall. One or the other, man. But do it fast.”

The kid stands there, lip quivering. He looks like he’s about to cry. Just my fucking luck.

From the tunnel, I can hear the pock, pock as each jab from the mantis dislodges more stone. A cloud of dust pours out of the disintegrating hole. Every blow from the mantis sends a throbbing vibration through the rock and into the rebar skewering my calf.

“C’mon man, I need you. I need you to help me.”

And for the first time, the kid speaks. “I’m sorry,” he says to me.

Fuck. It’s over. I want to scream at this kid, this coward. I want to hurt him somehow, but I’m too weak. So with everything I’ve got in me, I focus on keeping my face raised to his. My neck muscles strain to keep my head up, trembling. If this kid is gonna leave me to die, I want him to remember my face.

Eyes locked on mine, the kid holds his injured arm up. He starts to unwrap the towel that covers it.

“What are you—”

I stop cold. The kid’s hand isn’t hurt—he doesn’t have one.

Instead, the meat of his forearm ends with a mess of wires leading to a greasy hunk of metal with two blades sticking out. It looks like a pair of industrial-sized scissors. The tool is fused directly into his arm. As I watch, a tendon flexes in his forearm and the oiled blades begin to spread apart.

“I’m a freak,” he says. “Rob did this to me in the labor camps.”

I don’t know what to think. There’s just no more strength in me. I lower my head and stare at the ceiling.

Snip.

My leg is free. A piece of rebar is stuck in it, snipped and shiny on one end. But I’m free.

The kid helps me up. He puts his good arm around me. We hobble away without looking back at the hole. Five minutes later, we find the camouflaged entrance to the subway tunnels. And then we’re gone, struggling as best we can down the abandoned tracks.

We leave the mantis behind.

“How?” I ask, nodding at his bad arm.

“Labor camp. People go into surgery, come out different. I was one of the first. Mine’s simple. Just my arm. Other people, though. They come back from the autodoc even worse. No eyes. No legs. Rob messes with your skin, your muscles, your brain.”

“You on your own?” I ask.

“I met some others, but they didn’t want …” He looks at his mutilated hand, face empty. “I’m like them now.”

That hand hasn’t made him any friends. I wonder how many times he’s been rejected, how long he’s been on his own.

It’s almost over for this kid. I can see it in the slump of his shoulders. How every breath seems like a struggle. I’ve seen it before. The kid’s not hurt—he’s beaten.

“Being alone is tough,” I say. “You start to wonder what the point is. You know?”

He says nothing.

“But there’s other people here. The resistance. You’re not alone now. You got a purpose.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“To survive, man. To help the resistance.”

“I’m not even—”

He holds up his arm. Tears gleam in his eyes. This is the important part. He’s got to get this. If he doesn’t, he’ll die.

I grab the kid by the shoulders and say it face-to-face: “You were born a human being and you’re gonna die one. No matter what they did to you. Or what they do. Understand?”

It’s quiet down here in the tunnels. And dark. It feels safe.

“Yeah,” he says.

I throw an arm around the kid’s shoulder, wincing at the pain in my leg. “Good,” I say. “Now come on. We got to get home and eat. You wouldn’t guess it to look at me, but I’ve got this beautiful wife. Best looking woman in the world. And I’m telling you, if you ask real nice, she will cook up a stew like you wouldn’t believe.”

I think this kid is gonna be okay. Soon as he meets the others.

People need meaning as much as they need air. Lucky for us, we can give meaning to each other for free. Just by being alive.

In the coming months, more and more modified humans began to filter into the city. No matter what Rob did to these people, all of them were welcomed into the NYC resistance. Without this haven and its lack of prejudice, it is unlikely that the human resistance, including Brightboy squad, would have been able to acquire and