As the stumpers close in I call out, “Fall in on me!”
Two minutes later I’m sweating under the sun, my right shoulder pressed into Cherrah’s left shoulder blade, and almost shooting at my own feet. Carl is squeezed tight between big Leo and Ty. I can smell Cherrah’s long black hair and I can picture her smile in my head, but I can’t let myself think of that right now. A shadow passes over my face and the legend himself, Lonnie Wayne Blanton, falls out of the sky.
The old dude is riding a tall walker—one of Lark’s Frankenstein projects. The thing is just two seven-foot- long robotic ostrich legs with an old rodeo saddle grafted onto it. Lonnie Wayne sits up top, cowboy boots pushed into stirrups and hand resting lazily on the pommel. Lonnie rides the tall walker like an old pro, hips swaying with each giraffe step of the machine. Just like a damn cowboy.
“Howdy, y’all,” he says. Then he turns and unloads a couple of shotgun blasts into the tangled pile of stumpers scurrying over the churned dirt toward our position.
“Doin’ great, bud,” Lonnie Wayne says to me. My face is blank. I can’t believe I’m still alive.
Just then, two more tall walkers drop into our clearing, the Osage cowboys on top raining down shotgun blasts that tear big gouges out of the oncoming stumper swarm.
Inside a few seconds, the three tall walkers have used their high vantage points and the spread of shotgun blasts to eradicate most of the stumper swarm. Not all of it, though.
“Watch your leg,” I yell up to Lonnie.
A stumper that’s somehow gotten behind us is climbing the metal of Lonnie’s tall walker leg. He glances down, then leans in the saddle in a way that causes the leg to raise up and shake. The stumper flies away into the underbrush, where it’s promptly blasted by one of my squad.
Lark is yelling again from somewhere up ahead, hoarse this time. I can also hear Jack barking short commands. Lonnie turns his head and motions to his bodyguard. But before he can go, I wrap my hand around the smooth metal shaft of Lonnie’s stilt leg.
“Lonnie,” I say, “stay back where it’s safe, man. You’re not supposed to put your general in the front line.”
“I hear ya,” says the grizzled old man. “But, hell, kid, it’s the cowboy way. The buck’s gotta stop somewhere.” He cocks the shotgun and ejects a spent cartridge, pulls his hat down, and nods. Then, fluid in the stiltlike tall walker, he turns and leaps over the six-foot-tall grass.
“C’mon!” I shout to the squad. We rush forward over the crumpled grass, striving to keep up with Lonnie. As we go, we see corpses through the stalks and, even worse, the ones who are alive and wounded, ashen-faced and mouths murmuring in prayer.
I put my head down and keep going. Got to catch up with Jack. He’ll help us.
I’m moving fast, spitting grass out of my mouth and concentrating on keeping up with the damp spot between Cherrah’s shoulder blades, when we burst into a clearing.
Some serious shit has gone down here.
For roughly a thirty-meter circle, the grass is trampled to mud and the field gouged up in huge chunks. There is only a split second to take in the scene before I throw my arms around Cherrah and tackle her to the ground. She falls on top of me, the butt of her gun driving all the air out of my lungs. But the foot of the spider tank whizzes past her head without knocking her brains out.
Jack is hunched over, trying to untie Lark from something. The kid’s gotten tangled up in his guide rope. Lonnie and his two guards nimbly leap around the bucking monster on their tall walkers, but they can’t get to a good spot to shoot.
“Y’all jump off!” shouts Lonnie.
The tank careens past, and in a flash I see that Lark’s forearm is twisted under the rope. Jack can’t get him free with all the bucking and heaving. If the spider tank were to sit still though, even for a second, the stumpers would climb on top. Lark is shouting and cursing and crying a little bit, but he can’t get free.
He shouldn’t worry. We all know that Jack won’t leave him behind. The word
Watching the stumpers, I notice they’re clustered on the knee joints of the tank. A thought tickles the back of my head.
“Lonnie!” I wave my arms to get his attention. The old man spins around and crouches his tall walker near me. He cups his ear with one hand and with the other dabs his forehead with a white hankie.
“They go for the heat, Lonnie,” I shout. “We’ve got to start a fire.”
“Start a fire and it won’t stop,” he says. “Might kill our stock.”
“It’s that or Lark dies. Maybe we all die.”
Lonnie looks down on me, deep creases in his face. His eyes are watery blue and serious. Then he sets his shotgun into the crook of his elbow and digs into the watch pocket of his jeans. I hear a metallic clink and an antique Zippo lighter drops right into my hand. A double R symbol is painted on the side, along with the words “King of the Cowboys.”
“Let old Roy Rogers help ya out,” says Lonnie Wayne, face breaking into a gap-toothed smile.
“How old is this thing?” I ask, but when I flip the thumb wheel, a strong flame spurts from the top. Lonnie has already wheeled his tall walker around and he’s corralling the rest of the squad while avoiding the out-of-control spider tank.
“Burn it, burn it, burn it all down!” shouts Lonnie Wayne. “That’s all we got left, boys! No choice.”
I toss the lighter into the grass, and within seconds a raging fire begins to grow. The squad retreats to the other side of the clearing and we watch as, one by one, the stumpers drop off the spider tank. In that same idiotic clambering motion, they jounce over the chewed-up ground toward the sheet of flames.
Finally,
Out of nowhere, Cherrah grabs my face with both hands. She pushes her forehead against mine, bopping our helmets together, and smiles wide. Her face is covered in dirt and blood and sweat, but it’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. “You done good, Bright Boy,” she says, her breath tickling my lips.
Somehow, my heart is beating faster right now than it has all day.
Then Cherrah and her flashing smile are gone—darted away into the grass for our retreat back to Gray Horse.
One week later, Gray Horse Army heeded Paul Blanton’s call to arms and mustered a force to march on Alaska. Their fearless response likely occurred because none of the soldiers truly understood how close they had come to utter destruction on the Great Plains. Postwar records indicate that the entire battle was recorded in great detail by two squads of military-grade humanoid robots camping two miles outside Gray Horse. Mysteriously, these machines chose to defy Archos’s orders and did not join the battle.
4. AWAKENING
