Robopocalypse

I force myself to move toward Cherrah. Over my shoulder, I catch sight of Nine Oh Two clinging to the mantis’s back like a shadow as it twists and claws. Then Houdini’s intention light blinks to green. The mantis drops to the ground, legs quaking.

Yes!

I’ve seen it before. The lumbering machine has just been lobotomized. Its legs still work, but without commands they just lie there and shake.

“Form on Houdini!” I shout. “Form up!”

Houdini crouches in the muddy clearing, surrounded by gouged-up chunks of earth and pieces of trees that have shattered like matchsticks. The spider tank’s heavy armor has been scratched and sliced everywhere. It’s like somebody dropped Houdini into a fucking blender.

But our comrade isn’t beaten yet.

“Houdini, initiate command mode. Human control. Defensive array,” I say to the machine. With a groan of overheated motors, the machine crouches and mashes its cowcatcher into the ground, digging an indentation. Then it slowly pulls its legs in together and hikes its belly up about five feet. Armored legs locked together over a crude foxhole, with the body of the spider tank now forming a portable bunker.

Leo, Cherrah, and I clamber underneath the damaged machine, and the Freeborn squad takes up positions in the snow around us. We settle our rifles on the armored leg plates and peer into the darkness.

“Carl!?” I shout to the snow. “Carl?”

No Carl.

What’s left of my squad huddles under the soft green glow of Houdini’s intention light, each of us realizing that this is only the beginning of a very long night.

“Fucking Carl, man,” says Leo. “Can’t believe they got Carl.”

Then a dark shape comes running from the mist. Sprinting at top speed. Rifle barrels swing to intercept it.

“Don’t fire!” I shout.

I recognize the silly humping gait. It’s Carl Lewandowski and he’s panicked. Instead of running, the guy is skipping. He reaches us and dives into the snow under Houdini. His sensory package is gone. His tall walker is gone. His pack is gone.

About the only thing Carl still has is a rifle.

“What the fuck’s going on out there, Carl? Where’s your shit, man? Where’s the reinforcements?”

Then I notice Carl is crying.

“I lost my shit. I’m losing my shit. Oh man. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

“Carl. Talk to me, bud. What’s our situation?”

“Fucked. It’s fucked. Beta squad went through a plugger swarm, but it wasn’t pluggers—it’s something else and they started getting up, man. Oh god.”

Carl scans the snow behind us frantically.

“Here they come. Here they fucking come!”

He starts firing sporadically into the mist. Shapes appear. Human sized, walking. We begin to take incoming fire. Muzzles flash in the twilight.

Helpless with a shredded cannon, Houdini makes due by turning its turret and shining a spotlight into the gloom.

“Rob doesn’t carry guns, Carl,” says Leo.

“Who’s shooting at us?” shouts Cherrah.

Carl is still sobbing.

“Does it really matter?” I ask. “Light ’em up!”

All our machine guns fire up. The filthy snow around Houdini melts from the superheated barrels of our guns. But more and more of the dark shapes come shambling out of the mist, jerking from bullet impacts but still walking, still firing on our position.

When they get closer, I see what Archos is capable of.

The first parasite I see is riding Lark Iron Cloud, his body riddled with bullet holes and missing half his face. I can make out the glint of narrow wires buried in the meat of his arms and legs. Then a shell blasts his belly open and the thing spins like a top. It looks like he’s wearing a metal backpack—scorpion shaped.

It’s like the bug that got Tiberius, but infinitely worse.

A machine has burrowed into Lark’s corpse and forced it back up. Lark’s body is being used as a shield. The decomposing human flesh absorbs energy from incoming bullets and crumbles away, protecting the robot embedded inside.

Big Rob has learned to use our weapons and our armor and our meat against us. In death, our comrades have become weapons for the machines. Our strength turned to weakness. I pray to god that Lark was dead before that thing hit him. But he probably wasn’t.

Old Rob can be a real motherfucker.

But looking at my squad’s faces between muzzle flashes, I see no terror. Nothing but clenched teeth and focus. Destroy. Kill. Survive. Rob has pushed too far, underestimated us. We’ve all of us made friends with the horror. We’re old chums. And as I watch Lark’s body shamble toward me, I feel nothing. I only see an enemy target.

Enemy targets.

Weapons fire tears through the air, filleting bark from the trees and smacking into Houdini’s armor like a lead rain. Several human squads have been reanimated, maybe more. Meanwhile, a flood of stumpers pours in from the front. Cherrah focuses her juice in economical spurts on our twelve o’clock. Nine Oh Two and his friends do their best to stop the parasites coming at our flanks, darting silently between trees.

But the parasites won’t stay down. The bodies absorb our bullets and they bleed and bones shatter and meat falls but those monsters inside them keep picking them back up and bringing them back. We’ll be out of ammo soon at this rate.

Thwap. A bullet sneaks under the tank. Cherrah takes it in the upper thigh. She screams out in pain. Carl crawls back to patch it up. I nod to Leo and leave him to cover our flank while I grab Cherrah’s flamethrower to keep the stumpers at bay.

I put a finger to my ear to activate my radio. “Mathilda. We need reinforcements. Is anybody out there?”

“You’re close,” says Mathilda. “But it gets worse from here.”

Worse than this? I speak to her between bursts of gunfire.

“We can’t make it, Mathilda. Our tank is down. We’re stuck. If we move, we’ll get… infected.”

“Not all of you are stuck.”

What does she mean? I look around, taking in the twisted, determined faces of my squad mates bathed in the red glow of Houdini’s intention light. Carl works on Cherrah, wrapping her leg. Looking out into the clearing, I see the smooth faces of the Arbiter and Warden and Hoplite. These machines are the only thing standing between us and certain death.

And they aren’t stuck here.

Cherrah is grunting, hurt bad. I hear more anchor blasts and know that these are parasites forming a perimeter around us. Soon, we’ll be another squad of rotting weapons fighting for Archos.

“Where is everybody?” asks Cherrah, jaw clenched. Carl has gone back to firing on the parasites with Leo. On my side, the stumpers are gaining momentum.

I shake my head at Cherrah and she understands. With my free hand I take her stiff fingers in mine and hold them tight. I’m about to sign a death warrant for all of us and I want her to know I’m sorry but it can’t be helped.

We made a promise.

“Nine Oh Two,” I call to the night. “Fuck it. We’ve got this covered. Take Freeborn squad and get your ass to Archos. And when you get there… fuck him up for me.”

When I finally have the courage to look back down to where Cherrah lies hurt and bleeding, I’m surprised: She’s grinning at me, tears in her eyes.