Horatio sat back. “You make me want to disable my emotional subroutines.”
“I have that effect on robots,” Will quipped.
He drove onto the far left side of the street, past the three lanes reserved for incoming traffic, and weaved between the debris. As the garage came up on the right, he slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard right. The semi moaned as its right wheels threatened to lift off the ground, but the vehicle made the turn mostly without issue. The backend fishtailed slightly, but when the wheels caught on debris the trailer portion promptly straightened.
Will stepped on the accelerator and proceeded directly toward the dark garage entrance ahead. The door had long since fallen off its hinges, and the semi plowed straight over it. As the advance party had reported, the opening was big enough to fit the semi and its cargo, but just barely. Rhea could hear the grinding of metal-on-metal as the top portion of the tank scraped against the lower edge of the entrance.
“Not much clearance there,” Will commented.
The sound repeated, more softly, as the two pursuing tankers followed. According to the sensor data shared by the other vehicles, no combat robots remained attached to the trailer portions. But if there had been such robots, they would have been scraped off by the tight confines of that opening.
There were no lamps on inside. Will activated the vehicle’s headlamps, and two cones of illumination lit the way forward. LIDAR filled the dark spaces on either side with wireframes representing former parking stalls. The rusted-out frames of the occasional vehicle appeared on that LIDAR—all the intact vehicles would have been looted for parts by salvagers long since.
Will came to a halt. “Out!”
Rhea opened the door and leaped down. She raced for the door to the stairwell, which was only visible as a rectangular wireframe on the LIDAR ahead.
Horatio and Will joined her, along with Chuck and Renaldo.
“Talk about the ride of the century!” Renaldo said. “I don’t think I’ve had this much excitement since… well, the bioweapon attack on Rust Town!”
“At least you did something this time out, Stick Arms,” Chuck said. “Rather than hide inside your house and grovel. Though I suppose ducking behind the wheel of an AI driven semi is about the same.”
“Hey, you were hiding in a semi, too!” Renaldo said.
“At least I fought back,” Chuck said.
“Bro, if I didn’t fight back, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Renaldo told him.
Rhea reached the stairwell, but heard a strange sound, so she raised a hand and stopped. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
A distant keening filled the air, growing in pitch.
“Bombers!” Will said.
Eyes widening, Rhea kicked in the door and leaped through. The others barreled inside after her.
Thanks to the LIDAR, she saw that the steps leading down to the next floor were blocked by a collapse. However, there was another exit directly ahead, where a door sat askew its hinges. Beyond it, the rectangular corridor of the pedway system beckoned.
She approached that doorway, but as she stepped through, the cement floor shook, and she heard a terrible bang.
The rooftop directly ahead caved in, sealing off the pedway system.
“Crap,” Rhea said, backing away.
“So much for that part of the plan,” Will commented. “Time for the fallback point?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go deeper at the moment…” Rhea said. “I just want to get out of here!”
She spun around. The floor continued shaking; bangs and thuds of varying volumes filled the air.
“They’re really pounding the daylights out of the city, aren’t they?” Chuck said.
Rhea hurried to the stairwell entrance. Fearful of a collapse, she wanted to rush into the open and make her way outside the building that very instant. But leaving the garage was the worst thing she could do right now. Out in the open, those bombs would make mincemeat of her and her companions. And if not the bombs, then the bioweapons. Sure, it was possible the rest of the garage would collapse, but at least they had a chance while they were still inside. Out there, only death awaited at the moment.
Giving in to his fear, Renaldo tried to rush past her, but she latched onto his shoulder and hauled him back. “Stay here!”
“At least we should take shelter in the semis!” Renaldo insisted.
But she gripped him firmly. Something wouldn’t let her set foot into that garage. Call it instinct.
The headlamps were still active on the semis, illuminating the floor and ceiling in front of the vehicles, and casting the surrounding area in a dim light. As she watched the roof shake, she thought about what was happening. Either those bombers had been present all this time and were simply holding off on deploying their bombs so as to not risk damaging the water tankers, or they had only just arrived. Whatever the case, the mayor had taken a calculated risk, hoping that the garage would protect the tankers from the bombs dropping nearby. He was right, it did.
But it didn’t stop the bioweapons from breaking inside to seek cover.
She heard a strange slurping sound to her left. Glancing that way, she saw the entrance enlarge as a Tasin melted through with its sucker, sweeping that disgusting mouth in a circular pattern. The creature slammed into the surface occasionally, pressing the sucker hard into the closest edge, where it remained for several seconds, the acid eating a dome shape into the concrete, until the creature could push itself backward and continue the circular motion—Rhea had the impression it was struggling against what must be a press of Tasins behind it.
Sure enough, when the creature had made an opening big enough for its body, the bioweapon was unceremoniously shoved forward and stumbled inside on those stilt-like, avian feet, its giant claws clattering on the cement floor. More bioweapons frantically flooded inside after it, trying to escape the carpet bomb slaughter. More than a few of them were squealing, though the most frantic
