Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 101} Monuments and Mausoleums

There it was. Only a couple hundred meters ahead of me. The mall. I had no idea how far behind me the poachers were, or if they’d even give chase once I was out of sight. I needed a place to hide, to lie low and wait for nightfall so I could slip away into the murky twilight, back to my buggy, and put this whole goddamned misadventure behind me.

The mall was glorious. Three levels of glass and steel scrambling toward the sky, riddled with balconies, draped in walkways, lonely statues pointing into empty vestibules, frozen escalators left to serve only as stairs. In its day, it must have gleamed like a diamond on the finger of an effervescent newlywed. But now it was blasted to shit, crumbling, shattered, walls falling over, scrap metal haphazardly welded together to form barriers, gun lines. Someone had made their last stand here, thought somehow that this temple to commerce would protect them, that the supplies inside would allow them to outlast the barbarians at the gates.

There were sniper nests and hidey-holes, rubble and refuse everywhere. Walls blackened by explosions, floors stained with three-decade-old blood, ladders and staircases cobbled together from whatever anyone could find. Entire slabs of marble and concrete pulverized, collapsed, others still dangling precariously like they could, and would, meet the same fate at any moment. There had been war here, leaving behind only shadow and ruin. Anyone who wanted to disappear here could, into bombed-out caves that were once shops or dimly lit grottoes that had long ago been food courts rimmed with vaulted glass ceilings.

Like I said. Glorious.

There were places like this scattered all across the continent. Graveyards. Sites still littered with bones and wrecks and mummified corpses, all left right where they’d fallen, the useful bits long since picked clean; the rest left in the open to rust or rot. There was no need for us to bury the dead, no need for cleanliness in places that would be dust long before we had any use for them. Flesh would decay, metal would corrode, and one day they would be gone. No need to speed that process up or hide it from sight.

Respect for the dead is a human notion meant to imply that a life has meaning. It doesn’t. Once you’ve watched an entire world wither away and die after tearing itself apart piece by bloody piece, it’s hard to pretend that something like a single death carries any weight whatsoever.

I slipped in through the rusted frames of front doors that had long ago lost their glass—and into an atrium that featured a bone-dry marble fountain peppered with bullet holes. Light streamed in through blown-out skylights, painting a pale blue glow across the floors, casting charred shadows along the edges of the deeper blackness. There was so much glass in the fountain that it sparkled like water in the dim light, so much on the ground that it sounded like walking through giant piles of leaves, even as I tried to creep through it quietly. Had I not gotten here first, there wouldn’t be a soul in the place that wouldn’t know exactly where I was. So it was perfect for an ambush of my own. My pursuers would make the same noise.

I made a quick scan for Wi-Fi signals, checking to see if there was another poacher inside communicating with his buddies or, worse, the forward scouts of an OWI, and found nothing but empty frequencies. Static. A good sign. The place was dead, every bit the graveyard it appeared to be. I stepped wide over a pair of withered husks—brown shoe leather that was once man and woman, their bodies splayed out several feet apart, arms extended, fragile hands with brittle fingers still intertwined. Two lovers who had met their end together, only to become nothing more than terrain.

I’d been here before, picking through wrecks, so I already had the place mapped out and knew of several great hiding spots. But I kept my eyes peeled for booby traps. Scavengers loved to leave presents behind—sometimes to protect a stash or in case they needed to cover an escape, other times to take out careless citizens for later retrieval. As big as this place was, there was no telling how many snares or explosives or EMP ’nades might be rigged up in the rubble. So I trod lightly, avoiding any suspicious piles.

I crept farther and deeper into the mall, headed toward an escalator that wound up and around to the two levels above. Its dusty metal gleamed weakly in the diffused light, bullet holes and pulse marks riddling its side, frayed wiring and gears exposed, naked through the larger holes. There was a deathly silence to the place, a hollow quiet in which every tiny sound echoed. For a moment it seemed like the loneliest place left on earth.

Then there came the cracking of stepped-on glass, two stories up and behind me to the left.

Shit.

This was a trap.

And I’d blundered into it like a fucking amateur.

The time for running was over; it was time to fight back.

I ran toward the sound, my legs pumping as hard as they could, glass shattering beneath my feet, echoing through the halls like wind chimes in a hurricane. My foot hit the first step of the escalator, launching me up the corroded metal staircase, its steps frozen in place, its grooves orange and brown and green with years of damp time. The rubber handrails along the side were dried out, cracked, the black sun-bleached to a soft gray, coming off in chunks as I grabbed hold, crumbling to dust in my hands. It took only seconds to reach the second floor and only seconds more to reach the third.

I could hear the staccato of heavy footfalls, the CLANK CLANK CLANK of metal on concrete like a slow jackhammer just round the corner ahead of me.

We were seconds from seeing each other.

The shot of a pulse rifle streaked by with a hissing shriek, blowing apart the railing and glass of the overlook behind me, scattering debris down into the atrium three stories below. It missed me by a country mile. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a good shot.

It lumbered out from the shadows, gun in hand, a T-series Laborbot—as big as a bear with arms like tree trunks and hands that could crush stone. Far stronger than me, but slower, less agile—stainless-steel plates welded to every inch of its body and metal spikes on the joints of its elbows and knees. It was clear why the other poachers had left it here; the bot was too slow to give chase, too heavy for a light buggy to maneuver with; built to survive construction accidents and long falls, able to take a hit from all but the most powerful of rifles and keep on coming. I once saw one of these models get hit by a tractor trailer, only to immediately get back up and start repairing the truck.

I was being charged by a rhino and it was about to tear through me like a raindrop through tissue paper. It didn’t have time to fire again. Running at me was the only play it had left.

I would get one shot at this, and only one shot, before it likely punched my head clean off.

The Laborbot hunched over, positioning itself to spear me with a body tackle to my midsection, its massive bulk focused into a battering ram that would hit me with the force of a speeding truck.

I jumped.

I launched into the air, kicking with all my might, trying to land my foot just right.

I was just high enough.

It was just low enough.

As I sailed over its body I could hear my foot shatter the glass of its eyes, the crunch of its optics being crushed to powder. Between its momentum and mine, my foot kicked it like a slug from a .45. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to pay for that later. Though my foot was solid titanium, a hit like that was going to tear the shit out of my servos.

But without eyes it wasn’t going to see me strip the gun from its grip or know to duck when I fired.

The gun was in my hands before it regained its footing.

The first shot tore its head from its neck.

Blind and deaf, it flailed and swung, its tremendous arms smashing half the concrete out of a nearby pillar before punching a hole straight through the floor.

I backed away slowly, taking my time, waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. There was going to be no salvaging this thing, no way of neutralizing it while saving anything worth a damn. So I shot to kill.

I pulled the trigger and it went down midswing, the momentum of its punch spinning it around before it crashed to the ground, headless and twitching, its actuators struggling with their last few seconds of power. Then it was gone. My shot had caught it right between its armor plates, frying the entire system; its insides smoldering, melting, soft black smoke wafting gently from its cooling vents.

People used to describe the smell as sharp, pungent; thick and heavy on the air. It was one of the few things I envied about them. I had no idea what death smelled like. Maybe if I did, I would feel genuine pity for this thing.

I walked over to what remained of its head, its metal faceplate blasted inward, wires and chips cooked, the heat still fusing them into a pulpy mess of plastic goo, and I picked it up, cradling it under my arm like a football. This old T series still had one job left to do.

I didn’t know this Laborbot, had never met it. It was new to the area, probably a refugee from the Pacific Northwest. Things were getting bad out there and it wasn’t uncommon for some of the escapees to push this far east. Sadly for this citizen, it had pushed just a little too far.

From outside I could hear the crunch of tires on gravel and the soft whine of an electric engine powering down. I only had a few moments left to take position.

I crept through broken glass, debris, and shattered concrete, headed toward a nest I knew of in a store two doors away. The cast-iron security grille was rolled down across the front, a man-size hole crudely cut out of it with a blowtorch. A desk had been bolted to the floor beyond the makeshift door, making it impossible for anyone to charge through. You had to climb slowly, carefully, past jagged protrusions that could take a limb off or sever some circuitry if it snagged you.

But the nest offered a clean shot at the landing at the top of the escalator and had a view of a large mirror reflecting a section halfway down. I would see them coming, but they would only see me in time if they knew where to look. I waited unmoving by the door, just beyond the security grille, listening for the moment they walked in, finger trained just above the trigger, ready to move into position and open fire with a millisecond’s notice.

Glass crunched beneath their feet, just as it had mine. I tried to parse out how many poachers there were by the sound of their footfalls, but the audio was distorted by all the crunching glass and I could make neither heads nor tails of it. Three? Four? Maybe six? There wasn’t an algorithm for this. I made a mental note to see if I could get someone to code one for me later. If there was a later.

The footsteps stopped, leaving only the crisp soft cracking of solid bodies shifting on glass. “Bulkhead?” a voice with a surprisingly soft tenor called out. That didn’t bode well. Soft voices in that particular tone were never a good sign. “Bulkhead?” he asked again.

I looked down at the severed remains of the T series sitting next to me on the desk, and though I dared not make a sound, I thought that you? silently to myself. It didn’t answer. It just stared at me with its lifeless, shattered eyes.

“He’s gone,” said the soft voice. “Brittle got him. Fan out.”

Brittle got him. Shit. They knew me. They fucking knew me. This was a setup all along.

There’s nothing quite so demoralizing as someone who knows you trying to kill you.

I was pretty certain now who exactly that soft, purring voice belonged to. Voice boxes like that were manufactured for bots designed to deal directly, and compassionately, with people. And this particular box belonged to only four different Simulacrum models—among them Simulacrum Model Caregiver.

It was my voice, but masculine. Authoritative setting. Used for administrative work or dealing with veterans.

There was an old HS-68 series running around these parts by the name of Mercer. Mean cuss. Crafty, wily, dangerous as they came. And the parts that ticked in me were the very same that ticked in him—every last resistor, transistor, and chip. I was worth more to him than all the other wrecks and brainsick wanderers out here combined.

We gave each other a wide berth, each keeping an eye on the other, for obvious reasons, but he’d never made a move before. Not like this. If it was Mercer, and he had it in for me, I was dead for sure. I could take him one-on-one, maybe, but not if he had backup.

Metal feet left the glass behind, clicking next on marble, then clanking on metal. There were two, no, three of them, one of whom had made it to the escalator. They no doubt knew where the aptly named Bulkhead had lain in wait; they had to assume that was as good a place as any to start. And that was only a few meters away from where I now crouched. There was no reason to play coy.

I lobbed the Laborbot’s head out into the mall, arcing it just so as to let it sail over the railing and plummet three stories down into the river of glass below. The clangor of it smashing against the floor resounded like a firecracker in a tin can, echoing before it triggered an eruption of gunfire all trained at its epicenter.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” cried the soft-spoken bot in an even softer tenor. Even at the height of excitement he seemed cool, controlled, unflappable. “Stun. Only stun. What the fuck are you shitbricks thinkin’? She’s no good to me blown to pieces.”

“What do you think we’re thinking, Mercer? Anyone who can silence Bulkhead isn’t someone we want shooting back.”

Dammit. Mercer. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

But who the hell were these other yahoos that he’d saddled up with? Mercer didn’t have a crew. And he wasn’t known for poaching. He was a tracker, a regular old cannibal like me. This was all out of sorts.

“Cool your jets there, pal. Bulkhead’s pulse rifle had a battery with three, maybe four shots left of charge in it. He had to take at least one shot at Brittle if not emptying the whole battery at her.” Then he spoke a bit louder. “You hear that, Britt? That pulse rifle of yours is just about out of charge. You still thinking about giving it a go?”

He waited for a moment, and I let the quiet answer for me.

“Yeah,” he said. “Smart. Stay quiet. Don’t make a sound. Maybe we won’t find you. Maybe you found a better hiding place. Maybe you already snuck out the back and are beating feet across the Sea back to wherever you hid your buggy. But I doubt it. I think you’re still here. I hope you’re not up in that blowtorched hidey-hole behind the security gate on the third floor, clutching that burned-out rifle for dear life, hoping it’ll save you. ’Cause it won’t.”

The feet continued up the escalator, the metal sounding like it was a solid titanium frame. Not heavy like the Laborbot. More like something military grade or one of those old Peacekeeper models. I could hear Mercer’s accomplice shoulder his pulse rifle, the clang of its stock against his back, and then the slow digital trill of his stunner powering up.

And as I lay there on the third floor, in that blowtorched hidey-hole behind the security gate, clutching that rifle for dear life, I realized just how badly outplayed I really was.