Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (19 page)

I shook my head, “Can’t say that I do.”

“Well, according to myth, Pelops challenged the King of Pisa to a chariot race, and if Pelops won, he’d be granted the King’s beautiful daughter’s hand in marriage; but if not, he’d be put to death like the thirteen suitors before him.”

“Tough break.”

“Yeah, but before the race, Pelops had the King’s chariot sabotaged by replacing the bronze linchpins with beeswax, and when the wax melted from the heat of the axles, the wheels flew off and the King was dragged to his death by his own horses.”

“Yes, that sounds very Greek,” I nodded, “but how does that help our situation?”

“What I propose isn’t nearly as elaborate a task as the linchpins, but it does make me wonder ... ” She took a step toward me, whispering slightly, “Just what would happen if the government no longer had shiny chariots with which to dispense their wrath?”

“Now I see where you’re going with this.”

She turned back to the robot, extending an arm to it. “Zeke, give us an eye into the city.”

The robot obliged. And there, standing over a pool of emerald light, Alice began to reveal her plan to us. It was during her thorough presentation that I was informed—quite to my dismay—that the mission would require all three of us to enter the city on this night.

“Too dangerous,” I said multiple times, but Alice had none of it. It was time for action, in her eyes, and there seemed to be nothing I could say to convince her otherwise.

“Just send the robot,” I proposed, and Zeke hadn’t objected, but Alice vetoed it completely.

“With or without you,” she told me, and I knew it to be a solid fact. Alice had her arms crossed over her chest, locked in place for the entire conversation, when I noticed a marking on her weapon. With her body doused in the hologram’s emerald gloom, a variety of neatly carved lines became magnificently visible atop the weapon’s aluminum casing. It seemed she’d used a Dremel tool to etch an intricate title onto the device.

The radiant label read: Hellburner.

I was sure the name had held some sort of historical significance, but wasn’t much in the mood to press her for further facts just then. Survival had been at the top of my priority list, as it had been since the moment Alice and I stumbled upon one another that fateful afternoon. And this night would be no different.

The kitten I’d rescued from the hyena enclosure ten years before was now returning to the hunt when the stakes had never been higher. But this time she’d not be coming as a kitten, rather a resurrected lioness ... with a godforsaken laser-gun strapped to her arm.

I
said a small and insignificant prayer before triggering the horizontal freight door from the cavern. The night spilled its blackness into the void as I placed my hand on the throttle of my Kawasaki, thrusting the engine to life. It hummed upon its awakening, but proved to be quite silent beneath the decibel-reducing modifications that Alice and I accomplished. I trusted that bike as if it were a separate entity; it had a way of communicating the differences in terrain through a slight resonation in its throttle. I could distinguish these vibrations as if it were Morse code.

This bike and I—machine and man—had meshed together through years of post-apocalyptic hardships, and although it had not been uncommon for a man to gain an intimate connection with a machine at some point during his modest stretch of life, our union was still something quite unique.

It was unions like these, throughout the ages, that prompted the first breed of man to refer to their machines as female, in order to justify such an unorthodox relationship. Well, this Kawasaki was no exception, and I’d learned its curves and eccentricities just like any other devoted partnership.

But, as I felt the additional weight of Alice climbing on and wrapping her arms around my midsection, I felt that hard-earned relationship between a man and his machine beginning to wane. My father once told me to never try to handle two women simultaneously, for they are far too complicated a creature to be handled so lightly, and—there in the cavern—I’d found that to be true on so many levels.

The ride would be different tonight. I could feel certain facets of the motorcycle’s personality changing with the addition of Alice.

“Alice,” I started, wishing to test her resolution one last time, but then thought better of it. “I hope you’re right about this,” is what I decided to say instead.

“I am,” she assured me.

To split the darkness with a beam of manufactured light would have been wonderful, but this was a stealth mission; and I’d long since removed every last light-emitting-diode from the Kawasaki. Because Zeke and Alice were both well equipped to handle themselves in total darkness, it was up to me to bridge that biotech gap between us. Without the aid of a wireless satellite or the eyes of a nocturnal animal, I was left with my night vision goggles.

Dropping them down and switching them on, the night suddenly became a more visible version of itself. I could now see Zeke standing directly to my right, shaking its limbs and rolling its head atop its shoulders.

The robot, unlike Operation Diner Extraction, was going
au naturale.
Since it would be venturing out on foot this time, Alice wanted to be sure the robot would not overheat during the strenuous journey into the city. I was curious just how fast the thing could actually run; even Alice wasn’t quite sure, but we knew we’d find out soon enough.

We made our way out of the underground garage, shut the horizontal door behind us, and opened the gate to the rest of the world. It was then, without notice, that Zeke passed us to begin its run to the city; I locked the gate and managed to catch up within the following minute.

I clocked the robot going about 40 miles an hour—very impressive—as I eased up on the accelerator to keep from passing the kinetic entity. Due to its connection to Arcturus, it was imperative that the robot be the first into the city. The satellite offered us a much safer passage, and choosing not to use it would only prove to be foolish.

It wasn’t long before the first spires began to rise out from the distant earthscape, and familiar landmarks whizzed past to hint at our near arrival—the first of a seemingly endless assemblage of tattered buildings and dusty gas stations, looming over us as we moved farther into the city.

“Right there,” Alice said, extending her arm so I could see. “Park it in that alley. We’ll do the rest on foot.”

I nodded and pulled the bike into the narrow, between-building corridor as Alice leapt from the back of the motorcycle to tend to Zeke. She placed the back of her hand against several parts of its body.

“How do you feel?” she asked it. “Any thermo faults?”

“No,” Zeke said, “this body is better ventilated than the one I was programmed for.”

“That sounds like a compliment to me, Alice,” I said.

“I heard, Miles. Thanks, Zeke. I’m glad you like it.”

Zeke nodded and led the way out the other side of the corridor. As we entered the street, glimmers of light blazed white-hot in my night vision. I removed my goggles to discover that these blazes were controlled flames, reaching lazily skyward from thick, metal trashcans. Their light had been sufficient enough to illuminate the street and the buildings which lined it.

They were more than decent replacements for the streetlamps that had once done the job on a nightly basis; and whose skeletal remains still stood, towering over us like the upturned ribcage of some massive and extinct beast. Busted doors and shattered windows were highlighted as the light danced and flicked off each telltale surface. I looked to Zeke, who did not appear to be worried, despite the obvious clues that we were nearing government territory.

“Nothing, Scraps?” I whispered.

“Still clear,” it reassured me.

We made our way deeper still as I grew increasingly anxious with every step. I looked to Alice, who had been adjusting the potentiometer of her Hellburner, keeping its trigger snug beneath her index finger.

“You set that thing for stun?” I asked jokingly, but Alice didn’t appear to be in the mood for banter. She shushed me, thrusting a hand to her lips, and then pointed out a variety of places where there lurked the potential of an adversary. But each space was deserted, and every alley void of inhabitants.

“There is no one in the immediate vicinity,” Zeke said.

The robot kept its weapon—one of three pistols it acquired from Dingy Pete’s—idly by its side, and I tried to take that as another cue to relax a little. There seemed to be no present danger, as all of the members of the government remained out of sight, even for Arcturus. The majority of them must have been tucked away within (what Saint John had called) their
sanctuary
, while others of less importance had gone back to their designated homes for the night.

Directly to our right, slumped upon the asphalt with all its rounded edges, was City Hall. The basic structure had somehow survived the most catastrophic points of the war, its wide and spherical design proving to be quite beneficial. Although the building itself had been a bit of an eyesore for the locals, the best part about the building, cosmetically, was the art piece that was resurrected during its costly reconstruction.

The presentation was of three bronze statues, all of which were similar in design. The first statue depicted a young boy, maybe seven, doing a cartwheel atop the grassy-green lawn in front of the building’s large front doors. The second, a girl of same age, had joined the first in play with her metallic pigtails stretched out toward the ground—an infectious and copper-toothed grin spread across her face. The final statue, another boy, along with the two before, was engaged in a similar gymnastic maneuver. The three of them—as a whole—were designed to cast a lighthearted spell over all who witnessed them.

At least that’s how it once looked.

The lush-green grass had long since faded, withering to clumps of dry and thirsty earth, and the children atop it— only two of which still stood—were no longer symbols of free spirit or youthful energy. Instead, they reminded those left of what had once been.

The girl’s perfect and eternal smile, due to either the accumulation of dust and shadow, or simply from the place of my own perception, appeared more like a pain-ridden grimace. And her body, once frozen in a place of pure and untouchable joy, looked more like her final moment, just before an inevitable and life-shattering impact.

The statues represented death, at least in my mind, and I knew I’d never see them any differently. It was a fitting reminder of just how bleak we’d allowed their fates to become—the ghosts of our children, immortalized for as long as we could stand to bear it.

I bent down to wipe the filth from the girl’s face, but most of the muck remained fastened to her bronze features.

“Hey,” Alice poked me in the shoulder, “it’s just a statue. You can get nostalgic some other time.”

I nodded, rising to my feet and regaining my wits.

“There,” Zeke said as we rounded City Hall, pointing its cylindrical finger out past the trash-lit alleyways.

And that’s when I saw them, parked in single file on the adjacent street, the gleaming-white SUVs the government used to terrorize the people.

Alice was right—to rid them of their chariots would be a devastating blow, but there were countless other vehicles the government could acquire in their places. So this was more of a message than an actual attack—a swift kick to the nest in order to reintroduce a number of them to the fear they’d surely forgotten, letting them reevaluate their status on this social food chain.

As the robot crossed the street and slipped beneath the first of several orderly and unguarded vehicles, I discovered everything Alice had said about the government was true. It was their own unhindered pompousness that allowed this offensive outing to be so easily executed.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Alice advised, somehow able to detect my thoughts, “we’re not out of here yet.”

I agreed wholeheartedly. If there ever was a time to get boastful, this wasn’t it. We were still in the thick of things, and there remained plenty that could go wrong.

Zeke emerged from the first car only to dive beneath the second and continue its work. The robot proceeded swiftly yet silently, yanking out and dismantling vital pieces of each vehicle’s drive system, then setting it on the floor like some dark and greasy mechanical organ. I could hear the trickling of oil as it dripped slowly, forming small but steadily increasing puddles of thick and slimy liquid.

Alice kept Zeke covered with her Hellburner, shifting her eyes about the complex, ready to torch anyone who so much as stepped outside.

We’d taken cover behind a car, its bumper pressed against the slanted pole of a street sign. On that bumper was a sticker depicting a collection of various cultural symbols. Those symbols, when matched to their closest resembling English letter, created a very clever word:

COEXIST

The irony of it actually hurt my stomach.

There was then a sudden rustle behind us as Alice and I twisted our weapons around to face it; but all we’d found was a cat, one that scurried away the instant its presence was known, bolting back through a curtain of darkness and off to some unknown haven.

“Complete,” Zeke said as we turned to find the robot standing beside us, its forearms coated with automotive lubricants.

“Great,” I said. “Let’s hit the road then, huh?”

“Almost.” Alice held out her hand. “There’s one last thing.” She aimed the Hellburner at one of the complex’s concrete and windowless walls, pinning it with a beam of scarlet light.

“What are you doing?”

“Our calling card,” she answered, “or perhaps our
scrap signal,
as you might call it.”

I watched as she carved a variety of circles into the wall, leading each delicate slope with superhuman accuracy. Once each line had met its beginning, and every shape completed, the finished piece was simply amazing; and I was beyond certain that the precision and perfection of her work could be matched by no creature, at least none of this earth.