I Am Automaton: A Military Science Fiction Novel (27 page)

A few ID burst through the glass doors at the bottom of the stairs and began to make their clumsy ascent. But they were only functioning as they were supposed to. Peter knew this. And having
been trained in using them, he had some idea about how to deal with them on the receiving end.

His men moved with a purpose, and so
far, no one lost their cool. But the true test of their fortitude was about to begin. It wasn’t just the ID’s appearance that unnerved their prey. It was their slow, steady pursuit. They took just about whatever was thrown at them, and then they kept coming.

But Peter and his men knew how to slow them down, separate them, and dispatch them.

“Bring the first barbell.”

Carl and Barnes lifted it slowly and put it down on the inside of their barricade. The ID made their way up slowly, wheezing and growling, their glassy eyes fixed on their imminent meal and jaws snapping in anticipation.

“Steady. Steady.”

The group from outside rounded the landing and were beginning their ascent of the second staircase
, and the group from the hallway crossed the floor with the blood and intestinal juices of the two terrorists smeared across their faces.

The group climbing the stairs was almost all the way up and was reaching for the barricade.

“Okay, NOW.”

Carl and Barnes picked up each end of the barbell and hoisted it up above their heads. They leaned up against their side of the barricade.

“On three,” Carl grunted. Barnes nodded. “One, two, THREE.”

They tossed the barbell down on top of the approaching hoard, catching several of them and pulling them down to the landing.

There was the crunching of bones. A couple were silenced permanently, their heads crushed under the weight. The others kept coming, grabbing onto the overturned equipment.

Those maimed on the landing below were beginning to recover and pull
ed broken carcasses up the stairs with whatever limbs and appendages they had left.

At
least they thinned the herd, and that was the exact effect Peter was looking for. A couple of ID were climbing over the barricade.

Peter brought down his straight bar on the head of the first. He finished the job with a second blow. The one behind it almost made it all the way over, but Longo brought a free weight down on the back of its head, caving in its skull. As it reached out for him he struck again, and then one last time. Blood and grey matter splattered everywhere.

“Don’t get any on you,” Peter warned.

Peter saw they had mere moments before the next wave began climbing the stairs. He handed Barnes his straight bar,
and climbed over the barricade. Barnes reached over and handed the bar back to him.

He flew down the stairs, taking two at a time, and began whacking the heads of those ID dragging themselves up.

Carl saw that the next wave was making their way up and closing in on his brother. He climbed the barricade. “I’ll be just a moment.”

He extended his baton and descended the stairs, bringing it down on the skulls of crawling ID alongside his brother.

“Carl, what are you doing?”

“Helping my brother. Look.”

Peter looked up in time to see more ID reaching the landing.

“Let’s go,” he said as he smashed one lying on its back in the face.

Carl brought his baton down on one that grabbed his ankle, and then struck two more times. Peter grabbed him and they both turned around as undead fingertips clawed at their black suits. All of their suits were torn from their fall into the cenote, and the ID tracked their cuts and sweat.

They climbed the stairs as fast as they could, the ID right on their heels, and began to climb the barricade. They were half-way over when the second wave reached the top.

Barnes and Munger reached out and, grabbing their hands, pulled Peter and Carl back over. Longo and Hasbro had the second barbell hoisted in the air.

“NOW,” Peter yelled as he hit the ground on the safe side.

Longo and Hasbro tossed the next barbell over, sending several ID crashing down to the landing below. But this time there was more of them, and they were climbing over the barricade.

They fought some of them off, scoring deadly blows to heads with batons and free weights, but some made it over. Now the men were retreating.

A female ID had climbed on top of Mirabella, opening her mouth wide, flipping the top of her head like a candy dispenser. As she lunged for his face, he pulled out his rather large knife and placed it over his face pointing out.

She fell on the knife, pushing into it as if she was trying to swallow it whole, and the tip came out the back of her head. Viscous black liquid dribbled down the blade and onto his
gloved hand and wrist.

He rolled her then motionless carcass over and pulled his knife out of her mouth. Carl pulled him away from the
other ID stumbling off the barricade and dragged him back with the other soldiers.

Another young woman in her twenties was crawling over the top of the heap of exercise machines. She got her footing rather quickly and looked at Mirabella with imploring glassy eyes whitewashed with death, an uncanny smile on her face.

He found himself swimming in her lifeless pools gazing into him, unaware of Carl shouting for him to get up. He was tired, so tired, and she at that moment did not look so abhorrent.

He was jarred from his exhausted reverie as she sunk teeth into his upper thigh.

“NO!” Carl yelled as the company drew back. More ID began to climb the barricade and reach the other side. Some piled on Mirabella, ending him.

“Don’t look at their eyes!” Peter shouted.

They had never been on the receiving end of the ID, other than the orientation in the Labyrinth, so this was their first uncontrolled experience with the psychological component of being hunted.

There was the visceral revulsion of encountering an undead drone; the phobias of disease, germs, and being eaten
alive, but these drones were once human and still retained many human traits and expressions. It induced a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, where you were so tired of being pursued that you just as well joined them.

However,
the ID did no recruiting, and they took no prisoners. When they finished with you, there was nothing left to reanimate. Reanimation only occurred when they were interrupted from completing their ghastly purpose.

Peter looked around frantically. There was a workout room behind them, glass walled and mirrored on the inside, likely a room for classes.

“Into that room,” Peter ordered.

The men fell back, striking blows with whatever they had. Hasbro had misjudged a strike with a hefty free weight, placing his fist directly into a
middle-aged Asian man’s mouth. The ID chomped down on his hand as two others reached around and pulled him in, seizing his forearms in their jaws.

Longo lost it and ran to the railing. Before Peter could shout any protest, he flung himself off the second floor
in a final act of desperation.

He hit the ground, legs first, shattering his knee joints. As he laid there wailing in pain, two teenage boys began to shuffle their way over to him. He pulled out his baton, but he couldn’t see straight from the pain. The boys closed in on him, their faces wild with cannibalism.

Peter heard Longo’s shrieks as he entered the mirrored room. Barnes, Carl, Munger, and Smithe filed in and Peter closed the glass door, locking it from the inside.

There were now only five of them left, and Peter could not believe how his platoon was being victimized rather effectively by their own training.

The psychological effects were gradually setting in, the effect amplified by the mirrored walls. As the ID pressed themselves up against the glass, the reflections in the mirrors made it appear as if they were surrounded on all four sides.

Their banging on the glass, the hisses, and the moans prevented Peter from thinking straight. His men looked to him for guidance, for the glass would not hold the ID back much longer.

Carl saw his brother’s vexation, so he snatched Peter’s metal bar from his hands and smashed the mirror behind them. Then he did the same with the mirror on the wall to the left, and then on the wall to the right.

The act of Carl shattering the glass and the relief from the hideous reflections allowed Peter to come to his senses again.

“We gotta get out of here, Lieutenant,” Barnes pleaded, his face pale with terror.

If Peter didn’t come up with something quick, his men would descend into madness and let the ID take them.

Carl scanned the room. Suddenly, he was reminded of his experience with the Labyrinth.

“Pete, look up there,” he pointed to a rather large air conditioning vent.

Peter traced the likely path of the duct with his eyes, and saw that it stretched over the gym and out. “Barnes, give Carl a lift up to that vent.”

Barnes nodded and gave Carl a boost up. Carl pulled off the screen and tossed it aside. He stuck his head inside the vent, looked around, and then he pulled it back out.

“We can fit,” he shouted down, “but we should only go one at a time and space ourselves apart. The ventilation shaft won’t hold the weight of too many of us.”

“Carl, you first.”

Carl nodded, and he climbed in. The shaft was wide enough for him to squeeze in with some room to spare. With the power off, it was hot and stuffy. But Carl’s special suit helped, as it was designed to, and he began to commando crawl through.

“Smithe, you’re next,” Peter directed.

Barnes gave Smithe a boost, and Smithe peered into the shaft. He saw Carl crawling away. “He’s outside, Lieutenant.”

Peter looked outside into the gymnasium and above the heads of more than a dozen frenzying ID. He noticed a bulge in the ventilation moving slowly over the gym.

“Good boy, Carl,” he said to himself. Then he nodded to Smithe. Smithe hoisted himself up and into the vent and began his commando crawl across.

The ID were pounding on the glass. Silent spider webs were beginning to form, the cracking of the glass drowned out by the growling of hungry undead and the dull roar of the hurricane outside.

“Munger, now you.”

Carl barely heard the noises of the ID over his own echoed clamoring through the airshaft. The dust was tickling his nose, and he did his best to stifle a sneeze. But he heard several sneezes from someone a ways behind him. He wondered if the ID detected men climbing through the airshafts overhead.

Eventually he took a sharp right turn and a bit of a dip as he figured he likely cleared the gym and was somewhere in the hallway in front of the convention center.

He came to a fork, where a shaft went ninety degrees to the left. He figured that was the direction of those hundreds of terrified tourists, so he pushed on forward. He hoped he guessed correctly, as the space was too small to allow him to consult his Mini-com Multi-tasker, which was at the moment strapped to his leg.

Peter and Barnes were the only ones left. The ID had breached the glass, jutting arms and heads through the jagged holes, snapping their jaws while shredding themselves on the shards. However, they didn’t register pain and apparently hadn’t noticed the damage they were inflicting on themselves.

All they noticed was that their prey was thinning in numbers, an apparent realization that seemed to cause them to double their efforts.

“You next, Lieutenant,” Barnes said.

“No, you first,” Peter insisted.

Barnes wanted to argue, but the truth of the matter was that he was scared out of his mind and was relieved at Peter’s insistence that he go first. Who was he to question a commanding officer?

Peter laced his fingers together, palms up, and gave the massive Barnes a boost up. Barnes peeked into the shaft. He didn’t see anyone. He looked down at Peter.

“What about you?”

“I’m right behind you.”

“But how are you…”

“I’m right behind you,” Peter said, voice steady, tone insistent. “Get going. I have to wait until you get far enough away.”

Barnes nodded his understanding rather emphatically and pulled himself into the shaft.

Peter knew he wasn’t going to make it.

The ID were beginning to topple the glass wall entirely and push through the door. For once, he figured he wouldn’t be the last one left. He saw that Carl made it up and out, and his little brother would have to work with the other men to survive the rest of the way.

Since Tijuana
, Peter was resolved that he was going to die in action. It was the only decent way to go. To rejoin his old squad. To be with his friend, Apone. To silence his guilt.

Although he was tempted to take his own life on a few occasions, he knew fate would provide the proper venue for his ticket out of this world if he only waited.

No more nightmares. No more blame. Just peace.

Several ID made it fully into the room and began to close in on Peter. But just because he counted on dying
, didn’t mean that he had to go quietly. Oh, he planned to fight to the bitter end, exacting what hateful vengeance he had left on the drones right in front of him.