Chapter 2

Chapter 2

For hours, Ambrose has made steady progress south along the abandoned highway, Sheep and I tailing by half a kilometer, behind and above him. We avoid the road, instead taking the mountain trails I’ve come to know from my foraging. Our route is far less exposed than the abandoned highway, and gives us a view of the valley below.

My high vantage point is how I discover the warbot is a couple of kilometers back, making its way toward Ambrose. I don’t see it often, but twice I catch sunlight glinting on its visor as it passes along the painted median of the ruined road. Nothing with that kind of weaponry has any need for secrecy. Even though the warbot is following Ambrose’s trail accurately, he has managed a fast enough pace that his enemy is slowly falling behind. Even when Ambrose has to scale the rubble of a fallen overpass, the warbot never gets closer than a kilometer or so. That’s no cause for premature celebration: the warbot might be going about two-thirds of Ambrose’s speed, but of course it will never slow. It will never sleep. It will catch him when he rests.

As the afternoon wanes, Ambrose takes a pause to remove his pack and boots, to rub his feet. From on high, I watch and silently scold. No. Stopping to rest is how you die.

I scramble my way down the mountainside, Sheep making her surefooted way behind me. The tree line breaks halfway down, which means I’ll have to run down a bald rocky stretch. Ambrose might notice me, but what will he do if he does? Run? That’s what he’s already doing. And why should he run from me? I’m the one who left him.

As soon as I’m down below the level of the clouds, the air warms and the trees return to obscure the land. I can no longer see Ambrose—or the warbot. Newly blind, I lead Sheep to the last spot where I saw Ambrose. A small clearing, calm and empty. Unhitching my bow from my shoulder, an arrow nocked in the string, I take the most probable path onward. It’s the one I’d have chosen if I were him, down across a suburban road with moss-covered ruined houses on either side, toward a bridge over a burbling river. A hint of shelter.

Sure enough, Ambrose is at the bridge’s start, emerging from a long-abandoned grocery, a can of food in his hand. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I see disgust on his face—it’s not something he’d have chosen to eat, no doubt. He starts across the bridge.

This is a terrible idea. First, if the warbot catches up, he’s an easy shot, with no cover. Second, warbots will avoid floating over water when possible because a perfectly aimed shot from a disabler could possibly sink them. We don’t have a disabler, of course, but the warbot doesn’t know that, so fording each stream in a place without a land bridge is our best option for getting some distance between us.

Us.

I break into a sprint. “No!” I shout. “Not the bridge!”

Ambrose startles and falls into a crouch. I continue to barrel toward him. “I don’t have time to explain. Follow!”

Sheep and I race past him, and down the ravine to the riverside. I don’t sense any movement behind me—for now. “The warbot tracks our locations through hypersensitive hearing, not smell, which means that the river won’t make it lose us,” I call over my shoulder. “But the EMP dust means it can’t be receiving outside instructions, and if it’s autonavigating then it will track us to whichever part of the river we try to cross, and then it will find a crossing it’s willing to make.”

Of course, the warbot might have heard what I just said.

I don’t get a response from Ambrose, but I do now hear him scrambling behind me. Good enough. I’d much rather not have to talk this through out loud anymore.

We’re at the lowest point in the valley, forested hills rising sharply on either side. Though passing along the riverbank means easy treeless going, it also means the sun sets earlier. After about an hour we’re sloshing through stony water in the half-dark, shivering with chill. I raise my hand to call us to a halt.

Ambrose stops before me, his face a mask in the dim light. “Welcome back,” he says. He gives Sheep a hearty rub. She wriggles in pleasure.

“I’m sorry I surprised you. But you destroyed my new life, and it made me angry,” I say quickly. Ambrose blinks back at me. Isn’t this how he likes to talk, expressing feelings and such? I rub my mouth. “But once we learned it was a warbot they sent after you, I knew that escape was our only possible plan.”

Ambrose looks up from petting Sheep. “That’s the same conclusion I reached,” he says.

“This river is a natural boundary. If we ford here, and the warbot goes around, which I think it will, then we might have bought ourselves some time.”

“Then let’s get moving,” Ambrose says. He removes his backpack, lifts it over his head, and makes his way into the muck at the shore, then into the eddies that soon lead to surging water.

I follow, impressed despite myself. Sheep paddles beside me. She’s clearly not pleased with the swim, but isn’t about to be left behind.

The moon above, the patter of rain on the slow river, the dark currents of the water, the sound of Ambrose ahead and Sheep beside me, the need to focus on what’s under my feet, the sore tension of my laden arms high over my head, give me a feeling of purpose... and strange peace. Perhaps a mission forward can bring as much harmony as a retreat.

In the corner of my eye, a flash.

I whip my head to look at the bank behind us. An arc of white-blue light, then nothing, just the blackness of the valley’s early night.

“Dive!” I yell.

I remember how quickly the dogs were vaporized. I don’t have time to check that Ambrose heard me. I let go of my pack and swim deep into the cold water.

I have no idea if being underwater will save us from the warbot. But I do know that the one time Dimokratía resistance fighters were able to fend one off, Singapore in 2464, had been an amphibious engagement.

The current is strong. I force myself not to stroke, so my oxygen will last longer, letting the water push me down the river. Where doesn’t matter, so long as it spits me out far from my starting location.

I wish I could hear more than the rush of the current. I’ve caught a strong stream, slipping past slimy logs and mossy stones, hoping I don’t impale myself on rebar or a broken branch. My lungs start to demand air just as I strike shallows, my belly skating on the soft muck of the shore. I pull forward so that only my head is out of the water, facing into soft dead leaves. I want to heave and gasp but I make myself breathe quietly.

Flashing lights, thudding vibrations. The same din as fireworks.

I turn onto my side, facing the commotion. I’m back on the near shore, and the warbot is hovering over the middle of the water a few hundred yards upriver, firing nonstop. Its bullets strike trees and ground with enough force to send up bright clouds of sparks, to fill the air with the tangy smell of burning wood. With each round of firing, a new glow fills the dark sky and illuminates the tendrils of smoke that rise from the assault.

The warbot is shooting in enough directions that it must not have detected Ambrose—it’s just firing on any biological signatures it detects, any hints of animal movement, indiscriminately mowing down ducks and voles and praying mantises. Or sheep. Or humans.

The warbot pauses, then moves downriver a few yards and begins a fresh round of firing.

I wince. But I must not be in range yet, because I’m still alive.

Frantically, I look for any sign of Ambrose or Sheep. Nothing. They’re either dead already at the bottom of the river, or they somehow got away, or they’re trying to keep as still as they can, like I am.

I wait for the warbot to begin a fresh round of firing. Once it’s done, I slink forward a fraction and stop when the warbot begins scanning again. I creep farther forward during the next round of firing.

I’m in a thicket at the shore now. I get to all fours.

The latest round of firing stops, and I pause.

The firing doesn’t begin again.

I allow myself to look back toward the warbot. It’s changed its strategy, and surges toward me above the river’s surface, fast enough that the top of the cylinder is ahead of the bottom half, the sparking electrified middle expanding between them like a stretched spring.

The warbot slows once it reaches the stretch of river closest to my feeble hiding place. It stops, and begins its latest scan.

Training be damned. No breathing tricks will keep me alive at this distance. I break into a mad crashing run, slamming through branches and thorny vines, slaloming around trunks, hurling myself into the tree line.

I hear creaking, crashing thuds behind me as bullets rip into vegetation. Shrapnel strikes my back, and chunks of wood hurtle past me. I’m beamed across the back of my head, strong enough that it feels like a punch. A bloody chunk of wood pitches into the ground before me.

Somehow I’m still alive, somehow I can still stagger forward, somehow I have a body that can tumble into the muck, exhausted and depleted. I can’t get to my feet in the invisible mass of bush and vine that’s trapping my ankles, but I do manage to wriggle onto my back to see behind me, where through the dark canopy of trees I can just make out the river.

There, the warbot has risen high above the water, its blue electric middle brighter than ever, casting glowing metallic light over the eddies of the river. Like an avenging god from some silent primal era of magic and might. It flies to the bridge, where it positions itself in the very middle.

Is Ambrose somehow alive, and hiding on the bridge?

Is the warbot out of bullets, and printing more? Or preparing to detonate?

I’ve pushed my body to its limits. I want to flee, but I can’t get myself to move. I can only watch. Watch my end come to meet me, or watch the murder of my new companion.

The warbot ticks and rotates. It doesn’t attack.

Motion in the cloudy, starless sky far above, something passing in front of the glimmering light in the background. An automated craft.

I can’t see it, just the negative space as the magnetic vehicle blocks out parts of sky. But I hear its low hum as it hovers over the warbot. I see the warbot shrink, the electric glow disappearing as its two halves rejoin into a sphere with a heavy click. The sphere catches traces of reflected light, enough so that I can track it rising to meet its transport. The hum intensifies, and then the craft speeds away.

The warbot has left.

It must have killed Ambrose, and had no directive involving me.

I collapse into the cold muck.

I don’t know how long I’m there until I hear a bleat, shuffling sounds, and a lick along the side of my cheek.

At least someone else survived.