Apocalypse Machine (44 page)

“Get out of there,” Abraham said. “Go! While you still can!”

The possibility of survival sharpened Ike’s senses.

They were still surrounded, but the Crawlers seemed confused. They staggered about, twitching, black eyes tilted up at the disintegrating body they called home. Ike turned north. The Crawlers had closed in from every other direction, but the path north, along the plate’s seam was clear to the horizon.

He turned to Graham. “Take her. I’ll cover you.”

Mayer opened her mouth to protest, but found herself flung over Graham’s shoulder before she could say anything. She reluctantly handed Ike her weapon. He nodded in thanks and said, “Go!”

Thirty seconds into their retreat, Ike thought they would escape unnoticed, but then whatever state of confusion that had transfixed the Crawlers, faded away. The creatures attacked the bomb first, assaulting it with savage efficiency, tearing it apart and ensuring that it could never be repaired or used. Then, they turned toward the fleeing soldiers and charged.

“Here they come!” Ike said, but he held his fire. The handgun only held eight rounds. If he was lucky, he might be able to stop or slow down four of the creatures, but he didn’t trust his aim with a handgun while running. And he wasn’t about to stop.

Being Rangers, and survivors in the wild, Ike and Graham could run long distances while carrying heavy weights. It was a necessary survival skill. Sprinting wasn’t as easy. Sprinting for a mile pushed them to their limits. But stopping, or even slowing, meant a certain and gruesome death.

Ike fired two rounds, the second of them striking the nearest Crawler’s eye. It stumbled for a moment, and would have kept charging, if the creatures behind it hadn’t plowed into its backside. All three Crawlers thrashed and kicked, until they were free of each other. The rest of the horde widened out around them, looking like a football defensive line from the seventh circle of Dante’s hell. The line steadily closed the gap, their hard limbs clacking against the Machine’s shell.

Taking the two shots slowed Ike’s speed, and he found himself lagging twenty feet back. He poured on the steam, willing his legs faster. He looked down at his feet like he did when he was a kid, imagining himself as the Flash, watching his boots blur as he ran.
Faster
, he thought.
Faster!

Ike blinked when he saw what looked like smoke billowing out from his feet. For a moment, it looked as though he was running fast enough to set his boots on fire, but then he noticed the entire landscape was smoldering.

Not burning,
he thought,
coming apart.

The nano-particles were separating, top to bottom. If they didn’t reach the edge soon, they’d be falling through the creature’s insides.
If we make it that far,
he thought, and he glanced back. With a shout of surprise, he aimed the high caliber weapon back with one hand and pulled the trigger. The bullet punched through the leaping Crawler’s underside. It didn’t have the explosive force of the XM25’s ammunition, but a fifty caliber round mushrooms and breaks apart on impact. The hole in the creature’s underbelly was neat, but the damage on the inside was enough to topple the creature when it landed, right behind him.

The bullet had saved his life, but firing the weapon one handed had pulled the gun from his hand and broken his wrist. Defenseless, Ike turned to run, but he was hammered in the back. He sprawled to the ground, now covered in a foot-deep layer of loose nano-particles. If not for the mask over his mouth and nose, he’d be breathing them in. When the attack didn’t continue, he pushed himself up, using his good hand. He looked back. The dying Crawler had managed one last attack, but it was now curling up on itself.

When another Crawler leapt onto the back of the fallen creature and let out a shriek, Ike focused all his energy on running. Within seconds, he was catching up to Graham and Mayer at the same rate the horde was gaining on him.

“Nearly there!” Graham shouted.

Ike looked past them and saw the terrain drop away.

Graham leapt over the edge feet first, but he didn’t let go of Mayer.

Ike followed them over the side, diving forward, expecting to see a drop off to the ground. Instead he found himself falling down to a steep incline, which Graham was now sliding on. Ike fell past his fellow Ranger and struck the incline moving fast. His armor absorbed some of the blow, but instead of sliding down the side, he toppled, completely out of control.

As he spun, he saw flashes of lightning above. Black mist whipped away by the wind, and a horde of Crawlers plummeted toward them. The creatures had followed them over the edge, just as they had the first time Graham and Abraham had fled the Machine’s back. When Ike first heard the story from Graham, he thought it had been embellished, like the myths of old. But now he was living it, following in his father’s footsteps, down the side of a planet-destroying monster. Each impact brought jarring pain, but less than expected. The aberration’s side was coming apart as well, providing a cushion of loose nanobots.

Slowed by his tumble, Graham and Mayer slid past him. As they did, Graham shouted, “Here we go!”

Ike spun through the air, waiting for the next impact, but it never came. Instead, he fell through open air, his body no longer tumbling, but facing up, toward the raging sky, where Crawlers spilled out, surging for him. The nearest reached for him, its sharp-tipped limbs just inches away.

With a snap of fabric, Graham’s parachute deployed. Still clutching Mayer in his arms and legs, he glided away from the descending chaos.

Ike let out a roar and swiped at the creature with his knife.

The blade passed through it, as though he was cutting through air. And then, as one, the horde burst into dust and was carried away.

Ike dropped his knife, reached up to his chest and pulled the ripcord for the parachute built into his armor. The chute deployed a moment later, but he didn’t feel the sudden slowing that comes from an open parachute. He looked up and found the open chute whipping through the wind, limp and useless, shredded, by the Crawlers’ final attack.

He soared past Graham, who had Mayer clinging to him like a baby monkey. Her parachute would be shredded as well, something Graham had no doubt realized before committing to the jump.

“Ike!” Graham shouted, his voice clear in the comm. But there was nothing else the man could say. They were miles in the air, but there was no way to stop his fall.

Ike saw the Osprey fly overhead and bank away.

His eyes moved to the Machine, its body coming apart, its glowing insides flickering and going dark.

“I see him,” came the voice of his father. “Twelve o’clock, Ike.”

Ike’s eyes widened as he saw a human missile cut through a cloud of nano-dust and plummet toward him, arms outstretched.

“Lose the chute, Ike,” Abraham shouted.

Ike slapped the button on his chest, freeing the useless parachute. It billowed in the air above him while he fell even faster. But as the ground rushed up below him, his father, a man turned legend, rocketed down above him, no trace of fear in his eyes, hands outstretched.

“I’ve got you, son.”

47

Abraham

I’m terrified.

I thought I had lost my son, leaving him as some kind of sacrifice to the Machine. But the bomb failed. Now, despite that failure, the ancient world-destroyer is coming apart. The moment I saw it, I understood what was happening, and ordered the Osprey to turn back.

But now we’ve arrived too late to pick up the surviving members of my team. From high above, I watch them tumble down the Machine’s side, sliding through clouds of nanobots the consistency of dry flour, despite the rain. The Crawlers chase them down the side, as mindless in their pursuit of prey as ever.

Go,
I think, willing them to fall faster.
Go!

Graham and Mayer reach the edge and fall into open space. I hold my breath. When Graham’s parachute opens and slows his and Mayer’s fall, I breathe a sigh of relief.
They’re going to make it.

Then Ike spills over the edge, a Crawler reaching for him, inches away. If he pulls his chute now, he’ll—

The Crawler bursts into black dust.

The horde follows its lead, like miniature Machines, disassembling into their nano-components.
They were part of the whole
, I realize, like some kind of external, defensive pruning system, or perhaps just the caretakers for all those shed eggs.

Nanobots swirl into the air, and for a moment, I assume it’s the wind. They twist and curl, sliding into the air and merging with larger clouds, all of it moving forward, and then down to the ground. The Machine’s head is nearly gone. Its underside flickers, the brilliant light fading as it comes apart. But it’s not the wind carrying the dust away. The rain, and the wind carrying it, is blowing in the opposite direction. The nanos are still in control, still operating under some ancient function.
But to what purpose now?
Is it attacking in some new way, or abiding by its promise? Ike lives, but not because either of us was unwilling to make the sacrifice.

The moment Ike’s chute deploys, I know he’s in trouble. It doesn’t billow out. It just flutters, limp and useless, torn apart. Before I’ve fully registered my actions, I’ve leaped from the back of the Osprey as it flies over the scene.

Graham’s voice booms loud in my ear as my son falls past him. “Ike!”

“I see him,” I say, leaning forward into the fall, gaining speed. It’s been a long time since I did this, but I’m far more calm than all of my previous sky dives, and I have no trouble angling myself toward my son. As I come in from above his head, I say, “Twelve o’clock, Ike.”

When our eyes meet, I actually smile. Miles in the air, rushing toward my plummeting son, while a city-sized monster disintegrates behind me, and I’m smiling.

Because he’s been spared.

And I know that I can save him. I might have been the king of nerds once upon a time, but now,
this
is who I am.

“Lose the chute, Ike” I say. The tangle of flaccid canvas and twisting ropes could keep my parachute from functioning right, and then I’ll just be a very confident stain on the ground. When the parachute flutters away, yanked in the opposite direction of the nano-clouds, I reach my hands out.

“I’ve got you, son.”

I flare my arms and legs wide, increasing the drag on my body, trying to match Ike’s speed. We fall together, nearly within reach of each other, trying to get closer without colliding too hard. Our fingers touch, but a gust of wind separates us, pulling us apart.

“Dad,” Ike says. His voice carries a tone of finality. And it’s not hard to know why. We have just seconds until impact.

“I’m not letting you go,” I tell him. “We both live, or we both die. Now get your ass over here!”

We both lean in, diving toward each other. Before we collide, I open my arms and bring my legs down. Ike slams into me with enough force to break a few of my ribs, but I barely notice them when I feel his arms wrap around me, linking behind my back. Then his legs wrap around me, link and squeeze.

“Hold on!” I shout, and when the grip around my body is so tight that I can’t draw a breath, I pull my parachute’s ripcord. The chute rips out and deploys, filling with air and slowing our descent. Ike slips a little, but he holds on.

At the mercy of the whipping winds, we’re tossed from side to side, and then slapped against the Earth three times, before coming to a stop.

On the ground, at the center of a wide open field.

Alive.

On my back, wracked by pain, I reach up and yank my helmet and facemask away. Water pelts my face, disguising my tears. Ike doesn’t move when I take off his helmet and facemask. “Ike,” I say, fearful that he didn’t survive the impact. “Ike!”

He smiles. “Remember when we used to wrestle like this? How much Mom hated it?”

“That’s because we knocked the perfectly folded laundry on the floor.” I grunt. “You were a lot smaller then.”

“Sorry,” he says, and he starts to move away.

I hold him tight, not wanting to let him go.

He rests his forehead on my chest. “Thanks for saving me.”

“I don’t think it was me.” I know he’s referring to the parachute maneuver, but he should have died a few minutes before that, too. Did the Machine honor his sacrifice, by sparing his life? Did that seemingly insignificant act of expiation apply to the rest of humanity?

“Heads up,” Graham says, his voice coming through the comm still in my ear. I look beyond Ike and see Graham and Mayer descending toward us.

Ike and I roll apart in separate directions, giving Graham room to land, which he does, while holding Mayer, without falling over.

I’m about to call him a show off, when I notice the epic display taking place in the sky above us. I climb to my feet and watch in silence as the others join me.

The Apocalypse Machine is almost wraithlike now. Its massive form is still present, but sifting apart in great churning clouds of black, stretching down to the ground, into Yellowstone. The now-dark form is backlit by near constant streaks of lightning, as though the entire natural world is aware of the Machine’s passing and has come to bid it farewell. Or perhaps mourning its savior’s passing. Without the Machine, the world would have become a wasteland, and now the whole world will flourish. And mankind...we’ve been given a second chance.

“You all want to get out of the rain?” the Osprey pilot asks.

I turn my eyes upward into the now lashing rain propelled by the Osprey’s rotors, as it descends to the field.

Graham removes his helmet and lets it fall into the grass. “In a minute.” He helps Mayer remove her helmet, too. She’s injured, but not mortally. Ike and I join them, watching the Machine peel itself apart, sliding down into the ground itself.

“How is this possible?” Graham asks.

“I wasn’t sure fifteen years ago,” I tell him. “And I’m still not.”

“But you spoke to it.” Mayer asks. “Another vision?”

I nod. “The deal was simple, my son for the world. I thought he had to detonate the bomb.

“I tried,” Ike says.

“And it seems our willingness to do so was enough.” I smile at the dark cloud that only slightly resembles the Machine’s massive form.

“Then it’s over?” Ike says. “We beat it?”

“Over? I think so.” I pat my son’s shoulder. “But beat it? No. Not a chance.”

“Then what’s it doing?” Mayer asks.

“Returning to the volcanic hell from whence it came,” I say. “Where it will watch, and wait, and the next time we, or our ancestors a thousand generations from now, threaten life on Earth again, it will return.”

I turn toward the Osprey and see the pilot watching us. I wave him down and squint my eyes against the water as the big aircraft descends, rotating so its opening rear hatch is facing us.

Ike steps forward, raising his hand in a salute. “For Edwards, Felder, Gutshall and Wittman.”

Graham joins him, offering a salute as well, and naming the members of his squad who died on our first mission, ending with, “Baker, Tremblay and Somers.”

“And Zingel,” Mayer adds, naming the Mossad agent we left behind on the day we escaped Israel.

“For Holly,” I say, surprised when I start to choke up. “Philip, Diego and Kiljan.”

We finish the salute to our fallen comrades and then enter the Osprey in silence. As we lift off and start east, knowing we’ll have to land within a hundred miles to refuel, I watch the last of the nano-cloud slip into the Earth and disappear.

The world was evaluated and found wanting. But it seems we’ve also been forgiven. If not forgiven, at least given a second chance.

If we can survive the trials ahead.

Our world is now full of Scion, hungry and happy to claim the planet as their own.

I don’t know if the human race will survive.

But I know we’re going to try, and if the Machine is true to its word, my family will one day be like grains of sand on a beach.

How did it know?
I wonder.
How
could
it know? That I would survive? That I would be here, at the end of its time on Earth, able to offer my son as a sacrifice?

Long before I come up with an answer that makes sense, my thoughts drift to my family. To Mina and Bell. To Ishah and my grandchildren. We’ll be home before morning, and then for the first time in fifteen years, Hope will be more than just the name of my boat.