Broken Things (14 page)

“When I find that kid I’m going to shut him down myself,”
she muttered aloud.

Seriously, her stomach rolled from the stench. The windows
didn’t seem to make much difference. She glanced in the rearview mirror to
check her make-up. As she adjusted the mirror, a reflection of something behind
her caught her eye. Dark eyes in a corpse-like face stared back at her, its
mouth frozen in a rictus grin, teeth filthy with dried blood.

She managed a brief scream before the thing lunged forward,
hands grabbing her neck and choking off breath. She dug her fingers between her
skin and his hands, fighting to break its hold. How could the thing be so
strong? It was unreal! Futilely she struggled, but it yanked her back hard
against the seat. She couldn’t pull her eyes from the thing’s, the frozen
expression of its face gave it the appearance of morbid glee, and its fingers
tightened a little more.

Its breath and deathly rasp came loud next to her ear, as it
pulled her head back toward its own. She felt the blood fight to pump to her
head, pounding in her temples. She couldn’t seem to keep her tongue in her
mouth.

With one more powerful yank, it dragged her over the seat by
her neck. She struggled, but it held her easily with one hand as it reached
down on the floor with the other. It returned with her hammer. It raised it
over her face as it sniffed the tool. Terror swept over her as she realized that
it had no intention of choking her. Fate was cruel, she remained conscious for
what felt like an eternity as the thing left her unrecognizable.

8

The basement was unfinished. Aside from a few dusty
cardboard boxes, a single bed, a folding chair, furnace, and a water heater, it
was empty. Josh wandered through the room trying to find something he’d missed,
maybe a window he could crawl through. Nothing broke the completeness of the
concrete foundation there were no windows to provide any hope.

The promise of home seemed as far away as ever. Despite
Norman’s promises, Josh had the sinking feeling that he didn’t plan on helping
him, and that he didn’t want to be here when the man returned. He tried the
door several times that first hour, in hopes of it magically unlocking itself,
but eventually gave up.

His arm throbbed horribly. It hurt from his fingertips clear
up into his back. It had grown worse, and he couldn’t move it at all. It hung
limply at his side.

A single bulb lit the room, providing plenty of light in the
middle, but left the rest of the room in deep shadows. Thick cobwebs plastered
the walls and ceiling, and the few spiders he saw were large enough to
encourage him to give them plenty of space.

The day passed slowly by, and though he grew tired, he
didn’t dare rest. He needed to be awake and alert. When he heard a door open
upstairs, the hair on the back of his neck rose. He quickly made another loop
around the basement, but there was nothing more to discover. There wasn’t even
anything he could use as a weapon. Tears welled up in his eyes. He had no place
left to run.

He could hear footsteps as someone moved across the floor
boards from the main floor. Something was wrong, they didn’t sound normal.
Drag
Thump. Drag Thump. Drag Thump
.
That isn’t Norman
, he realized,
despair flooding through him,
it’s the monster
.

Maybe it didn’t know where he was. But how did it even know
he was in this house? If it had tracked him across the city, it wouldn’t be put
off by a locked door. Briefly he considered hiding, but that left him feeling
more vulnerable. It reminded him of the tent. But this time, he wouldn’t shut
down. He wished he could, he wanted to be broken. It had become his only
defense against the world.

Drag Thump
. It moved across the floor above him.
Drag
Thump
. It knew where he was, and it knew how to reach him.
Drag Thump
.
Maybe it didn’t have the key! Maybe it didn’t need one. Nobody had locks inside
their houses that required keys.

He realized only one option remained for him. He ran up the
wooden steps to the door and grabbed the handle with his good hand. If the
monster hadn’t known where he was, it did now, his own feet sounded way to loud
as he’d ran up.

He gripped the doorknob as tightly as he could and waited.
He adjusted his grip a few times, feeling his palm grow sweaty against the
metal. He heard the monster approach the door and stop. Seconds dragged by as
he waited. What was it doing? He listened, trying to separate the sound of the
creature from the sound of his rapidly beating heart. Yes, he could hear it.
Its breathing was still loud enough to hear through the door.
No, it’s
sniffing,
he thought,
it’s smelling me
. 

The door handle clicked in his hand. The monster had
unlocked it. The door handle twisted in his palm. He squeezed it, but his hands
were too slick to maintain a good grip, and his other hand was useless. The
door pulled away from him, threatening to take him along with it, and he let it
go, running back down the stairs.

In the light of the now open door, he saw the silhouette of
the creature. It leaned awkwardly against the doorway. The smell of the thing
instantly filled the room. It placed one hand on the banister and the other on
the concrete wall and guided itself carefully down the steps.

Josh didn’t believe for a second that the creature’s
difficulty meant it was weak. It still wore the guard’s uniform, but blood and
gore covered it. The monster paused and reached behind it to pull the door
shut. It descended the steps slowly, eyes locked on him.

Josh backed across the room until the walls prevented him
from going any further. The monster reached the bottom of the stairs and took
its first irregular step into the room.

They both heard the front door, the monster looked up but
Josh didn’t. He kept his eyes on it. If he looked away the thing would be on
top of him in seconds. It had to be Norman upstairs, but that gave him little
hope.

He could hear Norman bustle about, moving around the
upstairs. The monster listened briefly and turned its attention back to Josh.

It raised a bloody finger to its lips and said, “
Shh
…”

 It turned and walked beneath the stairs, hiding itself
away in the shadows.

Less than a minute later the basement door opened and the silhouette
of Norman filled it. He seemed somehow less imposing than the monster, though
he walked down the stairs with purpose. Josh wanted to warn him that it was in
the basement with them so he’d let him go, get him out of the house, but Norman
crossed the basement rapidly and grabbed his broken arm.

Josh cried out as the man yanked the already damaged limb,
but Norman ignored his pain and said, “What the Hell did you do to this place?
It smells like a charnel house.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Josh shrieked. The pain in his arm
felt as though it were about to be torn off.

Norman shoved him to the floor. “You’re making this
difficult on yourself,” he said, “I trusted you to wait for me, not to cause
any trouble. But you couldn’t do that, could you? You’ve only brought this on
yourself. You’ve got to be punished, but first you’re going to tell me what you
did. Get up.”

The pain brought tears flooding down his cheeks. He tried to
shield his arm as Norman lashed out with a kick, and took it in the side. He
decided not to warn the man about the shadow slowly approaching him from
behind.

“I said get up.” Venom dripped from his words as Norman
kicked him again. Josh took it in the hip. It hurt, but now he didn’t care. The
creature stood directly behind the man and he still didn’t notice.

Josh steadied himself on the wall and got to his feet,
wincing. He shot the man a glare and said, “There’s someone behind you.”

Norman paused in mid-motion. He’d barely begun to reach for
Josh as the words sunk in. He turned, coming face to face with the monster.
Norman screamed. One hand of the monster grabbed him by the hair, the other
grabbed his groin. Norman couldn’t struggle but snarled and spit like an angry
cat. His anger turned to shrill screams as the monster jerked its lower hand
away without letting go. Cloth, flesh, and blood splattered in an arc across
the floor.

Josh didn’t stick around to watch the rest. He darted past
them and ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Nothing in the world
could make him look back. He could still hear Norman’s faint screams as he ran
out of the house, leaving the door wide open. He didn’t stop running until he’d
left the nightmare many blocks behind.    

9

James rubbed his temples. When had life gone so inexplicably
wrong? He’d received the call an hour ago. Tamara hadn’t been answering her
calls. They’d tracked the company vehicle, only to find her dead. His boss,
Gabe, hadn’t provided any details about her death, except that she was one of
two bodies found at the location.

First Gus, now Tammy
. When you lived forever, you
rarely thought about death. He hadn’t attended a funeral in years. Suddenly,
something came along to remind you of your own mortality. There would always be
drunk drivers, disillusioned psychos that couldn’t fit in to society… hell,
even earthquakes. They just rarely affected him.

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the adult android
had killed her too. But Tammy had been tracking the boy, Josh. He typed the
kid’s registration number into his tablet and immediately retrieved the kid’s
location. Finding him would be the key to finding the rogue machine. It wasn’t
his responsibility, but they’d dumped it all in his lap. It wasn’t even his
department. They’d made it clear it would be his job if he didn’t get the boys
back, and the adult android had been added into the equation.

At the bottom of his locker buried beneath old tool belts
and mostly forgotten tools, he pulled out an odd-looking gun. He held it
reverently. He had no doubts that it would still work, after all, he’d built
it. To anyone else it looked like an oversized home-made toy gun that belonged
in a low budget science fiction movie, not in the locker of an engineer. He’d
built it back in college as a weapon of mischief.

He’d never used it on an android, but he knew what the
effect would be. The electro-magnetic pulse that the gun generated would
permanently ruin its computer brain. He’d used it in the computer lab his
sophomore year with very successful results. Its focused burst of 5000 volts of
electromagnetic radiation could take out a computer twenty feet away. He would
probably have to be closer to the android. It didn’t appear anywhere as near as
sophisticated as what law enforcement currently used, but it would be just as
effective.

He left Kidsmith and mounted his tablet to the dashboard of
his company truck and hid the gun behind his seat. Fifteen minutes later, he
found the boy wandering down a side road. He walked slowly, dragging his feet,
head hung low, and clutching an arm that dangled uselessly. James slowed down
and pulled up beside him, rolling the window down.

“Josh?”

The boy turned his head. He had sad, haunted eyes. James had
never seen such in a kid before, at least not in the androids he worked with.
Something had happened to him since he’d left Kidsmith, he hadn’t heard about
this kind of damage. The only thing in Tammy’s report mentioned internal damage
in the head.

Josh’s eyes locked with his for a few seconds before
drifting to the logo on the side of his pick-up. His expression changed to
panic and he took off, running as fast as he could. “Oh Hell,” James muttered.
He gave the truck gas and chased after him. The boy could run. James would’ve
hated to have to chase him on foot. But he also didn’t have a destination. He had
nowhere to run to.

“Josh, wait,” he yelled, “I’m not going to hurt you! I just
need to talk.”

The boy slowed, and eventually came to a stop. James noted
the obvious pain the boy felt. He hadn’t stopped so much from trust, but from
the obvious discomfort that his arm caused. Josh reminded him of a starving,
beaten dog that had given up hope in humanity. That probably wasn’t too far
from the truth.

“Come on,” he said, leaning over to open the passenger door,
“”Get in. I’ll take you some place safe.”

Josh took a step back, well away from the vehicle.

“Come on, Josh. Tell you what, I’ve got some candy in the
glove box. Would you like that?”

Josh shook his head slowly, and took another step back. He
twitched like he was about to run again. James raised an eyebrow in wonder.
That had always worked, every kid loved candy. It was part of their program.

“Wait,” James said, “I just need your help. You don’t have
to get in, but I’m hoping you can tell me what happened. I’ve lost two friends
today, Gus and Tamara. Do you know what happened to them?”

Josh stopped backing up, and looked around. The sun was
beginning to set, turning the sky a brilliant purple, red, and orange. He
didn’t want to chase the boy in the dark. Seemingly satisfied that nothing was creeping
up on them, Josh shrugged. “I suppose the monster got them.”

“Monster?” James asked, “You mean the man? The broken one
from the mountains?”

“It may look sort of like a man,” Josh said, “But it’s not.
It’s after me. It kills everyone.”

“Is that who hurt your arm?”

The boy shook his head. “No.” James waited for the boy to
continue, but he remained quiet.

“Well I saw it,” James said, “When Tammy brought it to us.
It’s just an android, a robot. I need you to trust me. If it’s after you, I can
stop it. But I need your help to do that. And maybe I can help you.”

“I don’t think you can help me.”

“Josh, buddy, I’ve got a degree in mechanical engineering
and robotics. I can fix just about anything. Give me a chance. Besides, where
are you going to go? It’s getting dark.”