Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) (38 page)

Flash flash pause.

Flash flash flash pause

Flash pause.

Flash pause.

“You clever fucking girl,” Cavalo breathed.

Morse code.

I SEE YOU I SEE YOU I SEE YOU

Cavalo grinned.

He shouted, “
Hey
!”

The Dead Rabbits turned as one.

Cavalo aimed for the one near the front. The one carrying the grenade launcher, resting on his shoulder, the rocket pointed haphazardly toward the building.

He pulled the trigger.

The Bakalov recoiled in his hands.

The acrid tang of smoke filled the air, sharp and biting.

Some of the Dead Rabbits shouted out in warning. Some tried to scramble away. Others barely had the time to realize what was happening, the grimacing smirks on their faces barely fading.

Two things happened almost simultaneously.

The grenade struck the Dead Rabbit in the chest.

His finger jerked on the trigger to the rocket launcher.

The grenade from the Bakalov exploded with a dull clap. There were bright flashes of red amongst the falling snow as most of the Dead Rabbits were knocked off their feet, landing with blood spilling.

The rocket fired toward the building, shattering a window. A split second later, a heavier explosion rattled around them as the rocket hit the back wall of the building and ignited. The wall blew out, sending concrete and metal falling into the reservoir below. The roof of the building partially collapsed, plumes of dust and smoke rising up into the winter sky.

“Holy fucking shit,” Richie said, sounding slightly hysterical.

And then it began.

Dead Rabbits started to pick themselves up off the ground. Others were screaming, blood pooling around them. They held their wounds and rocked back and forth, trying to staunch the blood.

Aubrey didn’t wait. She was a good girl, and Cavalo wished she was anywhere else but here. He wished she was doing anything else than what she did. The moment the smoke drifted, the moment he knew her line of sight cleared, she barked an unintelligible order and opened fire. Alma and Hank followed suit while Bill pulled a dark object from his pack.

Lucas and Bad Dog were already working their way around the side of the container, away from the gunfire and flanking the Dead Rabbits. Richie seemed frozen, jaw dropping as the building began to collapse further, sending more debris falling into the water below.

Cavalo grabbed him by the back of his neck, pulling him down as they were almost in the line of fire. He squawked loudly, skin sweaty and trembling. Cavalo pushed him to follow Lucas and Bad Dog around the back of the containers, the twang of bullets ricocheting off the metal.

Twenty-four. There were twenty-four Dead Rabbits, he kept telling himself. Lucas and Bad Dog had stopped near the opposite end of the container, Lucas peering around the corner, fingers tapping an erratic beat on the ground. Cavalo left Richie in the rear and huddled up with Lucas and Bad Dog.

Boomsticks
, Bad Dog said, growling audibly.
Boomsticks and blood and bad guys. I bite them now. I bite them, MasterBossLord.

“Not yet,” Cavalo said, running a hand over Bad Dog’s snout. “Almost.”

He leaned over Lucas’s shoulder, following his gaze.

Dead Rabbits were screaming and moving, orders being shouted and disregarded. He counted ten, maybe ten and a half bodies lying on the ground. He didn’t know whose detached leg belonged to whom, or where the owners had gone.

The Dead Rabbits had regrouped quicker than he would have thought. A handful took cover in the center building, the one on the end all but collapsed completely now. Others hid behind another decrepit truck that looked the same as the one they’d seen farther down the dam. They started firing back with ancient rifles and guns that billowed black smoke.

Aubrey rolled quickly to the right, off the edge of the container. She landed somewhat gracelessly, but she regained her balance and dodged behind the wall of metal. Hank was shouting something at Bill, while Alma fired with deadly precision, the head of a Dead Rabbit snapping back, blood arcing and splattering against a concrete wall.

And through it all, the robot remained still.

Watching.

Waiting.

They had this. They
had
this, and all it would take was Cavalo remembering the
fucking words
and—

I gave a man butter and then killed him by driving a nail through his head.

“It’s time,” he said, and Lucas looked up at him, eyes wild and angry. “I have to get to SIRS. Now.”

He grabbed Cavalo’s hand and gripped it tight. Cavalo looked down at him.
You can’t die
, Lucas said.
Not now. Not after all of this. You can’t. You can’t.

Cavalo nodded. “I won’t.”

Lucas almost smiled, deep and bitter. They were not the type of men who could make such promises. And yet they made them anyway.

Who am I?

Cavalo moved. He pulled the machete back out, and he
moved
. He didn’t know if he was submerged again, didn’t know if he’d ever really surfaced, didn’t know if the waters up and over his head were liquid or bees. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to the robot, getting to his
friend
while he still had time, while there was enough death and distraction to give him the chance.

A Dead Rabbit saw him as soon as he stood. Came at him with snapping teeth and outstretched hands, blood pouring off the side of his head where his right ear used to be.

Bad Dog was there before Cavalo could even react, jaws closing heavily over exposed flesh. Bad Dog snapped his head back and forth, breaking skin and muscle and ligaments. The Dead Rabbit screamed, trying to pull his leg away, trying to get the teeth out of his skin. He stopped screaming when Richie fired his gun. The Dead Rabbit fell, and Cavalo moved on.

Then Jael Haber’s wife took a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him…

Lucas brought up Cavalo’s rear, moving like liquid. Like smoke. His knife flashed in his hand, and for every Dead Rabbit who took notice of them, who became aware they were being flanked, the knife tore into skin, rending and tearing.

Cavalo kept his eyes on SIRS.

…and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground; for he was fast asleep, and weary. So he died
.

The robot had yet to move, standing stone-still, eyes blazing red, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him. The Dead Rabbit he’d seen giving orders to the robot was dead, his chest littered with shrapnel, eyes unstaring at the sky. None of the other Dead Rabbits were trying to get to the robot, and if it was only one who spoke the command key that could control him, if none of the others knew the phrasing, then maybe he could break through to him.

He ducked as a Dead Rabbit holding a heavy metal pipe came running at him. He pushed up with his shoulder as the Dead Rabbit crashed into him, hitting the Dead Rabbit in the stomach. The momentum caused the Dead Rabbit to flip up and over Cavalo, legs and arms akimbo. The Dead Rabbit grunted softly. Their cheeks scraped together as the Dead Rabbit flew over him. Cavalo was spinning even before the Dead Rabbit was all the way over him. He brought the machete around in a flat arc, slashing the Dead Rabbit’s chest and stomach. The Dead Rabbit was bleeding out even before he hit the ground.

I am the evil king of Judah who was killed by his own servants.

He could see into the crack in the dam now. It wasn’t as deep as he thought, at least in the middle, maybe ten feet. Maybe a little more. The side facing the reservoir ran all the way back down, almost touching the water. The crack at the front sloped off quickly, leading toward a precarious drop.

They couldn’t jump it. They couldn’t climb down into it. Not without help.

Not without SIRS.

Who am I?

Bullets punched through the air around him. Dead Rabbits screamed and died. Bad Dog growled, and Richie cried out when a Dead Rabbit stabbed him in the arm. Bill screamed for his son, but there was little he could do. Richie saved himself when he put the barrel of the gun under the Dead Rabbit’s chin and pulled the trigger.

They came for Cavalo. Or rather, they tried to. They attacked in singles or twos and threes, and Lucas was there, Lucas was always there, knife moving, parting skin, spilling blood. He was distracted by a Dead Rabbit missing part of his jaw when another tried to take Lucas from behind. That one ended up almost beheaded, Cavalo filled with a terrible fury that they would try and hurt Lucas. That they would try and hurt him even more than they already had. Especially in front of Cavalo.

There would be remorse. There always was. But that would be later. If there was a later.

And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the King in his own house
.

He stood in front of SIRS as the battle waged behind him. The shouts were getting few and far between. A bullet ricocheted off the robot’s shoulder plate, denting the metal and embedding itself near Cavalo’s foot.

But Cavalo did not look away.

He gazed up into the eyes of his friend and said, “
SIRS
.”

Something clicked within the robot deep inside, and the gears ground together, the robot’s spider-fingers twitching.

The command key. The phrases needed. He would speak them, and they would all go home.

He opened his mouth.

And closed it at a sound he’d never heard before.

It was low, at first, and strange. Like machines, but angry.

Like it was filled with bees.

It was a
thumpthumpthumpthump
that caused his ears to pop and his jaw to ache. The wind began to whip around him, the snow slamming into his face, and he wondered if this was the snow globe. If he was finally trapped within its glass. He took a step toward the edge of the dam, the great empty space in front of him.

And in this space rose a monster from Before.

He’d seen them once or twice. Maybe at the base that screamed of DECFON 1. Once, in a city of sin in the desert, the tail end sticking out of a building that tipped over and lay against another building shaped like a castle.

Strange words came to mind he’d learned over his years. Rotor. Propeller. Cockpit.

Helicopter.

For that’s what it was. Somewhere, somehow, Patrick had acquired a helicopter and had taught the Dead Rabbits to fly. The great machine hovered in front of him, causing the falling snow to spin tornadically around him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, and the machine spun slowly away, turning so its side faced the dam.

And in the belly of the machine, in the open doorway, behind the largest mounted gun Cavalo had ever seen, stood Patrick.

And he was smiling.

He raised a small black box to his lips and spoke, his voice booming out from the helicopter.

“Why,
hello
there, my friend. How
delightful
it is to see you again. Be a dear and tell your…
subjects
to drop their weapons unless you want to see what a thousand bullets per minute looks like.”

Cavalo didn’t move.

Patrick frowned, and there was a burst of screeching static before he spoke again. “I’m not playing games here, Cavalo. I will kill them all.”

The barrels of the mounted Gatling gun began to spin.

He raised a hand toward the divide where the others stood, warning them down. He didn’t look away from Patrick in the belly of the machine, squinting against the snow and wind.

Patrick’s smile widened, so the others must have done what he asked. “You too, Cavalo. The knife. The rifle.”

Cavalo did.

“Lucas!” Patrick cried. “You’re looking well. Why don’t you drop the knife, son? You have to know this was over even before it began.”

Lucas moved until he stood beside Cavalo. Out of the corner of his eye, Cavalo saw the rage on his beaten face, the remnants of his mask from the battle of Cottonwood streaked down his cheeks.

“It’s okay,” Cavalo said, even though he didn’t think it would be. He spoke as loud as he dared. “It’s okay.”

Lucas looked as if he didn’t believe Cavalo. Cavalo didn’t blame him for that. But it must have counted for something because Lucas dropped the knife.

“Now,” Patrick said, sounding extraordinarily amused. “I see that you’ve taken out some of my people.” He grimaced. “In quite a gruesome fashion, I might add. But you know what is so very fascinating about the Dead Rabbits, Cavalo?” He cocked his head, and that showman’s smile returned. “There are so
many
of them.”

Movement, off to the right. The way they’d come. He turned his head slightly, not wanting to let Patrick out of his sight.

Dead Rabbits. Dozens of them. Marching down Dworshak. Armed with jagged weapons and furious smiles. They were a marching death, and in all his years of life, in all the pain and suffering that he’d felt and brought unto others, Cavalo never thought his ending would be something this dramatic. Something so ludicrous as standing next to a psycho fucking bulldog on top of an unknown world while being surrounded by cannibals and a flying machine from Before. He would bleed out for them, and after all that he’d been through, all of the things he’d done, this is where his life would end, and
God
, if it didn’t feel like he deserved it.

Cavalo couldn’t stop it, even if he tried. The laughter.

So he didn’t.

He laughed.

It started out as a low sound, just a chuckle, a rumble in his throat and mouth. It bubbled out and changed, his lips parting and twisting cruelly, his breath curling into bursts of steam around his face. It poured out of him, loud and raucous and
angry
. Tears sprang to his eyes as he
bellowed
out his laughter.

He remembered the day he’d met
her
, how his palms were sweaty and his heart tripped all over itself.

He remembered the day he’d first held his son, staring at this little creature in his arms, understanding truly for the first time the idea of love at first sight, because he
was
in love, with this little pink blob that wailed thinly, eyes squinted shut, little fists waving in the air.