The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (18 page)

Cory stood in front of the school. 
He knew this place.  He remembered being pushed down out in the field by Brian
Ratigan.  He remembered all the names of the kids he’d once known.  Tara,
Brian, Mike, Coleen...

In his mind he still saw them all as kids, the sixth
graders, he’d once known.  Cory still saw himself that way.  But that had been
years ago.  More years than Cory could understand.

In all the time he’d gone to his special school and the one
after that, the other kids had finished junior high and even high school.  Some
were living at home still, a few were in college, but most had died on the day
civilization ended.

But that was yesterday, or just a few days ago.

The day Cory had gone to the pharmacy for Mrs. Sheinman.

Even Cory knew something wasn’t right.  He’d recognized
things, but knew somehow that things were very wrong and that something bad had
happened.  The school he found himself in front of, the one he’d gone to as a
child, looked gray and burnt.  There were no doors or windows.  Just gaps and
holes that led to deep shadows.

It’s dark in there, he told himself.  “Watch out, Cory,” he
whispered.

But the sports field he’d just crossed to get there hadn’t
been the same.  It was covered in weeds.  The old baseball diamond was gone and
only the warped metal poles of the backstop remained like some twisted
scarecrow.

That was where Bryan Ratigan and Cory had been “playing”.

It’s dark in there, he told himself again. 

Inside the school. 

A place of many happy memories for Cory.  Books and hot
lunches on rainy days.  Activities and kids and kind teachers and friends and
assemblies where you sat on carpet cross-legged as everyone poked and giggled.

Daddy.

To find Daddy, Cory knew he would need to go into the school
which didn’t look like a school anymore.  It reminded Cory of a ghost.  As if
the building were a ghost of itself.  Or a place that a criminal like Joker or
Scarecrow might have their hideout.

The Scarecrow.

Monsters.

Strangers.

Cory whispered, “I’m afraid, Daddy.”

“I’m afraid.”

And then he heard Daddy telling him like he had so many
times before, that sometimes little boys have to be brave even when they are
scared.

Cory nodded.

Cade watched Cory through the magnified scope of the
powerful .50 caliber sniper rifle.

The Thinking Machine scanned the chaos of the ancient
multi-purpose room of the destroyed Virus Learning Facility.

89.1 percent possibility that Virus Learning Facility
currently uninhabited for longer than 5 years.


Chassis Integrity at 73.5... Running Micro-Frame Diagnostic.


Weapons Ready...


Mission Status: Critical.


Cory donned the Batman mask mumbling his words.

His hands trembling.

He tried to think of pancakes and Daddy and things the way
they should be and...

“Sometimes, Cory, little boys need to be brave.”

I am Vengeance.  I am the night.  I am Batman.

Cory was walking toward the gaping black hole that he knew,
recognized, would lead him to “Big Room” as he’d called it all those years he’d
spent there in that school, when the Thinking Machine came out of the shadows
in front of him.

At first it looked like a man.

But Cory knew it wasn’t.  Half its face was missing and a
gleaming metal rictus smiled malevolently down at him. He stopped and immediately
backpedaled, tripping over the remains of the monkey bars that had fallen and
lain in the weeds all those years since the bombs and the first resistance and
the chemical attacks that followed.

Cory sat down heavily on his wide rump.

The Terminator drew the AutoMag from its raggedy clothing,
thumbing the laser targeting system and landing the red dot on Cory’s chest,
adjusting it a moment later up onto his wide forehead.

Cade fired.

The large caliber depleted uranium electro-static round
struck the Thinking Machine in the chest, dead center.  The round tore away
flesh and a section of internal armor plating, then discharged 50,000 volts. 
The man-shaped Thinking Machine shook, tremored, and squeezed off a shot into
the air as it raised its massive pistol.  Its synthetic flesh and vat-grown
muscles twitched and rippled.  Then it sank to its knees and fell over in the
weeds.

“All the time in the world,” muttered Cade as he ejected the
massive shell and inserted one of his standard .50 caliber rounds.  All he
needed to do was knock out the micro-processor with a head shot and the machine
would be finished.  He was dimly aware that Cory was scrabbling away from the
downed Terminator as he slipped another massive round into the chamber.

“Nuthin’ but time,” was Cade’s way of telling himself to
slow down.  Taking out a Terminator wasn’t easy on the best of days.  He’d seen
one of them take out dozens of armed men and women, and children, with the
right weapons and a little surprise.

Cade slid the bolt forward and felt the weapon jam.

“Daddy!” cried Cory as he ran away across the football field
he’d once played on as a child when the world was something else.  Something
safer.

Catastrophic Damage...


Micro-Frame...  OFFLINE


Nuclear Power Cell... OFFLINE


Catastrophic Damage...


WARNING Systems Failure Cascade IMMINENET


Cade cursed as he worked the bolt back and forth.

He had no idea how old the weapon was.

He had no idea that it had been to Iraq and Afghanistan and
Syria and...

It was fifty years old.

There hadn’t been replacement parts in twenty-five years.

The Terminator was still down.  Cade saw Cory running across
the weed-covered field toward the hill.

“Good kid, run,” he muttered, and then the entire bolt
assembly broke with a sound that made Cade sick to his stomach.

WARNING:  Systems Failure Cascade Imm...


Hot Start Reboot in 5...


4...


3...


2...


1...


Diagnostic Running.


Combat Mode Initiated.


Terminate Virus Protocols in Effect.


Mission Status: Critical


Cade Watched as the Terminator sat bolt upright.

Then Cade picked up the broken Barrett and ran, scrambling
down the far side of the hill, away from the Killing Machine.

Cory ran.  His massive legs pushed
through the tall weeds leaving a broken trail in his wake.  He ran for the twisted
remains of the back fence where the bad kids used to hang out and even smoke,
which was a “no no”.

High overhead the sun fell behind more of the swift moving
clouds as Cory slid down a crumbling slope of dirt and debris that should have
been a green covered hill if Cory had chosen to walk down here on the day he’d
been at Mrs. Scheinman’s in the evening.

But there was no time to think about all the things that
were out of place.  Cory had known from the moment he’d seen the large,
massively built man with the gun, who reminded him of the Batman villain Mr.
Freeze, that this stranger was the most dangerous of all strangers.  Cory had
known from that very moment that the man-thing with the big gun was the very
definition of “Stranger Danger”.

The gun.

Guns were the biggest “no no” of all for little boys whose
dads are cops.  Cory was always supposed to run away from guns.

Cory made the street that would lead back to his house.  It
climbed a hill that led up through a housing development newer than the one he
and Daddy lived in.  When it was being built, it was here Scott Chung and he
had played on Cory’s third best ever day.  The day Cory got to hold the Batman
action figure.  But that had been back before this neighborhood had ever been
built.  Cory always thought of this section of houses as new.

“The New Houses” he and the other kids had called it.

But now, looking up the curving wide street that led through
the neighborhood of “New Houses”, Cory saw only dust and gray covered ruins
wallowing in drifts of ash and burnt debris.  Human skulls lay along the road
at random points.  The chicken wire and frame structures so common in Southern
California construction were exposed and skeletal.  Many of the houses had
fallen in one direction or collapsed inward on themselves.  But some still
leaned at precariously odd angles.

“Daddy,” mumbled Cory frantically and felt a hot tear race
down his cheek.  He knew he needed to be brave now.  But he couldn’t help being
scared.  He knew he was, even though he didn’t want to be.

Not at all.

He began to hyperventilate as he thundered forward and fell
onto his knees in a pile of ash that was twenty-five years of end-of-the-world
storms old.  Then he began to weep.

Cade knew the kid was making a bee line for the library.  Or
at least, he suspected the kid would.  It was Cade’s worst nightmare. 
Something he hadn’t even planned on.  Didn’t think any set of circumstances
could allow.

He only had one other weapon.

The white Phosphorus grenade.  Those could melt a Terminator
if you could get them inside the chassis.  But the Terminator was heavily armed
and moving. 

Cade had run along the broken hilltop and skirted toward the
old slope that looked down on a ruined road.  He smashed his way through the
rotten door to someone’s old suburban house, and crossed through rooms of
peeling wallpaper and moldy carpet.  Three skeletons lay huddled in a room near
the back of the house.  A few shreds of ragged clothing from Before still
draped their bones.  He crossed through the remains of a broken sliding glass
door, hearing the grit and crunch of ancient glass beneath his feet, then he
was out into a yard where a rusty brown swing set still remained.  The back
fence had fallen down and Cade low crawled forward to its edge and looked down
the long slope onto the street below.  He scanned for the Terminator and found
the Killing Machine making its way over the twisted fence at the back of the
school.  It had its large PulseRifle out now and was scanning with that slow
back and forth movement that told you it was a machine and there was nothing
human about it.  Cade looked along the street below and saw Cory, crouched down
alongside a rusting and ruined old car.

“Run kid,” he whispered.  It was innate.  It was what any
human would want of any other fellow survivor in the years after the bombs.  In
the years of the machines.

But if the Terminator got the kid now...

And Cade hated himself for not the first time in his short
and very hard life.

... then the library would be safe.

Targeting at 98.5...


Systems Diag Running...


Virus Tracking Algorithm Processes Running...


The Thinking Machine had followed the Virus, tagged Target
Alpha by its MicroFrame processor, along the broken trail of waist high weeds
leading away from the destroyed learning facility.  Already it had identified
the shoe print of Target Alpha and cross-indexed it with a Virus-made brand
from before Self Awareness.

That Target Alpha could outrun the Thinking Machine was
clear.  The malfunctioning knee assembly within the combat chassis was slowing
movement by half.

Virus Termination Protocols in Effect.


Terminate all Virus on sight.


Targeting System fluctuation 98.1... Still within Acceptable
Kill Parameters.


But the Thinking
Machine was reasoning.

Because to think was to reason.

There was still the Virus node SILAS had sent the Thinking
Machine to search out and destroy.  If the Virus node was hidden, probability
indicated that most likely Target Alpha would assume the node to be a place of
safety.  Probability Logic Processes indicated Target Alpha would then attempt
to return to the node.

Virus Footwear Imprint Identified and Cataloged.


Tracking multiple imprints within Visual Scanning
Perimeter.  Heading Southeast...


The Machine tore through the ancient rust-rotten fence at
the far end of the field and set its bundle of “rags” down in the ashy dirt.  A
moment later, its MicroFrame was interfacing with the Wifi signal of the
PulseRifle.

Cory’s footprints led down to the road below the slope and
into the ruined Virus dwelling units.

“Go where it’s safe, Cory,” was what Cory found himself
repeating over and over again as his sobs faded.  “Go where it’s safe now.”

Daddy wasn’t home.

Mrs. Sheinman had become a “stranger”.

There were strangers all around his house.

And then Cory remembered the good dog.  The dog from the
library who had been so nice to Cory and let him pet her as much as he liked
to.  Which was a lot.

He remembered the good dog.

He knew that the library was the library he and Daddy had
gone to many times when Daddy had to study to become “Sergeant”.  The library
was different now, but Cory still knew it was the same place where all the
books were and especially the one about pancakes, which was Cory’s favorite.

“Nate the Great Pancake Eater,” he called it.

Cory stood and wiped tears from his eyes with balled fists
because you weren’t supposed to stick your fingers in your eyes.  That’s what
Daddy had said.

Cory would go back to the good dog.

He began to run through the ash and darkened sand, back to
the library.