He caught himself with his hands and did a tuck and roll, the rifle skittering along the concrete beside him. He came to rest on something soft, and was startled to find it was an old mattress.
Next to him a man and a woman were struggling to put on all their clothes at the same time.
“Wow, what’s going on?” the man asked.
“Hide,” Wiley said. “Run and hide!” He got to his feet and grabbed his rifle, scrambling over the old foundation and nearly falling into a empty swimming pool. He teetered on the edge, looking down at scraps of wood and broken bottles, then pranced along the side and over the remains of a diving board. There were some half-dead pine trees ahead and he ducked behind one, pausing to look back. The drone had recovered and was coming in his direction. It paid no attention to the half-dressed couple who where huddled underneath their mattress. Good, Wiley thought. I’ve messed up some of its scanners. He brought the rifle up, put the bead right on a shiny crystal on the front of the thing, and let off two more thunderous rounds. He saw it shudder, and pieces went flying in all directions. Right in the eye, you motherfucker! he thought. He turned and trotted through the sickly, dry pines and into a ruin. He made his way past dark obstacles to a window, then pointed the gun. The drone came into view then stopped. It was leading with what looked like one spider’s leg, its last remaining sensory device. Wiley aimed at the base of it and fired once. The device was blasted right off the thing, leaving a smoking hole. It spun with a dreamlike slowness through the night shadows and came to rest on the ground. Wiley stepped away from the window, heading toward the door. Five quick concussions hit the building, blasting through the window and setting the ruin on fire. Two more blasts came through the door. It’s still firing!? he thought. No! He took a quick peek out the door, saw nothing, and pulled his head back.
Another concussion rocked the ruin, and a fist-sized hunk of door frame exploded right where his head had been. Wiley instinctively ducked and two more shots hit, punching fist sized holes through the wall behind him. He looked up, saw they were at his standing chest level. Shit! he thought. Shit! Shit! How is that thing firing at me?
It was getting bright inside because the place was on fire.
Wiley stumbled down a hallway away from the front, and ducked into a room with a window. He looked out to see two shadows lurking about 6 meters in the air. More drones! he thought. I’m a dead man. He pulled back from the window, ducking back against the corner, but no blasts hit. He leaped out of the room and toward the back of the ruin. Smoke was beginning to fill the air. Through a back window he saw another shadow hanging above the ground.
Three of them, he thought. Maybe more. And it’s only a matter of time before one of those troop transports drop a shitload of MPs down here.
The smoke stung his eyes. It was getting thick.
Think! he told himself. Think! How are these things programmed? How do they work? Several overlapping image sensors; radar, ultraviolet, motion detection, light scan with visible and infrared. Probably a few more that I don’t know about. The programming is looking for something that moves. The fire is probably giving them a lot to watch … ?
From a distance he peered out a window, saw a red glowing light playing off of the hulls of the drones. Yes, it had reached the roof. Now what? he thought. Indecision will kill me.
Wiley made his way along a side hall to a window facing the south. Outside he could see a low stone wall leading into more of the wild overgrown hedge. Down the hall to the north there was another window, and he could see trees beyond. I can fire from here down the hall, he thought, and out that window. He checked the power meter on his rifle; he’d been firing at full power and it was drained quite a bit. He put it on a lower setting and aimed it down the hall and out the far window. He fired three times, hitting a tree, then peered out the back to see if it attracted the attention of the drone. It did; it was slowly drifting that way. Wiley fired several more times then dived out the south window, running low along the stone fence and then through the hedge. There were concussions behind him, but on the other side of the ruin. They were returning the fire.
Wiley picked his way through the thicket and kept to the brush, making his way as fast as he could to the south. Nothing seemed to have noticed him, so when he reached an edge he sprinted across a clearing and into another set of ruins. As he ran he had a tight feeling in his back, as if it were expecting a bolt of energy to hit, but none did. He paused for a moment with his back to a cool slab of uprooted concrete, breathing heavily and thanking the Lord for his escape, then continued on.
#
Aaron sat huddled against the tree, listening to the blasts and watching as a fire lit up the sky to the west. He saw more drones rush in, and not one but two of the big hovering troop planes. Aaron felt like a sitting duck out there under the tree in the clearing.
Minutes stretched cruelly, and Aaron sat there sweating. If anyone bothers to scan in this direction I’ll look like an infrared bonfire. I should be in a damn hole, he thought. For a moment he considered trying to dig one, but decided against it.
This valley clay was hard and dry, it would be impossible to dig without a nice sharp shovel. I’m just going to have to keep the tree between me and them.
It grew quiet to the west, but the fire was much larger.
Aaron kept peering around at it. He wondered if Wiley had set it on purpose. After a while another large aircraft came swooping down from the sky, with red blinking lights and several powerful spotlights stabbing through the darkness. It dropped a few tons of white powder on the fire and then flew away. The fire was gone.
The moon set, and the night became very dark. The sounds of insects grew deafening. Satellites and orbiting spaceships made bright stars that crawled across the sky.
The laptop computer beeped. Startled, then excited, Aaron crawled over to it and brightened the screen. “TASK COMPLETED” it read. It’s in! he thought. It’s done! An expanding elation filled him, and his fear was gone. All the years and years of guilt lifted from him, leaving him lightheaded. He disconnected the hardware from the optic cable, capped the cable and buried it.
Then he walked off into the field in the darkness, underneath the bright stars, the whole universe looking down at him, and blasted the MSDs and the laptop to little pieces with his rifle. He didn’t give a damn who saw him now. He threw the rifle off into the weeds and walked away.
37. TRAVELS
The antique rifle rested in his lap in the long cardboard box, the butt sticking out one end and wrapped in an old shirt.
Dodd was alone in the subway car, so the bottle of bourbon was out of the bag for the moment. It was half-empty. Dodd liked the way the train’s motions caused ripples across the surface of the amber liquid; watching them kept him alert, they reminded him of sound waves or shock waves. He remembered that as a child he had a program on his school computer that would plot the motions out and explain the chaotic math behind it.
I wish I had a son, he thought. He fell into a half dream, imagining himself with a tow-headed young boy and a pocket computer, showing him the amazing dances of the computer-generated waves. Taking him on a train ride to the coast so that he could see real ones. Swimming in the ocean. A fire on the beach at night, and pointing out to him which satellite was what.
No war stories, Dodd thought. I will never tell him any war stories.
The night was growing cool as the train reached the coast.
The trestle angled northwest at one point; Dodd could see it growing light on the eastern horizon. Then the train went underground for a while, passing a mountain range; when it came up again it was full daylight outside.
People began boarding more and more frequently as he went on, and in the Bay Area the subway was fairly well populated –