CHAPTER TWENTY
The Survivors
She moved through the ground floor of what used to be an office building on the outskirts of downtown. Cautious and quiet, the way she always moved now, one hand pressed flat against the wall and the other wrapped tight around her daughter’s wrist. The little girl was three, and she’d learned the hard way what quiet meant.
“Shh,” she breathed, barely a sound at all. She squeezed her daughter’s wrist gently. The little girl pressed her free hand over her mouth, the way she’d been taught, her eyes tracking her mother’s face.
The air inside tasted like dust and rot. A sweet, sickening smell had worked its way through concrete and tile walls, masking hidden horrors. The light filtered into the structure, thin and orange, through particulate that never fully settled.
Their clothes were a patchwork of whatever they’d been able to find and layer. She had strips of fabric wound around her face from the bridge of her nose down, her eyes the only thing exposed, red-rimmed and dry from the air. Her daughter was wrapped similarly, a scarf and two separate sleeves from different garments tied around her small head.
She had found half a box of protein bars on the second floor three days ago, shoved behind a collapsed partition and still sealed. They were almost gone now. She’d heard movement from somewhere above them yesterday and hadn’t gone back up since.
She was looking for the supply closet. She’d seen it on her second day here and hadn’t risked it yet because the exterior wall on that side had a gap in it. But they were out of options.
She heard the drone before she saw it.
The sound came from outside first, a low rhythmic whirring that rose and fell in smooth oscillating pulses. Her whole body pulled tight as she dropped into a crouch and brought her daughter down with her, pressing them both behind the shell of an overturned desk.
The drone came in through the gap in the exterior wall.
It was roughly the size of a large microwave, smooth-bodied and dark, with four articulated fins that adjusted constantly as it moved, tilting and rotating in a way that almost made them seem alive. It swept the lobby in long, methodical arcs, its faint blue light pulsed from its undercarriage, and washed across the floor.
She could hear the heavy rhythm of bipedal constructs moving through the streets outside, their footfalls carrying clearly through the open walls. Two of them, maybe three.
The drone drifted closer.
Its light swept across the top of the reception desk, inches above her head, and paused. The whirring shifted pitch, rising slightly, and she felt her daughter’s fingers dig into her arm through layers of fabric.
The light suddenly shut off, and the drone moved on.
It took another two passes before the drone slipped back out through the gap. She waited until she couldn’t hear it anymore before she moved.
She went careful and low, cutting across the lobby, her daughter tucked close against her side. The bipedal constructs outside sounded like they were moving away, with each passing minute.
She let out a slow breath that she’d been holding and she felt the tension in her shoulders ease a little…
The supply closet was right where she remembered it, the door mostly intact, and the frame was only slightly warped. She eased it open and her stomach dropped. The goddamn thing was empty.
She stood there with her hand on the doorframe, staring at the empty shelves, and when she turned around…
The spider construct was five feet away from her.
Roughly the dimensions of a large dog, its six-bladed legs splayed wide and low against the tile. It had come from beneath a collapsed section of dropped ceiling she hadn’t thought to check.
All at once, it began to spray caustic poison.
The spray hit the wall beside her head in a wide arc, iridescent blue-green, stuck to everything, and the smell of it was sharp. The chemicals burned the back of her throat.
She grabbed her daughter and ran.
She went the only direction that wasn’t blocked, back into the corridor and away from the lobby. Her boots hit the floor hard as her daughter cried. The construct lunged at her from behind. The monster was fast, its legs scraped the tile in a rapid rhythm.
She could feel it behind her, as she desperately tried to spit the corrosive poison from her mouth.
She cut right at the first intersection, then left, ducking under a collapsed section of building, and dragged her daughter through the gap with her. She heard the construct hit the obstacle behind them, only to pry and pull itself through.
One of its legs came down six inches from the little girl and punched through the tile like it was paper.
She screamed, barely managing to pull her away at the last instant.
The corridor opened up ahead into what had been a maintenance hall, lit now only by the bioluminescent spray that had coated her jacket sleeve and now the walls and floor as the spider let loose another burst. Everything it touched hissed and glowed softly in the dark, blue-green light bled across the floor and walls in every direction.
There was a heavy metal door at the end of the hall that framed the outside of the supply closet they had been staying in.
She hit it at a dead sprint, and managed to pry it open and threw herself and her daughter into the storage room beyond, spinning on her heels, she reached out, grabbed the handle, and pulled the door closed just as the construct’s legs hit the exterior face of it with a sickening crunch.
She held the door handle and pulled back as hard as she could manage, with all of her weight as the construct tried to pry the handle and pull the door open into the hallway.
The first leg punched through three inches from her arm.
The second came through six inches below the first, the blade dragging downward through the metal with a sound she felt in her back teeth.
All at once she stopped pulling and pushed the door out into the hallway with everything she had left.
The door swung out and caught the construct between its face and the concrete wall. There was a crunch of metal, and she heard something structural inside it give way.
She had already pulled the revolver from her waistband.
Her hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped it. She hadn’t fired it in six weeks, had been saving the last round…
The construct was still moving, dragging itself partially free from behind the door, its legs scrabbling against the floor.
“Cover your ears, baby,” she said. Her voice broke.
The little girl pressed both hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
She closed hers too, and pressed the barrel to the cracked section of the construct’s casing and pulled the trigger.
The shot was enormous in the enclosed space.
The construct came apart in a burst of bioluminescent chemical that sprayed across the floor and the walls and across her hands and face.
She stood there for a moment with the empty revolver still raised.
From somewhere back in the corridor, she heard legs on concrete, not one set but several, the sound of them moving through debris getting louder with every second.
She set the revolver down carefully on the floor, walked back into the storage room and sat down against the far wall, pulling her daughter into her lap and wrapping both arms around her. The corridor beyond it glowed with the chemical light from the dead construct, and the shadows of what was coming moved through it, getting closer.
She pressed her lips to the top of her daughter’s head and started to sing. It was a song her own mother had sung to her when she was small, before the sky changed and the plants died and none of this had happened yet.
The monsters didn’t rush the door.
They moved into the threshold slowly, one after another, filling the only exit with their legs, the joints clicking as they settled into stillness. The bioluminescent spray covered everything and there was plenty of light to see them by. They stood there, blades resting, and didn’t move.
She pressed herself further into the corner and pulled her daughter’s face against her chest.
Then the first explosion hit.
It came up through the floor before it came through the air, a deep rolling concussion she felt in her back teeth before she heard it properly. Loose grit rained from the ceiling. Something on one of the upper shelves toppled and hit the floor and made her flinch.
The floor shuddered. More particulate let go from the ceiling. A shelf bracket above her groaned and tilted, and a handful of small objects skittered across the floor.
Another concussion rolled through the floor, harder than the last. A crack split across the ceiling above the doorframe and dust poured through it.
All at once the constructs turned around and bolted back towards the lobby. They moved faster than they’d come in, their legs finding the floor in a rapid overlapping rhythm as they pushed back down the corridor.
She didn’t move for a long time.
The fighting above continued in waves, the heavy crack of the large weapons, the shrieking pulse of the smaller ones, the deep rolling shudder of things collapsing on the surface. Dust kept coming down from the ceiling. She tried her best to rub the glowing chemical from her fingers that were now burning.
The fighting eventually died down, the sounds growing less frequent and more distant, until there were only occasional discharges and then long stretches of quiet between them.
She was still trying to decide what to do. The goop covered her jacket, her hands, part of her face, and it wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t move through the dark without announcing herself to anything still out there.
Something pushed through debris at the far end of the hall, she could hear the sound of feet on the floor in an uneven rhythm with a dragging scrape between each set of steps.
She pulled her daughter tighter and watched through the open doorframe.
The spider construct moved at an angle, listing hard to one side, one of its front legs gone below the second joint, the stump of it leaving a smear along the floor. The remaining five legs worked unevenly to compensate, giving it a lurching tilted gait.
She got up, sliding her daughter into the corner, and grabbed the door. The frame was bent and the door hung off its lower hinge. She got both hands on the door and pulled, with everything that she had left desperately trying to shield herself and her daughter.
But the door didn’t budge, and the construct kept coming.
She could hear more behind it now, pushing through the debris at the far end of the hall.
Two things hit the wounded spider from the side at once, driving it sideways. Its remaining legs scrabbled at the floor. The sounds it made as they tore into it was brief and sharp and then it was still.
She pressed back against the wall with her daughter behind her.
One of the new constructs was close enough to make out now. It was roughly the size of a large house cat, six-legged and low to the ground, compact and smooth. It had two eyes that glowed a soft steady orange and a recessed socket at the front of its face. It stood just inside the door and looked at her. It tilted its head slightly.
A projection suddenly snapped into view between them, a young girl in a white dress with a white bow in her hair.
“Greetings, Survivor.” The voice was calm and warm. “I’m sorry that I can’t be here in person. And I can’t begin to tell you how remarkable it is that you’ve managed to survive all of this.”
She backed further into the corner and pulled her daughter against her. Her eyes moved between the projection and the small construct that watched her from the door.
“My name is Roslyn,” the projection continued. “And I’m sorry it’s taken this long to reach you and the others around Seattle. If you can still hear fighting outside, please stay where you are until it stops.”
A second lizard construct slipped into the storage room. She turned her shoulder to shield her daughter, squeezed her eyes shut, and braced.
Something cool hit the back of her hand.
She opened her eyes.
The construct had sprayed something across her exposed fingers and the strip of skin below her eyes, and she felt the burning ease almost immediately. The glowing residue began to bead and slide off her skin.
“I know that in a world full of metal monsters, even our own can still look frightening,” the projection said. “But if you’re injured, they’ll do their best to attend to you before we move you to safety.”
She stared at the small construct that had just treated her hand. It stepped back and waited.
“You’ve done well to make it this far,” the projection continued. “But what’s happening to our world is going to get worse before it gets better, and it’s time to get you somewhere safe. We have food and clean water, and we can protect you. We won’t force you to come with us, and if you choose to stay, we’ll respect that. But I hope you’ll choose to come.”
The projection snapped off.
She stood there holding her daughter, staring at the two small constructs in the faint remaining glow. She’d heard what the metal monsters did to the people they found. She’d seen the camps.
She looked down at the construct nearest the door. It sat there and waited, no movement, no pressure, just the soft orange glow of its eyes in the dark.
She stared at a small American flag stamped into the plating on its left shoulder.
“You’re really not one of them,” she said. She could barely get the words out.
The construct tilted its head, and began to wag its tail.
When the fighting above went quiet she let the lizard constructs lead them back through the gap and out into the lobby.
A bipedal construct had come through the front of the building. The entire northwest corner of the ground floor was gone, the wall and two support columns collapsed inward, and the construct lay half inside and half out, one arm sheared off at the shoulder socket and a section of its torso was missing.
She pulled her daughter close and stepped around it and followed the lizards out into the street.
A strange looking transport was directly in front of the building, low and wide and massive, roughly the length of a city bus but riding on eight articulated legs instead of wheels, its hull dark and utilitarian, its side hatch open with a shallow ramp extended to the cracked asphalt below. Survivors were boarding it, more of them coming into view as she looked further down the block.
Above them, moving between the buildings with slow and deliberate care, were constructs that stood two stories tall. She watched one of them reach into the blown-out fourth floor of a building across the street and carefully lower a man to the street below. Another was working on the building beside it. Crude spray-painted letters read Big Gus 12.
From somewhere deeper in the city she could hear the projection playing, Roslyn’s voice carrying from a distance, and from another distance after that, and another after that, the same calm introduction drifting across the ruined streets from every direction.
A small projection of the same young girl in the white dress stood at the base of the transport ramp.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” it said as she approached. “You’re welcome to bring whatever you like, but honestly, we have everything you’ll need.”
She stopped in front of it and waited, expecting it to loop back to the beginning.
The projection turned and looked directly at her.
She took a step back.
“It’s all right,” it said. “You and your daughter are quite safe.”
“You’re not a recording.”
The projection smiled softly. “No. That’s a long story, and my sister is much better suited to tell it. For now let’s get you on board quickly. We retook the city, but there could still be danger.”
She walked up the ramp.
The air that came down from the ceiling of the transport was clean. Cool and carrying none of the chemical rot she’d been breathing for months. She stopped and breathed it in.
Then she moved to the back and sat down.
She reached up and unwound the fabric from her face. The air on her bare skin felt amazing. She looked down at her daughter and helped her with the scarf and the knotted sleeves until the little girl’s face was uncovered too. They sat there together and breathed.
Through the window she watched others being helped out of buildings and walked to the transports by the lizard constructs, the two-story ones moving carefully above them between the rooflines. The transports were beginning to move, pulling into a procession that stretched down 4th Avenue heading south through the heart of the city, their legs carrying them in a steady rhythm over the debris.
She pressed her hand to the glass.
To the northwest, through a gap between two collapsed buildings, the Space Needle leaned hard against its own tower, the observation deck collapsed and hanging at an angle, held up by nothing but the wreckage of itself.
She turned away from the window and held her daughter as the transport moved south through the ruins of the city.
Earth, Roslyn Research Facility.
“It’s done,” Roslyn said, turning to face General Daniels and Colonel Dmitri in the command and control center. She raised her hand and spread a combat report across the wall in a wide projection.
The professor stepped into the room a moment later and looked at it. “Ros, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s going to take some time to build more tablets,” Roslyn said. There wasn’t much emotion in it. She let out a slow breath and looked back at him. “Every one of my sisters that we lost volunteered for this. What matters is that there are over four hundred transports. And they’re bringing more than thirty-seven hundred survivors here right now. And this is happening all over the world, Professor. My sisters are saving millions of people.”
She stopped mid-sentence.
Her eyes went wide, and a slow impish grin spread across her face.
“I leveled up.” She paused. “In fact, I leveled up twice.”
Just as quickly, the grin flickered into irritation.
“What’s wrong?” the professor cut in.
“I can assign my attribute points,” she said, “but it won’t let me use my skill points.” She crossed her arms. “Looks like we’ll have to wait for my big sister to make some choices.”
She glanced toward the ceiling for a moment.
“I hope they’re good ones.”
