Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens (2 page)

When the end had come most people had survived by grouping together, like the Train Station Gang. The chickens had targeted the adults first and foremost and ignored everyone under the age of sixteen. A lot of us didn’t know how to look after ourselves, so it was either club together or get grabbed.

The Ambassador wasn’t like that. I wasn’t sure what her real name was, but she survived by herself. She travelled around, finding each of the groups and trying to befriend them. I think she gave Noah the idea of trying to make friends with the guys at the library. She probably knew more about Aberdeen as it was now than anyone else.

She was also a little scary. And she was yet another person who didn’t like me. So whatever involved her probably wasn’t that good for me.

Noah took me along the train to where she sat, passing back through the dining carriage on the way. It was quiet again, full of kids just talking and reading. None of them looked up as I passed.

The Ambassador was in a compartment at the end. Like almost everyone else in the world she was taller than me and built quite solidly. Not that she was fat (no one was fat any more), but there was no question that she had muscles. At thirteen, she was a year older than me and a year younger than Noah. Her hair had been long to begin with, and was now bound back in an impressively large ponytail.

She stood up from the bed and glared at us as we came in. Or maybe it was just at me. I returned the glare with a measured stare.

“So what’s this about?” I asked.

She looked at Noah and this time she was definitely glaring.

“Him?” she said. She clearly wasn’t impressed.

Noah shrugged. “Is there a problem?”

“The joke-teller. You’re sending him.”

I don’t like people talking like I’m not there, so I chose this moment to butt in. “Sending me where?”

“Noah, you know how important this could be,” the Ambassador said, ignoring me. “I was expecting you to come with me yourself, or at least send someone important. Why him?”

“Why him what?” I asked. The Ambassador shot me a look but didn’t answer. I felt the need to get a response from her.

“All right. How long do chickens work?” She still didn’t reply, so I finished the joke for her. “All around the cluck.”

She stared at me for a moment longer, then looked back at Noah. “You see?” she said.

Noah scratched the back of his neck and kicked me gently on the leg. “Jesse, stop being an idiot. This is important.”

“All right. I’ll cluck up.”

He shook his head and started leaving. “He’s the one you’re getting. Have fun.” Then he slid the door shut behind him and was gone.

The Ambassador looked at me levelly for a moment, then sighed. She sat back down and gestured that I should as well, so I perched on the bed across from her.

“So what’s the job?” I asked.

She shrugged, then said, “I think I might have a way to take down the chickens.”

I stared at her for a second then swallowed.

“You’re joking.”

“I believe joking’s your thing,” she replied.

“All right, I’ll bite. How?”

She looked annoyed for a moment. “I don’t know.”

I smirked. “OK, so you have a way to take down the chickens, but you don’t know what it is?”

She took a deep breath and seemed to count to ten in her head. “I’ve run across this guy who might know. He’s been living in Aberdeen University and when I last talked to him he said that he was close to discovering something.”

I thought about it for a second. It might be possible. And if the guy was telling the truth then this could be huge. “Where do I come in?”

For the first time she looked angry, not just annoyed. “This guy’s a bit of a jerk. Even worse than you. He won’t tell me what it is because he reckons I don’t belong to any group. He wants a representative of one of the bigger groups in the city to guarantee his demands will be met.”

“His demands?”

“Yeah. He wants food and clothing. And a few other things I think.”

I nodded. There were tonnes of clothes and enough food that we didn’t have to worry for a while. Luckily there weren’t that many of us.

“Well that shouldn’t be too hard. Should I load up some stuff now?”

“He wants it on a regular basis.”

That was more of a problem. A one-off gift of food? Not
really an issue. Giving it to him weekly, or even monthly, would be much harder. And that wasn’t counting having to carry it across the city to him if he was set on staying at the university. That would be incredibly dangerous.

“Does Noah know about this?”

She stood up, towering over me. “Of course he knows. And he agrees with me. If the information turns out to be good then he’s willing to take the risk.”

“Of course he is.” I got up as well. Having the Ambassador looming over me was unsettling. “So when do we set off?”

She gestured towards the door. “Right now, of course. Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

All that I had left in the world was a backpack that I kept stowed under my bed. I can’t say that anything in it was exactly mine. It was filled with stuff I’d nicked from the various shops around, especially the nearby camping shop. It had been put together in case I ever got chucked out of the gang or they came under attack and I had to run. This seemed pretty close to getting chucked out, so I heaved it up on to my back and joined the Ambassador on the platform.

She saw me and raised an eyebrow. I could see that she’d got a similar bag on her back.

“Great minds,” I said to her. She huffed, obviously insulted, and walked away without saying anything.

“So are we bringing this guy any food or anything?” I asked, hurrying to catch up with her. I couldn’t see any extra supplies on her, though she might have had some in her backpack. She shook her head.

“No, just seeing you will be enough.”

“Yeah, right. When are things ever this easy? How will he know that you didn’t just grab some random kid?”

The slight hesitation before she took her next step told me that she hadn’t thought of that, but she quickly recovered. “That would be a problem no matter who I brought. This guy is smart, though. He’ll see sense.”

She didn’t say anything else, just led the way over the turnstiles and out to the front of the train station, where there was a huge empty foyer. The place gave me the creeps, especially when I was the only one there. Maybe it was the size, and feeling so alone where there should have been so many people. Maybe it was memories of the day the chickens came. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. But I didn’t really like being there.

Instead of taking us out of the front door, the Ambassador led us straight ahead to the bus depot. I followed, frowning.

“Which way are we going anyway?”

She didn’t look around. “We’re going to head along the quay then get up on to Union Street where it turns into King Street. Then we just follow it until we get to the university.”

I stared at her for a moment. I didn’t know the names of all the streets around here but I knew roughly what she meant. “We have to walk past the quay? That’s kind of out in the open, isn’t it? Why don’t we just get on to Union Street right away and follow that?”

She shook her head, slowing just enough for me to walk alongside her. “Union Street isn’t safe.”

“Why?” I’d heard that before from Noah. I guess he’d heard it from the Ambassador, but I didn’t know the reason.

“It just isn’t. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

I was pretty sure that I’d believe anything at this point, but I didn’t press the issue. If she wasn’t going to tell me then she wasn’t going to tell me and nothing I
said or did would change her mind.

By this point we were at the bus depot. The gates to the street were open so we headed towards them.

“So…” I began but she cut me off.

“Are you going to talk the entire way there? ‘Cause that’s going to get old really fast.”

“You might find that you grow to like my conversation.”

“I really doubt it. You never talk about anything sensible.”

“You don’t know me, so how do you know that?”

I wasn’t really offended, but it was nice to talk about something, even if it was me.

She sniffed, cautiously making her way through the gates and out on to the road beyond. It was a dual carriageway, cluttered with cars jumbled together. Beyond the mess I could see a white metal fence. I’d been out here a few times and knew that it protected a clear strip of land and then the ships that still lay in the harbour. There was something pretty creepy about it. It was yet another place where I didn’t like to go, though at least I wasn’t alone. To my knowledge no one had tried getting on the ships.

We began moving carefully through the cars. We’d almost got to the traffic lights before she answered.

“I’ve heard enough about you to know. All you ever do is make jokes.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, fair point. But there’s a reason behind it.”

“Oh, what? To annoy everyone?”

“Nope.”

“Then why?”

I shook my head. “Oh, it doesn’t work like that. You have to tell me stuff before I’ll tell you anything.”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

Her voice came out a bit loud and we both froze. I was pretty sure that we were safe this close to base. If there was anything around then they’d have been spotted by our lookouts a while ago. Noah had put them all around the station and Union Square. They could probably see us right now. But there was nothing that would get us caught faster than being careless.

After about five minutes we unfroze and started walking again, staying close to the buildings. If a chicken did come for us we might be able to get inside and hide.

“Because you know more about me than I know about you,” I hissed to her. “You know who I am and probably where I come from. I don’t know where you came from or why you don’t hang around with groups like everyone else. I don’t even know your name.”

She didn’t answer me, just kept on walking, not saying anything. I trudged along behind her. I felt a bit ashamed about my outburst, but why should I trust her when she obviously didn’t trust me?

After a few minutes we came to a wide street with no cover whatsoever. I took a deep breath and dashed up it, only stopping when it had safely narrowed again. I turned back, expecting to see the Ambassador following me but she was just standing there, looking at me like I was an idiot.

“Come on,” I called back to her.

“We’re not going that way.” She pointed along the road that we had been following, which led further along the quay. “We’re going this way. We can’t go on to Union Street.”

I was beginning to really want to know what was on Union Street. Whatever it was really seemed to have
her spooked. I tried to smile reassuringly at her.

“We’ll only be on Union Street for a short while. Trust me in this.”

Maybe something I said earlier had stuck because she took a deep breath then dashed over to where I was standing. The street wasn’t that narrow. A giant chicken would have been able to fit in here. But it was still less dangerous than the quay had been.

“If we get caught I’ll never forgive you,” The Ambassador hissed at me. I rolled my eyes.

“Yes, your Ambassadorness.”

The street wasn’t that long but it seemed to take ages to walk up it. It was only when we were getting to the end that I realised that the Ambassador was dawdling. She really didn’t want to go there.

From a purely tactical sense I agreed with her. Union Street was the main street in Aberdeen and that meant that it was wide. A whole army of giant chickens could march up it and we wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them. If we were spotted, we wouldn’t stand a chance.

But King Street was almost as big. I didn’t know my way around the city as well as she did but if the Ambassador had problems with Union Street because of its size then she could probably have found a better way. There was definitely something wrong here. If something could freak out the Ambassador that badly then it couldn’t be anything good.

Finally we reached Union Street. I took a quick look around before darting back to the Ambassador.

“I can’t see anything,” I told her. It suddenly occurred to me that the chicken I’d seen earlier could be around here, but I decided that she didn’t need to know that right now. She was getting panicky enough as it was. “We should make it.”

She nodded, trying to hide her emotions behind a mask of confidence. I could respect that. “Then let’s go.”

We ran for the corner where Union Street turned into King Street. Whenever there was a chicken around I liked to move slowly. I didn’t know much about chickens, but from what I remembered from a documentary they could only see movement. Or was that dinosaurs? Anyway, moving slowly and carefully seemed like a good idea. But when there weren’t any around it was even better to move fast and get into cover, instead of being left out in the open.

I glanced down Union Street, just to see if I could see anything that could make the Ambassador that scared. I thought I caught a glimpse of something white in the distance but we were in cover before I could get a good look.

The Ambassador was gasping as if she’d just run a marathon, instead of the short distance. I decided that the white thing in the distance was yet another thing that she didn’t need to know about. Instead I pulled a bottle of water out of my backpack and offered it to her. “Are you all right?” I asked.

She took a quick gulp from the bottle before straightening up and nodding. “Yes. Thanks, Jesse.”

I think it might have been the first time she used my name.

“No problem, Ambassador.”

She had started walking forward again but stopped, uncertain. Then she said. “You don’t need to call me that. They just called me that because I move between the groups. My name is Rayna.”

I smiled. Progress.

We walked in silence. I didn’t want to push the little trust that Rayna had given me and she seemed relieved by the quiet. Besides, it was usually a good idea not to make noise. You wouldn’t think it but cities without people can be eerily quiet and any noise can echo. So I spent my time looking at the shops to either side of us and memorising them. The group was still pretty well stocked for supplies, but they would run out eventually and it was always good to know where else to go to look for them. The great thing about a chicken attack in the middle of the day was that most of the shops were still open, meaning that we didn’t have to break in to any. I got really excited when we passed a Morrisons. There weren’t all that many supermarkets near the centre of town and it could potentially keep us in food for the rest of the year.

After about forty minutes, we came to a crossroads and the four streets stretched out in every direction, long and straight. The one building off to the right was barely one story high and when I glanced left I found myself looking at a wide expanse of green grass and bushes. It looked too open. Open was not good. Open got you caught.

Rayna seemed to sense that I wasn’t happy. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

“It just seems a bit… exposed,” I said weakly. “What’s a field doing in the middle of Aberdeen?”

She looked at me strangely. “It’s not a field. It’s
a metre wide space, then there’s a lorry park or something.”

“It’s still pretty open.”

She nodded. “I guess, but this is the fastest way there. Look, there’s a pretty solid building along here that I sometimes camp in. We can rest up there for a while and get something to eat. Are you hungry?”

I was, but I hadn’t wanted to mention it. Breakfast had been a long time ago, before I’d set off to the library, and it was midway through the afternoon by now. I followed Rayna as we walked carefully across the intersection and towards the building she had been talking about. It was pretty impressive, long and brick, with a turret on the wall at either end. I wasn’t sure if you could get in them or not but a turret was a turret.

She let us in the back door and up some stairs to the second floor. She wasn’t kidding about having camped there in the past. There was a sleeping bag, a table with a few chairs and a couple of boxes full of what looked like tins. Even more impressive was the gas-powered stove with the pots and pans. We had one back at base but we didn’t use it that often. Getting the fuel for it wasn’t easy. Mostly we just ate things cold. My stomach, which had been pretty quiet up until now, suddenly twisted in anticipation of a hot meal.

Rayna saw the look on my face and grinned. She carefully lit the stove and gestured at one of the boxes. “You can pick anything you like from there.”

I went to have a look and found it full of tins of soup. I looked through for maybe half a minute before returning, clutching two tins in my hands. She glanced at the label before raising an eyebrow. “Chicken soup?” she said, her voice sarcastic.

I shrugged. “It seemed fitting.”

She laughed a bit and emptied both tins into a pot, putting it onto the stove and pulling out a spoon to stir it with. “You’re odd.”

“Everyone is,” I replied, echoing my brother. Then I swept my arms around in a circle. “The whole world is.”

“True enough,” she said. The soup quickly came to the boil and she pulled the pot off the stove. Then she handed me another spoon.

“No bowls, I’m afraid,” she said. “We’ll have to share the pot.”

I wasn’t bothered and had already taken my first spoonful of chicken before she’d finished talking. It was still very hot and I almost burned my mouth as I swallowed, sending it rolling down my throat in a warm, delicious wave. It had been so long since I’d had anything hot, let alone anything that was well cooked, that I had to remember to let Rayna have some as well. She was a lot daintier than me and took a lot longer. I had to stop to let her catch up.

“Hey, Rayna. Why did the chicken end up in the soup?”

She looked annoyed, then sighed irritably. “I don’t know. Why did the chicken end up in the soup?”

“Because it ran out of cluck!” I beamed at her.

She stared at me a second then went back to eating. “Ha ha. Very good. Are you going to keep doing that? Telling jokes?”

“Oh. Probably.”

“Could you not? Please?”

I was about to tell her no, but then I stopped and held up a hand.

“Feel that?” I asked.

She looked at me, exasperated. “If this is another joke…” she began but I cut her off.

“No, no, I’m serious. I think a Catcher is coming.”

She immediately got out a glass and poured some water into it. Sure enough, it began trembling a second later. One of the giant chickens was nearby.

We both hit the floor. She got down before me because I grabbed the pot of soup and brought it with me. She looked at me weirdly, but we’d probably have to stay down for a while and I really needed that food.

Still, I could get to that later. First I had to find out what was going on. I crawled across to the window and took a look.

The Catcher was closer than I thought it would be, plodding its two-legged way along. It was so close that I could see the detail on it. Each of the feathers seemed to have been carved individually out of metal and they rattled slightly with each step. The beak looked realistic as well. This wasn’t good. When they’d first attacked, the giant chickens had seemed pretty basic. Just a round body on a pair of legs. If more time was being taken to make artistic changes then that suggested that the makers weren’t too concerned about being attacked. Whoever they were. Worse, it meant that there were more of them being made.

There was a rustling noise and Rayna pulled herself up next to me. We were both quiet for a second, watching as it came level with our building. It was zigzagging slightly, wandering about as if drunk, and it seemed to be peering into random windows. Silently, we both lowered ourselves out of sight.

“Hey, why did the chicken cross the road?” I asked, only half joking. My heart was racing. I actually really
wanted to know.

“It’s probably hunting for us. It must know that we’re in the area and that’s why it’s acting oddly. I just can’t figure out how it got wind of us so fast. We haven’t done anything that could have alerted it.”

I shrugged and pulled the pot closer to us. “It was probably already in the area. I’ve already seen one today. Maybe they’re increasing the amount of patrols that they’re sending out.”

She frowned, but she picked up a spoon as well and joined me in eating. “I hope not. We’ve been pretty lucky so far. There are still a lot of kids out there.”

“I reckon the Catchers don’t really care about us.”

She looked at me, her head cocked slightly to one side. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, I’ve seen some of what those things can do. They can fire lasers from their eyes and their beaks can peck through rock. I think that if they were really serious about catching us we wouldn’t have a hope. I think that they only catch us when they see us so that we keep our heads down and don’t interfere.”

She took another spoonful. “But they captured all the adults.”

“Yeah, the ones who could attack them and do them harm. I think they just don’t see us as the same sort of threat.”

Most of the soup was gone by then and our spoons were scraping the pot edge, trying to get every scrap of food that we could. I gave up first, now feeling pleasantly full, and heaved myself up to look out of the window. The chicken seemed to be gone.

“You know, we can still be a threat,” Rayna said. “Especially if this plan goes ahead.”

I turned and watched as Rayna packed everything
away and got ready to move again. “I hope you’re right,” I said. “Because if they’re sending out more patrols, something’s got them spooked.”

We set off again after giving the chicken a ten minute head start. Ten minutes should be more than enough. Their legs were just so much longer than ours that they could cover the ground a lot quicker. We were right. Once we’d left the building there was no sign of it except for a few cars nudged into different positions. Still, I glanced at the sky, worried. It would be night soon and I didn’t think we had enough time to get back to the train station.

Rayna led us up to College Bounds, which was a cobbled street that led straight to the university. I couldn’t help but be impressed. She really knew her way around and had been able to take us the entire journey without missing a step. It was only once we were outside the university that she paused, uncertain.

Aberdeen University has been around for hundreds of years. The part we were standing outside, Elphinstone Hall, towered into the sky. It wasn’t that big compared to, say, a skyscraper… but skyscrapers are modern things. This building was old before skyscrapers were even thought of. I had the feeling that it would be here long after we (and the chickens) were gone.

Eventually Rayna started walking towards the entrance. I fell into step beside her. “Nervous?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I was just trying to work out where he’d be,” she said. Aberdeen University was pretty big. It could take a while to find the guy she was
looking for, especially if he didn’t want to be found.

As it turned out, he did want to be found, if the large piece of paper with, ‘In the library’ written on it was any clue. It was taped to the inside of the door where it wouldn’t be seen by giant chickens but would be seen by anyone coming through the entrance.

“Great,” Rayna said through gritted teeth, grabbing the sign and yanking it off the door. She turned on her heel and stalked back the way she had come.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, hurrying after her.

“I don’t like the library building. It looks creepy.”

I had to agree with her. The library looked like a bad modern architecture joke gone wrong. It was a giant cube, towering high above everything else around it. Where all the other buildings around here were made out of stone it was almost entirely glass. About halfway through construction it seemed that the designers had noticed how much it stuck out and tried to lessen the effect by camouflaging it with zebra stripes. All in all, it looked weird and out of place. And it didn’t look like a great place to hide.

Once inside it was a little better. Seven floors curved away above our heads, each opening to the foyer we were standing in. There was a café off to our left and a round white donut in the middle of the floor was probably the admittance desk. There was no sign of anyone around.

“Hello? Glen?” Rayna called.

There was movement on the top floor and someone stuck his head over the bannister. It was too far away for me to see anything expect blackish hair hanging messily around a wide face. “Ambassador? Is that you?”

“Yes,” Rayna called back. “I’ve brought a
representative with me from one of the city gangs.”

“And it’s not…?”

“No, it’s not Cody’s. This guy’s from the Train Station Gang.”

“Excellent. Bring him up.”

The head retreated from view and Rayna turned to me.

“Come on. We’ll have to take the stairs; the lifts don’t work.”

“Who’s Cody?” I asked, but Rayna didn’t answer.

We clambered over one of the barriers and into the nearest stairwell. The stairs looked like something you’d find in a multi-storey car park, just solid slabs of undecorated concrete. It even smelled faintly like a multi-storey car park. And climbing seven flights of those stairs was not fun.

We emerged at the top, gently panting, to find the person we’d come to speak to sitting at a table surrounded by stacks of books. He’d somehow managed to stay quite plump, despite a shortage of food and the exercise he must have got by walking up those stairs every day. He looked up as we approached and smiled slightly. I might have been paranoid, but it didn’t look like a nice smile. “You took your time,” he said.

“Then why don’t you use your genius to fix the lifts?” I shot back immediately. He looked surprised.

“Excuse me? Who are you?”

Rayna stepped between us. “He’s the one you wanted me to bring, Glen. The one from a city gang, to assure you that we’re good for the price. Because you didn’t trust my word.”

Her voice hardened slightly at the last bit and I took a step away from her. Glen didn’t appear to notice.

“Yes, well, I’ve got certain needs. You’re just one
person. How was I to know if you could provide what you said you could? In fact how am I supposed to know now? This could be anyone that you dragged up from anywhere. Did you bring any food?”

Rayna looked at me, annoyed that I’d been proved right. I didn’t gloat; I’d save that for later. Instead I dug around in a pocket of my jacket before pulling out a chocolate bar and tossing it to Glen. He looked at it in surprise and immediately ripped the wrapper off before stuffing it into his face. I watched him, feeling slightly jealous. I’d been looking forward to doing that.

Rayna waited until he’d finished, then continued talking. “Is that enough for you?”

Glen shook his head again. “Don’t be silly. It helps me trust you, but one chocolate bar isn’t anywhere near the price that I was asking for. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

I took a step forward, threateningly. I wasn’t actually going to attack him but he didn’t know that. Rayna grabbed my shoulder.

“So what do we have to get?”

Glen thought about it for a moment. “Well the first week’s delivery would help. That way I know I could trust you.”

I butted in before Rayna could answer. “We can’t do that. You’re asking for a fair amount of food. We can’t just let you have it before we know if what you’re offering’s worth it.”

He sneered at me. “So don’t ask for my help. I’m giving you a chance to stop the chickens. I just need to know that I will be given what I ask for in return.”

“If your information really does all that it’s supposed to then you should just give it to us anyway. If we can defeat the chickens then you’ll profit too.”

He laughed. “What do I care? I’m happy enough where I am. I’ve got enough food to survive for a while and the chickens can’t get me in my fortress here.”