Into the Fire (17 page)

Between the fence and road at the front of the building there was a lawn, eighty yards or so wide: a human touch in an otherwise inhumane place. We'd already checked the entrance out as we sauntered by, trying not to look interested but taking in everything we could. There was all kinda stuff there: what looked like shields, scanners, maybe even automated weapons. That was what I needed Jimmy for—to be certain.

We found a bit of cover amongst the scrub and I explained to Hanna about the cameras—that you only got thirty seconds or so before the next one came along. What I didn't know was whether they were computer- or human-monitored, which'd make a big difference: computers can only be programmed for a finite number of actions, while humans are much better at interpretation. On the other hand, if a computer concludes you're up to no good, it's pretty hard to talk your way out of it.

She waited for the next camera to pass, then took out her coathangers and began to shape them, dropping the arrangement
to the ground when the next camera approached. Piece by piece she worked on assembling this kinda large saucepan, wrapped with tinfoil, adding the battery and gizmo Jimmy gave her to make a shield. She did it with such precision, followed his instructions so coolly, I gotta admit, I was already more comfortable with the decision to bring her. Meanwhile, I took out my so-called “camera and communicator.”

“I'm ready,” Hanna told me, turning on her shield so it was working before I operated my camera. Jeez, I really hoped Jimmy knew what he was doing.

“Jimmy?” I muttered into my apparatus, keeping my voice low. There was no answer, so I tried again. “Jimmy!”

I looked at Hanna. “Doesn't work,” I muttered.

“Worry about your end of things—not mine,” came this barely recognizable, rather automated-sounding squeaky voice.

He appeared on the mini-monitor, for some reason looking unnaturally red. Before I could speak, I had to conceal the apparatus from yet another passing camera.

It certainly wasn't ideal, what with Hanna and me having to hide our stuff every few moments and Jimmy not always able to hear us, but slowly we began to make sense of each other.

“Okay, just start by panning the whole thing for me, one end to the other,” Jimmy asked. “
No!
Too fast—go slower!”

“Jimmy,” I complained, seeing another camera bearing down on us, “I gotta be quick!”

The little guy kept thinking out loud about what he could see, going through an inventory, barely taking any notice of me apart from to give orders.

“Okay, yep, that's pretty standard—hey, can you focus in on the roof? By the helipad there . . . Nah, can't see—no, no, wait! . . .
Whoa!
” he cried. “
Heavy!
I won't be landing my private jet there any time soon. I wonder what an average everyday respectable conglomerate wants with heavy-duty laser cannons? . . . Clancy, where you gone?”

I covered my makeshift apparatus yet again as a camera slid past, pretending to be searching the waste ground for anything of value while Hanna did the same. I tell you, she was doing really well. Nothing seemed to fluster her.

“Wow! Cool!” gasped Jimmy, impressed more than intimidated by the hardware on display.

“So what d'ya think?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said. “The roof's heavily guarded, and as for the entrance, well, forget it. I don't get the lawn though.”

“What d'ya mean?”

“What's the point of it? Every thing else is there for a purpose . . . Try chucking a rock.”

“What?”

“Heave a rock over there. But get ready to run.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I doubt anything'll happen outside the fence.”

“You sure about that?”

“More or less.”

“Thank you, Jimmy,” I said, glaring at that tiny red representation of him on the monitor. Maybe Infinity was right and he was the devil incarnate.

Though I say it myself, rock throwing is one of my few talents, and one was winging its way over there in no time. It landed on the grass while I trained my makeshift camera on it, watching for any reaction. There was none.

“Try a bigger one,” Jimmy said.

“What?”

“It might have a heavier trigger point. Otherwise anything would set it off. A bird could drop a twig.”

With a pointed sigh, I picked up a larger rock and lobbed it over. This time there
was
a reaction: a rabbit appeared from nowhere, ran around in a couple of circles, then just sat there.

Hanna gave out with all these “cooing” and “ooohing” noises, and it occurred to me that she'd probably never seen a live rabbit in her life.

“There you go,” I said to Jimmy, as if the whole thing had just been declared safe by an expert. But he still wasn't happy.

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe it needs to be even heavier.”

“Jimmy!” I protested.

“It don't make sense, Big Guy! All those open areas unprotected. Where did that rabbit come from?”

“A hole, I'd guess,” I rather sneered.

“Mm . . . That must be the dark areas I can see,” he said, obviously splitting his screen and pulling up a second image.

For a while he said nothing as he studied and played with the other image. I couldn't see his face that well, but he looked worried. Several cameras passed by, sliding and jerking on their wire, and I realized what they reminded me of: the dishes in the First Original Sushi Bar, trundling by on their belt.

“There's something wrong here,” Jimmy muttered to himself. “I just don't know what.”

“You want me to hop over the fence and go for a walk?” I said sarcastically.

“Ideally, yes,” he replied.

“Yeah, well, you know what you can do.”

I was so intent on that tiny monitor I didn't notice what Hanna was doing until I glanced up: she'd left her “shield” propped up in a bush and was bounding over to the fence.

“Hanna?” I called, wondering what the hell she had in mind.

It was like watching a champion athlete do something you wouldn't have even thought possible. She kinda leapt up, rebounded off the fence about halfway up, then sailed over the top, slithering under the wires and down the other side, landing on the ground with barely any impact.

“Hanna!” I shouted again, but she took a few steps away from the fence, hopefully avoiding the gaze of the oncoming camera. “What do you want me to do?”

“Christ! Jimmy, can you see this?” I said, directing my makeshift camera at her.

“Tell her to just walk around naturally,” he said.

“What?”

“She's in there now,” he said, perfectly logically.

When I looked up again, Hanna was already off, moving toward the squatting rabbit, doing her best not to frighten it, taking a few gliding steps forward at a time.

“
Big Guy?
” Jimmy suddenly said, his voice lower, worried.

“It's okay, she's fine,” I replied, glancing over at the main building to make sure there was no sign of any activity.

“What the hell's that?” Jimmy muttered.

I turned to the monitor. He was looking at his other image and obviously something that was really unnerving him.

“What's the matter?”

“There's something going on there.”

“What?”

“Get her out!” he suddenly shouted.

“Why?” I said, looking over and seeing nothing.

“Clancy!
Get her out!
”

“Hanna!
Hanna!
” I called.

I tell ya, it was one helluva shock: suddenly sections of the grass started to rise up, mounds split open, doors slid back and something began to emerge.

“
Hanna!
” I screamed.

It took an age for me to realize what they were. Two of them came bounding out of one opening and several more from another: shiny, silver, moving like some kind of animal—but how could they be? Then I heard this sound, a sort of slurping, pneumatic galloping, and I realized they were robots.

I guess they looked closest to a dog, a much chunkier version of those pit bull things I used to see around when I was a kid. Their heads were almost entirely comprised of jaws, with huge, pointed metal teeth and a couple of slashes for eyes that I guessed were cameras; and all of them were giving out with this snarling mechanical roar, louder and more chilling than any real animal could ever be.

Hanna turned and started to run back to the fence, but it was obvious she wasn't gonna make it. There must've been half a dozen
or more of those things converging on her. Worse still, there was nothing I could do, no way could I get over that fence in time . . . Two of them came streaking in from the side, emerging from bunkers only yards inside the perimeter, snarling and snapping, their eager jaws ready to rip into her.

It was weird, almost miraculous. I swear, how fast those things moved, she didn't stand a chance, but she kind of changed mode and started to move in a different fashion, and in a lull amongst the growling and snarling, I realized she was actually humming to herself. She started to dance to the music, leaping into the air time and time again, pirouetting, leaving their jaws snapping at nothing. Two of them collided with each other, one ending up on the ground, kicking its legs in the air while the other resumed its pursuit.

Now more and more mounds were rising up, their exits spitting out further silver monsters, all running at her with their pneumatic
slurp-slurp
. As she neared the fence, there was a whole pack waiting for her and I had no idea what she was gonna do, but she just ran at them full speed and leaped into the air, using their backs as springboards, bouncing from one to another, eluding their snapping jaws until she was finally able to jump onto the fence, scramble up it and slide through the gap, leaving them growling and snarling down below.

She ran over and threw her arms around me, giving me a grateful hug.

“You okay?” I asked, hugging her back.

“Yeah,” she said, forcing a slightly nervous smile. “It was fun.”

Just at that moment we heard these kinda howls of preprogrammed victory and celebration: the rabbit had been chased and caught and was being systematically torn to shreds, piece by piece, like they'd keep going 'til there was nothing left.

Hanna looked a little sick, maybe 'cuz of what happened to the rabbit, maybe 'cuz it was a graphic demonstration of what might've happened to her.

“That's horrible,” she moaned.

Jimmy's voice suddenly crackled into life. “Big Guy, get out of there,” he said. “Somebody's coming.”

We didn't worry about the cameras any more—I reckon they were computer-monitored anyway. We just ran, disappearing into the smoke and gathering darkness, ignoring the sirens coming from the direction of the main building, the sound of a Dragonfly's engine starting up on the roof.

When we got back to the crypt everyone was sitting around looking a little worried, even Gordie, though I reckon we'd've had to've dragged it out of him by his back teeth. Hanna made light of what had happened, answering almost every question simply, like it was an everyday thing to be chased by a pack of mechanical jaws on legs.

“What the hell are those things?” I asked Jimmy, knowing he'd be the only one who might have a clue.

“Growlers.”

“What?”

“Dogs of war, or a version of them. Thought they were only allowed on the battlefield. Officially they've never been used, but there were rumors. They were supposed to be a more humane, more convenient way to fight,” Jimmy said, with some irony. “Tearing your enemies apart, incurring no domestic casualties, made them politically popular. They'll attack anything they're told to; they'll plant bombs, blow themselves up—they can even rebuild each other if they get damaged, work out how to divide their parts to keep the maximum number functioning, so instead of three four-legged growlers and a heap of nothing, you got four three-legged ones coming at you.”

“Jeez,” I gasped.

“Never thought I'd see them in civilian use.”

Delilah gave this long, weary sigh, the kind she often gave out with since she'd lost Arturo, as if everything that had subsequently happened was merely confirmation of how bad this world had become. If the Infinity complex hadn't looked unbreachable before,
it sure did then. I'd been no use at all to Hanna earlier—by the time I'd've got my arthritic old bones over that fence she'd have been torn into bits no bigger than postage stamps. I thanked God she was young and strong and full of spirit . . . but me . . . I was a dinosaur, a washed-up old big guy. I didn't even know what I was up against anymore.
Dogs of war!
What the hell next? In my day you fought
people
: you saw the whites of their eyes, even heard what they had to say; a lot of the time there was even a sort of respect. Now we got jaws on legs:
Growlers
. And yet I knew that if I was ever gonna see my Lena again, somehow I had to find a way of dealing with them.

I don't know if I got up in the morning or just didn't go to sleep at night, but shortly after dawn I made my way up the steps as quietly as I could. I didn't want the others to see me in the mood I was in. I'd been churning all sorts of stuff over all night and it hadn't done me a helluva lot of good.

There was a little bit of an early-morning mist mingling with the smoke and the light of the day was slowly seeping through both of them, creating this rather eerie and unreal world, like a no-man's-land between this existence and the next. Maybe that was why I started to meander around the churchyard, reading the occasional gravestone, tributes to those on the other side.

I don't know when she did it—for sure she never said anything to me—but I came to this very plain, simple stone cross with no carved inscription, but someone had recently scratched something on it.