The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (15 page)

She licked his hands and Cory, satisfied, returned to the
couch, covered himself in the old blanket again and prayed. 

“Dear God Jesus, please take care of Daddy.”  Then he closed
his eyes and slept.

Late in the night, long after the appendectomy was done, a
success, Cade came and sat in the big leather chair after he’d quietly added a
large chunk of dry wood to the fire.  He sat for a while and just listened to
the wind outside, far away and moaning softly.  Out there, the temperature was
now down in the low 30’s.  Cade watched the boy until his eyes also closed and
then he too was asleep.

Deep in the night, long after everyone had turned in, long
after Bertram had finished his nightly chapter of Raymond Chandler’s
The
High Window
, the German Shepherd awoke.  Her head darted up suddenly.  Her
pointy triangular ears flicked this way and that way.  Searching.  Listening to
something that had woken her from her dog dreams.  When she couldn’t find it,
she lay her head back down on her paws and watched the main door until her eyes
closed again after some time.

0558


Mission Runtime 156 hours 28 min 30 sec.


The Thinking Machine noted the time and continued its work
on the articulating joint located in what remained of its leg assembly.

44 degrees and rising.


Infrared operating at 39.6 percent efficiency.


Mission Status: Incomplete.


Message review at 0600, standby.


The Thinking Machine removed the bullet fragment it had been
chasing inside its internal chassis assembly.  Synthetic blood, more viscous
than actual blood, ran down the synthetic flesh of its shredded leg.

There are still 5 bullet entry points and thirty-six
unaccounted fragments located within the main combat chassis.


Weapons Status:


20mm Chain Gun, destroyed.  Marked with GPS tag for recovery
and reclamation.


9mm sub-compact Pulse Rifle, operational.  Ammunition
Status: Critical.  46 Rounds, electric impact.


Additional notes:  Laser sight Inoperative.


.50 AutoMag Pistol.  2 at full Cap Magazines.  20 rounds
total.  Laser Sight operational.


The Thinking Machine activated the compact welding tool
nearby and cauterized the synthetic flesh around the wound.  Chemical symbols
scrolled down the left side of its internal diagnostic display as the machine
snapped off the analysis program, redirecting its processor to continue the
data crawl it had been conducting on the last 24 hours of its operational
runtime. 

After contact with the Virus Unit, it had been experiencing
lag slip on its data gathering and acquisition assembly.  There was every
chance, it was 84.8 percent convinced, that it had somehow missed observable
evidence of an infestation node located in the local area.

06:00:00


Message upload.


Mission Status:  Incomplete


Contact with Virus Infestation at location
LAT:33.68679902741575
LONG:-117.67460337790988


29 units Terminated.


This unit status upload in attached file.


Mission continues.


There was a message from SILAS.

06:00:02


Message Received.


Mission Status:  Incomplete.


SILAS:  All files relating to operational capacity of this
unit complete.  No maint required for mission continuance and completion.  No
weapons drop this unit.  This unit must complete mission within timeframe
parameters. 


Mission Priority:  Elevated Critical.


Message End.


The Thinking Machine had only been “alive” for just over 156
hours.  It had been manufactured at the Light Infantry Special Warfare Assembly
Plant in the ruins of Culver City.  Its first recorded images of the world
outside the production line and clean rooms had been one of utter devastation. 
Broken skyscrapers and torn rebar.  Frozen gray vehicles in long lines
stretching off toward the west, the east, the south and the north.  Brand new
shiny chain link fences.  Continually searching searchlights questing out
beyond the perimeter for any signs of virus units.  Octagonal towers, clean and
austere, constructed with reflective metal composition almost alien in its lack
of human influence, rose above the chaos of the infestation’s ruins of a failed
civilization.  Hunter Killers hovered in the wastelands beyond the fences.

In that first hour of operational runtime, its targeting
assembly had locked onto an infestation unit.  One of many, in fact.  Virus
units coming in through the fence and passing the tall guard towers, under the
supervision of non-synthetic infiltration combat units, or just the
human-shaped matte-alloy combat chassis the virus called “Terminators”, herding
them into the processing facility for materials breakdown and harvesting.

The first virus unit the Thinking Machine had targeted, the
first virus infestation unit, had been a female.  Her face covered in dirt. 
Her eyes vacant.  There was no real intelligence there.

That had been just over 156 hours ago.

No doubt the female had been broken down into material
components since.

Runtime end.


The Thinking Machine wrapped rags around the wound and
picked up its smartphone from the table, where it lay next to the welding
device.  It activated the mirror function and examined its face.

Microframe housing at 88.3 percent functionality.


Microframe armor at 70.4 percent functionality.


Microframe stealth concealment 65 percent functionality.


Internal Diagnostic Assessment suggests:  Return to Light
Infantry Special Warfare Plant, Culver City, for reapplication of bio-genetic
camouflage.


Note: SILAS Authorized Mission Priority Override.


A large section of its face was missing.  Mostly the right
side.  The flesh had been burnt away by an Infestation Type 46 incendiary
device in the most recent contact with Infestation units.  

29 units Terminated.


A male virus unit had done the most damage.  Rushing the
Thinking Machine from the 237 degree radial.  The Thinking Machine had been
engaging two PulseRifle armed Infestation units under cover of a wrecked
Infestation transit bus, diesel-Type.  The Infestation unit with the Type 46 incendiary
device had penetrated the Immediate Danger Close Zone of ten feet when the
Thinking Machine deployed its 50. Cal AutoMag and ventilated the Infestation
unit with 12 critical kill shots at close range in
4,3 seconds
.

The incendiary device exploded.

There had been a system reboot.

Time was lost.

1.7 seconds.


Damage reports.

Urgent Critical:  Stealth Camouflage, Microframe Processor
Area, Critical.


24 seconds later, the last of the Virus units had been
terminated.  The mission continued.

Now for three days, the Thinking Machine had been
reconnoitering the area Defense Communications Processes had analyzed as being
a possible Virus Node.  For three days the Thinking Machine had been alone and
deep inside Infestation-held territory.  Disconnected from SILAS and the
network.  The virus had the capabilities of tracking and identifying the
electronic and communications signature of any networked Thinking Machine and
could detect units far to the south of the main conflict and area of
operations.

Three days now.

The Thinking Machine was in the large sanctuary of the
remains of a church.  There was a crow somewhere in the exposed beams above,
sheltering from the cruel sky.  The bleached and dusty bones of terminated
virus units lay along the floors and crumbling pews of the place.  There had
been many.  Now their bones and skulls were everywhere.  Intermingled and flung
about one another, uncountable because of their positioning.  The Thinking
Machine reasoned that many virus units must have been gathered in the remains
of the church on Independence Day when the war had begun... and been won a few
short hours later by the machines.

Mission Status:  Incomplete.


Mission Resumed.


Detect Virus Infection and Terminate.


Cade watched Cory pet the dog from
the steps of the library in the cool morning’s milky light.  They’d stepped
outside after Bertram had spent some time questioning the boy.

They’d learned nothing.

Who his Daddy is?  Or was?  Who they were and where they’d
come from?

Nothing.

That the boy was mentally slow, was obvious.  That the boy
was confused about where he was, was less obvious, but still, they guessed he
might be.  After the session, Bertram had taken Cade to the old help desk and
shown him some research materials he’d collected that morning from within the
stacks. 

When Cade had opened his eyes in the morning, he’d watched
Bertram in the stacks on the other side of the room and he hadn’t thought much
of it at the time.  Now, he knew what the old man had been up to.

Bertram said the research materials were called “comic
books”.

Batman.

The Dark Knight.

Old bound editions of collected works.  Some others on the
nature and history of comic books in general.  Cade hadn’t been able to read,
much, when he’d first been assigned by Resistance Command to come down here and
pull security for the old man and the library.  But there was a lot of downtime
and his reading had gotten better.  He’d never seen “comic books” books
though.  He was still reading all the Hemingway he could find.

“The boy thinks he’s this character,” whispered Bertram.

Cade picked up an old, paper thin comic book and leafed
through the yellowed pages.

“Was this real?” Cade asked the old man.

Bertram snorted.  “No, not at all.  Just a fictional crime
fighter.   A super hero they called them.   Seemed to be a little messed up in
the head.  I’d seen this one once a few years ago.  The boy’s cape and mask
triggered the memory and I pulled the name out of my hat.  He agreed with it
and so when I got up this morning, I did a little investigating and found out
as much as I could.”

Cade continued to turn the fragile pages.  There were so
many colors.  That was what stood out to Cade about “comic books”.  The
colors.  The colors of the ink.

Cade’s life had not been one of colors.

“So... does it mean anything?  He’s simple, so what,”
whispered Cade, studying a particular picture of a man with a long, pronounced
jaw, white skin, purple clothes from the Before, and green hair.  Cade wondered
if this was how people dressed before...

... he had no idea.  He’d been raised in the Nevada waste. 
He’d only ever known found clothing, pulled from the corpse of someone just
dead or redistributed by Resistance Command.  Clothing that had survived a five
year winter and a world that had never really recovered from a global
thermonuclear Armageddon.

“So where’d he get the cape and mask?” asked Cade.

“His “Daddy” must have found ‘em, I don’t know, I guess?  I
imagine “Daddy” is a survivor from the Before who remembered the stories
involving this Batman character.  He must have told them to the kid.”

“Those things haven’t been manufactured in over twenty-five
years, Bert.  They look far too new for that,” hissed Cade, referencing the
mask and cape.

Cade closed the comic book and put it back on the stack, his
long finger resting on it for a moment.

“So what’re you saying?” rumbled Bertram.

Cade watched Bertram gathering himself for something that
didn’t come.  In the end, the old man just looked off at the boy who sat cross
legged in the middle of the library, petting the dog, softly mumbling something
to himself.

“He was just part of some group, trekking to somewhere. 
Times got tight and they left him.  It happens.  It happens a lot, in fact. 
He’s just another mouth to feed and if the Cans catch up with them... then he’s
a liability.  They were probably heading north like that bunch last month. 
Coming in to try and find anything they can to survive another year.  There’s
nothin’ left out there.  This is gonna happen more and more.  So that’s it,
they just abandoned him.”

Cade considered this.  He could see the old man wanted to
buy his own argument.

Then, “He said he lived in a house,” Cade shot back.

Bertram smirked, then ran his fingers through his bushy gray
hair.  “Can we trust anything he says?  Who knows what his idea of a house is. 
Said his “Daddy” was a cop.  Maybe that’s just somethin’ someone told him. 
Ain’t been a cop around in all your life, Cade.”

For a moment, the two of them were silent.

“So what do we do with him?” asked Cade.

Bertram seemed stunned by the question.  As though that
really hadn’t been what this whole conversation had been about and leading
toward.  All the old man’s researching, the interrogation, the questions
internal and external had been about something else.  Bertram had merely wanted
to solve the riddle.  He had no desire to do anything with it afterward.

“Well,” Bertram huffed.  “I’ve no idea.  Turn him over to
the next supply run and have them take him out to the refugee camps?”

After a long silence, Cade looked down at his thick fingers
and said, “I suppose that would be the thing to do.  I suppose.”

But then...

“They got no use for him, Bert.  Aww... who knows.  How
‘bout we just let him stay for a while.”  Then, “We’ll figure it out later.”

Bertram thought.  His brow furrowed, his ancient face
creasing.  His breath held.

“Well... we’ll see for now.”

Cade watched the boy out in the cracked parking lot and
smoked one of his own cigarettes.  The air around the library felt dry and
almost warm today.  Life was pretty good down here, away from the meat-grinder
of the front lines and the Cans.