| |
Walker hung back and watched as Alvin Mcready examined Johnny. This examination seemed to consist of the older man checking Johnny’s pulse, feeling the temperature of his forehead, and retightening his sling and the bandaging around his torso. Walker watched Alvin work quickly and confidently, and wondered if the old-timer had in fact had any medical training. He suspected he had. As Alvin worked, Walker gazed at the older man’s features. Alvin’s face was heavily lined, teetering on the cusp of rugged, but threatening to slide into haggard old age. His grey hair and beard, and leathery tanned skin aged him further. Walker would have placed Alvin in his early sixties, were it not for his fit, very capable looking physique. And if the man behaved like a doctor, he certainly wasn’t dressed like one. He wore dusty khaki combats, high leg boots and a sweat-stained grey T-shirt.
“How’s he doing?” asked Walker.
Alvin straightened up and turned to face him. After a pause, he wandered outside and began talking. Walker took the hint and followed.
“He’s badly banged up alright,” said Alvin, stepping out into the desert heat. “He’s broken his leg and arm, and I’m pretty sure he’s cracked a couple of ribs. I haven’t seen any evidence of internal bleeding, but that doesn’t mean everything’s OK inside.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I’ve had some training. I was in the army.”
“We need to get him to a hospital straightaway,” said Walker.
“Ideally, yes, but given the current situation, I’d say it’s best not to move him.”
“Current situation?”
“That accent, are you English?”
“Yeah.”
“My cousin married an English guy, from London. Blackworth, Blackheath or something?”
“Where’s your car?”
Alvin sighed and scratched his head. “It’s a couple of miles over the ridge in Folly, but it’s not working.”
“Folly?” said Walker. “There’s a town close by?”
“Yeah,” said Alvin. “But don’t go breaking out the cigars yet. It’s not that kind of town.”
“Well what kind of town do you mean? Aren’t there people there?”
“Well, yes, and no. It’s sort of complicated.”
“Look, thanks for helping back there and patching us up, but you said it yourself, Johnny needs proper medical care. So we’ve got to get him to a hospital.”
Now it was Walker’s turn to take the lead, striking out west towards the lowest foothill at the tail end of the impending ridge. Walker headed off at a steady pace, despite his own injuries. He made a deliberate point of not looking at the metal giant that was still stationed outside the railcar shack like a graffiti strewn statue. The less he acknowledged it, the more he could postpone dealing with its existence.
That was one conversation he wasn’t yet ready for yet.
Alvin watched Walker leave, then after a few moments sighed and called out to him with a tired voice.
“Ok, hold your horses,” he said. “I’ll take you there. The whole set up will probably make more sense if I just show you anyhow.”
Walker waited impatiently for the older man to catch up with him. When Alvin reached him, he paused and turned back to face the inert mechanical giant by the railcar shack. Alvin then addressed it.
“Tyson,” said Alvin. “Guard the perimeter, and see if you can do something to fix those bikes.”
Walker stared at Alvin as if the older man was suffering a bout of dementia. He quickly assumed that Alvin probably talked to this machine the way someone else might jibber away to their cat or dog, with familiarity and perhaps purpose, but with no real expectation of an answer.
After all, just because you’ve seen that hulking machine walk, surely that doesn’t mean it can talk or listen or fix smashed motorbikes...?
But then, to his astonishment, the metal giant braced up like a soldier responding to a command, stretching and expanding its joints in an anthem of hissing compressed air and whirring servos. Tyson then picked up both Harleys and examined them. It then replaced the mangled Electra Glide on the ground in favour of the still intact Fat Boy, turning the remaining bike over in both hands as if it were a toy and inspecting it more closely. Alvin put his arm around Walker’s shoulder and steered the stunned Englishman back on their course towards the ridge and the alleged town of Folly beyond. Walker complied in a trance, like a wide-eyed, freshly sedated patient being herded away by an orderly.
*
The two men trekked through the desert in silence for several minutes, Alvin allowing Walker time and space to rerun the recent events over and over in his mind, giving him the chance to come to terms with the accident and the sight of his extraordinary machine. Perhaps enough to find the right questions to ask anyway. Walker tried to take full advantage of the time-out to do just that, but he was unable to focus on anything properly. His aching mind had hung like an errant programme, and for a while he dare not, could not, return to the subject of Tyson without mentally seizing up again. They were approaching the tail of the ridge, the lowest point where the sandstone rolled down to meet the vast plain of the wide-open desert, when Walker finally broached the subject.
“OK,” he said. “I can’t stand it any longer. What the hell was that?”
Alvin wiped a glistening sheen of sweat away from his forehead with the back of his hand and squinted at him.
“Tyson?” he asked.
“Yeah, you know, that enormous bloody robot.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“What’s it doing here? Or anywhere for that matter? I mean, they don’t make stuff like that yet. At least, not outside Japan.”
“Actually, they do,” replied Alvin, smirking. “In fact, Tyson’s pretty dated now. He’s the earliest model.”
“Earliest model what?”
“Military robot. He was the prototype for the series, but then they scrapped his design and went back to the drawing board.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s a big, tough bruiser alright, a solid piece of kit, but he’s too big to handle standard issue weapons or machinery. So they scaled them down to something a little less showy, used the dimensions of actual soldiers.”
Walker shook his head and stopped. He held up his hands to halt his guide too. He felt sweat and frustration bubbling their way up through his skin.
“Stop.” he said. “I’m from England and I only speak English. So from the beginning, and in plain, sensible English, what the fuck are you talking about?”
Alvin’s face hardened for a second, his placid features becoming tight and harsh, his pale blue eyes suddenly severe and threatening. It was just a reflex action and Alvin quickly relaxed again, but in that moment, Walker glimpsed something that would make him think twice about raising his voice to this man again.
“You’re near, well on, a test site,” said Alvin. “There’s a commercial programme underway here to QA android war machines that have been commissioned by the army. Tyson was the first version of this war machine, but they’ve been through a lot of changes since he was developed. We’re now testing much more advanced models. Is this making sense?”
“Yeah.” said Walker, calming down. “Perfect sense.”
Walker felt himself deflate. He looked at the ground and then back into Alvin’s eyes. They were clear and earnest.
“So what are you, a scientist?”
“No,” replied Alvin. “I’m a consultant of sorts. I’m here along with some other trouble-shooters to help fine tune these soldiers, to improve their capabilities before the company makes a final presentation to the military...”
“I feel a “but” coming on...”
“...but we’ve had a few problems. Come on, let’s get to Folly and I’ll show you.”
Alvin started walking again, and Walker automatically followed, still struggling to digest the latest bombshell. The two men circled around the foot of the lowest hill where the tail of the ridge bottomed out. At last Walker could see the town that had previously been hidden behind the mountain. About another mile or so from the ridge lay Folly, though it was so small it hardly warranted the word “town”. Even at this distance, Walker could see that the settlement consisted of just one street with two lines of dreary wooden buildings running parallel, their tired wooden frontages facing off against each other. To Walker it was more like the set of an old western ghost town than a real, functioning place that might actually house people. The town lay in a dusty basin at the foot of a large and imposing mountain. This colossal outcrop of bare rock was the centre point of the ridge, the spine of which stretched all the way back from the north-east, down towards Folly, reaching for the town like a huge Y-shaped claw, the two raised ends closing down on the town as if poised to crush it.
As they approached the town, Walker picked up very faint whirring sounds here and there. He looked around and eventually spotted a tiny remote video camera protruding from the desert scrub like a plant shoot. The whirring sound accompanied the camera’s efforts to pan right to left, presumably tracking their movements and keeping them in frame as they walked. Walker was about to say something about it, when he realised that the desert here was littered with them; dozens and dozens of little automated eyes keeping watch over the town and its surrounding area. More and more electrical whirs filled the dry air, as most of the cameras in the immediate vicinity re-framed to pick up the two men and follow their approach. Walker instinctively tightened up, finding this particularly unnerving.
“Had a lot of break-ins around here?” he asked, trying to sound light, but failing.
Alvin didn’t reply.
As they drew closer to the town, Walker could see that Folly was no longer habitable. It really did look just like one of those old, abandoned gold rush ghost towns that you read about in books or saw on TV. It was a dry, dusty and desolate dead end, now home to nothing more than scorpions and the occasional rolling tumbleweed. It was the sort of place that defined failure, reeked of it. It was a very wrong turn off the road to the great American dream. Walker could see that the majority of the dilapidated wooden buildings that made up the street, were not only in dangerous states of disrepair, but were also peppered and shredded with varying calibres of small arms fire. In some cases, whole walls had been shot away to reveal their crumbling interiors. Walker supposed that over the years, Folly must have become a Mecca for every gun-toting redneck in Nevada; the promise of shooting a whole town to pieces proving an irresistible draw, even if the target was lost in the middle of nowhere.
“There was a short-lived gold rush here at the turn of the last century,” said Alvin. “Mining towns sprung up all over Nevada. Goldfield, Cobre, Osceola. But people got too keen, too jumpy. When there was a strike here, the miners were all over the place like a rash. Only it wasn’t gold, it was fool’s gold.”
“Hence the name...”
“Yup. This town was over before it even started.”
The two men had reached the start of the high street, the only street. A wide and dusty avenue presented itself before them, flanked with flaking frontages, broken windows, collapsed balconies and bullet-riddled walkways. Here too there was a large scattering of tiny, panning security cameras embedded in the ground, rippling and keeping pace with their movements like a lazy Mexican wave. Most of the old, prefabricated buildings were mundane and ambiguous, but Walker recognised a hastily thrown up saloon and a general store, and what looked like a large livery stable towards the other end of town.
Something caught Walker’s eye and he looked up quickly, just in time to see a figure watching him from the far corner of a nearby barn. The man there stayed perfectly still and continued to stare at them from his supposed hiding place, seemingly unfazed that his cover had been blown. It was only when they drew level with the barn, that Walker realised the figure was not a person at all, but was in fact a posed mannequin. The figure reminded him of those life-sized crash test dummies repeatedly smashed through car windscreens in safety experiments, but this one seemed to be covered in a matte blue-grey metal skin.
Walker glanced over at Alvin. The older man just shrugged in response. Walker ventured closer to the mannequin to take a proper look. The figure was life-sized, and though featureless, had been constructed with great care and meticulous detail. Scanning the numerous metal and plastic joints, Walker imagined that this thing was fully poseable and capable of imitating any position a person might take. This one had been left peering around a corner as if preparing an ambush. There were clusters of dents in the dummy’s chest and “face”, and judging from the mass of bullet holes that had torn up the side of the wooden barn behind it, those dents had been made by rounds that struck it and ricocheted off. Walker began to back away to the centre of the street. He didn’t know what all this meant exactly, but it stirred up a bad feeling inside that was hard to ignore. As he rejoined Alvin, Walker found he was now able to pick out lots more of these target dummies stationed around the town. Nearly all of them were semi-hidden and positioned in threatening or defensive poses; lurking at windows, behind corners or in the shadows. Most bore the same depression scars where bullets had bounced off them, and their immediate surroundings had again been similarly drilled, or in some cases entirely shot away by sustained arms fire. Walker stared at Alvin with a questioning, almost accusatory look. The thick air of menace that filled this town had crept up on Walker slowly, but now it had revealed itself, it was impossible to ignore. Yet Alvin’s face gave nothing away. His new friend seemed happy to remain silent on the subject, at least for now.
“A test site, you say?” said Walker.
“Yup,” nodded Alvin.
“Like a range?”
Again, Alvin nodded, but he was now apparently preoccupied, his eyes fixed firmly on the tumbledown saloon ahead of them. Walker noticed that they had stopped in the centre of the street, and that the older man seemed to be wary, as if waiting for something to happen.
“What is it?” asked Walker.
The answer, or rather answers, revealed themselves before Alvin could reply. More figures emerged from the shadows of the surrounding buildings and quickly closed in on the two men, encircling them. Walker counted six metal dummies in all, but unlike their static, grey brethren, these jet-black models appeared to be fully functioning robots. As they closed in, their fluid, fast motion didn’t just mimic the movements of real humans, it perfected it. It was an eerie sight. Had the androids’ elbow and knee joints not been so compact, Walker would have swore that these figures were in fact graceful men disguised in some elaborate costume armour. His shock at seeing Tyson stroll out of the desert sun seemed to pale in comparison to this next stage in combat robot evolution. He began to wonder what other terrifying technological advances were being assembled at that very moment in laboratories and test chambers around the world.
“It’s OK,” said Alvin calmly. “They’re just Wardogs. They’re doing as they’ve been told.”
Walker heard the older man’s words, but they did little to reassure him, especially when he looked into the gleaming, black curve of convex metal where the closest Wardog’s face should have been, and saw only dust, his own reflected image and that of the sun and the sky staring back at him.
“They’re robots too?”
“Yeah,” said Alvin. “They may not look as frightening as Tyson, but believe me, they’re a whole different class.”
Walker’s eyes fell to the Wardog’s black mechanical gauntlet of a hand, stretched open and poised to grab and crush.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’d say they’re pretty frightening.”
Alvin straightened up and slowly began to rotate on the spot as he spoke to all six androids surrounding them.
“Alright ladies, back off, this one’s a friendly.”
Then he whispered to Walker. “Say, what is your name anyway?”
“Walker, Matt Walker.”
“Nice to meet you, Matt Walker.”
“You too, Alvin, but call me Walker.”
Alvin nodded, but his eyes were on the androids again. “This is Walker. He is a friendly, not a target. OK?”
One of the Wardogs dipped its head to Alvin in the briefest of nods and then the others followed suit, as the same synchronised motion spread through their circle like a wave.
“Don’t worry,” said Alvin. “They won’t touch you.”
“Are they really that smart?” asked Walker, still visibly baffled by what he was seeing.
“You’d be surprised at what all the hardware here can do.”
“All these machines, just walking around out here, taking orders. It’s insane. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”
It was then that the door to the saloon across the street creaked open and more figures, genuine humans this time, began cautiously filing out on to the raised walkway outside. Walker looked over at the six bedraggled men and saw immediately that all of them carried the same weight of suspicion and fear on their tired faces. The men formed a loose line along the front of the saloon and stared down at Walker for a few moments with blatant hostility. Then a powerfully built man stepped out on to the street and made a beeline for Walker, ignoring the jet-black androids as if they were just mannequins arranged in a store display. The man, like the rest of the group, was dressed in a dusty mixture of civilian clothes and army gear. His choice was faded denims and an olive drab khaki vest and matching field jacket. The big man’s stride picked up speed and Walker could tell from his forceful swagger and fixed stare that he meant trouble. He’d seen the type, the sort of man that would load up on beer then insult you or come on to your girlfriend, just for the excuse to take you outside and beat you to a pulp. Walker caught a reflected flash of sun bouncing off dog-tags hanging around the guy’s neck and quickly looked away, his vision dazed and spotting.
Then Walker was being grabbed by his T-shirt and hauled into the air. He heard one of the men behind his attacker shout something. Then Alvin raised his voice too. The next thing he knew he was flying backwards, launched into the path of one of the Wardogs by his aggressor. The Wardog slipped quickly to one side to avoid the collision and Walker landed on his back in the dust. When he looked up again, he saw Alvin and one of the other men, a younger, dark-haired guy holding back the large thug who’d attacked him. The two men talked quickly, calming the bigger man down. With the danger seemingly subsiding, Walker got to his feet and dusted himself off. He rose cautiously, wincing from his bruises again. Now all of the men were out in the middle of the street and the Wardogs were backing away to give them room. The big guy that had attacked Walker was finally backing up as well, but there was no hint of regret on his face, only more latent anger and frustration. Alvin approached Walker and helped him dust off.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “We’re all a bit jumpy these days.”
“Let me guess,” replied Walker. “Robots are fine, but he can’t stand Limeys?”
Alvin smiled, but Walker was already looking over his shoulder, watching another argument flare up between the big guy and the dark-haired man that had restrained him.
“Who’s the psycho?” he asked.
“That’s Lynch. The other guy with him is Marlowe. I suppose he’s sort of in charge, for now.”
Walker moved a little closer towards the tense group, which had formed a semicircle around the two clashing men.
“So how the hell did he get through?” snarled Lynch.
“I don’t know, if you calm down, maybe we can ask him,” replied Marlowe.
“This is bullshit,” said Lynch, jabbing a finger towards Marlowe’s chest. “If he did get through that means we can do it, just like I told you. It means we need to man up and go for it, while we still can, while there’s still enough of us left.”
“Listen, it’s not as simple...”Marlowe began again, but was quickly cut short by his spitting opponent.
“Tonight,” growled Lynch.
The more Walker watched Lynch foam at the mouth, the more he decided that the guy wasn’t just violent, but that he’d cracked. His eyes wandered over the rest of the men assembled there. They all seemed edgy and nervous too, strung out and hovering close to the edge. It was written all over their shell-shocked faces.
“We go tonight.” said Lynch. “We can’t sit around waiting for...”
“Waiting for what?” said Walker.
Lynch snapped around and glared at him. Then his tense features eased and settled into something calmer, but still quietly seething, and perhaps cruel. He looked up past Walker and pointed towards the top of the mountain that loomed over them.
“That.”
Walker turned and raised his eyes, as did the rest of the men. There, near the top of the jagged mountain overlooking the town, on a small rocky plateau jutting out just beneath the summit, was a tiny, splayed figure. The silhouette was too far away to make out properly, but it was definitely a man. The man appeared to be lashed to two large, crisscrossed poles in the shape of a crude X. Though he had no way of telling at that distance, Walker instinctively felt that the crucified man up there was not only still alive, but that he was gazing down at them at that very moment, watching their little drama unfold through blurred, delirious eyes.
“Waiting for that,” repeated Lynch. “Waiting for our turn on the mountain.”