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Alvin rested a hand on Walker’s shoulder and gently turned him back to face the rest of the group. The ex-soldiers were slowly emerging from their hiding places in the dim recesses of the bar, shock and relief evident on their pale faces.
“You alright?” asked Alvin.
“Yeah,” said Walker. “I think so.”
Alvin managed an encouraging smile and ruffled the Englishman’s hair as if he’d just scored his first goal. “Good man, come on,” he said.
Flashback pushed his way through the ex-troops and grabbed hold of Walker’s arm. The veteran’s eyes were as wide with fascination as they had been with fear.
“What the hell did you do to it?” He asked. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything,” replied Walker, still shaken.
“Bullshit. You did something.”
“Easy Flash,” said Alvin, breaking his grip on Walker’s arm.
“No way man,” said Flashback. “He must have done something. You see that? It came looking for one of us, just like every other time, but it took off empty-handed after it saw him. Now I want to know what the hell this motherfucker did.”
“He didn’t do anything,” said Marlowe, stepping forwards. “He’s new, it probably backed off because it doesn’t know him.”
Lynch stepped forwards now too, raising the stakes. Walker could see the army vets winding up for another confrontation over him, but felt powerless to stop it.
“Screw it,” said Lynch. “It’ll be back soon enough. Let’s tie him up outside, leave him there as a present if it finds him so interesting.”
“I told you once already...” said Marlowe.
“And I told you.” growled Lynch. “He’s not one of us. And you saw it’s got a hard-on for him. So we hand him over, buy some time. Hell, he’s not even American.”
Marlowe placed himself in front of Walker, fully aware of Lynch’s previous warning about getting in his way again.
“It backed off because he’s something new, something it hasn’t seen before,” said Marlowe. “If we’re smart, we might be able to use that to our advantage.”
There was short, sharp click and Marlowe’s eyes dropped to find six inches of cutting steel ready to use in Lynch’s hand.
“That’s it,” said Lynch, advancing.
Scotty West appeared next to Marlowe. The stocky biker’s massive arms and dangerous grin made Lynch hesitate. Seconds later Marlowe and Scotty were joined by Thorpe, who was tall and determined looking enough to make a difference, even if his clothes did hang loose on his lean frame. Walker could see Lynch’s mind turning quickly behind his reddening features as he did the maths. Then Lynch moved forwards anyway.
“Use your head, Lynch,” grinned Scotty, drawing a greasy, black coil of bike chain out from under his sleeveless denim jacket and letting it trail to the floor like a whip. “While you’ve still got one.”
Lynch halted, his face burning with anger.
“You really want to do this, Scotty?”
“Shut the fuck up you sweating sack of shit,” whispered Scotty. “I’ve had enough of you. Open your mouth again and I’ll stick my boot in it.”
Lynch’s features quivered, but as much as he raged inside, he knew he’d never get close enough to use his blade while Scotty wielded the chain. He strained in frustration and forced his furious expression back into a psychotic smile. He winked at Marlowe and the others then began to back away to the door.
“Whatever,” he smiled. “But we’re going tonight. You want to stay here, it’s your funeral. And West...you didn’t just make my shit-list. You’re top of it.”
Walker saw Scotty grin again and laugh it off behind his aviator shades. Lynch kicked open the saloon door and strode out into the bright sunlight. Flashback followed him, stomping across the rattling floorboards and raising small clouds of dust with his size thirteen boots. The rest of the group’s gaze then fell on Blane. He dragged out a chair and reclined in it with feet up on a table. He then lit a cigarette and pulled on it.
“Don’t you want to go and join your buddies?” said Marlowe.
Blane shrugged and leaned further back in his chair, blowing smoke into the air.
“Maybe later,” he sighed. “Maybe not.”
Marlowe turned and slapped both Scotty and Thorpe on the shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “I owe you one.”
“Yeah, you do,” replied Scotty. “You know, Lynch may be an asshole, but he’s got a point. We can’t sit around here any longer waiting to be picked off.”
Scotty began winding the bike chain back around his thick arm. He then turned and left the bar without another word.
Walker looked at Alvin with troubled eyes. The latest run-in with Lynch had hardly registered; he was still in shock from his encounter with the Machine.
“Is it safe to go outside?” he said.
Alvin, who had remained by Walker’s side throughout the episode with Lynch, nodded at him with vague, but well-meaning reassurance.
“Good,” said Walker. “I need to check on Johnny.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” said Marlowe.
“He’s my friend and he’s out there alone,” replied Walker. “And that thing’s out there too, so excuse me if I don’t hang around to watch you guys have another punch-up.”
“OK,” said Marlowe. “But I’m coming with you.”
“Fair enough,” said Walker.
Marlowe turned to Thorpe, who was leaning back against the wall, seemingly drained by all the heat and excitement.
“Are you going to be alright Bill?” said Marlowe, his eyes wandering to the corner of the bar where Blane sat smoking, waiting.
Thorpe lifted a string of olive wood Rosary beads out from the neckline of his shirt to reveal a large, ornate silver cross with a moulded impression of Christ hanging from it. Thorpe kissed the crucifix and nodded.
“Are you sure?” said Marlowe, his eyes narrowing on Blane again.
Still holding up the cross, Thorpe raised his left hand too, showing Marlowe a shining set of brass knuckles as he made a fist.
“Don’t worry,” drawled the Texan. “I’ve got it covered.”
Alvin drew in a deep breath and strolled across the saloon to the front door and opened it, allowing sunlight and hot air in to penetrate the dusty gloom.
“Gentlemen?”
*
It was getting late when Walker, Alvin and Marlowe started out from Folly for Alvin’s shack. As they walked, Walker turned to look at the purpling desert horizon, streaked with orange and red, as a fat, swollen sun began sliding down behind the jagged silhouette of the mountain. He paused and sighed, allowing himself a moment to enjoy the spectacle, but then thoughts of the approaching night and its hidden horrors bled out of his imagination and into his waking senses. Suddenly the shadows of every darkening rock, cactus tree and sagebrush cluster seemed to be concealing the Machine. The desert air was rapidly cooling now, and Walker felt the crisp tingle of a chill against his sunburnt skin, and it made him want to shiver. At least that’s what he told himself.
Walker noticed Alvin and Marlowe pulling ahead of him, keen to reach the shack before nightfall. He remembered his deliberate dawdling on the way back to the saloon, just before the Machine had shown up wearing another man’s rotting face. He cursed his earlier scepticism, as he watched long shadows crawl across the desert, sliding out from rocky outcrops on the mountain’s north ridge, stretching and reaching towards him like gnarly claws. Fear cramps shot through his stomach and he instantly began to jog after his two new friends. Walker quickly caught up with Alvin and Marlowe, and though he tried to pretend he hadn’t been running, it was difficult when he was almost breathless from the short sprint. Walker took out his tobacco and began to roll.
“You should give up,” said Marlowe.
“I know, I know,” replied Walker between breaths. “But it’s only a couple of roll-ups a day.”
Sure, he thought, as he popped it into his mouth, but what he really wanted was his stash back at the shack. The events of the day had made him long to lose himself in the comfort of a sublime, lazy haze.
“No, really,” said Marlowe. “You should give up. You’re stuck with us now in this...siege. It could go on for some time, and you’re probably going to have to run for your life before it’s through.”
“Yeah,” said Alvin. “Try and get some air back in your lungs. Otherwise, the next time Skin comes sniffing around, you’ll be the one lagging behind. Predators always go for the straggler.”
Walker dropped his gaze to the sand, feeling like an errant schoolboy.
“You keep talking about this thing like it’s an animal, but it’s not, is it? You said it was a machine.” Walker looked the older man straight in the eye. “What exactly are we dealing with?”
Alvin thought for a moment, and when he saw that Marlowe was more than willing to hang back and let him do the explaining, he cleared his throat and tried to break it down.
“Well, it is definitely a machine,” said Alvin. “Like Tyson, like the Wardogs. But there’s a lot more to the C19’s brain.”
Alvin gestured to the great expanse of desert stretching up to the ridge ahead of them and beyond.
“All of this is army land. There’s an old mine in the bottom of the mountain that was converted into a military bunker for observing atom bomb tests back in the fifties. Anyway, the company leased it off the army and fitted it out as a lab. They brought the C19 out here to put it through its paces, to drill it with combat practice and sharpen it up for their final pitch to the army.”
“QA,” said Walker. “Quality Assurance.”
“Something like that,” replied Alvin. “Now technically, this thing was amazing. It moved and worked just like a man, so it could drive a Jeep, fire a weapon, throw a grenade, but it was far, far stronger, and faster. And tough. You could drop a bomb on this bastard and there wouldn’t be a scratch. It was almost the perfect soldier.”
“Almost?”
“It was stupid,” said Alvin. “Even though they gave it A.I. it had never had any real combat experience. When they tested it in war game scenarios, it just didn’t know how to react. And why should it? I mean, no one had ever trained it, right? It had the skills and the potential, but without the instinct for warfare it was just an expensive hunk of metal and plastic. Then the programme’s head scientist, Doctor Shelly, had this great idea to improve its performance.”
“Obviously,” said Walker. “Since everything’s worked out so well.”
“Hey, we just work here. Like the captain said, we’re all war veterans. We’ve got a hell of lot of active service between us. And I’m not talking about sentry duty, or drill instruction.”
Walker caught that look in Alvin’s eyes again, the one that reminded him not underestimate the old man.
“They hired in twelve of us in for this project” continued Alvin. “And collectively we’ve survived the worst wars the last fifty years could throw at us. What I’m saying son, is we’ve been through the shit.”
Alvin left a pause and Walker took it as a cue to show respect, which he tried to do with a thoughtful nod of the head. He glanced over at Marlowe, and saw that the captain was watching him carefully, examining his reactions as he listened to their story.
“Anyway,” continued Alvin. “We were brought in to spice it up, to give the C19 some killer instinct.”
“You mean train it?”
“In a way. They wanted our experience, that’s for sure, but that’s not how they went about getting it.” Alvin turned to Marlowe, looking a little flustered. “Jump in any time, Cap, I’m not as up on the technology as you.”
“Well, I’m no expert,” said Marlowe. “But they...basically interviewed us about every incident, every skirmish, every firefight we could remember from our active duty. As Captain Mcready said, they wanted their new soldier to be field savvy without having to learn the hard way. So we each talked at length about our war experiences over and over again, and they recorded it all in the lab. They had us hooked up to computers that read and digitized our alpha waves.”
“Alpha waves,” said Walker, nodding.
He could feel his scepticism returning.
“Brain waves,” said Marlowe. “They sampled everything we had to offer. Every memory, even the subconscious ones. They had us undergo deep-state hypnotherapy to make sure they dug everything out. Every dirty little last detail of everything we ever went through in action. Shelly had written his own software that he believed could convert our sampled experiences into code that the C19 could read and process as its own experience.”
“Digitized thoughts,” said Walker. “Really?”
“Not thoughts,” replied Marlowe. “Memories. Besides, like the man said, we only work here.”
“So it would have one big fat file of all those collected war experiences,” said Walker. “I guess that makes it a very cunning, vicious son of a bitch?”
“Yeah,” said Marlowe, rolling his eyes. “I guess it’s easy to criticize with hindsight. Anyway, if we hadn’t donated our experiences they’d have just got someone else.”
“In our defence,” added Alvin. “They originally told us they were just going to take our tactics and instincts for different scenarios, our field-craft. We didn’t know how deep they were going to dig while we under hypnosis”.
“So what happened?” asked Walker.
“To tell the truth we don’t know,” said Marlowe. “I guess they uploaded the translated experience code and the C19 didn’t like what they fed it. We were billeted in trailers out behind the test range at Folly, so we didn’t have access to the lab, apart from our sampling interviews, and then we were always escorted in and out.”
“So?” asked Walker.
“So, about two weeks ago everything went quiet,” said Marlowe. “Real quiet. We sat tight for a couple of days. We figured they were just having a few technical problems, and them being the scientists and us just the hired guns, we were still very much grunts to the project managers here, we waited to hear from them. Then we saw the first signs of trouble. It was the generation 1 and 2 prototypes. We found Tyson and the Wardogs out in the desert. Apparently their A.I. isn’t as sophisticated as the C19, even without the experience-code. They were just out of it, wandering around in the sand, all dumbstruck like lost children.”
Alvin looked around nervously at the darkening desert and rubbed his grey beard, before chipping in.
“Three of the guys went up to the facility to take a look around. They never came back.”
Walker, Marlowe and Alvin had all stopped now, isolated in the cold shade of the mountain, surrounded by just desert scrub and long shadows. Walker watched Alvin and Marlowe swap grave looks, and he began to try and imagine what these men had been through.
“It was that night that the C19 first showed up,” said Marlowe quietly. “It was wearing Shelly’s skin like some fucking Halloween costume. It smashed the trailer park to pieces, took our phones and laptops, wrecked anything that looked remotely like a vehicle. Then it backed off again, but we could tell it was still out there in the desert, circling us, watching us. We held tight and waited for the cavalry to come, but they never did.”
“The men started to go crazy and eventually Michaels had enough,” continued Marlowe. “He set out into the desert on foot to look for help. We tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. You see that thing is fast, faster than you’d ever believe. It hunted him down in no time at all, like it was nothing. Then it ripped out a couple of support beams from the store, took him up on top of the mountain...and it crucified him. A couple of us went up there, tried to cut him down. It busted us up pretty bad. So we waited. It had us by the balls.”
Alvin sighed.
“Michaels didn’t last long up there in the sun without water,” he said. “The poor bastard was slow cooked. Then when he was gone it came down from the mountain in the middle of the night and took Heggarty. Well, you saw him up there, didn’t you? Now he’s dead too, so it’ll want someone else to hang on that cross. It’s torturing us slowly, playing with us.”
“Why?” asked Walker.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s confused, maybe it thinks we’re the enemy or something. Either way, I wouldn’t lay bets on any of us getting out of here alive.”