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Walker and Johnny sat amongst the debris of the demolished saloon front. They leaned back in the shade of the collapsed walkway against two of its remaining support posts, swatting away the flies, but letting an air of resignation linger. Both men were soaked with sweat in the furnace heat of the mid-afternoon, the bone-dry air leaving them lazy, sapped and short of breath.
“So, are we having fun yet?” said Johnny.
Walker gave his friend a weary, contemptuous look.
“Well, Matt Walker, how do you feel about your lousy, pointless life now?”
“I have to say I haven’t been thinking about it much recently, what with all the death and destruction around here, but I suppose my troubles just aren’t that big a deal in the great scheme of things.”
“Is that right?” said Johnny sarcastically.
Walker stared at his friend.
“Yeah. All...this has given me some perspective.”
“Every cloud...” said Johnny. “Do you know why I do all the racing and boarding and extreme sports? You know, all the stuff that you think is arrogant and showy.”
“Girls?”
“Absolutely. But there’s another reason too. Taking risks keeps all the other shit, the shit that doesn’t really matter, in perspective. We all need a little risk in our lives.”
“You think I’m a little neurotic,” said Walker. “Don’t you?”
“You do think an awful lot,” said Johnny. “But as you said, I wouldn’t worry about it, we could all be dead tomorrow.”
“Maybe even today.”
Both men leaned back and smiled. It was too hot to laugh, but Walker thought it would be nice to do so one last time anyway. Maybe he’d smoke the rest of his stash. That way, if the end was nigh, he might not give a shit for once in his life.
Alvin appeared next to them and stood under the shade of the remaining section of walkway. The old man looked hot and tired, as if he’d been exerting himself, yet there was crafty glint in his eyes when he smiled at them. Walker smiled back at him when he caught sight of the beers dangling from the old man’s hand.
Alvin raised the six-pack and showed it off proudly.
“I figured with twelve ex-soldiers on the case, there’d still be some beers lying around by those trailers if I searched hard enough.”
“Now that’s what I call salvage,” said Walker, straightening up.
Alvin slipped three bottles of Sierra Nevada from their carry box and handed them out.
“One of them was busted, so we’ll have to share the second round.”
“Sterling work, Alvin,” said Johnny.
Alvin slipped down against a third wooden post and twisted the top off his beer.
“I hope you don’t mind them warm.”
“We’re English,” said Walker, winking. “We love warm beer.”
Walker raised his bottle and angled it towards the others.
“Cheers,” said Johnny.
The three men repeated the toast, clinking their bottles together, then drank.
Despite its temperature the pale ale seemed to hit the spot, and the men licked their lips and sighed through satisfied expressions as they stared into the distance.
After a few moments, Walker broke the silence.
“That thing’s going to kill us when it comes back, isn’t it?”
Alvin looked at him.
“Probably.”
There was another, longer stretch of silence, as the men supped at their beers.
“Why didn’t it kill us last night?” said Johnny.
Alvin shrugged again.
“I don’t know. I reckon it knew we weren’t going anywhere. Then it must have realised the others were making a break for it. Maybe it caught sight of them on one of the cameras and prioritised its...”
“Its killing order?” said Walker.
“Yeah,” said Alvin. “It definitely seems to have one. Besides, I think you two are something different to it. It doesn’t know you. You didn’t work at the facility or contribute to its programming. I guess if it’s punishing us for what we did in creating it, you’re still low down on its shit-list.”
“Lucky us,” said Johnny. “So what now?”
Alvin shrugged again and drained his beer bottle. He took a second from the pack and opened it.
“I don’t think there’s an awful lot we can do. The way I see it, either Marlowe or one of the other boys makes it, and we wait for the cavalry. Or they don’t, and we wait for something else.”
The men stared ahead again, waiting to see if inspiration would strike and reveal another plan of action. But there was nothing for them other than flies, heat and warm beer.
“I hate that thing,” said Johnny. “It wrecked my bike.”
“I think the feeling’s mutual,” said Walker.
“I suppose there is one thing we could do,” said Alvin.
The two Englishmen looked up and saw that Alvin’s face had darkened. He slipped a Beretta from his sweat-stained combat jacket and placed it on the dusty walkway.
“If it comes back,” he said.
Walker stared at the pistol and then at Johnny. Both men turned to Alvin and nodded grimly.
Walker looked up at the mountain. He shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare as they searched the summit.
“What about him?”
Alvin looked up at the small plateau just beneath the mountain’s peak, where Flashback Jackson still hung from a cross.
“Well, I suppose it would be the decent thing to do,” he said. “I guess I’ll finish my beer and take a stroll up there. Get a bit of mountain air in these old lungs of mine.”
“Guys,” said Johnny. “I’m not ready for a suicide pact just yet. Why don’t we give the others a bit longer? You did say it was a hell of a hike out of here.”
Alvin grimaced as he pulled himself up and stretched. He wandered to the edge of the shade and stared up through the hazy heat at the mountain again.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t jump the gun. We’ll wait as long as we can, but I figure poor old Flash is suffering pretty badly. The sooner we help him on his way the better.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” said Walker, rising awkwardly.
“No,” said Alvin. “You stay here with Johnny. There’s no point in putting your leg through hell to climb up there if you don’t have to.”
Alvin stepped out into bleached glare of the street and winced at the heat. He turned back to the others.
“Walker. If anything happens...you’ve got a pistol too, right?”
Walker nodded and pulled up his dirty T-shirt to reveal the black grip of an automatic sticking out of his jeans.
“Right,” said Alvin. “I guess I’ll be...”
Walker watched the old man hover there in the street, straining to listen. Walker left the shade too and lingered behind him, watching him sample the air.
“What is it?” whispered Walker.
“I don’t know,” said the old man quietly. “Sounds like...”
Walker was concentrating now too, trying desperately to hear. Then he caught something. It was a low and distant hum, and at first, he assumed it was the white noise that seemed fill his head out here whenever he stared at the desert or strayed from the shade for too long. But as the hum slowly began to rise, a sense of terrible Déjà vu gripped him, and his mind was cast back to his failed attempt to escape the ridge by motorbike. That same hum had risen out of the desert then too. It was the droning hum of a biblical plague of insects all lifting into the air at once; the noise that had rapidly swelled in volume and intensity to reach a frenzied pitch in seconds, heralding the Machine’s arrival.
Exactly as it was doing now.
Walker saw Alvin turn to face him. The gun was in the old man’s hand, and he had a lost, bleak look of defeat in his drawn features. Walker could see despair cloud over the old man’s eyes, and he suddenly knew what he was about to do.
“It’s coming...” said Alvin.
He raised the pistol and pointed it at Walker.
“No! Wait!” said Walker, struggling to find an argument against the old man’s logic. He was vaguely aware that Johnny was up on his feet, limping out into the street now too, but he didn’t dare take his eyes of Alvin.
The old man thumbed back the hammer.
“Sorry, Walker,” said Alvin. “It’ll be easier this way.”
“Don’t,” said Walker. “I’m not ready to give up.”
All around them now he could hear the angry swell of the Machine’s phantom insect swarm heralding its charge. It sounded to Walker as though the Machine was screaming towards them from the north. Alvin’s probably right to shoot, he thought, as he stared into the old man’s faded blue eyes. It’s probably just killed Marlowe and the others, and now it’s back for us; back to finish the job. But Walker didn’t want to die. Not now, not yet. He didn’t want his life to end now that he had finally learned the secret to living, now that he was free of his old self. But try as he might, he couldn’t find the right words to convince himself, let alone the old man, that this way out wasn’t quicker and kinder.
“Sorry,” said Alvin.
The old man straightened his aim at Walker’s head and screwed his left eye shut as his finger squeezed against the trigger.
“Wait!” shouted Johnny. “Listen!”
For a terrible moment, Walker thought Alvin had already fired. In those few, stretched seconds that followed, he wondered if the old man had even heard Johnny above the Machine’s war cry, or if he’d heard too late after pulling the trigger. But to Walker’s relief, the ex-captain slowly lowered the weapon, and raised his confused features to look at the sky above. Now that his death was postponed, Walker found the presence of mind to hear it too. The Machine’s shrill, chainsaw roar was fading, retreating north. Above this sound and the furious pounding of his own fearful heart, Walker could now detect the unmistakeable sound of a helicopter overhead. He looked up and saw the long, black outline of a Chinook hanging beneath two whirring rotors. The helicopter sailed over them, circled around Folly, then descended in the east, between the town and the mountain, whipping up clouds of rolling dust and sand as it came into land.
“Oh my God...” said Walker.
He looked back at Alvin, but the older man had turned away, his gaze fixed firmly on the mountain. Walker limped forwards and drew level with him.
“You see that, you crazy old bastard,” said Walker. “You nearly shot me for nothing. We’re saved. Do you see? We’re safe.”
Alvin reached out and grabbed the Englishman’s shoulder and squeezed it tightly, but Walker could tell from the old man’s worried face that something was wrong.
“Look,” said Alvin, pointing towards the mountain.
Walker followed his mark and quickly picked out the C19. It was scuttling up the lower slopes of the mountain like a frightened spider rushing back to its lair.
“We better get inside,” said Alvin.
“Why?” said Walker frowning. “The rescue team’s here.”
“And they’re going to have to take the Machine down,” replied the old man. “Believe me, there’s going to be fireworks.”
Walker and Johnny quickly followed the ex-marine as he made for cover.