Dude, let the police deal with this shit.
CORMAC “BRIGHT BOY” WALLACE
ZERO HOUR
This account is composed of a series of patched-together camera and satellite feeds, roughly tracking the GPS coordinates provided by the phone I owned at Zero Hour. Since my brother and I are the subjects of this surveillance, I have chosen to annotate with my own recollections. At the time, of course, we had no idea that we were being watched.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
Shit, man. Here it is, the day before Thanksgiving. The day it all happened. My life up until now was never that great, but at least I wasn’t being hunted. I never had to jump at shadows, wondering whether some metal bug was about to try and blind me, sever one of my limbs, or infect me like a parasite.
Relative to that, my life before Zero Hour was perfection.
I’m in Boston and it’s as cold as a bastard. The wind is cutting my ears like razor blades and I’m chasing my brother through the Downtown Crossing outdoor shopping pavilion. Jack is three years older than me and as usual he’s trying to do the right thing. But I won’t listen to him.
Our dad died last summer. Me and Jack flew out West and buried him. And that was that. We left our stepmom alone in California with a lot of tear-streaked makeup and everything Dad owned.
Well, pretty much everything.
Since then, I’ve been sleeping on Jack’s couch. Mooching, I’ll admit it. In another few days, I’m flying to Estonia on a photojournalist gig for Nat Geo. From there, I’ll try to book my next gig straight, so that I don’t have to come home.
In about five minutes, the whole fucking world is going to go bat-shit insane. But I don’t know that, I’m just trying to catch Jack and calm him down and get him to be cool.
I grab Jack’s arm right before we reach the wide, open-air tunnel that runs under the street and across to the shopping pavilion. Jack turns around and without hesitation the jerk punches me in the mouth. My right upper canine cuts a nice little hole in my bottom lip. His fists are still up, but I just touch my lip with my finger; it comes away bloody.
“I thought it was never in the face, you fucker,” I say, panting clouds.
“You made me do it, man. I tried to run,” he says.
I know this already. It’s how he’s always been. Still, I’m kind of stunned. He’s never hit me in the face before.
This must have been a bigger fuckup than I thought.
But Jack already has that “I’m sorry” look creeping onto his face. His bright blue eyes are trained on my mouth, calculating how bad he hurt me. He smirks and looks away. Not that bad, I guess.
I lick the blood off my lip.
“Look, Dad left it to me. I’m broke. There was no other choice. I had to sell it to get to Estonia and make some money. See how that works?”
My dad gave me a special bayonet from World War II. I sold it. I was wrong and I know it, but somehow I can’t admit this to Jack, my perfect brother. He’s a damn Boston firefighter and in the National Guard. Talk about hero material.
“It belonged to the family, Cormac,” he says. “Pappy risked his life for it. It was a part of our heritage. And you pawned it for a few hundred bucks.”
He stops and takes a breath.
“Okay, this is pissing me off. I can’t even talk to you right now or I’m going to knock you out.”
Jack stalks away, angry. When the sand-colored walking land mine appears at the end of the tunnel, he reacts instantly.
“Everybody look out! Out of the tunnel. Bomb!” he bellows. People respond immediately to the authority in his voice. Even me. A few dozen flatten themselves against the wall as the six-legged device tap, taps slowly past them over the paving stones. The rest of the people flood out of the tunnel in a controlled panic.
Jack walks to the middle of the tunnel, a lone gunfighter. He draws a Glock .45 from a holster under his jacket. He clasps the gun in two hands, keeps it pointed at the ground. Hesitantly, I step out behind him. “You have a gun?” I whisper.
“A lot of us in the guard do,” says Jack. “Listen, stay far away from that scuttle mine. It can move a lot faster than it’s going now.”
“Scuttle mine?”
Jack’s eyes never leave the shoebox-sized machine coming down the middle of the tunnel. United States military ordnance. Its six legs move one by one in sharp mechanical jerks. Some kind of laser on its back paints a red circle on the ground around it.
“What’s it doing here, Jack?”
“I don’t know. It must have come from the National Guard armory. It’s stuck in diagnostic mode. That red circle is there to let a demo man set the trigger range. Go call nine one one.”
Before I can get out my cell phone, the machine stops. It leans back on four legs and raises its front two legs into the air. It looks like an angry crab.
“Okay, you’ll want to back up now. It’s target seeking. I’m going to have to shoot it.”
Jack raises his gun. Already walking backward, I call to my brother, “Won’t that make it blow up?”
Jack assumes a firing stance. “Not if I only shoot its legs. Otherwise, yes.”
“Isn’t that bad?”
Reared back, the scuttle mine paws the air.
“It’s targeting, Cormac. Either we disable it, or it disables one of us.” Jack squints down his gunsight. Then he squeezes the trigger and a deafening boom echoes through the tunnel. My ears are ringing when he fires again.
I wince, but there’s no big explosion.
Over Jack’s shoulder, I see the scuttle mine lying on its back, three remaining legs clawing at the air. Then Jack steps into my line of sight, makes eye contact with me, and speaks slowly. “Cormac. I need you to get help, buddy. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on this thing. You get out of the tunnel and call the police. Tell them to send a bomb squad.”
“Yeah, right,” I say. I can’t seem to look away from the damaged sand-camouflaged crab lying on the ground. It looks so hard and military, out of place here in this shopping square.
I trot back out of the tunnel and directly into Zero Hour—humankind’s new future. For the first second of my new life, I think that what I’m seeing is a joke. How could it not be?
For some crazy reason, I assume that an artist has filled the shopping pavilion with radio-controlled cars as some kind of art installation. Then I see the red circles around each of the crawling devices. Dozens of scuttle mines are stepping across the pavilion, like slow-motion invaders from another planet.
The people have all run away.
Now, a concussive thump detonates a few blocks away. I hear distant screaming. Police cars. The city emergency outdoor warning sirens begin wailing, growing louder and then softer as they rotate.
A few of the scuttle mines seem startled. They rear back on their hind legs, front legs waving.
I feel a hand on my elbow. Jack’s chiseled face looks up at me from the dark tunnel.
“Something’s wrong, Jack,” I say.
He scans the square with hard blue eyes and makes a decision. Just like that. “The armory. We’ve got to get there and fix this. C’mon,” he says, grabbing my elbow with one hand. In the other hand, I see he still has his gun out.
“What about the crabs?”
Jack leads me across the pavilion, delivering information in short, clipped sentences. “Don’t get into their trigger zones, the red circles.”
We climb up onto a picnic table and away from the scuttle mines, leaping between park benches, the central fountain, and concrete walls. “They sense vibration. Don’t walk with a pattern. Hop instead.”
When we do set foot on the ground, we lunge quickly from one position to the next. As we proceed, Jack’s words string together into concrete ideas that penetrate my stunned confusion. “If you see target-seeking behavior, get away. They will swarm. They aren’t moving that fast, but there’s a lot of them.”
Leaping from obstacle to obstacle, we pick our way across the square. About fifteen minutes in, one of the scuttle mines stops against the front door of a clothing store. I hear the tap of its legs on the glass. A woman in a black dress stands in the middle of the store, watching the crab through the door. The red circle shines through the glass, refracted by a few inches. The woman takes a curious step toward it.
“Lady, no!” I shout.
Boom! The scuttle mine explodes, shattering the front door and throwing the woman backward into the store. The other crabs stop and wave their forelegs for a few seconds. Then, one by one, they continue to crawl across the pavilion.
I touch my face and my fingers come away bloody. “Oh shit, Jack. Am I hurt?”
“It’s from when I hit you before, man. Remember?”
We move on.
As we reach the edge of the park, the city emergency sirens stop screaming. Now we just hear the wind, the scrabble of metal legs on concrete, and the occasional deadened bang of a distant explosion. It’s getting dark and Boston is only getting colder.
Jack stops and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Cormac, you’re doing great. Now, I need you to run with me. The armory is less than a mile from here. You okay, Big Mac?”
I nod, shivering.
“Outstanding. Running is good. It’ll keep us warm. Follow me close. If you see a scuttle mine or anything else just avoid it. Stay with me. Okay?”
“Okay, Jack.”
“Now, we run.”
Jack scans the alley ahead of us. The scuttle mines are thinning out, but once we’re out of the shopping area, I know there will be room for bigger machines—like cars.
My big brother gives me a reassuring grin, then sprints away. I follow him. I don’t have much of a choice.
The armory is a squat building—a big pile of solid red bricks in the shape of a castle. It’s medieval-looking except for the steel bars covering its narrow windows. The entire front entryway has been blown out from under the entrance arch. Lacquered wooden doors lie shattered in the street next to a twisted bronze plaque with the word historic embossed on it. Other than that, the place is quiet.
As we mount the steps and run under the arch, I look up to see a huge carved eagle staring down at me. The flags on either side of the entrance snap in the wind, tattered and burned by whatever explosion happened here. It occurs to me that we’re headed into danger instead of away from it.
“Jack, wait,” I pant. “This is crazy. What are we doing here?”
“We’re trying to save some people’s lives, Cormac. Those mines escaped from here. We’ve got to make sure nothing else gets out.”
I cock my head at him.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “This is my battalion armory. I come here every other weekend. We’ll be fine.”
Jack strides into the cavernous lobby. I follow. The scuttle mines were definitely here. Pockmarks are gouged into the polished floors, and piles of rubble are strewn around. Everything in here is coated with a fine layer of dust. And in the dust are lots of boot prints, along with less recognizable tracks.
Jack’s voice echoes from the vaulted ceilings. “George? You in here? Where are you, buddy?”
Nobody responds.
“There’s nobody here, Jack. We should go.”
“Not without arming ourselves.”
Jack shoves a sagging wrought-iron gate out of the way. Gun drawn, he marches down a dark hallway. Cold wind blows in through the destroyed entrance and raises goose bumps on my neck. The breeze isn’t strong, but it’s enough to push me down the hall after Jack. We go through a metal door. Down some claustrophobic stairs. Into another long hallway.
That’s when I first hear the thumping.
It’s coming from behind metal double doors at the end of the corridor. The pounding comes in random surges, rattling the door on its hinges.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Jack stops and looks at it for a second, then leads me into a windowless storeroom. Without saying anything, Jack walks behind the counter and starts grabbing stuff from shelves. He throws things onto the counter: socks, boots, pants, shirts, canteens, helmets, gloves, kneepads, earplugs, bandages, thermal underwear, space blankets, rucksacks, ammo belts, and other stuff I don’t even recognize.
“Put on this ACU,” Jack orders, over his shoulder.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Army combat uniform. Put it on. Make sure you’re warm. We might be sleeping outside tonight.”
“What are we doing here, Jack? We should go back to your place and wait for help. Dude, let the police deal with this shit.”
Jack doesn’t pause; he works and talks. “Those things on the street are military grade, Cormac. The police aren’t equipped to deal with military hardware. Besides, did you see any cavalry coming to help while we were on the streets?”
“No, but they must be regrouping or something.”
“Remember flight forty-two? We almost died because of a glitch? I think this is bigger than Boston. This could be worldwide.”
“Dude, no way. It’s just a matter of time before—”
“Us. Cormac, this is us. We have to deal with this. We have to deal with what’s banging on that door down the hall.”
“No we don’t! Why do you have to do this? Why do you always have to do this?”
“Because I’m the only one who can.”
“No. It’s because nobody else is dumb enough to go directly toward the danger.”
“It’s my duty. We’re doing it. No more discussion. Now, suit up before I put you in a headlock.”
Reluctantly, I strip down and climb into the uniform. The clothes are new and stiff. Jack suits up, too. He does it twice as fast as me. At one point, he snaps a belt around my waist and tightens it for me. I feel like a twelve-year-old in a Halloween costume.
Then he presses an M16 rifle into my hands.
“What? Seriously? We’re going to get arrested.”
“Shut up and listen. This is the magazine. Just jam it in there and make sure it curves away from you. This selector is the fire-mode control. I’m setting it to single-round so you don’t blow your clip all at once. Put it to safety when you’re not using the rifle. There’s a handle on top, but never carry it by the handle. It’s not safe. Here’s the bolt. Pull it back to chamber a round. If you have to fire the weapon, hold it with both hands, like this, and look down the sights. Squeeze the trigger slow.”
Now, I’m a kid in a soldier’s Halloween costume armed with a fully loaded M16 battle rifle. I hold it up and point it at the wall. Jack slaps my elbow.
“Keep your elbow down. You’ll catch it on something and it makes you a bigger target. And get your index finger outside the trigger guard unless you’re ready to fire.”
“This is what you do on weekends?”
Jack doesn’t respond. He’s kneeling, shoving things into our rucksacks. I notice a couple of big plastic chunks, like sticks of butter.
“Is that C4?”
“Yeah.”
Jack finishes stuffing the bags. He throws one onto my back. Tightens the straps. Then, he shrugs on his own pack. He slaps his shoulders and stretches out his arms.
My brother looks like a goddamned jungle commando.
“C’mon, Big Mac,” he replies. “Let’s go find out what’s making that racket.”
Rifles ready, we slip down the hall toward the booming sound. Jack stands back, rifle leveled at his shoulder. He nods at me and I crouch in front of the door. I put one gloved hand on the doorknob. With a deep breath, I twist the knob and shove the door open with my shoulder. It hits something, and I shove harder. It flies open and I tumble inside the room on my knees.
Black writhing death stares back at me.
The room is teeming with scuttle mines. They climb up the walls, out of splintered crates, over one another. My opening the door has shoved a pile of them out of the way, but others are already crawling into the opening. I can’t even see the floor for all the creepy crawlies.
A wave of forelegs rises across the room, tasting the air.
“No!” screams Jack. He grabs the back of my jacket and drags me out of the room. He’s quick, but as the door starts to close it gets wedged on a scuttle mine. It’s followed by more. A lot more. They emerge in a torrent into the hallway. Their metal bodies smack the door as we back away.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“What else is in this armory, Jack?”
“All kinds of shit.”
“How much of it is robots?”
“Plenty of it.”
Jack and I retreat down the hall, watching the crablike explosives as they leisurely flood out of the door.
“Is there more C4?” I ask.
“Crates.”
“We have to blow this whole place up.”
“Cormac, this building has been here since the seventeen hundreds.”
“Who gives a shit about history? We have to worry about right now, dude.”
“You never had any respect for tradition.”
“Jack. I’m sorry I pawned the bayonet. Okay? It was the wrong thing to do. But blasting these things is the only thing to do. What did we come here for?”
“To save people.”
“Let’s save some people, Jack. Let’s blow the armory.”
“Think, Cormac. People live around here. We’ll kill somebody.”
“If those mines get loose, who knows how many people they’re gonna kill. We don’t have a choice. We’re going to have to do something bad to do something good. In an emergency, you do what you have to do. Okay?”
Jack considers for a second, watching the scuttle mines creep toward us down the hallway. Red circles of light glint off the polished floors. “Okay,” he says. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to get to the nearest army base. Make sure you’ve got everything you need, because we’ll be walking all night. It’s cold as shit out there.”
“What about the armory, Jack?”
Jack grins at me. He has this crazy look in his blue eyes that I’d almost forgotten about.
“The armory?” he asks. “What armory? We’re blowing the fucking armory straight to hell, little brother.”
That night, Jack and I trek through frigid mist, trotting down dark alleys and crouching behind whatever cover we can find. The city is dead quiet now. Survivors are barricaded inside their homes, leaving the desolate streets to be hunted by frostbite and lunatic machines. The growing snowstorm has put out some of the fire we started, but not all of it.
Boston is burning.
We hear the occasional thump of a detonation out in the dark. Or the tire squeal of empty cars sliding over the ice, hunting. The rifle Jack gave me is surprisingly heavy and metal and cold. My hands are curled around it like two frozen claws.
The instant I see them, I hiss at Jack to make him stop. I nod to the alley on our right, not making another sound.
At the end of the narrow alleyway, through the swirling smoke and snow, three silhouettes walk past, single file. They step under the bluish LED glow of a streetlight, and at first I assume they’re soldiers in tight gray fatigues. But that isn’t right. One of them stops on the corner and scans the street, head cocked funny. The thing must be seven feet tall. The other two are smaller, bronze-colored. They wait behind the leader, perfectly still. It’s three humanoid military robots. They stand metallic and naked and unflinching in the cutting wind. I’ve only ever seen these things on television.
“Safety and pacification units,” whispers Jack. “One Arbiter and two Hoplites. A squad.”
“Shh.”
The leader turns and looks in our direction. I hold my breath, sweat trickling down my temples. Jack’s hand tightens painfully on my shoulder. The robots don’t visibly communicate. After a few seconds the leader just turns away and, as if on cue, the three figures lope off into the night. Only a few footprints in the snow remain as evidence that they were ever there.
It’s like a dream. I’m not sure whether what I saw was real. But even so, I have a gut feeling that I’ll be seeing those robots again.
We did see those robots again.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217