AZU-1: Lifehack (19 page)

They slowly got deeper and deeper in
towards the middle of the pit. The terrain made it clear that they
were getting closer to the bottom, even though the density of the
zombies made it nearly impossible to see. Alisia blasted into the
pit, and suddenly the manhole-sized hatch was revealed.

“
General! Now!”

”
Opening!”

The hatch began to open as they ran
towards it. Regan used P90 fire to keep any curious zombies from
getting in.

They reached it and quickly clambered
down the ladder inside. As Alisia went down, she noted the
thickness of the hatch. About fifteen centimeters thick. “Close it,
General!” It started to scrape closed. Curious zombie faces began
to peer over the rim, but a bit of lead made them reconsider. The
hatch closed with a satisfying ‘thoom’ but it soon came to Alisia’s
mind that they were also trapped in.

Regan screamed in victory, hopping off
the ladder to the floor of this small cement room.

“
Report!” the General
jumped.

“
We’re in, Sir. We’re fine.
Regan just got over excited.” And almost as if to illustrate, Regan
hopped up and down, grinning like a demon.

”
Good work, ladies. The path
should be pretty clear for a while. I’ve opened the appropriate
hatches.”

Nearby, the only way out of the room
was an industrial elevator. They got in and pressed the only
button. The doors closed and they started going down. Regan eyed
Alisia, smiling, still breathing heavily from the battle. She
cornered Alisia, pressing up close with her thigh up onto Alisia’s
hip. “Do you feel as hot as me right now?”

The General jumped in. “Really? I don’t
have access to the core’s readings from here. I hope it’s not
spilling any heat or radiation.”

Alisia thought quickly. “Uh, no Sir,
I’m sure it’s fine. We’re just a little heated up from the
running.” Regan smiled into Alisia’s eyes and leaned forward.
Alisia grabbed her by the jaw and paused a moment. She considered
kissing Regan and then tossing her on her ass, but she didn’t want
her sardonic sense of humor to encourage the poor girl. “Get your
mind on the mission.” She tried her best not to smile, but whether
she was successful or not, Regan was still happy.

The elevator stopped and opened into a
dark, empty hallway.

”
I kinda expected to see
zombies.” Alisia said quietly. Regan hummed in agreement. She
seemed to be more focused now. They moved forward with caution.
Most of the doors were closed, sealed by electric locks. The
General left the irrelevant doors alone. Alisia called door numbers
now and then to confirm their route with the General.

Soon they were at a clean, steel-door
elevator. Alisia pressed the button and was greeted with a sharp,
annoying buzz.

“
Damn.” The General said.
Through the comm, Alisia could hear him tapping on his keyboard.
“That goes almost all the way to the core. Fine!” A clink was heard
down the hall. “I’ve opened up the stairs. Five floors to
go.”

The girls had their reservations. A
complication was just another chance for something really bad to
happen. Of course there was always the chance of the elevator
failing and dropping them, too.

As they went down, the General’s signal
became progressively worse.

“
General, this cement’s
starting to make it hard to hear you. I’m dropping a
repeater.”

“
You have what, two? Will
that be enough by the time you get to the bottom?”

Alisia reconsidered. “Hmm. Alright,
I’ll hold out.” She put the signal-amplifying device back in its
pocket.

The stairwell only went down one floor.
“Next one’s across the complex. Convenient, eh?” The General
smiled, “It’s gonna be like that for the rest of the way down, I’m
afraid. Back and forth.”

It was another uneventful stroll across
a long hall, past locked doors, to another stairwell. They passed
the elevator and tried the button to the same result as before.
They continued to the next set of stairs, and after descending, the
static was worse. Alisia dropped a repeater. Three floors to
go.

The quiet and the lack of opposition
was getting on their nerves. “You’d think there would be some
guards here.” Alisia said.

“
Zombies aren’t exactly
great strategists.” Regan replied.

“
Well, maybe not, but I’d
think that the A.I. controlling them would be. After all, the top
of the pit was probably thick with zombies for a
reason.”

“
Good point. Maybe the A.I.
can’t open the top hatch, so it would have no way of getting
zombies in here.”

Alisia considered it. “Sounds good. I
think I’ll choose to believe that. The A.I. may be taking advantage
of the core’s output, but it’s not controlling
everything.”

“
And another weakness; It
controls the zombies, but not very well. If you think about it, why
shouldn’t a zombie move as fast as a human?”

“
Because the A.I. has a poor
understanding of the... the physics involved?”

“
Maybe. Same with the
tactics. A computer program is a pretty specialized thing. I bet
this A.I. has enough trouble just getting them to not fall down,
let alone attack. It just can’t handle advanced
tactics.”

“
So far.”

“
All the more reason to blow
Autar the hell up.”

Soon they were on the floor above the
core, the second repeater freshly dropped. They came to the
elevator again and saw the problem. A cart was lodged in the
doorway.

“
That’s disappointing. I was
expecting some kind of deliberate evil.” Regan looked inside the
elevator. “Hey, now that we know it’s safe, wanna get in here and
get it on?”

“
No.”

“
I mean get the cart onto
the elevator, of course! It’s only one floor down but it’ll be nice
to have a ride up after. We can use the cart to hold the elevator
till we need it.”

“
Uh huh. Sure. You’re
forgetting, we’re going to have to go back up without power and
climb up that first elevator shaft.”

“
Feh.” Regan pulled the cart
into the elevator and turned to face Alisia. “Going...
down.”

Alisia stepped forward and lazily
shoved Regan in. She pressed the button next to ‘core’. The doors
closed and the elevator began its short trip. Only it wasn’t so
short. The last floor was deep.

The doors finally opened into another
hall, except this one went in both directions in a curve, probably
forming a giant circle. A door stood directly across from them,
which clicked as they approached.

“
In there, ladies.” The
General’s voice was almost unintelligible through the static,
despite the repeaters. “The core will have eight large handles near
the base. Twist em ninety degrees counter clockwise and pull em
out. You’ll get a meter long device. Feel free to smash em once
they’re out.”

“
Roger.”

Alisia and Regan looked at the door and
then at each other. Regan spoke. “When we pull these, there will be
no more power being transmitted. The A.I. servers will go down and
the zombies will be dead. If the A.I. has any last line of defense,
it will be in here.”

“
Yup. Ready?”

“
Alisia. I love
you.”

Alisia sighed in exasperation. “Ugh.
Shut up, already.”

“
I’m serious.”

Alisia looked down, feeling like she’d
just been hit in the head with a giant bag of marshmallows. “I... I
know.” She finally replied, humoring her.

“
Good.” Regan said, “Now I’m
ready.”

They stood to either side of the door
and opened it. Alisia hopped into the doorway, and back out. Regan
looked to her with an expectant expression. “Well?”

“
..... dick all. No zombies,
no giant robots. Just one big helpless looking
core-thingie.”

“
Then why are we still
standing out here?”

“
I... I don’t
know.”

They walked in and looked around. It
was a large control room with convoluted terminal desks arranged in
two circles around the middle.

In the middle of the room, the core
protruded from the ground as a roughly domed shape, six or so
meters across, and one meter high. It seemed to meet the floor in
such a way as to suggest that the core’s bulk was under the floor.
Like an iceberg showing only its top.

Pipe fittings and cabling plugs of all
sizes and types littered its steely surface. Many were not
currently in use, and many connected to pipes and wires that led
everywhere. To the surrounding terminals, along the floor into the
walls, or just right into the floor.

“
This Frankenstein powers
the whole city?” Regan said with a tone of disbelief.

Alisia identified the handles that the
General had been talking about, and pointed them out to Regan
before kneeling down to the nearest one. She reached out for it,
but Regan stopped her and grabbed it herself. No
electrocution.

“
Just felt paranoid all of a
sudden. Let’s get pulling.” Regan pecked Alisia on the cheek,
making Alisia roll her eyes, and went around the other side of the
core to start on a different handle.

When the handles were twisted and
pulled out, a roughly cylindrical mass of circuitry, strange
containers, and simply unidentifiable components came out. They
soon found that they smashed spectacularly against nearby terminal
desks.

Regan was pulling the last one, and
Alisia walked up to her. Regan stopped and looked up at Alisia. She
slid the unit back in slowly before pulling it back out with a soft
‘ooh’. Alisia rolled her eyes. “What are you, twelve?”

Alisia contacted the General and got
further directions for one of the terminals. A few keystrokes later
the room’s lights flickered and died.

“
It’s over.” Alisia said
into the darkness. Regan pulled out a flashlight, and shone it at
Alisia’s chest.

“
Oh, grow up.” Alisia said,
pulling out her own. “General?”

“
I can see from here,
Captain. Autar is dark. We have sightings of zombies collapsing en
mass. I’m calling in the airstrike. Come on home, and we’re out of
here.” Just then, the lights flickered back on.

“
What?” Regan
yelped.

“
At ease, Ms. Grier.
Short-term battery back-up. Three days, max. It’s safe for us to
bomb the city like this. It just means there will be zombies on the
way out.”

“
Alright” Alisia said,
“Let’s get going. We might get some distance in before the A.I.
servers boot up.”

They took one elevator up, then the
other. “Open up the hatch, General.”

“
Be ready, we’re seeing
zombies moving again.”

“
Figures. Let’s do
it.”

The two surfaced. There were no zombies
around. Not walking nor collapsed.

“
Maybe they responded to
some kind of buggy error, and wandered off... like to the nearest
server or something.” Alisia suggested.

A shadow rose from the other side of
the wall. “I don’t think so…” Regan said.

A creature five stories tall turned its
eyeless head towards them. The thing walked on its four huge, thick
legs, smashing through the wall at the edge of the pit area. As it
drew nearer, it could be seen that its gargantuan body was made out
of zombies. Each one acting like a muscle group, pulling and
pushing when needed to propel the thing. The individual zombies
moaned of their own accord, forming a dreadful symphony.

“
Cute.” Alisia pulled out
the Bad Mojo, warmed it up, and let off a shot at the thing’s head.
The zombies that composed its head flew apart from each other. Some
fell to the ground, some landed on this thing’s back, and others
caught a hold before flying off to be pulled back in. Without
missing a step, the behemoth reformed the damage to the head and
absorbed the fallen zombies- some of which walked to the thing,
others had to be picked up.

“
Um…Let’s go.”

“
Yeah.”

They fled north toward a hole in the
pit wall. Luckily, there were no other zombies hanging around. It
was small comfort though, as the creature behind them was gaining
speed.

“
You were saying something
about a poor appreciation of physics?” Regan said, making a few
pot-shots now and then while running.

“
Silly me!” Alisia turned
and fired the bad mojo again, this time at a leg. “Keep going!” The
beast staggered. It was already conducting repairs as it fell, but
it was forced to slow down for a bit.

They passed the north edge of the pit
wall and ran like hell. The footsteps of the beast thundered behind
them and it bashed through the wall. Alisia fired another shot at a
leg, to the same effect.

“
This way!” Regan said,
pulling Alisia towards a nearby building. “We might be able to lose
it!”

They ran though a ruinous building,
going through doorways and holes alike. Alisia suspected that Regan
knew her way around here. The sounds of buildings being hit by the
beast resonated from behind them. The chase continued from one
patch of buildings, through empty streets lined with
half-functioning zombies.