The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) (13 page)

Cory had drunk deeply from the
faucet in the kitchen before he’d left the house.  He’d shoved snack bars into
his pocket, then taken one out and ate it while thinking of pancakes.

He was going to look for Daddy.  He would find other
policemen and they would tell him where to go.  They would know where Daddy was
or where the Scarecrow’s hideout might be.

Now, standing in front of his house in the late morning sun,
he saw a few strangers at the far end of the street.  They just stood, staring
at nothing, not even noticing Cory who’d donned his cape and mask and was being
extra quiet.

Like Batman.

Cory cut through the houses on the far side of the street,
following a well-worn path behind those houses that popped out in a forested
area above some train tracks.  All the kids of this neighborhood called the
forested area along the train tracks “the Forts”.  The Forts was a tree covered
half-hill with a drop that led down into a wasteland between neighborhoods. 
The wasteland consisted of the carved away section of the hill, at the bottom
of which, train tracks ran south next to a small drainage area turned overgrown
swamp.  On the other side of the railway wasteland was a library, an old
church, and more neighborhoods.

The other kids would often tell Cory a monster lived down in
the swamps.  They would go down the hill, cross the train tracks and enter the
swamp, knowing Cory was not allowed down the hill.  They did this so he
couldn’t follow them and ruin the fun they were having, which was really just
the “fun” of teasing Cory.

The train tracks were a “no no” to Cory.

On the occasions when the neighborhood kids would play this
particular game, Cory would watch them from atop the hill, bouncing from foot
to foot, worrying his fingers, waiting for them to come up out of the swamp
they’d disappeared into.  Hoping the monster hadn’t gotten them.  Sometimes
they would scream down there and Cory would run and go tell someone, but no one
would ever believe him that the kids, his “friends” as he called them, were in
any kind of trouble.  Cory would simply be left to worry about them until he
saw his friends again.

Then everything would be alright.

Cory came to “the Forts” which were half-dug pits like open
graves, lying along the top of the slope among the long, dead yellow grass of
late summer.  The Forts were holes that the children would dig, usually
starting on a Friday after school, waiting for the train to come along.  Then,
when they heard the train from far off, its momentum somehow spilling off the
iron rails ahead of it, they would all run and hide inside the holes they
called “the Forts”.  They would throw dirt clods at the rushing locomotive as
it flew past their hiding places.  Never rocks.  Just dirt clods which exploded
in dusty sprays along the tinted windows and shiny metal passenger cars.

The daylight was orange, and Cory smelled burnt wood in it
which reminded him of the beach and the beach parties in the summer when the
other men and women who worked with Daddy would gather down by the ocean and
spend the day and late into the night around smoky fires.  Cory could watch
fire for hours.  Watching it burn and turn everything orange and ash was the
very definition of beauty to Cory.  There were beautiful empires of ember within
the heat and flames, wavering and shifting as though it were a whole living
world dying inside the coals there.  Cory loved watching fires, especially on
nights at the beach when everyone laughed and ate hot dogs and let Cory do the
same things they were doing.

Now he looked along the skyline above the suburban rooftops,
but he couldn’t see any great gray and black plumes of smoke like he’d seen
before.  He could only smell it hanging over everything in the heat of the day.

Atop the hill, Cory could see the train tracks both
stretching off toward the milky north and curving around a bend to the south,
passing under a small bridge, running alongside, for a time, the tiny swamp
where a monster lived.

“There’s a monster inside the swamp.”  Cory had heard some
voice inside his head telling him this.  “That’s what the kids always told
you.” 

The Scarecrow is like a monster, thought Cory.  His wide
mouth, his floppy hat.  His eyes like holes, dark holes that always made Cory
wince when he saw them on TV.  When Cory thought of monsters, or a monster, he
always thought of the Scarecrow.

Ash began to fall from the sky and Cory watched, fascinated
by the delicateness of the gray and black flakes, their course seemingly random
choice, their descent inevitable.

Why didn’t they fly up, or away?  Why was it always down?

Ash always flies, inevitably, down.

If the Scarecrow has Daddy, Cory continued to reason...

Then stopped.

And the Scarecrow is a monster...

He waited, waited to finish the thought.

“There’s a monster in the swamp, Cory
. 
Better not
go down there, he’ll get you
.”

That’s what the kids always told him.

Then they’d go down into the swamp and watch him watching
them from the top of the hill above the train tracks.  Watching Cory from
within the deep foliage of the swamp.  And the scream would come once they were
just inside the edge of the swamp and well hidden.  Cory would always jump.  He
never heard their giggling laughter as he ran to tell someone his “friends”
were in trouble.

Silence.

Daddy might be in the swamp.

“There’s a monster in the swamp, Cory
.”

The Scarecrow is a monster.

“I am the night...” Cory reminded himself.

He took a deep breath.

Then he started down the narrow trail through waist high,
feathery yellow grass that led down along the train tracks.  The tall dry grass
on either side of the path seemed to swallow him as he went.  The air began to
feel slightly cooler and Cory could smell the sage that grew down there in the
wild, thick and heavy.  At the bottom of the slope, he waded out through the
tall dead grass and crossed the cleared space along the railroad tracks and
walked up onto the bed of gray rock that lay underneath the rails.  He could
smell the oily ties as he watched the twin lines of the rails, almost perfect
lines, race off in both directions.  He’d only been down here one time.  He’d
followed a boy named Steven down there one afternoon.  Cory bent down with a
grunt and placed his hands on the rails and waited for the vibration Steven had
told him about.  Steven said if you felt the rails vibrating, that meant there
was a train somewhere down the tracks, probably coming in a hurry.

Cory could still feel that vibration when he thought of that
memory sometimes.  Bending down awkwardly now, gloved hand on the rails, he
felt nothing.

He heard a short huffy
Whoop
.  Above and behind him. 
Almost a loud gasp.

  He turned and saw strangers, dozens of them, clustering at
the edge of his neighborhood high above the train track wasteland.  They
crawled over the low backyard fences that looked down upon the slope.  They
fell over barriers, tumbling down among the eucalyptus and cypress into the
gray concrete drainage ditches that ran along the dry brown slope of the hill. 
They were dark shadows at this distance.

Stranger shadows, thought Cory.

Cory hurried across the train tracks, his hands waving to
pull him forward because of his backpack and the heavy utility belt he wore. 
He ran across the dirt and dust on the other side of the rails and found the
wide chalky path descending into the swamp.  Low hanging trees loomed over the
shadowy entrance and reminded Cory of the mouth of a dog that once snapped at
him even though Cory liked dogs.

That dog was a snapper, he thought.

He looked back once and saw the strangers, and even more
strangers now, stumbling down the hill after him.  They were moving slowly,
moaning as they crossed the wasteland for him, but they were definitely
coming.  Cory knew they definitely meant to harm him.

To “play” like Brian Rattigan had played.

But there were too many to play with.

If there are too many, Daddy had said, then run and find a
teacher.

Cory wished, right now, that he could find Mrs. Baird.  She
was the teacher that always protected him.  He wished he knew where he could
find her. 

The corpses came stumbling down the hill at the sight of
Cory, reaching and waving as they walked awkward and stilt-legged from side to
side down the steep slope.

Cory turned back to the gaping maw that was the narrow path
leading down into the swamp and whispered, “I’m Batman.”  Then, after a great
draw and exhale of his massive chest, he started down into the clutching
undergrowth and low-hanging musty trees. 

The air was cool and moist under the shadowy, green embrace
of the tiny swamp.  A small stream burbled nearby, its bottom close to the
surface and streaked with oil and ochre-colored mud as long strands of grass
bent and drifted in the wan current.  There were discarded cups and magazines
tossed and tangled in the growth alongside the trail.  Cory followed the
twisting sandy path alongside the stream, and in time came to a small
clearing.  The remains of a fire lay at its center, surrounded by banked
stones.  Cory cast a glance through the fluttering leaves toward the hill and
saw only shimmering daylight peeking through the leaves.

He knew the strangers would come for him, even here in the
swamp.  And there were monsters here, too.

He made the “Bhuwuuush!” sound and leaped across the tiny
stream once the imaginary bat-shaped grappling hook was secure in the leafy
canopy above.  Then he disappeared into the foliage beyond, crashing deeper and
further into the swamp.

An hour later Cory was lost.

He sat down cross-legged and pulled the hot and sweat-laden
mask from his face.  Everything looked the same and he could not tell if somehow
he was just going in circles.  He’d seen the stream many times since entering
the swamp and he’d even re-crossed it at points.  Invisible gnats and other
unseen bugs buzzed about his ears and the air was definitely cooler.  He was
thirsty too.

He listened to the swamp.

There was a heavy, dull and constant buzz of unseen insects.

No strangers, though.

Just the low burble of the swamp beneath the buzzing sound.

Then Cory remembered something.  Something important.  He
said it aloud. “Cory, always follow the water.  It will lead you someplace
safe.”

Right now, Cory wanted to go to someplace safe.  He wanted
that badly.

Cory remembered the day he’d spent hiking in the mountains
with Daddy.  Cory hadn’t liked the drive up.  They’d come too close to the
cliff’s edge on the highway that climbed higher and higher into the mountains. 
Cory had needed to shut his eyes because they were so high up, and when he’d
opened them again, they were in the middle of a real forest and the air had
smelled clean and good to Cory.  And it was quiet up there, which was something
Cory liked very much.

Daddy had taught him many things that day, most of which
Cory couldn’t remember now when he needed to.  Things about the woods.  An
important thing about water.

... and an important thing about being lost.

Yes, Cory said aloud.  “If you ever get lost, Cory, just
follow the water.”  Daddy called it a “stream”.  Follow the stream and that
will lead you someplace safe.

Cory stood up and walked toward the water’s edge.   He bent
to drink some of the water, but didn’t like the smell that came from it.  He
got up once more and brushed the wet sand from his chest.  He put his mask back
on and began to follow the twisting stream as it dove deeper and deeper into
the swamp.  At times he even waded through it, his pant legs and tennis shoes
getting wet and sandy as it grew deeper. 

It was very quiet now.

Even the invisible gnats had stopped buzzing.

A dense fog had closed in on Cory, coming out from the trees
along the bank of the stream, snaking up and onto the water, lying along the
bottom of the swamp like a waiting thing.  Closing in on everything and
blotting out the world with its heavy thick blanket of quiet.  It was cool and
silent in the fog.  Cory liked that.

He thought he’d like to find someplace where there weren’t
any strangers and maybe there was a dog that would be nice to Cory.  A dog he
could pet.   Dogs were never mean to Cory unless someone had made them that
way.  Dogs were always good friends.

That would be nice, thought Cory, and wished as hard as he
could that he would find a dog right now.

Bertram had been watching the
ancient grainy black and white CCTV all that day.  He’d heated the last of the
leftover possum stew they’d made a few days back and then gone across to the
main room, enjoying as he always did, the smell of the butterscotch colored
carpet and the ancient books along the shelves.  As always there was the
distant hum of the servers whining, whirring and sometimes ticking with the
last of humanity’s knowledge sleeping inside.

He sat down again to watch the battery of black and white
CCTV monitors. 

The view of the shadowy alley. 

The washed out view of the bridge. 

The camera underneath the bridge pointed north toward Los
Angeles, watching the train tracks disappear into the desolate north.  Other
cameras surrounded the neighborhoods adjacent to the secret library.

He checked the temperature inside the building.  Forty-eight
degrees.  He pulled his old coat close to his considerable bulk and sat blowing
on the re-heated stew in the chipped bowl, waiting for the transient they’d
spotted at various times over the past few days to reappear again.

They’d first seen him three days ago.  There hadn’t been a
soul down in this neck of the woods other than the two of them and the
occasional visits from Captain Rose and his squad.

“Traffic request for Hotel Six.”  It was Cade.  Then, “That
stew still good?  Possum smelled off from the get go,” asked the tall, bearded,
younger man as he sat down with a huff in an old patched office chair that
squeaked a wide groan as he settled back into its natural inclination to lean
impossibly backward.  Then Cade handed the message to Bertram.

“They still coming in through the wire tonight, up there at
the Reseda Outpost?” asked Bertram.

“That’s what the man said.  Week in the downtown ruins and
they can’t find that HK air traffic control server node.”  Cade bent forward
and snatched up the bent spoon from Bertram’s untended bowl.  He tasted, made a
face, and swallowed it anyway.

“He talk about the water condenser?” asked Bertram, studying
the old paper with the new scribbling.  Underneath Cade’s chicken scratch, a
beautiful woman in a red dress looked back over her shoulder and smiled.  It
was an ad for perfume or some such from the Before.

“Yeah,” mumbled Cade.

“Well, that’s the code.  Means they’re coming in tonight. 
I’ll get a message ready and we’ll open a router.  Howse yer anti-virus
working?”

“As good as it’s ever gonna get, just like I tell you every
time.”  Cade spooned up more stew.

Bertram glared at Cade from underneath his gray bushy
eyebrows.

“There’s more in the kitchen if you want to go ahead and
have yer own bowl, instead of this one.  The one I made for myself.”

“Nah, it’s off.”

“Then why are you eating it?”

“Just makin’ sure.”

Bertram pulled out an old binder, its plastic spine
peeling.  He checked the front, the code cypher index, then turned to the
appropriate page.  Sticking his tongue out and bending to the scrap of paper,
he set a stubby pencil to translating the message for Hotel Six.

An hour later, the message was ready and the servers locked
down with encrypted double blind passwords and all of Cade’s antivirus army up
and running on a battery of hodgepodge monitors representing every decade of
computer development.  Green screens where zeroes and the occasional one rained
down across the monitor.  16-bit color monitors with clunky numeric figures
representing the latest machine-lethal algorithms humanity had been able to
develop after the Before.  Even a barely functioning liquid crystal touchscreen
that had been the latest thing the last year Apple made anything.  The last
year any corporation had made anything for that matter.  Their best monitor
showed the system batch and root files Cade would use for command and control
as they opened up their router to the patchwork resistance internet.  Key
system entry points were locked down by blocky red bars on another 16-bit
monitor that had the word
Amiga
written along the bottom.

“Cold in here,” mumbled Cade.

Bertram reached over and flicked the switch on an electric
space heater.  A few of the coils began to turn a slight orange.  None of the
others would.  Ever again.

“Ah,” exhaled Cade. “Much better, dontcha think?”

Bertram grunted, rubbing his jowly chin stubble as he
double-checked the message one last time.

“Alright, let’s check out the neighborhood for stalkers,”
whispered Bertram to himself.  His thick fingers began to dance across the old,
dirty gray plastic buttons of the worn keyboard where the CTRL button was
missing and had been replaced by a jury rigged enlisted soldier’s US Brass
insignia.

A moment later Cade, watching his battery of monitors,
whispered, “Rabbits are out of the hole and no one’s chasing.”

They’d broadcasted a bogus message across the internet to
see if any HK algorithms gave chase.  Nothing moved and the message sped off
toward a useless fiber optic junction that could only contact a battered MWRAP
Command and Control vehicle just outside the Tijuana blast zone. 

“Be careful old man, Cans are getting smarter every day,”
whispered Cade.  “Scramble the back trail and bounce it off the old bunker
array near LAX.  They’ll never...”

“Cade, I was doing this ‘fore you ever laid eyes on a
computer, so shut up and let me work!” whispered Bertram.

Cade thought about asking why they always whispered when
they went live, but he knew the answer.  They whispered because death could be
just moments away.

Bertram nosed around the router’s neighborhood, looking for
clues and sifting traffic that had cluttered the network on the day the bombs
fell.  Looking for anything that might tell him the Cans had been there
recently.  Any lag other than the appreciable lag of equipment twenty years
past its operational date, and that was reason enough to shut the whole system
down and hide.  They’d have to find another way to get the message through or
just hope the best for Hotel Six and the recon squad coming in through the wire
tonight. 

There was lag, and then there was unacceptable lag. 

Bertram watched the ping counts and mentally calculated
their echo.  A two second error was all he needed to know the Cans had been
there. 

“See here,” he motioned for Cade to watch monitor six.  If
their HK’s are hanging out, monitoring it, or if they’ve even high-jacked it,
that number’s gonna be a lot more stable.”

“Why’s that?” asked Cade. 

“They can’t stand it.  Cans can’t stand bad machinery.  They
always fix it.  Always try to improve it somehow if they’re going to use it.”

They watched the router pings jump around a bit.

“Looks good to me,” mumbled Cade.  “And by good, I mean
wonky.” 

“Yeah,” replied Bertram.  “Does look good.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.  Cade watched the
clock on the wall.

“It’s after four, Bert.  Hotel Six’ll need time to get the
dogs ready.”

Bertram, mouth open, watched all the monitors.  He was dimly
aware of the smell of burnt wiring and the ancient yellowing books in the
library beyond.  He looked over his shoulder, out into the main room and across
to the server room.  He didn’t see any flames in the darkness there.

But that’s where the lights are really on, thought Bertram. 
That’s where the fire of civilization still burns.

“Alright,” he sighed and seemed to momentarily shudder. 
Let’s open the router and see what the old net looks like these days.”

Cade bent to his keyboards, sliding his chair along the
monitor banks in what used to be the librarian’s break room, tapping in brief
commands at each station.  He glanced up to check the monitors, seeing what he
needed to see, then moved along quickly.

“I’m hot.  All defenses up and rolling.”

“Bandwidth,” mumbled Bertram.

“Check.”

Then, “I’m in,” said Bertram.  There was a moment of silence
that followed.  The kind of quiet only those who violate graveyards after
midnight know about.

“Moving through the portal.  Cover me.”

Cade watched a monitor.  Mouth open.  Then he bent over a
keyboard and slapped in a series of quick commands.

“Spam jam.”  Then, “Covered.”

A million old forwarded emails began to download and
re-download across a live cake decorating website from the Before.  Millions of
lost messages about everything from cat videos to government hatred began to
flood Angie’s Unique Cakes.

“Uh....” moaned Bertram.  “Oh.”

Cade felt his chain-smoking heart seize.  He’d want to light
one of his homemade specials if it were indeed their last moments, but Bertram
would never let him smoke inside the library.  Still, if the Cans were gonna
drop a bomb on them, then who cared anyway.  Cans would use a TAC nuke to kill
a mouse.  Cans didn’t care that way.  They just wanted to make sure it got
done. 

The “it” being the eradication of humanity. 

Cade stopped himself from going there and settled for a,
“What’s wrong, Bert?”

“Seattle’s Best is gone.  Can’t find it anywhere.”

“Can we use another website?”

Time.  Tapping.

“Okay, got an old financial maintenance server running out
of a bank in Whittier.”

“I don’t like it, Bert.  That’s way too close to Can
Central.”

Silence.

“I know, but it’s all we got right now if we’re going to
help Hotel Six get through the wire.”

Tapping.

“Okay, I’m in.  Setting up the message.”

Cade swiveled and sent himself off to another monitor. 
“Alright, scrambling your IP there.  Bert, this place has got six open
sockets.  It’s Grand Central!”

“I know.  Someone’s using it as a message board.”

“Who?  Who could be living that close to It?”

“Gangs?”

“Not that close.”

“Resistance?”

“We’d know about ‘em.”

“Maybe Black Section?”

Cade waited a minute.  To him that wouldn’t be the only
explanation.  Still, he didn’t like it.

An alarm went off on an old Mac monitor Cade had worked with
for six months to get up and running.

“What is it?” said Bertram.

“Maybe nothing, but hold on a sec,” moaned Cade.  “It’s that
old Mac.”  They both knew it was unreliable. 

“I told you that thing was...”

“Nah, Bert, it’s true and straight.  You got a hound.”

“How many seconds?” asked Bertram.

“Thirty ... forty-five at most.  Either cut the whole line
or send the message.”

Bertram weighed the cons for ten seconds.  There weren’t any
pros.  There never were.  The scout unit that was coming in through the wire
had been on a long range patrol.  They’d survived and maybe even found a Can
factory.  Something the resistance could take out.  And then there was always,
in the back of Bertram’s mind, the hope that whatever the patrols found out
there in the ruins was something big.  Something big enough to end the Cans
once and for all.

But that’s just hope, Bertram always told himself.  Just
hope, and nothing more.

And then there was the reason why he had to do something.

If the patrol tried to in come through the wire at the
Reseda Bunker without a heads up, they’d get shot to shreds.  And, if they did
and the dogs weren’t ready, there was a chance everyone down inside the pit,
the bunker, would be dead.  One infiltration unit, one “Terminator” in that
patrol, and everyone inside the pit was dead by dawn.

There was always that in the back of Bertram’s mind. 

And... there was also some little part that just wanted to
finally give up and let go.  He was tired of everything meaning life and
death.  His whole existence, every day of it since the bombs, had been a
struggle for life, or death. 

That and nothing more.

He hit SEND and shot the message off into the secure Reseda
Comm Gathering Array.  A clever warren of routers and receivers, dead ends and
double blinds on ancient computers running complex crypto so the simple message
of someone,  the few of what remained of humanity, might know that another
someone was coming in out of the darkness tonight.  Through the wire.

Coming in from the never-ending nightmare created by
machines.

“Blow the site, Bert?”

If they did, the Can Hound would know for sure.  At that
point it would have a choice.  Either follow the message and see where it went,
or back track and find the sender.  In his heart, Bertram knew the Hound would
chase the message.  When it didn’t, his jaw literally dropped.

Suddenly he and Cade were scrambling to shut down routers. 
Outermost first, as they watched with wide-eyed fear, then the traffic on the
best ones nearest the library.  The last bastion of man’s entire knowledge
database as far as the resistance, or what was left of humanity living beneath
the rubble and the Cans, was concerned.  The library.

Bertram exploded. “This is why we don’t do comm, Cade!”

To lose the entire library, all the beautiful old hardcopies
and magazines and the even more valuable digital files hiding in the server
room because of a lone patrol wasn’t worth it, roared Bertram inwardly. 

But Bertram had had this conversation with everyone,
including himself, many, many times.

“Shutting it all down,” Cade called out.

“Hurry... it’s inside Fullerton.  Ahhh... it nailed the
original IP out of that station Carver set up last year.”

“Working on it,” mumbled Cade.

“Well do something quick, otherwise we’ve got to nuke the
whole system just to have enough time to get the hell out of here with the
entire library.  That’s a lot to lose, Cade, because of traffic!”

Tapping.  Burning ozone.  Humming.

“Alright, see that server down in Tustin.  I’m broadcasting
help messages from an old Day One database.  That Hound might think that’s all
it is.  Just us looking for our own after all these years.”