XOM-B (41 page)

Which turns his attention back to us … along with hundreds of other undead closing in all around. The fittest of them break ranks from the shamblers and charges, letting out unholy and hungry howls. Charging forward, through and over the pack, are several soldiers—recent converts whose powerful robotic bodies enable them to perform physical feats and fight far more formidably than the average undead. Sir, slowed by his leg, hobbles with the slowest.

“Freeman,” Heap says in his usual protective tone. I turn around, rush back to the VTOL and find Luscious being helped up the stairs by Harry. But they’re not going to reach the top of the stairs before the horde arrives, which means I need to stay and fight.

“Help them inside,” I say to Heap.

“I will not leave you,” Heap says.

“Heap, you’re free,” I tell him. “You have no one left to protect.”

He shoves me down and throws a punch, striking an undead man and shattering his body to pieces. I look down at the ruined man, then back up the staircase. I calculate the time it will take them to reach safety. Twenty seconds.

The horde will arrive, in force, in fifteen seconds.

A woman lunges at me, arms outstretched. I sidestep, grip her tattered clothing and use her momentum to launch her into an oncoming pair of running corpses.

Heap faces a group of five zombies, rushing him from all sides. He lowers his body, widening his stance and then spins around with extended arms, pummeling the group.

When he straightens back up, I ask, “Why didn’t you do that before?”

“You would have known,” he replies, spinning again and crushing the metal skulls of two more zombies.

“That you were a robot,” I say.

“It would have been too soon,” he says.

The first of the soldiers arrives, his approach faster and more deliberate than the undead following in his wake. But I am not the same man who feared these faster and stronger zombies. Instead of seeing a monster, I see an opportunity.

I kick the rushing soldier hard in the chest, clutching his arm as I do, tearing it free at the shoulder. The one-armed soldier arcs through the air, over the rushing mob, and I use his titanium limb as a club, striking down two more undead and stepping back toward Heap.

“Time to go,” I say at the fifteen-second mark.

His reply is drowned out by the hum of repulse engines. Three glowing discs pulse to life, lifting the VTOL several feet off the ground and crushing the undead beneath them. A grinding rattle fills the air next and before I can ask what the noise is, two whirling guns extending out of black orbs on the bottom of the gunship’s wings open fire. Hot orange tracer rounds crackle through the air, as lines of high-caliber bullets disintegrate the horde around us.

I’m about to ask who is controlling the gunship when a booming voice shouts through a speaker. “Get inside! I’m detecting an outgoing signal.”

Hail.

The VTOL rises higher.

Hail’s voice returns. “Hurry! The signal started when Sir … when he died.”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the most vengeful and remorseless killer the planet Earth has ever seen will have something horrible in store for those who brought about his demise.

A shadow falls over us and Hail’s voice booms from the speaker. “Incoming! Look out!” The gunship peels away, its repulse discs crushing scores of undead to the ground, but leaving Heap and me exposed.

As the shadow narrows, Heap and I jump away in opposite directions. The ground shakes beneath me as I land, but the quake has nothing to do with me and everything to do with whatever has just landed behind me. I roll onto my back and find six red eyes staring down at me. It’s the tallest of Sir’s robot soldiers I have ever seen, standing at least fifty feet. Unlike the other soldiers, this one doesn’t carry a railgun. It’s so big, I doubt it needs one.

A zombie slides into view above my head, jaws opening, teeth descending toward my face. I reach back with my legs, grasp the undead man with my feet and fling him over me. The man collides with the giant’s leg, falls to the ground and begins righting himself for another charge. But the soldier turns its body toward me, shifting its massive foot and crushes the dead man.

I’m positive the soldier will just take another step and crush me into the ground, but it doesn’t. Instead it leans forward and down, bracing its torso by planting its hands on its knees. A very … human gesture. The six glowing red eyes blaze brightly, casting a thirty-foot circle in the color of blood.

Then, it speaks. “Councilman Mohr was not the only one with secret projects, Freeman.”

The voice is loud, like an engine, but also terribly familiar. “S-Sir?”

The colossus stands tall again. “Version two point oh.”

52.

“It took me ten years to build this body,” Sir says, his new, mouthless body projecting his voice through unseen speakers. “If I’m honest, I had hoped to never have a need for it. But here we are, the greatest sons of Mohr, one destined to kill the other. And this time, you will not be saved by a virus.”

His giant foot lifts up and slams back down faster than something so big should be able to do. I dive to the side, narrowly avoiding being flattened. I have no time to marvel at how close I’ve just come to death because the undead have arrived en masse.

Kicking and punching to defend myself, I see the shadow of a foot over the group. My legs react, almost on their own, springing up and propelling me twenty feet into the air just before another crushing stomp smothers the undead that had encircled me.

My brief glide time gives me a moment to think. And in that moment, I come up with nothing. Not just because defeating a fifty-foot-tall war machine driven by the world’s keenest military mind seems impossible, but also because I’m about to land in a sea of living dead, all reaching up for me with greedy fingers.

Remembering that I have yet to really find the limits of my own strength and toughness, I land.

And run.

I stomp a path through the undead, cutting through their numbers. None of them can see me coming through the heads of their neighbors, so I take each one of them by surprise, leaving a trail of confused grunts and broken bodies in my wake. As I run through the horde, I glance up to my left and see Sir, tracking my movement with his six eyes.

But I also see the VTOL lowering down behind him. To my surprise, Hail doesn’t open fire. Right now, the gunship is our best bet of defeating Sir 2.0, but then I see why. Clinging to the nose of the red vehicle is a splotch of deep blue. Heap.

I zoom in briefly, see the determination in his eyes and guess at what he’s about to do just a second before he does it.

Heap lets go of the VTOL and throws himself toward Sir’s massive back, repeating the same poorly conceived strategy I attempted in the swamp.

I’m not sure what Heap is planning to do, but I know he won’t have a chance if Sir realizes he’s there. So instead of continuing my circuitous route around the park, I make a sharp turn toward Sir and jump as high as I can.

But this is Sir.

He predicted this potential attack—not that it’s much of an attack—and responds instantaneously, swinging out with his twenty-five-foot arm. Just before the moment of impact, I tighten myself into a ball, flex my body and take the hit like a baseball—a game which I now fully understand.

My flight through the city is … revealing. The streets below are absolutely mobbed with undead. If the impact of landing damages me too severely, I will be defenseless. While the undead won’t infect me with the Xom-B virus, to which I am immune, there will be nothing to stop them from tearing me apart.

I realize that won’t be a problem, however, as I begin my descent toward a large flat roof of a five-story building because of the two missile bays that have just emerged from Sir’s shoulders. Twenty missiles, ten from each side, tear into the air, all of them headed in my direction.

Remembering who I am and what I am, I set my mind completely on the task of calculating the perfect landing. To my surprise and delight, my mind sifts through thousands of projections and finds the optimal course of action in just a fraction of a second, which is good, because I reach the roof two seconds later.

Reaching out with my hands, I reduce the impact with my powerful elbows, then arc my body in a way that I roll over the roof, three times, gradually getting back to my feet, unharmed, which is beneficial because there are twenty missiles at my back.

Rather than stopping and facing my end head-on, I use the speed of the fall to propel me forward, running across the roof, which creaks beneath my heavy feet. When I reach the edge, instead of leaping off, I dive forward, reaching out with my hands. Catching the small wall on the side of the roof, my feet come up and over and I fling myself straight down toward the ground fifty feet below.

This time, I absorb the impact of landing with just my knees. For a moment, I lament at not fully understanding the capabilities of my body before. Several previous encounters would have ended differently. If I’d known how to roll with a punch when I encountered the first soldier-zombie in the sewers, I might not have been damaged. Speaking of which … I activate all of my ocular implants and see the world through a variety of spectrums.

The missiles that had been following me are unable to make the 90-degree turn toward the street below. Several of them overshoot, striking the building across the street. Glass, fire and brick explode outward as the remaining missiles pummel the rooftop above.

With a groan, both buildings topple inward, toward the street, and me.

But my mind, now free to think at full capacity, responds as though time had been slowed. With debris bursting into the air all around me, tearing into the horde of undead in the street, I sprint for the far side of the street and leap up, to the third-story window of the crumbling wall. Before it can fall out from under me again, I jump away, back the way I came, landing on what remains of the missile-ruined roof, which is now tilted at a 30-degree angle and dropping rapidly. My feet pound over the roof, fueled by a sense of purpose and driven by confidence in my abilities.

My foot strikes the edge and I leap once more, this time flinging myself into the air with the equivalent energy of Sir’s strike.

Sir doesn’t see my jump. He’s already turning away, focusing on the gunship, which still hasn’t opened fire. Then I see why. Heap is still clinging to his back, just below the neck. I zoom in, viewing the scene through multiple spectrums and see the strong glow of some powerful energy source. I’m not sure what Heap is up to, but I know Luscious is on board that gunship.

“Sir!” I shout as loud as I can.

He turns back toward me and though he has no real face, I see surprise in the way he flinches back. But then he collects himself, pulls back and swings, harder than before, perhaps hard enough to destroy me. But neither of us will ever know because by the time I reach the point of impact, my mind has provided a solution and I deftly flip over, plant my legs atop his swinging arm and leap off.

Extending a fist, I punch through the lowermost crimson eye, shattering it and the electronics within. Clutching onto a bundle of cables, I jump out of his head’s interior, swing across his face and kick my feet into the second of his lowest two eyes.

Four more to go and he’ll be blind.

But I’m never going to get the chance. His hand is just a few feet away when I notice it and if he gets ahold of me, there will be no escaping his grasp.

But the digits, each about the same size as me, freeze in place as a spasm shakes through Sir’s body. I hang there, watching the strange phenomenon for just a moment when a voice shouts at me. “What are you waiting for?”

It’s Heap, now standing on Sir’s giant shoulder.

“There isn’t much time!”

Trusting him, I shove away with my feet and swing around toward the shoulder where Heap reaches out and catches hold of me. The VTOL lowers down, its stairway hovering just a foot over Sir’s shoulder.

Wasting no time, we hurry up the steps, which rise up and close behind us. When the hatch fails to close all the way, Heap takes hold of its handle and begins pulling it up manually. When I move to help, he refuses. “Go help Hail. I’m not sure she really knows how to fly.”

I’m about to say, “And I do?” but then realize,
I do!

“Hang on!” Hail yells from somewhere within the VTOL.

The three repulse engines kick in and shove us skyward quickly.

The turbines kick in hard, shoving me to the floor. I step into the vehicle’s main compartment, clinging to a wall. Harry and Luscious are there, strapped into a pair of seats.

“What’s the plan?” Luscious shouts.

“I don’t know!”

As I climb to my feet, Luscious raises her hand to me. I take it, squeeze it and kiss her soft skin, relieved, but not understanding how she’s alive.

I reach the cockpit and push through the door. Hail is there, seated and clutching the controls. Her face is twisted in pain, but it’s tempered by a fierce determination. I push myself into the empty seat beside her and take the controls on my side. “I’ve got it.”

Hail looks relieved as she lets go and leans back.

Through the windshield I see the interior of the capped city passing quickly by. We’ll be outside in seconds.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“East,” she says. “Fast as you can.”

“Why?” I ask. “What’s happening?”

A roar reaches up from below, shaking the aircraft. Hail reaches forward, toggling a switch that activates a view screen built into the dash. A view of the ground behind us is revealed. But we don’t just see the shrinking city below. Sir is there, propelled into the air by giant rockets beneath his feet, spewing fire that incinerates the dead and capped city alike.

“We need to get away from him!” Hail shouts.

That’s obvious, but something in Hail’s voice reveals that I still don’t fully understand what’s happening.

And then, in a flash I do. The big robot soldiers are powered by small fusion reactors—
nuclear
fusion reactors, meaning “small” doesn’t matter much. And those reactors can be manipulated from a panel where I saw Heap clinging. But how did he know this?
Mohr,
I realize. While Sir trusted my creator, the reverse was not true. He must have prepared Heap for this possible confrontation. I glance back,
through
the VTOL, and see a plume of energy rising up behind us.