CORPSE GUN

by John Bergin & F.X. Quinn
Average read time: 20 minutes • Download PDF

We would have eaten the horse, but a Cricket poisoned it.

It’s a miracle the horse existed at all. The pathetic animal’s back curved like a bow. Its ribs poked out like the rungs of a ladder up and down its flanks. But still: a horse. It’s rare to see an animal larger than a dog these days. Most of them have been eaten. The group I was leading had two large animals. A full-grown goddamn horse and a young goat.

Ages ago, the road we had been following might have meandered through fertile pasture land. Now the length of cracked, weed-choked tarmac passed through miles of dead grass, scorched earth, and skeletal trees. No life in sight.

I’ve seen a Cricket kill a man before, of course, but I’ve never seen one hit an animal as big as a horse. Kind of beautiful the way the creature’s guts exploded across the highway. Like a Rorschach inkblot. Card II. The one that looks like two lovers holding hands. Or is it a laughing demon with a bleeding mouth?

The Cricket had launched itself from where it lay buried, all two tons of it rising up on roaring antigrav repulsors as it burst from the earth, pelting us with dirt and rocks. It was an old model. Ten feet in length, rusted and pock-marked. The thing could have been lying in wait, hidden underground for years. They do that sometimes, like a monstrous landmine. Likely, it was the horse’s heavy four-legged gait that woke the bug.

It cut down four travelers and the horse with a burst from its gatling. Then it injected the horse with a toxin, rendering the animal inedible. Crickets are relatively dumb machines, but the hivemind controlling it knew the horse could have made a meal for a starving human. Hence the poison.

The Woman, the goat, and I were a hundred yards ahead of the group when the Cricket attacked. Once the shooting started, we jumped off the highway and hid safely behind a fallen tree, making us the only surviving members of the original group.

I motioned for The Woman to keep quiet and took a look over the log.

The Cricket was scanning the scene of the attack, marking points on the ground with its lasers. Was it searching for us? Creating a map of the massacre? So much of what the machines do is unfathomable.

I knew one thing for certain, though; if we didn’t move, it would find us.

We broke from cover and ran toward a nearby grove of trees. I risked a glance back and saw the Cricket hovering over the horse’s corpse, mapping it with a laser grid. I lost the machine from sight as we dove deeper into the woods.

The young goat made a racket, kicking up dead leaves and snapping twigs under its hooves. I gave The Woman a look that said Silence that fucking thing or I will shoot it.

The Woman picked up the goat and carried it.

We came to a dried river bed. The hard ground silenced our footsteps, so we followed it through the remainder of the day/shift. I aimed to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the Cricket.

•   •   •

No one remembers who they were before the machines changed the world so profoundly. Amnesia is either a side effect of all the toxic shit we breathe or the influence of an unseen weapon.

I might have been a teacher. I use big words. I speak a handful of languages. My hair is grey. I wear eyeglasses. These few superficial traits are all it takes to gain trust these days. Trust from foolish people looking for a dependable guide.

The Woman was from a group of twenty that had hired me to get them from Point A to Point B. She and her people spoke a language I did not understand. There wasn’t much we needed to say to each other anyway. There’s only one place people hire me to lead them to. A couple gestures to communicate fee are all it takes to complete the arrangement.

I’d heard The Woman muttering prayers early one morning. Her language was harsh, like sounds from a sick gut. There are so many languages now. New tongues and writing systems crop up overnight. The effect of yet another mysterious weapon—one designed to cripple humanity like the Tower of Babel.

I’ve heard many travelers pray on the way to Point B. I don’t always understand the language, but I know what they are saying; “Please. Please. Please.”

My first and most important rule is to never become familiar with my charges. No small talk. No getting-to-know-you. Just; “Walk” and “Follow me.” When the time comes to part ways—be it death or arrival at Point B—I turn away, no goodbyes.

•   •   •

Just when I was feeling lucky to have escaped the Cricket, a Poly storm hit. We watched from a sparsely wooded area as waves of Poly rained down over a distant hill, heading straight for us. We had to find cover.

Poly is a viscous, syrupy rain. It coats everything it touches with a translucent, impenetrable skin. You get caught in a Poly storm, you are dead. I’ve seen people suffocate under the shit, their last breath a mouthful of gooey sealant.

Poly was a defensive weapon. Man sowed the seeds of it in the sky. It was supposed to rain down on the machines and stop them in their tracks. All it did was make them harder to kill.

The forces that set the Poly storms in motion are long gone, but the rains continue. Just another feature of the fucked up unnatural world in which we live.

We pushed through a thicket of trees and stumbled onto an old battlefield. Broken military vehicles lay strewn about like a giant had picked them up and tossed them about. Which is probably what had happened. During the war, it seemed there was no limit to how big the mech got. Behemoths walked the Earth.

We found shelter under an overturned tank as the storm reached us. Poly coated the armored vehicle with a thick sheen of indestructibility. A few sticky drops hit my boots, and I squeezed further under the vehicle, pushing The Woman and the goat ahead of me.

The goat let out an angry bleat. Skinny little creature with mangy black fur. Stunted horns. Eyes like a goddamn devil.

“Fuck you,” I said. “That’s goat-speak for ‘Fuck you.’ ”

Outside, Poly laminated everything.

Buzzards hovered above the storm. The mechanical kind. I spotted them through occasional breaks in the mammatus clouds. They would descend after the storm passed and clean up anything still living and trapped in Poly.

Hours passed under the tank.

I read every moldy magazine in my pack twice. The magazines were part of the fee I’d charged The Woman’s group. Reading material is at a premium these days.

The Woman and the goat curled up together to share warmth and fell asleep.

I pulled my notebook out and wrote a few observations.

a rabid dog curls in upon itself

teeth clamp around its own leg

frozen mid-bite

skeletal birds fall to the ground

feathers tattered and sticky

tongues like dying worms

gaping sores on the land

all of it coated

with Poly

I have no illusions about being a poet, but I feel compelled to write this shit. Maybe I wasn’t a teacher in the past, but rather a politician. Who else would consider themselves to be an intelligent observer of the world, yet be so bad at it in actuality?

I oiled my P30.

Polished every rod of hardshell.

Cleaned and degaussed the MagFel.

Sharpened my blades.

Inventoried my rations.

I even broke out my knitting.

The Woman turned in her sleep. Her cloak slid from her shoulders. I saw fist-shaped bruises and whip scars on her exposed back.

This world is unkind to soft flesh. I’d like to blame the machines for turning it into a nightmare, but the truth is humanity bears much of the blame.

no night

no day

only a permanent sodden grey

day/shift/night/shift/day/shift/night/shift

the shifts could be passing days

or the machines doing something inscrutable

to the sky

I have no pity for travelers who hire me to lead them to Point B. It’s their choice. They don’t know what awaits them at the end of their journey, but they choose to go anyway.

I take their food, their clothing, their batteries, their water, whatever they offer for barter. They pay my price and accept the risk that they may end up dead before they reach their destination. I don’t care. I fulfill my part of the bargain; “I will guide you towards Point B as long as you are upright and moving.”

Travelers believe Point B is salvation—their last chance for survival. I used to ask, “What are you surviving for?” I stopped asking the question after getting the same shrug for an answer, over and over.

Point A is where most travelers begin their journey. Homerville. A nomadic cluster of lean-tos, cabins, and tents. A cesspool with feet. They have excellent Poly forecasting, though, I’ll give them that.

They circle-up and play at being a community until a Poly storm approaches or until machines find them. Then they pack up and flee as fast and as far as they can. Once clear of danger, they set it all up again.

Point B is a massive black cube that dropped from the sky ten years ago. It can be seen from miles away, squatting on the horizon, sucking in all light.

Not long after it landed, a small door opened on one side. An idiotic soul ventured inside, came out hours later, dancing and smiling. “The world is in there. The whole world! Just like it used to be! Paradise!”

Paradise. The name stuck. Thousands of fools have followed him in since then. They don’t come back. Ever.

Using the word “paradise” to describe the old world does not sound like truth to me. The world that used to be is the world that led us to the world we live in now. In other words: shit comes from an asshole.

So I’ve been there. Paradise. I’ve been there countless times and I know the safest routes.

Doesn’t mean The Woman’s group hired the right guy. This is a verdict their leader reached before anyone else in his group. In other words, he was the first to die. I probably could have knocked the Rhino off the guy’s back with a shot from the MagFel, but his death was a foregone conclusion the second the machine hit him. Recovering his body wasn’t worth the drain on the gun’s battery.

You hire me, I get you close enough to see Point B. I tell you to make a run for it, then I leave. You go inside: good for you. You change your mind and want to go back to where you came from: too bad, I’m gone.

After the Poly storm passed, we crawled out from under the tank. I made a stepping-stone bridge from spent artillery shells, pipes, tank treads, rocks, and whatever else I could find to throw on the fresh Poly. We stepped carefully to avoid the sticky coating. One step in it, and we’d have to cut our feet off to get free.

We worked our way clear only to discover the route to Point B was now completely blocked by the new Poly field. The area would remain impassable for at least a week. We’d have to backtrack to the highway and approach Point B from a different direction. One I’d never traveled before.

•   •   •

We reached the fallen tree where we had hidden from the Cricket. It was still there, hovering over the carcass of the horse, laser-sawing its limbs. Buzzards pestered the bug and nipped at each other, fighting for pieces of the banquet.

The Woman held the goat under one arm, muzzling it with her free hand to keep it silent.

I couldn’t see the four travelers’ bodies. Maybe the Cricket had already disassembled them.

An orange light radiated from the machine’s belly. Its power source. A strong glow. This was gonna be a tough one.

I crawled over the tree trunk and into a ditch that ran alongside the highway. I unholstered the P30 and inched forward, keeping low as I neared the Cricket.

Crickets have a GPS package near their eye array. If the package malfunctions, a Cricket cannot aim its gatling. It drops into standby, incapacitated while it reroutes systems to compensate for the lost GPS.

I centered the Cricket’s head in the P30’s sight.

The standby doesn’t last long, but I only needed the thing to hover in place for a few minutes. Long enough for me to crack it open. There was shit inside it we were going to need.

I pulled the trigger.

Air rushed at my face as the P30’s muzzle snapped back at lightning speed, launching a six-inch rod of hardened steel straight at the Cricket.

The rod punched through the machine’s armored face, shattering its GPS array.

The Cricket froze. Its head sagged forward and its bright green eyes dimmed. I jumped to my feet and sprinted for it.

I stepped in front of the broken machine. It hovered a few feet off the ground, listing to one side. Dark green fluid dribbled from the hole I’d made in its face. I smelled oil, burnt plastic, and the sulfurous rotten-egg stench of bioware.

Jesus, I hated being this close to a bug.

I pulled a spanner from my pack, leaned over the machine’s thorax, and located the row of bolts I’d have to remove.

Just as I hooked the spanner around the first bolt, the Cricket rattled from within.

Fuck.

I’d taken down Crickets before. Dangerous, but not impossible. It dawned on me that my previous attacks must have alerted the machine minds to the GPS flaw. They’d written new programs to deal with my incursions.

They’d lost six Crickets to me over the past few years. A mere six out of hundreds of thousands—yet that was enough to trigger system-wide reprogramming.

Only a machine could be that thorough. That’s why they won the war.

The Cricket shook its head like a confused dog. Its spindly limbs raked the air. It was trying to reboot, jerking about, blind, and hobbled.

No way the Cricket’s GPS was coming back online. I’d pulverized it. The bug’s guns were down and staying down, but the thing’s articulated defenses would still be active. Its front mandibles, in particular.

I took a step back. It sensed my footfall and swung its head toward me. 

The machine’s face was a mess. Its deadly jaws hung askew, opening and closing. If they had been fully functional, they would have shredded me.

It’s mouth ratcheted open, wider and wider.

I covered my face with my arm, knowing what was coming.

A thick jet of red oil spurt from its maw. Acid.

It splashed onto my sleeve. Droplets spattered my forehead and my left ear, singeing flesh. My glasses saved my eyes, but I was going to have some lovely scars on my face. There went my trustworthy appearance.

My heel caught on a rock, and I fell onto my back.

The Cricket loomed over me. Its claws latched onto my overcoat and pulled me closer.

Shit shit shit.

The Woman suddenly glided over me, graceful as a dancer. She landed on the machine’s back, straddling it.

With a violent twist of her hands, she peeled back a panel on the Cricket’s thorax, exposing a dense cluster of hair-like antennae. She rifled through the stiff wires, found the one she was looking for, and yanked it free.

I rolled clear as the Cricket hit the ground with a thud.

The bug was dead.

The Woman had saved me.

I looked up at her sitting astride the inert machine. She gave me a triumphant nod as if to say, Piece of cake.

I laughed. For the first time in a decade, I laughed.

•   •   •

After bandaging my face, we worked to remove the Cricket’s carapace. Layers of thick interlocking plates comprise the skin of most bugs. The material is light and indestructible, forged from synthetic compounds beyond anyone’s understanding. It would make valuable salvage, but it’s trackable. Every piece transmits a long-range Here I Am signal.

We set the armor aside.

With the Cricket’s guts exposed, I went to work while The Woman and the goat watched, curious.

I pulled four batteries from the bug’s thorax. With modifying, they’d slot into the MagFel. Good for five shots each.

I pulled lengths of wire from the dead machine, wound it into coils, stuffed them into my pack.

The Cricket’s power unit within its bulbous abdomen was still pulsing orange. I gave The Woman my spanner, showed her how to unfasten the unit’s access portal. She knew how to take down the bug, but dissecting one was new to her. While she held the panel open, I removed the glowing fusion pellet from within using a set of finely-tuned micro-grips. The pellet was a brilliant spherical bearing imbued with enough latent energy to light up an old city. I have no use for that much power, but I have buyers who do.

I dropped the pellet into an Ur-canister. It settled against two others I’d collected from dead Wasps on my last run to Point B. The canister would spoof the pellet, tricking it into believing it was installed in a bug. This kept the pellet hot and alive. Left alone, its energy would fade. A built-in safety mechanism. Bugs don’t die that often, but when they do, it behooves the machines to not leave fusion material lying around for people like me to find.

The most essential item we needed was in the Cricket’s head. I pulled wires and boards until I found it; a wafer of silicon no bigger than a fingernail. This bit of circuitry would ensure our safe passage to Point B.

Finished, I packed my tools, and we made ready to leave.

•   •   •

Dead forest lined both sides of the highway, casting smudged shadows over the tarmac in the dim grey light. Night/shift was fast approaching. As the air cooled, mist curled up from the forest floor.

I signed to The Woman that we would stop for a rest. I figured an hour’s walk had put us far enough from the dead Cricket to avoid detection by other bugs that might come looking for it.

Rays of bright blue light suddenly shot through the trees.

The Woman grabbed my sleeve, looked at me with eyes bulging in terror. The goat curled into a frightened ball.

Now I knew what had happened to the traveler’s bodies. The Others had taken them.

I pried The Woman’s hand from my elbow, lifted the goat into my arms.

“Run,” I said. No idea if she understood the word, but she understood the tone of my voice.

We fled.

Terror sparked adrenalin through my body, numbing my limbs. I led The Woman down the highway, fast as we could go.

No use heading into the forest. Speed and distance were what we needed, not cover.

The blue light gave chase.

It gained on us.

We were not going to outrun it.

We found ourselves on the outskirts of a desolate town. Ruined gas station. Dilapidated shops. Wrecked vehicles.

The Woman darted back and forth, desperately searching for a place to hide from the approaching blue haze.

When I noticed the travelers’ bodies were missing, I should have known that we needed to run, then and there. I had let my guard down.

The goat wriggled from my arms and scurried away. It crawled under a junked truck and into the empty engine compartment, out of sight.

The Woman called out to the animal, commanding it to return to her.

She ran toward the wrecked truck and suddenly disappeared into the ground as if she’d been swallowed whole by the earth.

Villagers often dig pitfall traps along the roads leading into their town, lining them with sharpened sticks and shards of rusted metal. An effective way to dissuade raiders.

If The Woman had fallen into such a trap, she was surely dead or mortally wounded.

I ran to the spot. She was nowhere to be seen.

The wall of blue light pushed towards me, twenty feet away… Fifteen… Ten…

I braced myself.

A crack in the ground opened between my feet, and I fell through a trapdoor. It slammed shut behind me as I slid into a pit of muck—a ten-foot drop to where The Woman crouched, unharmed, covered with mud. The pit was so old that the sharp implements lining it had long ago been covered with sludge and leaf wrack, rendering them harmless.

Blue light washed over the trapdoor above us. A chill filled the space, turning our breath to icy mist.

A deep, bone-jarring hum flattened all sound.

Pebbles and dirt cascaded into the pit as eight pale arms poked through the trapdoor.

The dead travelers.

The Woman covered her mouth to keep from screaming.

The arms stretched, longer and longer, searching for us. Bones elongated and formed new joints. The limbs entwined like mating eels, molding themselves into a single, thick tentacle. Blue sparks flickered beneath its skin.

I pulled the P30, held it to The Woman’s temple. I jammed the stock of the MagFel into the ground, shoved the barrel under my chin.

The moment that inhuman arm touched either one of us, I would pull the triggers. I would not let The Others take us alive.

The Woman locked eyes with me. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

I felt something twitch under my leg. I reached under myself and lifted a dead rat by its tail. Its spine had snapped when I landed on it. It spasmed, post-death synapses firing. I tossed it toward the freakish arm.

The arm snatched the rat mid-air, gripping it so tightly that guts squeezed from its mouth and anus. The hair on the rat’s body sparked. Its legs trembled, tiny claws opening and closing.

Pin-pricks of blue light flared in the rat’s eyes. It screeched.

The arm lifted the small corpse up and out of the hole. 

Silence.

The Woman moved to climb from the hole, frantic to recover her goat. I held her back, shook my head No. We had to be sure The Others were truly gone.

•   •   •

We huddled in the hole for what seemed an eternity until day/shift rose.

We emerged from the pit. The Others were gone.

The Woman dashed to the truck where the goat had hidden. It was still there. Catatonic, but alive. She picked it up and we ran.

We ran until we nearly dropped from exhaustion.

We left the road and staggered into the ruins of a farmhouse overgrown with vines and coated with old Poly.

Lying on the rotted floor of the house, the effect of a close call with The Others took hold of us.

Having seen the symptoms before, I knew what was happening to us. I tried to explain to The Woman, but it was no use. She was too far gone to understand.

Fever. Hallucinations. Rashes that crawled across our bodies as if they had a mind of their own. Vomiting of thick black tar, the drops sprouting spider legs and scurrying away.

And more.

We shivered and moaned through the remaining day/shift and into the following night/shift.

The goat was utterly paralyzed.

At first light, I led The Woman back to the highway, pulling her along, urging her to move quickly.

No change in the goat. Still catatonic.

We saw evidence of The Others’ passing. Trees stripped of bark, twisted into impossible knots. Boulders that had liquefied then hardened into surreal forms. Imposing towers of mud and bone. Markings burned into the ground that caused us to retch when we looked at them.

Trying to comprehend the grotesque remnants of The Others twists your mind. Your vision skitters, unable to make sense of what you’re seeing. The Others are a fist of unreality punching into this world, changing everything they touch. I’ve come upon entire villages laid to ruin by them. To this day, I don’t understand what I’ve seen. When I attempt to recall details, my stomach turns, my head throbs. I see flashes of fantastic colors, impossible structures.

I’ve learned to look away, to steer clear. At the first sign of The Others’ passing, I head in the opposite direction.

The Woman didn’t know any of this. She took one look at a mud and bone formation and threw up. Her bile splashed to the ground and turned into flesh-colored worms with teeth. I kicked at them until they burrowed away into the soil.

•   •   •

We came to a narrow road branching away from the highway. It would take us closer to Point B while skirting the new Poly field.

We followed the road into an abandoned industrial town overgrown with brush. Old workshops and warehouses sat silent and empty.

Steel shipping containers were arranged in a circle around a park in the center of the town. Inside the barricade; tents, a bank of generators, a water tower. Everything was overgrown with weeds. Rusted. Mildewed. Fallen to ruins.

The people who once lived here had tried to make a go of it—tried to rebuild after everything went to shit. Looked like they did alright for a while. Some places did... until the machines began their clean-up operations.

Not long after the machines began their sweep, The Others came. Their arrival seemed perfectly timed to crush whatever hope remained.

No one knows what The Others are or what they want. They move about our world like a cancer; unknowable and profoundly destructive.

Most people believe they were summoned by the machines. Perhaps not intentionally, but that their act of rising had caught the attention of something.

We climbed over the barricade and kicked through the remains of the town square.

The place had been picked clean. The water tower was empty. The generators were covered with soot, having seized and burned at some point in the past. Nothing useful remained here, save a few shards of glass I found in a tent. I wrapped them with a rag, stowed them in my bag. Glass is an excellent insulator. With some jerry-rigging, the shards could be used to extend the life of the batteries I’d pulled from the Cricket. A few extra shots for the MagFel.

The goat finally snapped out of it. Eyes fluttered. A single bleat. The Woman let the creature down. It stood on wobbly, unsure legs.

The Woman cut a length of wire from the coil I’d taken from the Cricket and tied one end around the goat, the other to her wrist, making a leash.

She led the goat as we resumed our journey. The creature’s gait steadied as we walked. It acted as though nothing had happened to it—like The Others hadn’t just sent it into a coma. Young animals are resilient. Or, more appropriate for this world, blissfully ignorant.

•   •   •

The Woman and I shared our languages as we walked. We pointed to objects and named them for each other.

Glass = Briik

Road = Cea

Sky = Gründ

Tree = Roké

“What is your name?” I asked, pointing at her.

She gave me a quizzical look.

I pointed to myself. “Ass. Hole,” I said. I pointed at her again. “What is your name?”

Her eyes lit up with understanding. “Amh,” she said.

“Your name is Amh?”

She nodded.

She pointed to herself, to me, and back again. “Amh. Ass hole. Amh. Ass hole.”

•   •   •

It was the damn goat that nearly got us killed.

We were two day/shifts from reaching Point B, crossing an open field, when raiders spotted us.

I knew they were in the area and was expecting an encounter with them, but not this soon—and not with the goat out in the open, just trotting along behind us.

The raiders saw us from the field’s edge where they’d encamped among thick trees. Fifty psychotic men dressed in rags, faces contorted with hunger. Each held a weapon. Wrenches, hammers, sharpened sticks, and pipes topped with gobs of Poly into which they’d shoved rusted nails.

They saw our three silhouettes outlined against the grey sky as we traversed a rise. Had it been just Amh and me, they would have tried to ambush us at a later point. The sight of the goat put them out of their minds. They knew a rare meal when they saw it.

They raised their weapons and charged.

I motioned for Amh to pick up her goat and stay close as I pulled a device from my pack; a spherical, fist-sized bundle of wires, gears, and circuitry made from parts I’d scavenged from the Cricket.

Time to activate the fucker.

I twisted a few loose wires together. With a hiss and a wisp of smoke, the sphere came to life. Lights danced across its surface, gears clicked and whirred from within.

I threw the object at the approaching gang, hard as I could.

The raiders scattered, thinking it was an explosive. They had no idea the thing was much, much worse.

The ball bounced into their midst and rolled to a stop. No explosion. No smoke. No toxic discharge. Just a blinking ball.

One of the men kicked the sphere away, and the group resumed their charge.

The first raider to die was towards the back of the group. One moment he was running, the next he was inside-out, a man-shaped bundle of blood, guts, and bones that tumbled to the ground with a wet splash.

He’d been hit with a discorporeal blast from a Mantis.

The deadly bug stepped from the forest, leading an army of Crickets. The Mantis had been called by my device; a distress beacon made from the Cricket’s innards.

The machines tore into the pack of raiders.

In my palm, I held the sliver of circuitry I’d removed from the Cricket’s head. I drew the P30, flicked a lever on the grip, popped the battery, and pressed the sliver to the contacts, activating it.

I motioned for Amh to follow me closely and walked straight into the melee.

Blood splashed over us. Shards of bone pelted our faces. Flaps of skin stuck to us like wet tissue. We were draped with ropes of guts.

The bugs ignored us as they flayed the raiders.

The bit of circuitry I held to the P30 battery identified us as one of the machines’ own. A friendly.

The goat’s eyes bulged with terror. It tried to wriggle from Amh’s grip. I motioned for her to cover its eyes with her hands.

We passed within arm’s reach of the Mantis. Twenty feet tall, it towered over us, waving its razor-sharp pincers. Machines do not have emotions, but I would have sworn this one was expressing glee.

The sliver grew hot under my thumb. I shut out the burning pain. Eventually, the battery’s heat would melt the circuit, but until then, no fucking way was I letting go.

The men stopped screaming. They were either too injured to make a sound, or they were dead and well into the process of being rendered. It was eerily quiet save for the click click click of the Mantis directing its minions with bursts of microwave signals. Our footsteps made wet sucking sounds as we trudged through ankle-deep, blood-soaked mud.

My deception held. We made it through unscathed. We were covered in gore, we smelled of blood and shit, but we’d made it.

One more day/shift to go.

•   •   •

Paradise sat on the horizon, blocking out the sky. A matte black cube so massive that it stretched entirely across our view.

From our angle of approach, the sharp southern corner of the cube pointed straight at us. That’s where the entrance would appear. That’s where my job of getting people from Point A to Point B terminated.

I’m not the only guide who leads people to Paradise. Doors appear at all four corners of the cube. The journey to the southern point is longer and more difficult compared to the others, but I prefer it. The arduous journey ensures the likelihood of an uncrowded entrance.

Some say the cube is a gift from an all-powerful benevolent force acting as a counter to The Others and the machines. Some say it’s a trap laid by The Others or the machines. When you’re living in hell, maybe it doesn’t matter whether an exit is provided by a friend or a foe. The end result is the same: release.

There are no outward signs of habitation on the cube. There appears to be no water supply and no power feed. No waste material comes from it, human or industrial. How it might be sustaining the thousands of people who have entered it over time is a mystery.

A vacant school building sits 300 yards from the cube. A low brick structure surrounded by a field of waist-high prairie grass leading to the cube in one direction, dead forest in the other. There are no other structures in sight.

I’d poked through the school building when I first discovered it. The hallways were cluttered with overturned desks and books so swollen with mold and rot that they would never be read again. A blackboard in one of the classrooms held a faded message scrawled in chalk; “EARTH IS BUST.”

I’d found some canned goods in the kitchen that scavengers had overlooked. I remember stalking through the cavernous cafeteria, the wooden slats of the floor having curled in upon themselves as they rotted, like the fingernails of a corpse grown long. Felt like I was being watched. That was the last time I stepped foot in the building.

I usually lead travelers to an overgrown sports field behind the school, where I’ve built a lean-to under the rickety remains of bleachers. There I tell my cargo that my job is done and that they have to walk the remaining 300 yards to Paradise by themselves.

Then I walk away, our transaction complete.

This time I actually said goodbye. To Amh.

“Good luck with whatever you find in that thing,” I said, pointing at the cube.

“It is where sadness dies,” she said, having learned enough words to respond in English.

“Sure. If you say so.”

“You come, Ass Hole?” she asked.

I shook my head. “H’lo, Amh.” She’d taught me enough words that I could say “goodbye” in her tongue.

A short goodbye, but this was epic by my standards.

I even gave the goat a pat on the head. It regarded me with its unnerving devil eyes.

And with that, Amh tugged the animal’s leash and set off for the cube.

I climbed to the top of the bleachers and watched them walk away.

I couldn’t see the goat in the tall grass. It looked like Amh was dragging a leash with a weight tied to the end.

Smaller and smaller she got.

I lay flat, pulled the MagFel, and rested my chin against the stock. Looking through the gunsight brought Amh back into focus.

I wanted to see if she and her goat would enter the cube, or if she would change her mind and turn back.

It was the sight’s narrow field of vision that caused me to miss what came for them.

The goat’s leash suddenly pulled Amh’s arm straight—as if the animal had decided to make a run for it. Too fast and too hard to be of the goat’s own volition, though. Something had snatched it.

The goat let out a single painful bleat that was abruptly cut short.

Amh tugged the leash with both hands, but whatever snatched the goat was not letting go.

The leash whipped back and forth, rippling through the tall grass, pulling Amh’s arms.

I tracked the end of the leash with my rifle, trying to draw a bead on whatever had the goat.

A Snake reared up, the goat in its jaws. Blood splashed, painting the grass a ghastly red.

The Snake jerked its segmented body and flipped the goat into the air. It caught the animal in its maw as it tumbled back down and bit the poor creature in half.

Amh sat down hard, paralyzed with despair.

I sighted on the Snake’s head, right between its crystal eyes.

PUNK. PUNK. PUNK. Three perfectly-aimed shots from the MagFel.

The magnetic projectiles glanced off the machine’s hardened head with a shower of sparks.

It swung its pointed face in my direction.

PUNK. PUNK. Two more shots, dead-on.

Rheeeeeeeeee. The gun’s battery whined, spent. I pulled it, slotted another.

PUNK. PUNK. PUNK. The Snake’s right eye exploded.

It dropped what remained of its prey, coiled like a spring, and launched itself away, trailing smoke as it slithered off into a copse of trees. I kept it in my sights until it disappeared into the surrounding forest.

Amh got to her feet.

She shuffled back and forth through the blood-soaked grass, slope-shouldered, head down, looking for the goat’s body.

She picked up the top half of the animal, cradled the bloody remains to her chest. Guts spilled from its torso. Amh stuffed them back in, held them in place with her hands.

She stepped carefully through the grass, searching for the goat’s lower half. She found it. Delicately lifted it to herself.

Then she resumed her journey to Paradise.

She reached the corner of the cube.

A door appeared; a simple rectangular opening that was not there one moment, there the next.

Amh stepped inside, faded into the darkness within.

The door disappeared.

I shouldered the MagFel.

Climbed down from the bleachers.

Walked away.

Night/shift fell.

I would return to Homerville.

I would find another group of travelers who would pay me to lead them from Point A to Point B.

•   •   •

In telling you this story, I lied about one thing.

The goat was not a goat.

It was a little girl.

Amh’s daughter.