Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens (5 page)

I woke up the next morning to find the little girl staring down at me, wide-eyed and silent. She was still wearing her cult outfit and looked very creepy. I started and jerked away from her. She seemed shocked and did the same thing.

“Sorry, but you gave me quite the surprise there,” I told her, glancing over at Rayna. She was still asleep and I decided to leave her like that. I hadn’t found yesterday pleasant but it had to have been even worse for her. “What’s your name?”

“Henny,” she said, in a little voice as clear as a bell. I frowned at her and got to my feet.

“Is that your real name?” I asked her. She thought about it for a second then slowly shook her head. “What is your real name?”

“It’s Lizzie,” she told me. I smiled down at her.

“Well Lizzie, how would you like something to eat?”

She almost tore the cereal bar that I offered her out of my hand and ripped off the wrapping before stuffing it in her mouth. I guess having corn on the cob every day wasn’t that satisfying.

I left her with another cereal bar and told her to watch Rayna while I went to explore. I was hoping that I could find some other clothes for the little girl. I was getting uneasy around that costume she was wearing. But I was out of luck.

I did manage to find a vending machine. Vending
machines were like treasure chests in our world. Usually they just taunted anyone who found them. It was almost impossible to break the glass quietly and it was always possible that a chicken could hear you if you did. Since there was no electricity any more we couldn’t even steal money to pay for the chocolate inside. But I’d managed to find a vending machine key a couple of months ago, so I was able to open any that I came across. I didn’t let others know that I had it. It was probably the most precious thing that I owned, which was pretty sad when you came to think about it.

I walked back to the room with my pockets filled with bars of chocolate. When I got in I found Rayna staring at Lizzie suspiciously, while the little girl sat as far away from her as possible. What was needed here was something to diffuse the atmosphere, but I’d already promised to lay off the chicken jokes. (Get it?)

Instead all I had was mindless chatter.

“I quite like being back here,” I said as I got in. “It reminds me of home.”

Lizzie looked up at me with wide eyes. “You used to live in a castle?”

I laughed and shook my head, knocking a hand against a nearby wall. “No, but it’s made of stone from near where I live. See this? Kemnay granite. A lot of things in this city are made of it. It’s nice to be reminded of where I come from.”

I handed out some of my vending machine loot and Lizzie grabbed at hers with a shriek of delight. Rayna ate hers more slowly, savouring the taste. Then she looked at me with what looked like interest.

“They seriously took granite all the way from Kemnay to build this?”

I sighed. “That’s nothing. There’s stuff built from Kemnay granite all around the world. The parliament building in Edinburgh has some in it. So does the Cenotaph in London. And the Sydney Harbour bridge.”

Lizzie looked up at me then the walls, her eyes wide. “Wow.”

“Do you know where Sydney is, Lizzie?”

She snorted, apparently disgusted that I’d even asked the question. “Of course I do. It’s in Australia. We have a map of the world in our classroom at school. I’m not a stupid baby.”

“Sorry,” I told her, chucking her another chocolate bar. “My mistake.”

“How do you know all that?” Rayna asked me, while Lizzie tore into her prize. I groaned.

“I didn’t want to. I had this teacher in school who was obsessed with all of that. Said we should be proud of our cultural heritage. I’d have been prouder if the village had a swimming pool.”

After that Rayna got some cans out of her pack and we feasted on more cold soup. I made sure that none of them were chicken. It was probably better to ease Lizzie gently into stuff like that. Which reminded me…

“Lizzie, why did you help us yesterday?” I asked her. She looked up from her vegetable soup, a look of simple contentment on her face.

“You seemed nice. And you told funny jokes. I didn’t want you to get hurt. So I waited until everyone else was asleep then I stole Egbert’s knife and rescued you.”

“Well I’m really glad you did. My name is Jesse and this is Rayna. Do you want to come along with us now?”

She thought for a second then nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Now we’ll be walking for quite a long way
today. Do you think you can handle that?”

She nodded again. “Yes, I can.”

“Good. Now why don’t you go to the toilet before we set off? It’s just down the hall.”

She turned and darted out the door.

“What do you think?” I asked Rayna quietly. She just shrugged.

“Well we’ve got her now, for better or for worse, though you know she’ll just slow us down.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But I think it’s the only thing to do.”

“Besides,” Rayna added. “They got my sister. They’re not getting this little one. We’ve just got to be careful. She’s been with the Brotherhood for a couple of months now. It will be hard to undo that.”

“But we will,” I said. There was no point in telling Rayna that I’d already started thinking of Lizzie a bit like a little sister. I’d always wanted a little sister. And this felt like fighting back against the chickens in some strange way. We weren’t giving up and we were sticking together. It seemed like the most important thing we could do for our future.

Lizzie didn’t hold us back as badly as I thought she would, but she soon began complaining that her feet were hurting. I wasn’t really surprised. Her slippers probably did well on the worn floors of the church but they weren’t really practical for outside use. Luckily by this point we were close to the Morrisons I’d spotted earlier so we ducked in for a quick spot of looting. We were able to get Lizzie to exchange her chicken outfit for some more normal clothes and shoes quite easily. We also gave her a backpack with a change of clothes and some cereal bars in it. Then we left again, back on
King Street.

It took longer than it had before because we kept an eye on Lizzie and stopped every time it looked like she was flagging. It was late in the day before we finally arrived back at the University Library. Glen looked quite surprised to see us, and even more surprised to see Lizzie.

“I asked you to bring me back a TV, not a brat,” were his first words on seeing all of us. Lizzie behaved in a more civilised manner and merely stuck her tongue out at him.

“Calm down, we’ve got your stupid TV.” I hauled it out of the bag and handed it to him. He took it, with a gleeful expression.

“Finally. Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.” He was so happy he was almost dancing with delight.

Rayna stepped forward, all official Ambassadorness. “We’ve upheld our end of the bargain and proved that we can be trusted. Now give us what we want.”

Glen was distracted and for a moment I thought that he hadn’t heard what we’d said. “What? Oh, the way to defeat the chickens.”

“What?” Lizzie hissed, shocked. “But you can’t defeat the chickens.”

“If we can’t, then there’s no point in worrying about what he’s got to say, is there?” I reasoned. She frowned and then nodded.

Glen stared at her, unsure for a moment. Rayna snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “Focus. What’s the way?”

“Uh? Oh. Right. Well, naturally the first question you’ll be asking yourself is, why chickens?”

Rayna and I looked at each other and I shrugged.
“You know, I hadn’t actually thought about that.” I said.

“Seriously?” Glen looked shocked. “That’s the first thing that came to mind. I mean, it’s not something you’d expect to happen, is it?”

“Well I always just assumed that they were robots or aliens that were posing as chickens for some reason.”

“Nope, it’s chickens. There are chickens inside each of the Catchers, wired in somehow. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

Well this was news; we really were fighting chickens. The very fact that he could have claimed to see inside one of the robots was pretty astonishing. But it wasn’t really worth all the food he was asking for.

“Anything else, Doc?”

He looked absurdly pleased with the nickname for some reason and nodded. “Oh yes, much more. I think I might have found out why they’re so smart.”

“So this isn’t just natural?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Don’t be stupid. They’re chickens.”

“Not alien chickens?”

“They’re not aliens. They’re perfectly ordinary chickens.”

“Then who’s controlling them? They must have a leader?”

Rayna butted in. “Yeah, if they’re just chickens then they must have someone telling them what to do.”

Glen growled exasperatedly. “I don’t know who’s leading them. I don’t know why they’re doing this. I just know that they’re ordinary chickens that can somehow control massive robots.”

“So something made them smarter?”

He raised a finger and waggled it at me. “Exactly. And I think I’ve found what.”

He beckoned us towards a flight of stairs leading up. I told Lizzie to stay down on this floor, and followed Glen. Rayna was close behind me.

We emerged on to the wide flat roof of the library building. Someone, presumably Glen, had tied a rope to the last rung of the steps and we all clung onto it. Maybe it was just me, but I’d seen too many movies which involved people sliding on ice into some sort of chasm to be comfortable up here. Glen led us over to a mast and pointed at the box at its base. For some reason it was covered in tinfoil.

“Do you have to keep it warm?” I asked, loudly.

He started unwrapping it. “No,” he bellowed. “It’s to block signals. I don’t want the chickens tracking them back to me.”

As the last of it was pulled away the screen on the box lit up.

“You see that?” He yelled. “There’s the proof.”

He flicked a switch and I could see a number of wavy lines appear on the screen.

“What does it mean?” Rayna yelled back at him. I was pleased to see that it wasn’t just me who didn’t understand.

“It’s… oh hang on, let’s just go back inside.”

Very thankful, I led the way back and was surprised at the quiet inside the library. The wind must have been louder than I had thought.

“It’s a carrier wave,” Glen said after we had grabbed a seat at a nearby table. Lizzie was napping in a corner. “I think that it’s sending instructions to the chickens and making them very smart.”

“That’s it? That there’s some sort of weird signal in the air? We went traipsing all the way over Aberdeen, went through all that, just for a signal?”

Glen looked slightly bemused at my annoyance. “What’s the big deal? You only had to get a TV.”

I growled at him but Rayna placed a hand on my shoulder, like last time, and gave it a warning squeeze.

“So the chickens are all being controlled by this signal?” she asked. “What happens when the signal gets cut out?”

“Without the signal they can’t operate. If they can’t operate then they’re just chickens stuck in a big metal shell,” Glen said.

Now I got it. “So all we have to do is to cut off the signal and they’re useless? The chickens all fall over or explode or something?”

He nodded. “Sort of. They’ll probably still be able to control their machines, but they won’t have the intelligence to pose a threat. If you went at them they’d probably run away.”

“Who’s sending the signal?” I asked.

His smile faded. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, it was pretty lucky that I was able to find the signal in the first place,” he said defensively. “It just happened by chance. I haven’t been able to do anything more with it than identify it. I would have to leave the University and wander about to triangulate the signal.”

“All right,” I said, getting to my feet. “Grab your stuff and let’s go.”

He shied away from me. “No way. I’m not leaving.”

“That’s what you think,” I said, taking another step towards him. I was still holding out hope that he could just be intimidated into doing it, but Rayna restrained me again.

“No, leave it, Jesse. If he doesn’t want to go then we
can’t make him. Now sit back down.”

I did, grumbling and shooting Glen hostile glances. He seemed very flustered. Good.

“Look, even if I wanted to go with you I probably couldn’t,” he said. “I don’t have the stuff I need. This is a university, not an FBI outpost or something. And even if we did have it I’m not sure I would know how to use it. I only managed to get that because I was trying to see if there were any TV stations still transmitting.”

“Why were you looking?” I asked.

“I thought there might be some emergency channels still working, maybe some government broadcasts.”

I looked up, hopeful. “Anything?”

He shook his head. “Every so often there seem to be things broadcast, but I’ve not been able to see them. That’s what I was wanting the TV for. Anything to help us survive.”

I looked at him, interested. If there was a chance of picking up a broadcast, maybe the Train Station Gang would have to get a TV for themselves.

I went and got the book I’d picked up. “Here,” I told a surprised Glen. “I figured that since I was in the area anyway I’d pick up a book for you. I hope I got what you liked.”

He looked at the book and I swear I could see tears swelling in his eyes. “Thanks. Thank you very much.”

“No problem,” I said, looking away and feeling uncomfortable. “Just since I was in the area anyway. It wasn’t any skin off my nose.”

“Look, I’m really sorry I can’t help you,” he blurted out. “But I could probably narrow it down. I’m sure the signal isn’t coming from a satellite and I’m also pretty sure that they’re not using the mobile phone networks. It would have to be some sort of signal mast. They’ve
probably got them set up in every place they invaded. I don’t know if that helps at all.”

It did… a bit. At least we knew that if it was a local signal we stood a chance of destroying it. If the source of the signal was on the ground it would mean that we only had to blow up an antenna or something. Though I had no idea how we’d be able to do that either.