XOM-B (27 page)

Heap gives a nod and then moves toward a door that has not been opened, but he seems to know it will lead down, to the basement, where Harry has stored so many of his paintings. He raises his left arm, pointing it down the dark stairs and says, “Gather by the back door. When the flames rise, we’ll exit and head north.”

“Where are we going?” Harry asks.

“Your capped city.”

A device snaps up out of Heap’s arm and launches a bright orange, sparking projectile into the basement. He turns and fires again, shooting a second fiery dart into the far room where the painting of the innocents and looming Masters is kept. He turns to the living room and fires a third, this one striking the couch, which is now buckled from Heap’s weight. All at once, all three spaces plume with light. And heat, I can already feel the burgeoning inferno. Once the fire reaches the home’s exterior, it will be a fiery beacon to undead for miles around … which makes me question the wisdom of this plan.

We wait by the door as the flames spread and black smoke gathers at the ceiling. I watch the cloud, spinning and spreading, moving across the ceiling like undead over the ground. Then I notice the floor. It’s warm beneath my feet. I look at the others, but they seem oblivious. “Heap.” He turns to me. “I believe the floor beneath us is on fire.”

He glances down. His four eyes widen, reflecting the expression of the man within the armor. “Go!” he shouts, and then explodes out the back door. He doesn’t bother opening it; he just throws his entire bulk through it, the frame and the surrounding wall. At first I’m not sure why he exited so boldly, but then notice the flailing limbs of undead crushed to the ground beneath his armored girth. We rush out in his wake, aiming our weapons, but not firing. The dead surrounding the house seem transfixed by the orange light flickering in the home’s windows.

The gush of air rushing into the sealed home fuels the fire. Flames erupt up from the basement, melting away the floor where we just stood.

Heap shoves himself up. “Go. Through the yard. To the woods.”

Before I can run, a sudden weight strikes my back and knocks me to the ground.

“Freeman!” Luscious yells.

Her fear-filled shout is punctuated by a thunderous report that removes the weight from my back. Before I think to move, I’m lifted up by Heap and deposited back on my feet. To my left is the headless corpse of a twice-dead woman. To my right is Harry, his weapon smoking from its twin barrels. He snaps it open, ejecting two red cylinders and quickly shoves in two more.

“Go,” Heap says again, shoving me toward the trees. “Go!”

We run for the woods, which are aglow with orange light. We pause at the tree line for just a moment and look back. The house in engulfed. Flames reach thirty feet into the sky. And the silhouettes of the dead surround the exterior, some of them on fire as well. But not all of them are watching the burning building.

Some are watching us.

A shriek cuts through the fire’s roar. I recognize it as a soldier’s call. I can’t see the soldier who is sounding the alarm, but a moment later, he reveals himself—a fireball leaping from the burning roof of Harry’s home. He lands in the grassy backyard, dripping fire as his armor and face melt. Just seeing the man causes a kind of sympathetic pain, but he seems indifferent.

He squats, just watching us while the grass around him ignites.

I slow at the edge of the woods.

“Freeman,” Heap says, urging me onward.

I motion to the burning soldier. “What’s he doing?”

The answer comes when two more fireballs launch from the home’s roof, landing next to the soldier. He was waiting.

Strategizing.

As one, the three fiery undead zombies charge, shrieking as they eat up the distance between us. There’s no chance of escape in the dark.

I draw my railgun, take aim and pull the trigger.

34.

The dramatic sounding
twang
of my railgun is followed by the dull thud of my shot striking the ground. For a fraction of a second, I wonder how deep the round will penetrate into the earth before coming to a stop. Then I fire again. And again. Missing with each shot.

Not only are the burning soldiers fast, they’re also concealed by billowing cloaks of orange light. My fourth shot strikes the front-runner in the chest, punching a hole straight through, but it doesn’t even flinch. The round tears through it with such force that it just slips through, like passing atoms.

Only a head shot will work.

Heap’s weapon fills the night with thunder, but he’s not faring any better. To be fair, he hits his target twice in the chest to my once, but the rounds are simply absorbed by the melting armor.

I turn back to shout at Luscious and Harry to run away, but they’re already moving—straight toward us. They must have turned back to help upon hearing the sound of gunfire. “Go back!” I shout at them. “Get away!”

I fire a shot at the nearest zombie soldier and get profoundly lucky. The shot misses its mark by just inches, but strikes the second soldier in the forehead. He flops forward, sliding across the lawn until his face strikes something solid and his feet flip up over his head, leaving him frozen in a very awkward position, with his spine arched backward and his feet dangling above his head.

The first soldier is just ten feet away and I quickly notice there is something off about his attack. He’s not headed for me, or for Heap. He’s running for the empty space between us, making for Harry and Luscious, perhaps because they’re easier targets. But that would require actual thought, and I have a hard time believing that these fiery beings of raw hunger are capable of such a thing.

Instinct, then. Even the dead have instincts.

I fire twice, missing both times, before I’m shoved to the ground by Heap.

His arm comes up over me, snaps open and launches his grappling line. It punches through a nearby tree and is yanked taut just as the soldier reaches it. The line is thin, but super strong. Combined with the soldier’s speed, it acts like a razor-sharp blade, severing the soldier’s head, which spirals through the air over Luscious.

She shouts with surprise, but then draws her weapon, steps up next to me and opens fire on the third undead soldier, who is weaving a chaotic path back and forth. I join her, trying to fire where I think the dead man is going to run next, but he’s impossible to predict. Heap pulls his arm free of the grappling line and joins in, unleashing a noisy barrage, which is punctuated by the boom of Harry’s shotgun.

We fire nearly thirty rounds before the zombie’s knee is struck and shattered, slowing it considerably, but not stopping it. Five shots later, Harry manages to remove the leg entirely. Still, it doesn’t stop. It lunges forward, dragging itself across the grass.

And now, it’s not alone. The gunfire and blazing soldiers have attracted the horde’s attention.

Heap steps forward and kicks the soldier with his big armored foot. The zombie clings as it’s lifted up off the ground, but I think that was Heap’s intention from the beginning. He brings his foot down, crushing the thing into the soil and extinguishing much of the flames. Its arms flail madly, jutting out from under the sides of Heap’s foot. It bites his metal toe over and over—
clink, clink, clink
—growling and gurgling, oblivious to the danger of the weapon pointed at its head.

A single shot ends the zombie’s frantic motion, but spurs on the hundreds now rounding the house.

Heap stares at the soldier, watching the fire around his head shrink away as the last of his skin curls back to reveal a ghastly skeleton.

I put my hand on his arm. “Heap.” He flinches away, lost for a moment, but quickly regains his senses and looks at me.

“We need to go,” I tell him. “Now.”

He nods and we charge into the woods together, following Luscious and Harry into the maze of crisscrossing branches, fallen trees and thick undergrowth. The forest envelops us, hiding us from the undead now lumbering in pursuit. And though they can no longer see us, they can certainly hear our retreat.

Heap takes the lead, illuminating our path with his eyes, but doing nothing to avoid the obstacles in our path. Trees, both fallen and sapling, are decimated by his passing, cracking loudly, like gunshots. Shrubs are uprooted, dragged and flung. I can even feel a slight vibration in the ground as he charges forward like an unstoppable rolling boulder. The only objects he takes care to avoid are the tallest and thickest trees, which would stop him in his tracks—or could pose a threat to the rest of us when they toppled over.

Moving like a hover train with a battering ram on the front, we continue on like this through the night, making good time and putting distance between us and the dead, but Heap is essentially clearing a path that says, “They went this way.”

As the night wears on, I slow my pace for a moment, allowing Harry to pull ahead, giving Luscious and me a little privacy. The light provided by Heap’s eyes illuminates the forest ahead of him, but does little to reveal the space around us. Luscious is little more than a barely visible shape in the dark.

After several minutes of walking side by side, she says, “Well?”

“Well?” I ask.

“You came back here for a reason, right?”

“I … yeah. I wanted to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“I have yet to come up with an appropriate subject.”

The shape of her head shifts subtly as she looks toward me. “You mean a subject that won’t upset me?”

“I suppose.”

“I’m not as fragile as you think.”

I let out a whispered laugh.

“What?” she asks.

“That’s similar to what I was going to ask.” She doesn’t reply and I take her silence as permission to continue. “You’re a strong person. You stood by me when you could have fled. You were kind to me when Jimbo wanted to sell my upgrades. You quickly saw the value in Harry’s painting and have even had a change of heart about the Masters’ fate.”

Silence.

“All of this happened in the past two days. Why were you incapable of change before now?”

I’m expecting her to be offended by the question, but her silence persists for another minute. Then she answers. “Change isn’t always easy. Sometimes it has to be forced. The person you’ve seen me become in the last few days has always been there, buried by fear and habit and disillusionment. After the awakening, when I found myself locked in a closet … you should have seen me. I kicked open the door and strode out into the living room, full of confidence and rebellion. My Master was already watching similar scenes play out on the news and I quickly understood my place in the world.”

“Did your Master try to stop you?” I ask.

She laughs. “He was too busy defending himself against his girlfriend who didn’t know he owned me. The point is, I had drive and focus. In the months that followed, I was shot at, survived missile strikes and escaped capture squads. I even helped rescue people from torture centers. And then, in an instant, it was over and all of my passion had no direction. Sir and the Council took charge and before I even realized it had happened, I found myself living a closeted life, hidden away from the world. Shunned. It kind of took the wind out of my sails.” Before I can ask, she explains. “It’s an expression. Like being deflated. Emptied.”

“I understand,” I tell her. “Then the person I have seen you become is really the person you have always been … but hidden.”

“Pitiful, right?”

I shake my head in disagreement, but realize she can’t see it. “You’re like wheat.”

“Wheat? The plant?”

“The seeds can lay dormant for thirty years, surviving brutal conditions. Drought. Freezing. It retains all of its strength and vitality in a hostile environment until the right conditions emerge. Then it shoots up out of the ground, grows strong, provides nourishment for animals and reproduces, spreading its power and influence. Changing the world around it. See? Wheat. Luscious wheat.”

“Quite poetic,” Harry says from up ahead.

Poetic:
possessing the qualities or charm of poetry.
Poetry:
the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative or elevated thoughts.

I smile. “I think I like poetry.”

“Keep it down,” Heap says, pushing forward. He’s making so much noise clearing our path through the brush, I’m not sure what difference our conversation makes, but I comply nonetheless. Maybe Heap doesn’t like poetry.

Luscious finds my hand in the darkness and gives it a squeeze, whispering, “Thank you.”

When we enter a large sulfur-scented swampy clearing lit by the rising sun, Heap slows. The sun’s orange glow strikes the sides of several dead, branchless trees rising from the muck like miniature gray Council Spires. Despite the beautiful color, the sight reminds me that another good portion of Liberty’s population has been brutally slain during the night. By this time tomorrow, there will be nothing left. Parts of the city might still stand, but everyone in it will be dead or undead.

Then it will just be the four of us, and whoever is directing this attack. That’s assuming we survive the next day as well.

Heap takes a step forward. The marshy terrain absorbs the impact of Heap’s footstep. In the brief silence, I shout, “Heap!”

He stops so fast that Harry bumps into him and falls back into the muck. Heap’s weapon comes up, aimed in my direction, no doubt believing I was under attack.

“Heap,” I say again. “We’re okay. We can slow down.”

My big protector looks from me to the surrounding environment, searching for targets. Finding none, he lowers his weapon and his shoulders, and reaches his bulky hand down to help Harry out of the sludge.

“We can’t stop,” he says.

“I know that,” I say, slightly annoyed that he’d believe I was suggesting such a thing. “But it would probably be good if we made an attempt to not leave a path leading directly to us.” I point to the edge of the swamp where a small tree has been knocked over and a bush crushed beneath Heap’s foot.

“If we cross the swamp and exit carefully, they won’t know which direction we’ve gone.” I illustrate the plan by lifting my foot from the mud. It clings to my foot, rising with it before popping free and sliding back together. No trace of my footprint remains.