Robogenesis: A Novel

5. WHAT ELSE IS THERE?


Post New War: 10 Months, 16 Days

During three long years of war, the city of Gray Horse earned a reputation as a bastion of civilization in a barbaric, violent world. It retained that reputation for only a short time in the New War’s aftermath, under the rule of my puppet Hank Cotton. It was surprisingly easy to shatter the unity forged in battle between men of all creeds and color. Cormac Wallace arrived back to Gray Horse hoping for a return to peace and normalcy—a chance to live. What he learned is that there never was such a thing as living. There was always only survival.

—ARAYT SHAH


NEURONAL ID: CORMAC WALLACE

Gray Horse. Home of the brave. Land of the free.

But not from where I’m standing.

With pneumatic puffs, Houdini tramps up the narrow switchback road that winds up the stone bluff and eventually leads into the drum clearing where this all began. The walker’s clawed feet are stained up to the ankle joints with red mud from dozens of abandoned farms on the outskirts of the Gray Horse plateau. We’ve passed acres of crops that look to have been untended for weeks. Hardly any human beings in sight, just the humped shapes of dead bison rotting in the fields.

The empty farms were a disturbing sight, but we didn’t stop to check them out. Houdini’s mended belly net is slack, flapping without any supplies left. You can’t afford to slow down when you’re running on fumes.

Cherrah and I are in our usual spot up on the turret deck. We still wear our combat fatigues and body armor. It’s all we’ve got. Looking out at the occasional scowling faces, I’m starting to wish we had something more friendly to put on. I feel like we should be waving a big white flag. It strikes me as odd that I’ve seen only native faces so far. Men, women, and children, and they look tired and angry. Something has gone wrong here. Some trauma. A lot of people are missing from Gray Horse.

“This is not the homecoming I was expecting,” says Cherrah.

She has on a brave face, but rests one gloved hand protectively over her round belly. It’s been seven months of slow travel since the sighted kid told us about our little boy. Now would be early, but we both know that the baby could show up any day.

“Lonnie will explain what’s going on,” I say. “We’ll get you to the hospital and off your feet. Then I’ll go find him. Relax.”

I hear a shrill whistle from up the hill.

“Don’t relax yet, maybe,” I say.

At the top of the bluff, we round the final corner and reach the wide-open dancing circle. The space has been turned into a staging ground for the Gray Horse Army. Spider tanks, gleaming and polished, rest on their haunches in neat rows. Hundreds of soldiers are broken into smaller squads: practicing marching drills, eating chow in a long tent at picnic tables, and organizing scavenged supplies. Others are off duty, sitting relaxed, cleaning weapons and checking ammunition. For the first time today, I see nonnative faces: white, black, and Latino soldiers.


Houdini stops.

The scarred old battle tank seems to be taking in the scene. It stands tall and weather-beaten and half crippled, staring down dozens of its freshly repaired former comrades. The other spider tanks are familiar old warhorses with patched armor and touched-up insignias: Jack of Spades, Mauler, Nemo, Brutus.

My throat tightens with nostalgia, remembering the march to Alaska. I never really believed I’d see these soldiers again after Cherrah and I stayed behind to write The Hero Archive and our rendezvous was blown. But here they are: the men and women we fought side by side with.

Houdini was a slumped wreck the last time these soldiers saw him. Abandoned, leaning against tall pines, he somehow found the strength to stand. We never figured out what spurred him to reboot and go searching through the woods for his old masters. We never had the luxury. I dismiss the thought as grim faces turn toward us. Oddly enough, a lot of hands are going to their weapons. Cherrah and I flash worried eyes at each other.

“Down, Houdini,” I whisper.

Nothing happens. Instead, I hear his intention light tick to yellow.

The heavily modified spider tank keeps standing erect, bristling. Its turret grinds as it sweeps over the scene again. A tall Osage man in full battle rattle is barking orders to his squad. He’s a sergeant and strutting our way quick, flanked by four more soldiers who are all big and native. Their hands hang over the stocks of rifles attached by straps to their chests. For now, their fingers are loose and relaxed.

The sergeant swaggers in, his bellowing voice coming into focus over the general turmoil. “Stand down and disembark from your vehicle!” he shouts.

“Down, Houdini,” I whisper again. “That’s an order.”

Houdini continues to track the man’s progress with his turret. I hear a loud mechanical click as the intention light in the walker’s chest flips from yellow to red. The advancing soldiers spread out and drop to their knees. They’re experienced with handling spider tanks. They know what the light means.

Four rifle barrels lift.

“We’re GHA,” I shout. “Friendly!”

The sergeant doesn’t seem to hear me.

“I am going to repeat this one more time, peckerwood!” he shouts, chin jutting out. “After that you are going to have a problem. Get your ass disembarked from that big boy immediately. I want you down here and on your knees! Right! Now!”

“Down, Houdini,” I whisper fiercely. “Down, you stupid tank.”

“We’re GHA infantry,” calls Cherrah. “I’m Cherrah Ridge, identification number two one seven oh oh three seven.”

The sergeant turns to his soldiers. “The two of you, get up there and drag them down. You cover them. And you, get the requisitions team out here to strip this tank down to spare parts. It looks jerry-rigged halfway to kingdom come.”

Poised to move, the soldiers pause. Someone else is coming.

My eyes flick past the sergeant and he kind of trails off, half turned with his hand still up. A gaunt Osage man is humping toward us, tall and bent and lumbering after his own shadow in a full general’s uniform. The fabric hangs stiffly off his bony frame, lapping at the wind as he walks. Some detail I can’t pin down is wrong with him. I’m scanning his face and gait and clothing, eyes darting frantically as a tight fear rises up in the back of my throat.

I can feel Houdini’s legs tensing below me, a hum of power surging through his frame. And Cherrah’s hand is suddenly on my shoulder, delicate fingers clamped on.

“What is he?” she breathes.

Gently, the gaunt man reaches out and pushes the sergeant’s arm down to his side. Then he turns to face us, his eyes sunken behind protruding cheekbones. He smiles at me with yellow teeth and a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

It can’t be.

“Hank?” I ask. “Hank Cotton?”

“Howdy, Cormac,” he says. “Cherrah.”

Tension evaporates off me, but the spooky feeling doesn’t. The old Hank Cotton was chubby and quick to smile. This guy is different. Cherrah lets go of my neck and I can still feel the crescent stings of her fingernails.

Hank rotates his great head until he is looking down at his sergeant. “Do you know who this man is?” he asks.

“S-sir, no.”

“This is Cormac Wallace, son. Sergeant Wallace. Bright Boy squad. Brother to Sergeant Jack Wallace. Author of The Hero Archive. While you were patching up the back line on the eve of V Day, this young man was marching to the lip of the hole. It was his squad that poured fire down the throat of Archos R-14.”

“Then he’s the one who allied with freeborn? In secret—” says the man. But Hank waves a long, dark-veined hand at him.

“He did what he had to do to win the New War,” says Hank. “We’ll figure out the rest later. Plenty of time for folks to make amends for the exigencies of battle.”

“Sure, General,” says the sergeant. His eyes never leave me.

Hank cranes to look back up at us, the sun at his back, wreathing his half-smiling face in darkness. His long teeth glint in the shadow. Somehow, this is the same man I fought alongside in the war. He’s lost too much weight. The skin around his neck is loose. His cheeks hang slack under dull gray eyes. And his walnut skin looks reddish and irritated, like he’s been spending time in a tanning bed.

“Don’t mind these boys, Sergeant Wallace,” he calls. “They’re just nervous. We’ve had a . . . readjustment, recently.”

“Did he call you General?” I ask. “Where’s Lonnie Wayne?”

Hank’s hands go to his hips, sharp elbows sprouting like wings.

“Lonnie is re-tired, as it happens. If you need anything, I’m your man. Happy to help out, but I’m getting a crick in my neck talking to you like this. How about y’all come down off that beat-up old walker? We can hold off on requisitions a little while.”

“Houdini?” I ask, urgency under my voice.

No response. Then the intention light goes to yellow. After a long second, the machine’s legs tremble into motion. It drops down onto its knees, belly kissing the ground. Freezes in a vulnerable boarding pose, not bunkered. The intention light ticks all the way back to green.

The tank is overprotective and I wonder again how smart Houdini really is.

Cherrah and I share a look of relief, and Hank notices. As I slide off the tank’s back, he puts a rough hand on Houdini’s leg. Rubs his fingers over the ridged, plasticlike muscles. His head is cocked to the side like he’s listening to a creaky old house.

“Lot of modifications,” he says to himself, musing. “Late-war stuff.”

He talks to a soldier without looking back. “Check the identification on this ST. Get me everything. There’s something . . . funny about this vehicle.”

The nearest soldier squints up at Houdini’s name, then turns and runs, straight-backed, toward a wooden shed.

Hank looms over me now and I think I can feel a prickling heat on my face. It’s impossible, but I can’t shake the feeling that Hank is radiating. Some deep instinct inside me is shouting to attack him. I get the urge to pull my trench knife and jam it into his belly. Rip out his guts, then run for it.

Instead, I help Cherrah off the spider tank. The curve of her belly is obvious under the abbreviated upper chest plate of her battle armor. Hank notices her stomach and Cherrah winces involuntarily.

“Oh my, my, my,” says Hank, turning away from inspecting Houdini’s leg armor. Cherrah backs away, hands up defensively. Her eyes are small and dark and she is breathing hard, nostrils flaring like a panicked horse. Something is bad wrong with Hank and I can feel it, too. I put an arm around her, pull her tight to my side.


“That is interesting,” says Hank. “Let’s get you to the hospital, mama.”

I’m told I can find former general Lonnie Wayne Blanton quartered in the old barracks. We built row after row of these shacks in the months before Gray Horse Army marched out for Alaska. Each leaning wooden cabin was thrown together in a few hours by sweating, grinning soldiers who still had hope in them. I tromp over tall grass that’s grown up between the slanting, splintery walls.

Cherrah is at the hospital, safe for now. She’s Osage and pregnant and not pulling the same scowls as me and my pale, stubbled face. We parked Houdini out alongside the arbor, bunkered with instructions to come find me if he is touched.

I let my fingertips lightly scratch over rough wood. I remember the day these shacks were built—hundreds of living trees ripped into boards by screaming, diesel-powered saws. The air smelled like sawdust and exhaust. All of us worked as one that day. Now the boards are moldering, warping away from each other.

Lonnie’s shack is leaning, squatting bowlegged on four posts, belly tickled by thick weeds. It’s the best preserved of the group and the only one occupied. A lot more soldiers left than came back.

“Lonnie?” I call.

I hear a thump from inside. The front door shivers on its hinges. The sound of a lock engaging.

“Cormac Wallace,” he says. It’s a quiet, sad voice from behind the door. Blurred on the edges and fading like an old painting. “I didn’t think you’d make it. Figured you were dead.”

“Well, I did. Make it. And so did Cherrah. Open up.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” he says.

“What happened, Lonnie?” I ask. “What’s the matter?”

I hear a thump that might be a forehead being pressed against the door. Lonnie’s words are slurred and hollow-sounding as they echo out of the shack.

“It’s all ruined. We hoped for some peace, but there isn’t any. Never will be. Everything went wrong. Awful things. Nothing’s left but darkness. Pain, Cormac. Pain and the things we lost.”

I think he’s crying.

“Are you drunk?”

A long pause.

“Yeah,” says Lonnie. “What’s the use? It’s time to give up. Give right up. We were doomed from the start. Never had a—”

“Cherrah is pregnant,” I say, my face inches from the door. For a long time I stand there, looking at hairy splinters and listening to rabbit noises as Lonnie swallows his tears. “Did you hear me? She wants to see you. I want to see you.”

Nothing.

“Lonnie?” I ask. I rattle the door and find it locked tight. I’m just about to kick it down when the old cowboy finally speaks. What he says next is like a splash of ice water over my neck.

“Run,” he says. “The both of you. Run from this place while you still can.”

In the old world, I was a photojournalist. Every photograph I took had a meaning. It was some shred of proof—evidence as to why I existed. People would pay for the moment I had captured, then share it with others. Even out in the wild with my camera, I knew I still fit into the larger world like a puzzle piece.

These days, there is no puzzle to complete. It’s just the vast empty world and violence and . . . nothing. I’ve got Cherrah, but I don’t know if one person is enough. Not when you have the whole empty meaningless universe pressing down on you.

It’s easier to let go if you’re alone. Lonnie is proof enough of that.

“Houdini,” I whisper to the darkness. “It’s Cormac.”

Crickets are singing out here near the grassline. Campfires dot the parade grounds, leaving Houdini a monstrous shadow on the perimeter. With a quiet whir, the diagnostic screen unfolds from under his armored sternum. The intention light clicks on and I wince, shading my face from the green glow.

“Lights out,” I hiss.

The light clicks off.

“Move out in twenty,” I whisper, poking my finger at a map on his screen. “Rally point alpha. Alternate rally point beta. Otherwise, search and reunite along this trajectory.”

The big machine clicks at me. Affirmative. The little screen folds back up under a layer of armor. With a glance, I make sure that my pack is still secured under Houdini. Then I reach in and haul Cherrah’s pack out. Shrug it on and walk away toward the hospital without looking back.

She’ll be safe here, without me. The baby will be delivered in a hospital. That’s the important thing. These are her people and they’ll take care of her, no matter what has happened to this place.

It’s only a short walk to the clinic. The brick building is tan and squat, built before the war. The glass front door is locked, and I have to knock.

A heavy Osage woman in flower-print scrubs peeks out. She refuses to open up until I tell her who I’m there to see. I follow her down a short hallway. Hearing the squeak of her sneakers on the gleaming floor, I’m almost overcome with the feeling that things have gone back to normal. That I just woke up in the real world again.

“Cormac?”

Cherrah calls for me as I round the corner. The nurse shoots a wary glance to where Cherrah lies in a hospital bed under crisp white sheets.

“He okay?” the nurse asks.

“Cormac,” says Cherrah again, smiling.

At her bedside, we wrap our fingers together. Her stomach is a round lump under the blankets. She’s had a bath and the skin of her face is clean and smooth except for that thin scar down her cheek. Her hair is like spilled ink on the pillow.

“They cleaned you up,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“How’s the baby?”

“Perfect, as far as they can tell.”

“Good,” I say, letting her hands go. “Good.”

Cherrah isn’t going to like this part. Right about now, Houdini is making his way down a steep hillside just as quiet as he can. Headed on a beeline toward a rally point at an abandoned farm about half a klick from here. The deal is done.

“Look,” I say. “I have to—”

“I think a lot of people were killed here,” Cherrah says quietly.

“What?” I ask, derailed.

Cherrah cranes her neck to see the nurse. The woman watches us silently from her desk across the hall with a wide, impassive face. She is as strong and blank as a stone bluff.

“The nurse didn’t tell me many details. But Hank Cotton took control of the tribal council,” says Cherrah. “He made up new rules for non-Indians. Sent some soldiers back north to hunt down and kill parasites—”

“Parasites?”

“They lived,” she says. “The soldiers the parasites mounted. They can still think. Some of them followed Gray Horse Army home, Cormac.”

“Who? Which ones?” I ask.

“Lark Iron Cloud,” she says.

A flash of memory hits me: an ice-cold rifle stock bucking against my shoulder. My bullet snapping Lark’s jaw off his face. Staggering zombies strobed in muzzle flashes. How on earth could he have survived?

“He was a good kid,” I say. “He’d do anything for Gray Horse. And Hank tried to kill him?”

“Lark ran,” says Cherrah. “Maybe he lived.”

Now I’m beginning to understand Lonnie. The old cowboy had two sons, a natural-born one deployed to Afghanistan before the New War and another one he found in the ruins of our civilization.

He’s lost them both.

“I found Lonnie,” I say. “He’s not good. He wouldn’t tell me what happened to all the people, but . . . he said I should run.”


Cherrah doesn’t respond. She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a long, shuddering breath. Blows air out of pursed lips.

“The best I can tell, Cormac, is that there was a purge.”

“Jesus” is all I can get out.

“Nonnatives were told to evacuate. A lot of people, Indians and not, just grabbed whatever they could and hit the road. It happened a few weeks ago. The ones who didn’t take the warning seriously . . . Well, there are some violent-minded people around here. They’re calling themselves the Cotton Army.”

“Has Hank gone crazy?”

“I don’t know. But he’s in charge of the military now. And the city elders. If you’re not Indian, then you’re pretty much not welcome here anymore.”

“What about the soldiers? I saw—”

“Fighters have amnesty. The tribal council promised to give all the property that’s been left behind to the veterans. He’s got them convinced that the outsiders were stealing from us while we fought. Even so, most of the nonnative soldiers are gone already. A lot of native ones, too. They made it out with a few spider tank platoons and some exos. Now they’re protecting the refugees who were thrown out. Cotton Army is gearing up to go after them. Hank is going to finish the job, like he did with the parasites.”

“Where are they going?”

“I don’t know, but the lady said there were rumors that a little girl was helping them. A little girl with no eyes.”

“Mathilda,” I say, “I can still catch up.”

“Not without me,” she says.

“You’ll be safe here.”

“No.”

“Look,” I say. “If we’d had a chance to plan—”

“We don’t plan to breathe, Cormac. We don’t plan to eat. This is what we do.”

“You want to go to a place with no hospital? To more fighting? If something goes wrong, anything, then you’ll die. The baby will . . .”

I can’t finish that sentence.

“Die,” says Cherrah. Speaking in a soft voice, she pulls my face closer to hers. I can smell her warm skin and hair. Feel her breath on my cheek. “It’s a risk, and it’s nothing new. People have been doing this for a long time.”

“Stay here. They’ll help you deliver. Then we can meet—”

“Our little boy is half-blood, Cormac. Don’t you think they already know? Why do you think the nurse told me all this?”

I glance over my shoulder and the nurse pretends to look at some papers.

“I can make it another couple of weeks,” says Cherrah. “We’ll reach the other group, find shelter, and deal with the birth then. But we have to go now. You’ve already got Houdini headed toward a rally point, right?”

My fear has turned to a sadness that wells up in the back of my throat. Brave words aren’t going to save her life. I lay her backpack down next to the hospital bed. Leaving her is not a choice. But neither is losing her.

I take a step toward the door.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” she says, and the expression on her face is familiar. She had this look when my brother, Jack, went down with a plugger in his calf. I held him down while she sawed off his leg with her bayonet. Those delicate fingers of hers locked on the frozen hilt of the blade and that same look in her eyes.

“We just keep losing,” I say, and I think of how Jack closed his eyes at the end. When they opened again they were full of blood.

“You’re going to lose me,” she says. “I am going to lose you. We can hold on as tight as we want. One day the music stops.”

“Except that I promised you we were going to live. Not just survive.”

“What’s the difference, Bright Boy?” asks Cherrah, breaking into a smile, eyes wet. “Step up, soldier. We’re having a baby. We’re going to protect it and keep it safe so that it will grow up and make babies of its own. The world sucks. So f*cking what? What else is there?”

She kicks off her covers. Under them, she wears her battle armor, modified for the pregnancy. Sitting up, she slides her legs over the edge of the bed. Stifling a sudden smile, I move my body to block the sight of her from the hallway. Just in case it matters.

“Read me?” she asks.

Now I can’t fight my smile. Size has so little to do with strength.

“Houdini is waiting, Private Ridge,” I say.

“Roger that, Sergeant,” she says. “There’s a bag of medical supplies under the bed. We’ll need them soon enough.”