Destruction, when it comes, gives no explanation...
~~~
Call it a gift from the grave.
The box appeared on Jeff’s new porch two days after he’d moved in. The return address was the former owner’s estate executor, who represented a charity. The late owner had no family.
“A gift from the grave.”
When he slit the packing tape and opened the carton there was another box inside, a black metal cube. It could fit around a bowling ball. There was also a note.
Mr. Edwards provided a holographic message to the new owners of his property.’
Jeff frowned at the cube. “Just what I didn’t need.”
It was a HoloGen, a holograph-generating machine. Everyone on the planet owned one now except holdouts like Jeff and his wife, Lydia. Nearly ubiquitous as TVs, HoloGens quickly gained popularity and the nickname GramGen, as in Grandma Generator. Now they were simply known as Grams.
Jeff reboxed the cube and added it to unpacked things he would eventually get to.
***
It was the last thing he got to. And he nearly threw it out without watching the message. But he had new questions about the house and property and thought the cube might hold answers.
He set it on a table and turned it on.
“OK. Enlighten me…”
A dull hum from the machine and a brilliant shaft of light pierced the room. It began strobing, ramping up into a frenetic machine-gunning of colored light beams. They coalesced into a fuzzy image that came into focus rapidly. An extremely old man, it appeared, was sitting in a straight back chair in Jeff’s living room.
None of this was a surprise to Jeff, having seen Grams in action before. But the old man sure was old.
“A fossil!” He laughed. “No wonder you’re dead. Look at you! Are you a hundred and ten?”
The hologram did nothing for a moment. Then it turned its head and stared at Jeff. “I will communicate with you.”
Jeff jumped. “Jesus!”
He stared hard at the image, a fancy video. They can’t see you. But his stare was returned by the old man.
“This can’t be.” Jeff kept his eyes on the hologram but moved 90 degrees around the room. The old man’s stare remained fixed where Jeff had been. “Phew! Had me there for a second.”
“What I need you to do,” said the hologram to the empty space before it, “is to pull up a chair and listen. You will learn everything you need.”
“I’ll give you five minutes. I have to go to work.”
Jeff did not pull up a chair. He stepped back to the cube and watched the hologram.
“Can you remember a series of tones if I give them to you?” said the image. “You don’t have to repeat them back, although that would help. Just listen and then I will explain their meaning.”
“What the hell,” said Jeff. “I’m not playing games.” He looked for the fast forward button.
The old man hologram flexed its jaws and made a mid-range chiming sound, “Bong.”
Jeff found and pressed the button.
The hologram sped up times 4. Jaws flapping, its voice climbed two octaves.
“Ha!” But after laughing at the quick, cartoon voice Jeff did not hear a single mention of the house or property. There was nothing he could use and certainly nothing of interest. The hologram seemed only to be directing him to follow a game.
He shut it off, pulled the plug and went to work.
***
Lydia was home from the west coast when Jeff got back. She finished her job and closed out their home there. She greeted him not with a kiss or a ‘Hey there!’ but with a five-note chime, beginning in the middle register, dropping low for a couple of notes and ending high.
“Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!”
“Jet lagged?”
“You got us a Gram! I thought you never would.”
“I never would. That was the previous owner bonging you. He sent it in his previous life. Thought we needed to hear his message.”
“Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!”
He kissed her. “Very nice. Now you’re one of them.”
“You didn’t watch him?”
“A little. But I had to go to work.”
“It’s mesmerizing!”
Jeff nodded but wasn’t interested. “How ‘bout this house!”
***
Lydia loved the Gram. Jeff never did. He found interesting, for a moment or two, some of the holograms she invited into the house: a singing niece, a cousin with a bad standup routine, her mother describing the recipe while making pastries, even a professor lecturing on songbirds. Often, apropos nothing, a musical ‘bong’ would come from the current hologram at a random point in its performance. Lydia always laughed and bonged back pitch perfect.
***
A noise woke Jeff one night. He lay listening for it to repeat and when it did he recognized the five note Gram chime. He turned to Lydia but it hadn’t come from her. He could feel that she was awake, too, though he couldn’t see for the darkness. When the notes cut the stillness again he got up and went downstairs.
He stood listening in the living room until their Gram chimed. He went over to it just as he heard Lydia descending the stairs.
“I’ll unplug the damn thing,” he said.
“Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!” she said.
As he turned on a lamp she went into the kitchen and returned with the largest knife they owned. He was bent to the plug and wall outlet when he looked up.
“Whoa! Did you think it was a burglar? It was just this stupid…”
She raised the knife gripped in both hands and charged Jeff.
“JESUS!”
He rolled away from the downward slash, kicking over the coffee table. She kept after him, grunting and swinging the knife. He crawled furiously through the doorway into the dining room with Lydia slicing the air behind. He threw a chair over to block her and scrambled to his feet.
“What are you DOING! WAKE UP!”
She pushed the chair aside and moved on him. He rounded the table, keeping it between them.
“You’re SLEEPWALKING! WAKE UP!”
She tried to get at him, breathing hard, stabbing at him.
“Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!”
He couldn’t get close enough to slap her…
Water! A glassful in her face…
He darted through the doorway to the kitchen but she was so close behind that he couldn’t stop for the faucet. He looped around the island, back to the living room and hallway and, fumbling, unlocked and opened the front door.
Down the steps and out into the middle of the street Jeff whirled around to face his house. Lydia and the knife emerged.
“Please! Put the knife down!” he called to her. “What is the MATTER?”
She did not answer as she descended the steps.
The front door of the house across from theirs opened. Jeff backed away from the oncoming Lydia and turned to look behind.
Three children came out, with the parents following. And they didn’t just watch from the porch. They came down off it toward Jeff.
Lydia did the Gram chime. The family of five answered back.
Jeff back-pedaled. “What the hell IS this!”
One of the kids, a grade-schooler, rushed him, kicking his legs and scratching up at his face. Jeff shoved him down but the kid got his teeth into Jeff’s forearm and then the other two were on him with the parents close behind. He tore himself free and ran down the center of the street.
When he dared to slow down and look back, he found that Lydia was still following but far behind, the knife held low in one hand. The neighbors walked beside her. People came down out of houses all along the way. No one spoke, shouted or verbalized in any way beyond the five notes.
“Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!” It was everywhere.
***
There was a large crowd of chimers down the street. He swerved into a dark yard when he heard a man shouting from the crowd.
“No! No! No! No!”
And then a scream. A woman? Then the man again, the ‘No’s’ suddenly cut off.
Jeff ran through yards to the next street. He would circle back to his house and get shoes – he was still barefoot from bed – and his truck.
There was a crowd on this street, too, at the eastern end. He moved west along the sidewalk, ready to bolt. Stragglers in the street drifted past toward the crowd. He remained silent. No one challenged him. Two men carried pistols. A woman held a croquet mallet. There was no one on the sidewalk in front of him for at least a block. As he passed a short hedge he saw a foot sticking out. Looking in he saw a bloodied body in pajamas grotesquely contorted within.
A half block later there was a commotion on an upper porch – the door flung open, the elderly occupant backing out, a group following with slashing knives and a swinging baseball bat that connected, sending the man over the balustrade to the concrete below.
Jeff kept moving. He tried to judge where his house would be through the yards but he was new to the neighborhood. When a group of chimers coming his way got within a couple of hundred feet he left the sidewalk to follow a drive back into the dark. A barking dog drove him sideways through yards before he could cross into light and the street again. But he made it across and into his block.
***
He tried the side door though he knew it was locked. Then he climbed the front porch steps and eased himself quietly through the front door. He stood in the dim light. Where was Lydia?
Last seen, she was heading east with everyone else. But did she come back? Did chimers remember non-chimers they encountered?
It was too much…
He tugged on sneakers, crept to the key station on the kitchen wall and lifted his carefully. Then he slipped out the side door.
He stood against it, listening. When he heard nothing beyond his own breathing he slowly brought up the key fob and unlocked the pickup but then quickly jumped in when its lights came on.
***
Though it was the middle of the night there should have been traffic, however light. There was none. But there was a crashed car off the expressway ON ramp. He didn’t stop. There were two more within the next mile. And there were pockets of people, eyes aglow in the headlights, walking toward town.
He would drive out to where the population was thin and he could figure out what to do.
***
Jeff was on a two-laner that wound its way up into the hills when his truck slowed on its own. He had plenty of gas. There was no problem indicated on the dash. The vehicle would have vocalized a problem if there were any…
It rolled to a stop, the engine running but the gas pedal unresponsive.
“What the hell?”
“Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!” said the universal online voice.
“NO!”
The truck roared to life and moved forward, quickly picking up speed. Jeff tried to brake but the pedal wouldn’t depress. He tried to wrench the gear shift into NEUTRAL but it wouldn’t budge. Ignition was stuck ON. He clung to the wheel at 60 but realized he wasn’t controlling the steering.
The truck’s speed continued upward. He tried the door and then the windows but they remained locked. The truck continued negotiating the twisty road on its own. They descended into a long, low area with a quarter mile straightaway. 80 and rising! There was a turn coming up that they could not possibly make…
“OHHH!”
What could he do?
“Bong bong bong bong bong!” he tried. “BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG!”
The truck left the highway, mowing down saplings. There was an explosion of airbags and glass when the truck rolled over. It rolled and rolled.
***
An odd musical sound awoke Emily and Bruce. Peering out their window they could see a stream of people walking toward town through the gloom of their country road. Accompanied by that music.
“What is this?”
“Some kind of glee club?”
“It’s after 2!”
“I…,” Emily shrugged.
“I have to know.”
Bruce dressed, found a flashlight and went out. Emily watched from the window. She heard and saw her husband address the nearest walkers, the flashlight played politely low. The chiming ratcheted up several notches and the walkers swarmed Bruce. She couldn’t make out exactly what was happening. But then the flashlight beam came up swinging until it slammed against a face and dropped to the road. Then Bruce disengaged from the crowd and ran back to the house.
She watched his approach and saw that several walkers were now walking up their drive. Emily met him as he burst through the front door.
“Go out the back! Get out! To the barn…”
“What happened?”
“GO!”
Bruce pulled a rifle from a closet and ammo from its shelf. He was right behind Emily as she threw open the back door. She looked back once as they tore across the yard…
“RUN!”
She struggled at the barn door but he was there heaving it aside.
“GET IN THE LOFT!”
She fell in the dark… “OH!” and he was lifting her with one hand, propelling her through the dark to the ladder.
“UP!”
And then she was over the loft port and crawling on all fours through loose straw. Bruce lay the rifle and ammo down. He scrambled around the opening and pulled the ladder up. Then he heaved himself backward into safety, colliding with Emily. He held her.
“Just stay quiet,” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t move.”
“But,” she whispered back. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. They wanted to kill me.” He patted her. “They can’t get up here. We’re OK. As long as they don’t start a fire…”
They heard people enter the barn but there was no talking, just a strange humming or whatever it was. They listened to them milling about for several minutes. Then those sounds diminished, drifted out and away. They sat for a long time listening to nothing but the old barn creak.
***
The sound of a vehicle grew as it moved along their road. It moved FAST. They listened intently as it drew near the west end of their property. Then the engine roar and tire hiss stuttered into the squealing, banging, earth pounding caterwaul of a crash.
“Goddam!”
“Oh, they must be dead!”
Bruce stood. “I should go help…”
“No! They might be out there!”
Bruce paced the loft. “What is going ON?”
***
The next morning, while Bruce was out scouting the farm for dangerous people, he worked his way carefully toward the road and the area where the sound of the crash had come. He found and followed snapped saplings until he came upon the truck on its roof in tall grass. Bracing for gore, he propped the rifle and bent to peer inside.
The driver, alone, hung upside down from the seatbelt, flat airbag supporting his head. Bruce looked him over and noticed a pulse at the man’s neck. He stood and looked around for marauders. Satisfied, he moved back to the truck bed and looked into it from the ground. There was a folded tarp bungeed against the other side. He went around and got it.
Before continuing he decided to radio Emily and ask her to try the cellphone again. It hadn’t worked earlier after they slipped into the house from the barn. When she tried 911 all that came back was chiming.
“Em, you there?”
She answered immediately. “Yes.”
“I found the crash. It’s a guy in a pickup. He’s alive.”
“Oh, Lord! How bad?”
“Unconscious. There’s not a lot of blood but I don’t know if anything’s broken. Can you try 911 again?”
“Yes!”
He heard her finger tapping the phone. And then the chiming.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Want me to come down?”
“No! Stay there and keep that pistol with you. I’ll figure this out.”
“Will do. Over.”
At the open windshield he removed remnants of glass from the path he would have to pull the man through and then lined it with the tarp. At the driver’s window he pulled his dressing knife, cradled the man’s chest with one hand and cut the seat belt.
***
“I should’ve left him. What was I thinking?”
“No!” Emily scolded. “This is the right thing. He needs help.”
“But so do we,” said Bruce. “Still no cell?”
“No.”
The driver lay on his side, fetal, on the tarp in their kitchen yard. Jeff had pulled him across the fields.
“That’s the way he came out. I didn’t want to move him any more than I had to.”
Emily nodded. “Can we get him into the spare room?”
***
Emily sat, the pistol in her lap, watching the stranger. They had laid him ever so gently on top of the cover and looked him over carefully. He had a purple welt, the size of a fist, at his left temple, swollen with blood. Worse, his left leg had a bend in the upper thigh that didn’t belong there.
“This may be a mistake,” Bruce said more than once.
“You couldn’t just leave him.”
Now Bruce was out checking on the neighbors, trying to find out what was going on.
“I didn’t tell you this before,” he’d said on his way out. “But Marty and Beth Slocum were in that group that came after me last night. Didn’t seem to recognize me. Just chirped like birds.”
Emily’s mouth dropped open.
“Yeah,” he continued. “And I saw the Clementowski’s kids and I’m pretty sure Jill Foster. All blank. Like sleepwalking.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder. “I’ll try to stay in radio range.”
***
Emily got up and checked the views from the windows. She went out on the from porch and tried 911 again and then all of the numbers in her directory. Nothing but the maddening chimes.
She returned to the chair and the stranger.
“On the outside chance this guy gets up and moves toward you, you warn once and then shoot.” Bruce had instructed. “Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
He was young and looked to be in shape but ashen, harmlessly still.
“Were you running from something? Is that why you were going so fast?”
She watched him for several minutes and then got up again. The radio was nothing but static. She tried the TV and then her laptop. Wi-Fi was out. She looked at the router and could see it had power but according to her cell there was no connection. She unplugged it, counted to ten and replugged it. She restarted her phone. Called 911. Chimes.
***
Bruce reported on the status of their neighbor’s places. “Unlocked, empty. I didn’t find a single person. Only those damn Grams running. Holograms scared the shit out of me. Chirping.”
They looked at one another, tried to make sense…
Then Bruce looked past her. “Someone’s coming.”
She turned.
A couple of hundred yards off, a man in dark clothing was wading through the waist high grass toward their house.
***
He was still a ways out but close enough now that they could see he was a stranger. On the second floor, Emily stood back from an open bedroom window, the rifle barrel resting on the sill. Bruce stood in the kitchen yard, the pistol in his right hand pointed straight down at the dirt.
When the man stepped from the long grass into the mown yard fifty yards off he stopped. “Are you one of them or still human?” he called over.
“Not one of them.” Bruce didn’t move.
“Thank the Lord.” The man raised his hands. “Unarmed.” He kept his hands up and turned himself completely around. “Can I come over?”
“Yeah.” But Bruce walked out to him.
The man had a tear in his slacks at one knee and one sleeve was a mess. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat.
“Carl Brimmer,” he said.
“Bruce.”
Neither offered a hand.
“What have you seen?” asked Brimmer.
“You first.”
Brimmer nodded. “I’m helping at church last night, running a praise program on their network – I work in computing. When it’s over a cry goes up to start the Grams. People have brought them in. Everyone wants to run them. Everyone but me. And a couple of others. Devil’s work is what they are!”
“We never saw the point.”
“And here you are!” said Brimmer. “Anyway, I leave them to their blasphemy and settle in at the office workstation. Pretty soon I hear musical notes like bells coming from the chapel. Maybe it’s nice. But then I can hear, I can tell, that the congregation is vocalizing this bell sound. Never heard anything like it so I have to go see. But as I’m getting up I hear a woman scream and then a man yell. Then the man screams. When I run to the door I see they are just tearing apart Morris and Eileen Grayson – the other two who were against playing the Grams.”
Brimmer had to stop. He looked down at the grass. “I mean, it was just…” He looked up again. “When I yelled ‘STOP!’ they came for me, bloody hands and all. I’ve been running since.”
“Where was that?”
“Porter Corners.”
“That’s a long run. Twenty? Twenty-five miles?”
“Yeah. I got to my car, got it started but before I got it in gear they smashed the window and pulled me out.” He held up a shredded sleeve. “I kicked and punched my way free.” He shook his head. “Then the damn car, it just takes off on its own. FAST! Until I hear it crash. But I didn’t stick around.”
Bruce stepped around Brimmer but kept him in view while waving off Emily. Then he told him of their night, the chiming walkers and the crash they heard and the damaged driver in their house.
“That’s it!” said Brimmer. “He must’ve been trying to get away from Grammers when his truck, its computer, took over and tried to kill him. That’s what MY car was doing. NOW I get it.”
Bruce looked quizzical.
Emily came out as far as the kitchen yard.
“Emily. Carl,” said Bruce.
The two nodded.
Brimmer continued, “It’s artificial intelligence. It took over the Grams and is using them to take over people. The Grammers are brainwashed. What else could it be?”
“It seems…” said Bruce.
“Farfetched,” said Emily.
“Absolutely. But that’s always been the fear of A.I. That it would turn on us.” Brimmer shook his head. “Maybe that’s crazy. What to do next is the question.”
“Yeah,” said Bruce. “Hard to plan when you don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Maybe it was just a freak thing with the Grams…” said Emily.
“A bug,” said Brimmer.
“…and they’ll fix it. Things will go back to normal.”
“What’s that sound?” asked Bruce.
Everyone was quiet. They listened to the breeze, the birds nearby, the buzzing of insects. In the middle of it all was a steady hum, high-pitched and mechanical. Overhead.
“Drone,” said Bruce.
The three looked up and immediately saw it, stationary, a hundred feet up.
“Shoot it!” cried Brimmer.
Bruce took the pistol from his waistband and looked at it. “Not with this. Where’s the rifle?”
Emily got up and raced to the kitchen door and quickly returned with it. “Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!” descended upon them at a surprising volume. “Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong!”
“HURRY!” shouted Brimmer.
Emily handed over the rifle and received the pistol. Bruce slipped off the safety and raised the long gun. The drone dipped and flew over the maple and out of sight.
“God DAMN!” yelled Brimmer.
“We should go inside,” said Emily.
“Do you hear any more?” asked Bruce. “See any.”
The three scanned the sky.
“We should go in,” said Emily.
*** Last in, Bruce rested the rifle near the kitchen door and followed the other two into the living room.
“I was about to say we can do something,” said Brimmer. “But now I think we have to. After that drone.”
“What’s that?” asked Emily.
“I think we need to get away from houses and cities and get up into the hills or someplace. I think that’s how we survive. There must be others like us still around. We find them. Band together.”
Emily looked to Bruce for an answer.
“But out in the open?” he asked. “No shelter?”
“At first,” said Brimmer.
Bruce shook his head. “No. Not yet. We have food, water, shelter.” He pointed to the pistol on a table. “Some defense.”
“But we don’t know what that drone will bring,” said Brimmer.
Bruce nodded. “We don’t. But maybe Em’s right. This, whatever it is, will blow over. Go back to what it was.”
“I don’t see it,” said Brimmer. “We’ve been spotted. This house isn’t safe.”
“You’re free to go.”
Brimmer shook his head. “Stick together is what we need to do. A.I. is neutralizing the people it can’t control. Maybe it’ll consider people living out in the hills as non-threatening. Neutralized.”
Emily, to avoid arguing with him, opened the spare bedroom door to check on the injured driver. Brimmer followed her in.
“No change,” she said.
“Is he even alive?”
Fetal as he was it was difficult to perceive breathing but it was there, shallow.
“Look at his leg,” said Emily.
Brimmer moved in closer. “Yeah. Fracture?”
Emily shrugged.
“Do you splint it?”
Again she shrugged. “We don’t know what to do for him.”
Brimmer looked him over. “Back’s not right, either. Might’ve broken that, too.”
Emily just shook her head.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t know what to do either,” said Brimmer. “Maybe a bullet…”
Bruce had joined them. Emily’s mouth dropped open.
“We’re certainly not putting him down like a dog.”
She walked out. Brimmer turned to Bruce.
“This man can’t travel. If you decide to leave, if you have to leave, you’ll need to…” he pointed at the driver’s head.
Annoyed, Bruce walked out also. Brimmer followed them to the kitchen.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Bruce. “Em and I are going to have a talk. See where we are. You’re welcome to get some rest…” He pointed back to the living room. “Couch?”
Brimmer rubbed his eyes. “Maybe. But is there a good lookout spot on your property? I can’t nap without seeing if we’re in the clear first.”
“Loft in the barn,” said Bruce. “You can see out four directions. Got some comfortable straw, too.”
Brimmer looked out the kitchen door window. “OK.” He checked his watch. “One hour?”
Bruce nodded.
Through the open door they watched him walk cautiously to the barn, staying in the shadows, turning every which way to gaze up and all around. Then he was gone behind the sliding door.
Bruce slid out a kitchen chair but Emily gestured to the interior of the house.
“Maybe talking around the driver, I don’t know, will get him out of whatever he’s in. Coma, unconsciousness. If he wakes from it he can tell us, maybe, how bad he is…”
Bruce nodded and followed her. Emily looked in on the driver again before they both sat.
“It’ll take more than a drone for me to leave here,” said Bruce. “Brimmer talks a lot but he doesn’t know for sure. This weird shit…” He looked at the ceiling. “It could just be local. People, authorities outside this area, will hear about it and come in and help.”
Emily nodded. “It makes no sense to me to just leave shelter and… hike? It just…”
Bruce patted her arm. “We’re staying put. We’ll keep trying the phone. Take turns sleeping. We need to watch for trouble. And for rescuers. Maybe a plane or helicopter will fly over checking farms.”
“Even the road.”
“Brimmer can stay if he wants. But I’m happy with him leaving.”
“Me, too.”
The house was suddenly quieter than normal. Silent.
“What happened?” said Emily.
Bruce stood. “Power’s out.”
“Oh. We have to keep the fridge going…”
He nodded. “I’ll get the generator.”
He halted at the kitchen door and called back over his shoulder, “Did you move the rifle?”
“Rifle? No.”
“Shit.”
He hurried back to the living room and retrieved the pistol.
“Keep watch from here,” he told her at the kitchen door. “You hear shots and Brimmer comes out, you barricade yourself. Do not let him in.”
“Oh, God…”
“He might’ve left. But we need that rifle…”
Bruce kept low as he ran out to the maple tree. There, with it between him and the barn, he broke the gun to check the ammo count. Three bullets.
“Shit.”
***
Emily stood at the kitchen door watching her husband. He stalked up to a barn corner and peered around it. Then he walked stealthily along the front and peered around the other corner. He went back to the door and slid it open very slowly. Slipping in, he slid it closed just as slowly.
Emily stepped out onto the stoop to listen. For several minutes she heard nothing from the barn. No voices and, thank god, no shots. But then a buzz like that of a large insect suddenly intruded and a drone cleared the maple and hovered over their house.
She eased herself back inside. She watched the barn and listened to the buzzing. As she watched another drone cleared the barn roof and joined the one above her, the buzzing doubled. The barn door slid open and Bruce appeared, carrying the pistol. He stayed put and watched the drones over the house. Then he stepped out and hurried to the shade of the maple where he stopped.
The barn door was open. Emily could see the generator on its wagon just inside. But no Brimmer. Movement caught her eye on the left. Three drones flew across that field toward the house. Bruce was watching them. Then his attention was directed to the opposite side and field. More buzzing. He looked at Emily through the window and shook his head. Then he ran to the house.
“He’s gone. With the rifle.”
“What about the drones?”
He shook his head. “We can’t do more than throw rocks at them.” He waved the gun. “Only three bullets in this. Not that I could hit a drone with it anyway.”
“Three?”
“I meant to get more. Kept forgetting.”
“But what are the drones doing?”
“Just hovering. Must be at least a dozen. In formation. A perfect square just sitting up there.”
The drones began chiming.
If the earlier drone had barked down at them, the group overhead roared each note. On time, in rhythm.
“BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!”
Like a massive hammer dropping hard on a massive anvil.
“BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!” rang out.
Bruce held Emily, her hands over her ears, face pressed to his chest.
“GODDAM!”
He pulled her over to the cellar door and guided her down, pulling the door closed behind.
Down in the cool, still gloom the drone sound was diminished but still loud.
“Is this supposed to drive us out or make us crazy?”
Emily kept her hands at her ears. “What if they’re calling more drones and it gets louder?”
Bruce stared at the floor. “I don’t know…”
They held each other again, heaving in fear. Then they sat together on the steps, Bruce behind Em, cradling her. They stayed together in the dim cellar for a long time trying to find calm, trying to think of a way to get out from under the massive noise bombarding them. It was relentless.
Then the chiming changed slightly. A touch louder, somehow nearer.
Bruce stood and stepped carefully around Emily. He walked beneath the first floor, listening. He stopped under the spare room and looked up.
“What the hell?”
He went back to the steps – “Stay here!” – but she followed him up.
Through the house, through the racket, he charged into the living room.
Through the spare room doorway, he could see the driver, still fetal, his face turned grotesquely to the ceiling, chiming back at the drones.
“He’s one of them!”
“OH!” Emily covered her mouth.
Bruce pulled the handgun from his waistband.
Through the godawful roar of sound he heard Emily cry “OH!” again. She pointed out the front window.
A line of people stretched across their property, facing his and Emily’s house. The line advanced toward them. Many of the people carried weapons: rifles, pistols, machetes, axes.
“OUT THE BACK!” Bruce shouted.
On the stoop, they both halted. To the left a line of people was crossing the field where Brimmer had appeared.
“THE BARN!”
But before they moved ten feet toward it, people began streaming around both corners of it. Then more appeared from the right, into the shade of the maple.
Back in the kitchen, slamming the door shut and the bolts across it, the two stared, terrified, at each other. Bruce held the pistol but… three bullets.
He rushed to the living room. People out front were less than fifty feet away and closing. From the dining room he could see the same on that side. He went back to the kitchen and Emily. People filled the kitchen yard. Out the side window the line was a dozen feet out. Near the center of it, a woman with a bloody wound at her shoulder carried a rifle. Bruce’s.
“THE CELLAR!”
He rushed Emily down into it and slammed back the door. There was no lock so he jumped down to the floor and ransacked shelves for anything to secure it. Over the Blare! Blare! Blare! Blare! Blare! of the drones they heard the kitchen door splintering and glass shattering.
Emily hid beneath the steps, crouched, her arms covering her head. Overhead, dozens of footfalls squeaked the hardwood.
SMASH!
A near cellar window was kicked in and a rifle barrel poked through.
BANG!
The bullet sizzled past Bruce’s ear, fanning his hair, cracking shrapnel off the rock cellar wall behind him.
At the top of the steps the door was thrown open and feet appeared, then two more pairs stumbling into each other.
Emily left the spot under the stairs and grabbed onto Bruce, who stood helplessly rooted to the concrete floor. He hugged her and brought the pistol up so that she couldn’t see it coming.
***
Jeff chimed along with the drones overhead and with the people milling about the house. He was one of them. He was left alone. The people dithered, chiming. There was no thought process beyond following the machines’ directive. Then they drifted out. If they expected him to follow they didn’t show it.
When the drones went silent so did Jeff. Mostly numb, he was terribly thirsty, with a searing headache. He just had to hope that those two people – actually speaking, not zombies! – got away. And that they would return.
***
[ Pikers love feedback! Comment on this article . ]