Impossible.
“I hear you, Dawn. But we don’t know how to stay alive in the wild. We’ve never even gone camping. Even if we make it out of the city, we’ll starve in the woods.”
“There are others,” she says. “I’ve seen people with bags and backpacks, whole families headed out of town. Some of them must have made it. They’ll take care of us. We’ll all work together.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. There must be millions of people out there. No food. No shelter. Some of them have guns. It’s too dangerous. Hell, Mother Nature has killed more people than machines ever could. We should stick to what we know. We gotta stick to the city.”
“What about them? They’re designed for the city. They can climb stairs, not mountains. Marcus, they can roll through our streets but not through forests. They’re going to get us if we stay here. I’ve seen them down there. Going door to door.”
The information punches me in the belly. Now, a sick feeling spreads through me.
“Door to door?” I ask. “Doing what?”
She doesn’t answer.
I haven’t looked down at the street since it first happened. I spent yesterday staying busy in a protective haze of confusion. Every whimper I heard from Dawn at the window just reinforced my need to stay busy, keep busy, head down, hands moving. Don’t look up, don’t speak, don’t think.
Dawn doesn’t even know about Mrs. Henderson at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Or the other ones with her.
I don’t take a deep breath or count down from three. I march over to the harmless-looking opening in the foil and look. I’m ready for the carnage, ready for the bodies and bombs and burning wreckage. I’m ready for war.
But I’m not ready for what I see.
The streets are empty. Clean. A lot of cars are neatly parked up and down the block, waiting. At 135th and Adam, four newer-model SUVs are parked diagonally across the intersection, head to tail. The inner two cars have a gap between them just big enough for another car to squeeze through, but there’s a car plugging the hole.
Everything seems a little bit off. A pile of clothes is spilled halfway on the curb. A newspaper stand has been shoved over. A golden retriever lopes up the street, leash dragging. The dog stops and sniffs a strange discolored spot on the sidewalk, then pads away with its head hung low.
“Where are the people?” I ask.
Dawn wipes her red-rimmed eyes with the back of her hand. “They clean it up, Marcus. When the cars hurt someone, the walking ones come and drag him away. It’s all so clean.”
“The domestic robots? Like the rich people have? Those are a joke. They can barely walk on those flat feet. They can’t even run.”
“Yeah, I know. They take forever. But they can carry guns. And sometimes the police robots, the bomb-disposal ones on tank treads with claws—sometimes they come. They’re slow, but they’re strong. The garbage trucks …”
“Let me, just let me take a look. We’ll figure this out, okay?”
I watch the street for the rest of that second day. The block looks peaceful without the chaos of the city tearing through it like a daily tornado. The life of the neighborhood is on hold.
Or maybe it’s over.
The smoke from the plane crash still lingers. Inside the building across the street, I see an older lady and her husband through the dim haze. They stare out their windows at the street, like ghosts.
In the late afternoon, what looks like a toy helicopter putters by our building at about thirty feet off the ground. It’s the size of a doghouse, flying slowly and with purpose. I catch a glimpse of some weird gizmo hanging off its bottom. Then it’s gone.
Across the street, the old man yanks his drapes closed.
Smart.
An hour later, a car pulls up across the street and my heart leaps into my throat. A human being, I think. Finally, somebody can tell us what’s going on. Thank you, Jesus.
Then my face flushes and goes numb. Two domestic bots step out of the vehicle. They walk to the back of the SUV on cheap, shaky legs. The rear door opens and the two walkers reach inside and pull out a dull gray bomb robot. They set the squat robot down on the pavement. It spins on its treads a little, calibrating. The glint from its jet-black shotgun sends a shiver through me—the gun looks practical, like any other tool designed to do a very specific job.
Without looking at one another, the three robots stumble and roll into the front door of the building across the street.
It isn’t even locked, I think. Their door isn’t even locked. And neither is mine.
The robots can’t be choosing the doors randomly. Lots of people have run by now. Even more were already out of town for Thanksgiving. Too many doors and not enough robots—a simple engineering problem.
My mind wanders back to the curious little chopper. I think maybe it flew by for a reason. Like maybe it was searching the windows, looking for people.
I’m glad my windows are blocked. I don’t have any idea why I chose to put up tinfoil. Maybe because I didn’t want a single bit of the horror outside to seep into my safe place. But the foil completely blocks the light that comes in from the outside. It stands to reason that it also blocks the light that leaks out from inside.
And more important, the heat.
An hour later the robots come out of the building across the street. The bomb robot drags two bags behind it. The domestics load the bags and the other robot into the car. Before they leave, one of the walkers freezes in place. It’s this bulky domestic with a big creepy grin permanently sculpted onto its face. A Big Happy. It pauses next to the idling smart car and turns its head left and right, scanning the empty street for movement. The thing is absolutely still for about thirty seconds. I don’t move, breathe, blink.
I never see the old couple again.
That night, the lookers fly past about once an hour. The gentle thup-thup of their rotors cuts through my nightmares. My brain is caught in a never-ending loop, feverishly considering how to survive this.
Aside from some damaged buildings, most of the city seems intact. Flat, paved roads. Doors that open and close smoothly. Stairs or wheelchair ramps. Something occurs to me.
I wake Dawn up and whisper to her. “You’re right, honey. They keep it clean so they can operate here. But we can make it hard on them. Hard. Mess up the streets so they can’t get around. Blow some stuff up.”
Dawn sits up. She looks at me in disbelief.
“You want to destroy our city?”
“It’s not our city anymore, Dawn.”
“The machines are down there, wrecking everything we’ve built. Everything you’ve built. And now you want to go and do it for them?”
I put my hand on her shoulder. She is strong and warm. My answer is simple: “Demolition is a part of construction.”
I start with our own building.
Using a sledgehammer, I punch through walls into the neighboring units. I knock the holes at waist height to stay clear of electrical outlets and I avoid kitchens and bathrooms. There’s no time to suss out load-bearing walls, so I take my best guess and hope a single hole won’t bring down the ceiling.
Dawn collects food and tools from the empty apartments. I drag heavy furniture into the hallway and barricade the doors from the inside. By ducking through our holes, we’re free to explore the whole floor.
In the lobby, I demolish everything I see and pile the debris in front of the main door. I smash the elevator, the plants, and the front desk. The walls, the mirrors, the chandelier. All of it breaks down to form a pile of loose wreckage.