Nothing happened.
She whacked the loading mechanism against the wood, but it still refused to fire. Molly couldn’t believe it.
Of all the times for the fucking thing to jam!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
2003
“Get in!” the woman repeated. “Move your butts!”
That was all the invitation Losenko and his men needed. They sprinted toward the armored truck even as the surviving robot lurched into firing range once more. Harsh scraping sounds came from its damaged left tread, slowing it down, but it seemed no less determined to exterminate the rest of the patrol.
Losenko’s heart pounded. The prospect of being shot now, only seconds away from rescue, filled him with dread. That would be the cruelest blow of all.
But no more than I deserve, perhaps.
A cigarette lighter flicked inside the truck. The flame ignited a strip of cloth wadded into the mouth of a tinted glass liquor bottle. Losenko recognized an old-fashioned Molotov cocktail
“Head’s up!” the woman in the truck shouted. She hurled the flaming bottle at the robot. “This drink’s on me!”
The bottle crashed against the robot’s armored chassis, exploding on impact. A swirling orange fireball swallowed up the oncoming machine. Its sensors overwhelmed, it fired wildly from inside the inferno.
“All aboard!” the bomb-throwing stranger hollered. “Trust me, that’s just going to make it mad!”
Losenko hustled two of his men into the dimly lit hold before boarding the truck himself. A calloused hand grabbed onto his wrist and yanked him up into the waiting vault. He tumbled forward onto a padded foamboard floor.
“There you go!” the nameless woman said. She risked a glance out the door. “Is that all of you?”
Losenko took a second to glance around. Heartsick, he realized that only the two other sailors were still alive, out of a party of twenty-five. Blasko and Stralbov were both young midshipmen, in their early twenties. They looked like shell-shocked teenagers to his weary eyes.
“I think so.” There was no point in looking back. The pitiless machines would have already killed any stragglers or wounded. He spit the vile words out. “Yes, we’re all that’s left.”
“Lucky you.” The woman yanked shut the reinforced steel doors and locked them in place, then shouted at a man at the other end of the vault. “You heard the man, Josef. Let’s get out of here before another one of those metal assholes shows up!”
Her companion, a heavy-set man with a surly expression, pounded on the bulkhead separating the cargo hold from the driver’s compartment. The blows echoed in the enclosed, windowless vault. A narrow metal lattice let his voice through to the cab. “Hit the gas!”
“Da! I hear you!” a voice answered from up front. “Hold onto your balls!”
A sudden burst of acceleration slammed Losenko against a foam-insulated wall. Tires squealed as the truck peeled out, back the way it had come and away from the flattened robot. He was grateful for the lack of windows, that meant he didn’t have to watch as they left their fallen comrades behind.
Exhausted, he sagged against the wall. Stralbov sobbed uncontrollably. Blasko vomited onto the floor of the truck.
“Crap!” the woman exclaimed. She wrinkled her nose at the mess. “Oh, never mind, sonny. What’s a little puke after all you’ve been through?” She gazed at the young seaman in sympathy, her tone softening a bit. Plopping down onto a bench, she drew her muddy boots back from the pooling vomit. “It’s only human, which is more than you can say for a lot of things these days!”
As Losenko’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he got a better look at their rescuer. A round face, of good peasant stock, had been baked brown by the sun. Time and toil had etched deep lines into her careworn countenance. A faded red kerchief covered her scalp. She, too, was stocky, and Losenko put her age at fifty-plus. Wily blue eyes looked over the traumatized sailors. Nicotine stained her fingertips.
“Thank you,” Losenko croaked. His throat was still raw from the smoke. “If you hadn’t come to our rescue....”
She shrugged off his gratitude.
“Name’s Grushka.” She cocked a thumb at her companion, an intimidating bear of a man wearing a tattered raincoat over what looked like hospital scrubs. He was twice Grushka’s size and maybe half her age. “That cantankerous whoreson over there is Josef.”
The man grunted in response. He had a smooth dome and a florid complexion. A cataract clouded his right eye. The other one eyed the newcomers suspiciously. A shotgun lay across his lap. A meaty hand rested protectively on a carton of liquor bottles topped with improvised fuses. There were at least eight Molotov cocktails left.
“Losenko,” the captain introduced himself. “Captain Dmitri Losenko.” He gestured at the traumatized sailors. Neither man seemed to be wounded, at least not physically. “These are my men.”
Or what was left of them.
Grushka leaned forward. Her fingers plucked at the stripes on Losenko’s uniform. “You really with the Army?”
“The Navy,” he corrected her. “Our submarine, K-115, is docked at a fishing village about a hundred miles east.” He believed the truck was heading that way, although the lack of windows made it hard to verify. “Our base at Murmansk was destroyed in the war.”
In the past, he would have been averse to sharing such crucial intelligence with unknown civilians, but everything had changed now. These people had saved his life. They were the closest thing to allies he’d encountered since the bombs fell.
Grushka nodded. “I know that village. Used to have a cousin there.” A momentary grimace betrayed her grief. “Didn’t think there was anybody still alive out that way.”
“There wasn’t,” Losenko divulged. “The town was empty when we found it.”
Josef snorted. “About time you got here. We’ve been hanging on by our nails for weeks now, with no help from Moscow or the Army or any of you worthless uniforms. First you blow up the world, then leave us to fight those fucking machines on our own.”
Losenko didn’t argue the point. In the end, the Gorshkov and the rest of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal had failed to protect the people from the ultimate horror. The last thing either Grushka or Josef needed to hear was that the holocaust might have been caused by an overseas computer error. And that still didn’t explain why his men had died.
“What happened here?” he asked. “What are those machines? Who built them?”
Now it was Grushka’s turn to look disgusted.
“Tell you the truth, I was hoping you could explain that to us.”
“I’ve never seen those robots before,” Losenko confessed. “How long have they been hunting you? Does this have something to do with that factory?”
The woman nodded.
“This used to be our home, and I actually worked on the assembly line at the plant once, back when it used to churn out riding mowers. Hard work, but a decent living. Then those red-hot mushrooms starting sprouting in the sky, and everything changed. Hid out in my basement for as long as I could, until I ran out of food and water. And when I came out....”
A shudder passed through her body.
“Well, I’ll spare you the ugly details. Pretty much everybody was dead or gone, though. I thought I was all alone in the world until I ran into that overgrown sourpuss over there.” She nodded at Josef, who scowled back at her. “Knew him casually from one of the bars in town. Never liked him much, to be honest. Still don’t. But beggars can’t be choosers.” She glanced toward the front of the truck. “Found the driver, Mitka, about the same time. He was in the back of this rolling lockbox when the bombs came down. Figure that’s what saved him.