Chapter 5:

Sleeping demons (2)

Cybernetic Dreaming or The Allure of Overcoming Humanity


From there, he watched as Roxy climbed out of the car through the shattered window. On all fours, scraping her knees on the broken glass as she passed. Paying no attention to the pain or the blood she left behind. No glass stabbed, just cut. That he saw, at least.

Still, she had been in quite a hurry to get out, when she could have walked out the door like a normal person and avoided cutting herself. He understood why.

And he appreciated it. It filled him with warmth.

But it was also, why not admit it, a little embarrassing.

He wasn't made of glass.

Roxy knelt beside him, her hands roaming his body. So she could be sure. Embarrassing, for the same reason. There was nothing else there.

The girl withdrew her hands and took a deep breath, seemingly relieved. But she still felt the need to ask him:

"Really?"

Jonathan decided to be honest. Because he truly had no reason to lie.

"My head is going to explode and my ears are ringing. So, fine." For starters, he could easily have broken his neck in the fall. A very stupid way to die, but that didn't make it any less possible, quite the contrary. Most deaths occurred in trivial ways like that. "Besides, we have much bigger problems in any case."

Roxy looked back over her own shoulder. Still bent down on one knee.

"The car... is not going to get us out of this." She then stated the obvious.

"Yes. I can see that."

What Jonathan could see was that the damn thing was smoking. From one second to the next, the problem wasn't the battery anymore. Even if they magically charged it to one hundred percent, here and now, they couldn't get out of the settlement. Not in that vehicle.

It was no more than a useless hunk of metal.

They had took care of that piece of junk. He hadn't seen how, hadn't realized when.

But there it was, all that was left of the car.

He felt sorry for it, surprisingly, even though they had much bigger problems. And it was just a car. Jonathan had never been one to make a big deal out of things like that, but he found that one could grow fond of an immaterial object that gave so many headaches, if one spent enough time with it.

That car had been with them from the beginning....

And now it would be at the end, whispered a dark voice inside his head.

No. He wouldn't allow it.

Mary and Jamie arrived with them, too. A little later, since they had chosen to walk out the door like normal people.

He chuckled to himself at the stupid thought.

"We'll have to fight," Mary declared. She herself didn't seem very convinced by that crazy suggestion, though.

And no wonder. There were dozens and dozens of those things out there.

They couldn't fight an army.

They were good, but that was way beyond good.

"How, against so many?" Jonathan uttered the question that was sure to be on everyone's mind. He was supposed to be the man with the plan, but if she had a good plan up his sleeve, he was more than willing to listen to it.

"I said we'll have to do it. Not that it's a good idea."

So Mary didn't have anything....

On second thought, though, she wasn't wrong. The car was totaled. They weren't going to get out of this damn settlement with it, Jonathan wished they had just kept pushing it along the road.

The other option was to flee on foot. Try to force their way through.

They wouldn't get very far, he was sure. Fighting...it seemed a hopeless path. But fleeing on foot was an even more hopeless idea.

At least fighting would give them some chance, however small.

He could hear them outside, all of them.

They still made no sound from their throats. They didn't curse at them, didn't demand that they leave, didn't even shout angrily as they hurled themselves against doors or windows. All in complete silence.

But there they were, relentless. They wouldn't rest until they were killed.

They had to resist. Fight.

Jonathan nodded.

"We'll leave the car where it is," Jonathan said.

They had broken through the wall, but the car had gotten stuck after punching a good hole in the wall. Fortunately, the hole was the same size, so it wasn't an easy entry point for the creatures.

They could leave it there, plugging the hole.

They had created a problem that had fixed itself.

If only the rest would be so easy.

Now that he'd had some time to rest, well, not really, to not immediately fear for his life, Jonathan didn't see his situation as bleak as before.

It was still fucking bleak, but he reflected that it could have been a lot worse. With a very simple change.

The car could have stopped in the middle of the street, instead of after driving through the front of the building. Then they would have been really screwed.

They'd have been run over before they could even think, let alone recover.

Here, at least, they had had that time.

And they would have a hard time getting into this building. If they handled this right, letting them in slowly and taking care of them, maybe they could get out of this hellish place alive.

Maybe. But maybe it was enough, it was more than he had thought he could ask for, not so long ago.

Good. Good.

They split up, going throughout the building to accomplish the obvious first step. That is, covering doors and windows. In the normal way, as well as by dragging cabinets and other furniture.

It was natural to start there, they all agreed, quietly getting to work.

If they didn't, they would soon have all those robots inside. And they could do nothing but fight and die, like cornered rats.

However fast he was going, however, it didn't seem to him that he was going fast enough. He had the impression that it was all going to come crashing down at any moment. He was no stranger to stress, to risking his life.

But he rarely felt so vulnerable and panicked.

It had been a long time since he had felt that a situation had really gotten the better of him.

In any case, Jonathan had to keep a cool head. His teammates, naturally, depended on their leader. They were all strong and skilled, perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but he was.... He was like the cornerstone.

He couldn't wobble.

He couldn't fucking wobble.

He covered a lot of doors and windows without incident. But then he heard the glass exploding. He felt the shards cut him as they flew, shallow cuts, nothing to worry about, but they still hurt.

Jonathan grimaced. And he felt something far worse than any of it.

He felt a hand close around his wrist. His breath cut off as if he'd been punched hard in the solar plexus.

The hand of one of those things, which had slipped between the gap in the closet and the window. Because he hadn't managed to close it, not all the way.

Not in time. And now it had a grip on him.

"Fuck."

"John!" Jamie shouted his name from the other end of the building.

The girl had been startled. Especially since she couldn't see what had happened, she'd only heard him curse. When there was room for imagination, in a situation like this, the possibilities that came to mind were terrible and worse still.

He had been startled too.

He had to admit it.

But nothing had really happened. Not yet.

So what if it had grabbed his wrist?

"I'm fine!"

Jonathan gritted his teeth. He swung the sword once, twice, three times. The robot's hand fell to the ground, followed by a spurt of....

Red.

Red.

His heart leapt into his throat, and for a moment he thought he had made a terrible, unimaginable mistake. But no.

He realized it because... there was no scream. Not even the smallest sound of pain.

The arm, now without a hand, simply convulsed backwards.

Jonathan regained his composure. He shook his head and rammed the furniture, pushing it against the window. That should hold for a while.

Mission accomplished...here.

He had plenty of windows and doors left to cover, and perhaps other possible entrances. They were at a disadvantage for many reasons. One of them was that they didn't know the settlement and its buildings. But they would manage in the end.

These things could lose an arm without complaint. Creepy, no doubt. They weren't human, but...

But what?

He shook his head, again.

But nothing. He just had to concentrate on what really mattered, namely survival. Everything superfluous, especially questions, could be put aside until then. Or until never.

It was not worth thinking along those lines any longer.

From the beginning, he hadn't wanted to know anything about these things. Only in the end they had convinced him.

If they got out of here... When they got out, he would pretend that nothing had happened here. He wouldn't do any investigating, none of that shit.

Determined, Jonathan continued with his work.

Once finished, he turned around and went back to the point where they had all started. That is, near the spot where the car had crashed.

Roxy was already there. Fast, in more ways than one.

Not long after that the others arrived, however. Not long after in an objective sense, that is. But it felt like forever. Like every second was hours.

"Well done," Jonathan said, "Now..."

He fell silent because he didn't know what to say, he couldn't go any further.

They were in for a good mountain of shit, the likes of which they had never faced before. What could he really say?

These monsters were silent. They had no vocal cords, or anything to mimic them. Still, Jonathan had to raise his voice simply to make himself heard. And that was because of the continuous pounding.

The defenses would hold. But not always, and then everything would be up in the air.

He doubted those beasts could simply get bored and turn around, walk away, so that wasn't the point. Even if they could take whatever was thrown at them, that wouldn't fix anything in the first place.

At best they would trade a quick death for a slow one. Hunger eating them up inside until it killed them.

So they had to fight. And win.

"Now we'll do what we do best, girls. We're not going to make it easy for those sons of bitches."

Not only had they been blocking doors and windows.

Those who could had set various traps. They would give it their all because they had no choice.

Nods, fists being clenched.

Those were the only responses to his words. More than enough.

"In a circle," Jonathan ordered.

They stood in a circle as he had said, so as not to lose sight of anything three hundred and sixty degrees around them.

Waiting for the moment when the first of the defenses would come down, letting one of those monstrosities through, marking the starting signal, the signal to fight, to give it their all.

Marking the moment when everything would start to wobble.

Lucianael
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