The Vagabond Codes Read online

  Ben threw back his head, dumbfounded.

  Inexplicably, the other four vagabonds ignored their comrade’s termination and marched forward with precision, like metal corpses oblivious to the living world.

  “Did you see that, guys?” Aiden called out.

  Ben’s mind was going blank, but then it clicked. “Close the garage door! There’s something in there they want. They always want something.” He wondered if they saw the Honda, their getaway car.

  “10-4, HULC,” Tomás replied. “Good thinking.”

  Alex, seeing that the other vagabonds had ignored his attack, grew bolder: gun in hand, he dashed up to another one. But this time a vagabond swung around and struck a blow across Alex’s face, instantly knocking him unconscious. He hit the ground with a thud. The robot turned and resumed its march toward the retreat.

  A furious shout that sounded like Marcelo’s voice echoed throughout the basin, and gunfire instantly erupted from the north spider hole.

  “Adobe One, a vagabond just hit Alex pretty bad,” Ben said. “I need to get out there, but Marcelo is shooting like crazy. Still can’t reach him on the radio?”

  “No,” Tomás replied. His voice cracked. “He’s on his own.”

  Fortunately, at that moment the gunfire stopped.

  Ben zoomed and studied the approaching vagabonds. The camouflage uniforms were military issued, but he’d never seen them before. Being a military brat, he definitely knew his fatigues. He looked closer at the vagabonds’ shirts: a patch above each left pocket read Global Federation.

  Ben shook his head in disbelief. Is there even an America anymore?

  “What’s your status, HULC?” Tomás called out.

  “I gotta get out there and get Alex, Adobe One,” Ben said, clenching HULC’s metal fists. “I’m moving in, guys.”

  “If you do, you’re on your own against four vagabonds,” Danna said uneasily. “Marcelo knows it’s suicide if he comes out of the spider hole.”

  Ben didn’t respond. Scanning the burnt-out truck one last time, he stomped out to meet the metal monsters.

  Ben was within fifty feet of the approaching vagabonds when he realized he forgot to reload the RPG launcher. Coming to an abrupt halt, he unbuckled the operator’s harness and reached for the last grenade.

  At first, the vagabonds calculated that the advancing machine was simply an industrial-use automaton. But as soon Ben lifted the helmet-hatch to reload the RPG launcher, they identified a living human being and initiated termination protocol. Picking up speed, they commenced their attack.

  Ben was desperately trying to insert the tiny bomb into the tube, but his sweaty fingers couldn’t get a firm grip on it. He wiped his hands on his shirt and tried again. These grenades detonated upon impact, not by a four-second timer like most grenades, so if he dropped it . . . .

  Up at the retreat, Tomás, Danna, and the others watched in alarm as HULC suddenly came to a stop just as the vagabonds began their rush.

  “What the heck, Ben!” Tomás cried over the radio. “They’re right on top of you!”

  Once again, Ben didn’t answer. He looked up.

  They were ten feet away.

  He panicked.

  The grenade slipped from his fingers.

  In that millisecond, Ben watched in horror as it fell and hit the ground with a dull thud. He closed his eyes and waited for the explosion and his death. In that briefest of moments, he thought about his mom, about his dad, and whether he’d get to be with them now.

  Two milliseconds.

  He opened his eyes and a burst of oxygen surged into his lungs.

  Not today. Not yet.

  Ben narrowed his eyes, and with beads of sweat streaming down his cheeks — or maybe it was tears — he dropped the helmet-hatch over his head and strapped his arm back into place. He didn’t have time to reattach the harness.

  The first vagabond went straight for the helmet-hatch, but with a furious jerk of his right arm — HULC’s right arm — he swung upwards and struck a mighty blow at the vagabond’s head. The head snapped backward, dislodged from its socket, and it dangled on the vagabond’s back, held by a few crackling wires still attached to the neck. It stood there motionless.

  Ben stepped back and cocked his shoulders to release the weapon locks on each arm. The RPG launcher and M260 slid back to expose HULC’s titanium four-fingered, crab-like claws.

  The claws were designed to lift steel beams and heavy machinery, but Ben was confident they’d be good for a fist fight. He was about to find out.

  He knocked the beheaded vagabond to the ground, and at once the second and third robots latched on to each claw, trying to rip them off.

  Ben didn’t know their full capacity strength, but as the androids pulled backwards, he felt the joint actuators on HULC’s shoulders strain and creak in reaction. Now I know, he said to himself.

  With HULC’s right arm, Ben backhanded the vagabond on the right and flung it six feet to the ground.

  The robot got up on one knee, but at that moment Cody drove in full throttle and struck its side with the ATV’s front brush guard.

  Cody let out a triumphant whoop as the vagabond staggered and dropped to one knee, and he turned around to make another pass.

  The vagabond locked sights on Cody and took a step in his direction; but then Joey ran into it head on, sending the robot to its knee again, but also his out-of-control ATV front first into a small ditch.

  Joey shifted the ATV into reverse, but it only spun its wheels. The vagabond limped toward him; its blazing neon eyes flashed rapidly like seizure-inducing strobe lights.

  “C’mon!” Cody shouted as he roared up to Joey.

  Joey hopped on the back of the ATV and Cody hit the throttle, just barely escaping skull-crushing fingers.

  “Go get Alex and take him back!” Ben hollered over the radio as he yanked at the other vagabond that clung to HULC’s arm. He knew that they’d get slaughtered if they stayed to fight.

  Joey gave a thumbs-up, and the two boys sped off to where Alex lay unconscious.

  Ben was surrounded. The vagabond that was latched to HULC’s left claw ripped the Bowden cable that powered exosuit’s entire left arm, and Ben felt it go limp. Surprisingly, the robot let go and took several steps backward, forming up with the other two.

  Ben knew that each vagabond had just calculated millions of various attack strategies with the highest likelihood of success for the desired outcome — Ben’s death. All three have reached the same prediction, as if they foresaw the future like mechanized prophets of woe, heralding the death of he whose heart still beats.

  The three separated into a tight semi-circle: one in front, one to Ben’s left, and the last one behind him. They determined his left arm was disabled and therefore the primary weakness.

  In a fading corner of his mind, Ben could hear Tomás paging him over the radio; but his pulse was pumping in his ears and he was going to die right now and he should have been dead already. No more talking. He was here, and they were there.

  And here they are, these metal monsters. These freaks. Look at them, Ben thought. How can they make those stupid faces? They are angry now. For what? They can think — my dad said so. Can they talk? Should I ask them to stop? Do they like to kill, or do they have to kill? Can they really think?

  Once again his dad came to his mind, and how he was right all along about everything, how he gave up his career and a chance to be a decorated general because of his never-ending struggle to warn the powers that be about what could happen. What would happen. What did happen.

  Everyone had laughed at him, Ben thought. Even the President!

  He remembered when his dad got home from the White House, early in the morning, and they asked him how it was and he just smiled and said it was wonderful and told them to pack up the truck because they were going fishing for the rest of the day. It was a Tuesday . . . .

  Ben blinked sharply. For a moment, he had blacked out.

  Time to fig
ht. Like yesterday. And the day before that. And forever, it seems, before that.

  HULC’s left arm was useless. He held out the right arm and unlocked the machine gun and slid it back into firing position with the hundred-round ammunition belt hanging underneath. Stepping backward to face the vagabond in front of him, he fired thirty quick rounds. Most of the bullets missed, five bounced off its shell, and one of them hit its exposed left shoulder joint — a sweet spot.

  An arm for an arm, Ben thought, with a slight smirk. He turned to the vagabond to his left and opened fire. He had managed only fifteen rounds before he heard a loud click. The gun had jammed!

  The vagabonds were upon him. They leaped onto HULC’s back and started to rip the power cords. Ben knew a critical malfunction could send a surge of power to the sensors and electrocute him.

  At this point he had only one choice: he had to get out. He popped the head-hatch and reached down and unlocked the sensor casings on his legs. Just as he was breaking free, the vagabonds pulled HULC to the ground. He rolled out before he was crushed under the weight of the exosuit.

  A shadow fell over Ben; the third vagabond was standing there in its tattered, half-ripped camouflage jacket, blocking the sun and waiting for him with an eerie smile (or so he thought) on its rusted face. The robot had calculated this scenario.

  Ben jumped up and lunged toward the vagabond. Not predicting the human’s maneuver, it extended its arms to clutch the human’s skull and crush it; but as it did so, the human dove beneath its legs and began to accelerate on foot.

  Ben was faster than the androids, which, as far as he knew, weren’t programmed to sprint. He’d made his escape.

  But he made it no further than forty feet toward the retreat when he landed awkwardly on a rock and came crashing to the ground.

  Clutching his ankle, he winced and let out a cry of agony. He got up and took one hop before he fell to his hands and knees. Spinning around, he saw the three vagabonds in pursuit, the one with the rusted face twenty feet ahead of the other two.

  Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Ben crawled toward the retreat. In the distance, the Gator roared out of the garage, his friends coming to his rescue. They’re going to die, too, he said to himself. Idiots.

  Then he came upon the grenade, half buried in the dirt, two feet in front of him. He stretched out and grabbed it, and turning around on his back, he hurled it as hard as he could.

  A deafening blast shook the earth, and a vagabond’s leg landed right next to him followed by a shower of small rocks and metal fragments.

  Ben started to crawl again. His lungs burned. His limbs were jelly. He clenched his jaw and dug deep. The Gator was fifty yards ahead, coming in fast. The other two vagabonds were nearly upon him.

  He finally collapsed in anguish.

  Yet with all of his will, all of his heart, and with every fiber of his being, he stuck his arm out and pulled himself forward; then he pulled his knee up to his side; then the other arm; then the other knee. His fingers dug into the earth, pulling, scraping, pulling.

  Then he heard the dull, commanding steps. He curled into a ball, covered his head with his hands and squeezed his eyes shut.

  Suddenly, he heard the sharp whine of a dirt bike, then two brief pops like two cracks of an electric whip, then another two pops, then a strange, split-second sound unlike anything he’d ever heard before, like a hyper-charged magnet thrown into an electric power grid.

  The dirt bike shut off. People shouting. Footsteps. Someone shaking his shoulders.

  “Hey, buddy, you’re good,” a familiar voice said. “You’re all right.”

  Ben turned over and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Kneeling next to him was his big brother, face covered in sweat and grime, and a prototype plasma railgun (!) slung over his shoulder.

  Just before everything went black, Ben saw many hands lifting him off the ground.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Heaven Sent

  BEN’S EYES FLUTTERED open. He was back in his room, lying on his cot. He squinted his eyes and saw Cameron sitting on a stool, cleaning his fighting knife with a white cloth. He hadn’t seen him in three weeks.

  Once neatly trimmed for military school, Cameron’s choppy brown hair fell across his deeply tanned face, the result of countless days wandering in the Southern California sun. His chestnut colored eyes were both bright and dark, depending on his mood, and always watching, observing, aware. His nose, narrow and sculpted, gave him a refined appearance of a soldier born to lead; but it was also crooked, the result of a fight outside a bowling alley a few years ago. His thin lips always seemed to be half-smirking, which made it impossible to tell whether he was taking something seriously or not. Much to his delight, that smirk used to drive his teachers nuts.

  On his forehead, above his left eye, was a small, pale scar from an accident when he was thirteen. He had staggered home late one night with a blood-soaked bandage on his forehead, blubbering to Mom and Dad that he’d slipped and fallen while exploring a sea cave with friends as part of a biology class assignment.

  A couple of months later, however, Ben overheard him telling the bridesmaids at their cousin’s wedding that an ocelot slashed him when he and his friends had broken into the zoo during the middle of the night. Over the next couple of months, Ben had blackmailed Cameron out of at least fifty bucks.

  Cameron looked much better than Ben thought he would after such a long trip. He was dressed in his military academy t-shirt, as well as the same olive-green tactical pants he always wore, but now they were tucked into a new pair of brown, rugged combat boots. Curiously, Ben also noticed that he was wearing a new Luminox wristwatch, the one worn by Navy Seals.

  Cameron noticed that Ben was awake. “Hey, look who’s alive,” he said.

  “Not funny,” Ben replied with a groan, rolling on his back. “I swear I was dead.”

  Cameron handed a water bottle to his brother, who gulped it down. “Mom wouldn’t like you swearing, bro,” he said with his half-smirk. “But yeah, you looked like toast.”

  “Where did you get that dirt bike?”

  Cameron’s dark eyes flashed. “Some scumbag was sitting on it at the road gate. I heard all the shooting start a couple miles out, and I was just about to cross the road when I saw him chilling there with an AK-47. Figured he was bad news, so I took him down.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Well, not exactly. I invited him to my doll party and poisoned his sweet tea.” He snorted. “Of course I killed him. Didn’t you take out like ten dudes yesterday?”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been passed out for almost a day.”

  Ben shot his brother a worried look.

  “Katie said you were cool though,” Cameron said reassuringly. “Just tired and shocked is all.”

  Ben threw off his blanket and rose out of bed; in an instant, a sharp pain exploded in his ankle. He grimaced, plopped back onto the cot with a groan, and lifted his bandage-wrapped ankle off the bed.

  “You should’ve seen it yesterday,” Cameron said as he set his knife on the table and stretched. “Looked like a purple baseball.”

  It all flashed through Ben’s mind. So much had happened, and yet he felt like he had missed everything. “How’s Alex? And Marcelo? Anyone else get hurt?”

  “Alex got a little roughed up, but Marcelo is fine. In fact, he’s out right now helping to drag the bodies.”

  “The bodies?”

  “Dude, slow down with the questions. Yeah, the bikers. The ones you guys toasted (good work!). Joey and them are digging the graves.”

  Ben carefully sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. His stomach growled; he hadn’t eaten in over a day.

  Cameron got up and walked out to the hallway, bringing back a pair of crutches. “Here,” he said, leaning the crutches against the cot. “Figured you don’t wanna be stuck in bed all day. Alex is in the infirmary; he’ll be happy to see you.”

  Ben had a blasting headache. A mi
llion questions raced through his mind. He stared at Cameron, wondering what he had seen on his trip and if he had any news. Of Mom. Of anybody.

  The Stranger. He had forgotten about him.

  “What about the guy we picked up?”

  Cameron sat down, stretched his legs out, and put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, the Stranger, that’s what everyone is calling him.” He paused for a moment and stared blankly at the wall. “He said you weren’t too trusting of him, which is probably not a bad thing . . . .”

  “And you do? You trust him?”

  “I don’t know. But I think his being here right now is what Mom used to say was a ‘God thing.’” He chuckled. “Remember that?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Ben replied quietly.

  Whenever something really good happened, like when the family randomly won a vacation to Disneyland after their dad got back from deployment, she’d say it was heaven sent. She always believed everything happened for a reason, even the bad things. Would she still think like that today? Ben wondered. In this world?

  “Anyway,” Cameron went on, “I told him that once you’re feeling better, we’ll sit down and talk about what’s going on.”

  Ben furrowed his brow. “What’s going on? I thought this was it, you know? Life. Everything.”

  Cameron handed Ben the crutches and helped him up. “You’ll see.”

  Ben hadn’t used crutches since he fell out of a tree and twisted his knee when he was eight-years-old. Even though he just had a sprained ankle, he felt paralyzed: if there were another attack, he’d be useless. Everything would be lost.

  When they arrived at the infirmary, Katie was standing at the counter making a fresh ice pack. She looked up and smiled.

  Alex was sitting up in his cot, half of his face wrapped in a large bandage. He lifted his hand slightly to wave, but his eyes squinted in pain.

  “Dislocated jaw,” Katie said, handing Alex the ice pack. “And lots of bumps and bruises. He’s a brave kid. I had to use my thumbs to put it back in place.” She glanced at Ben and said: “Luckily, you got anesthetics from the pharmacy. It really helped to relax the jaw muscles.”