Crossroads of the apocal.., p.30
Crossroads of the Apocalypse,
p.30
The machine kept coming.
The two men turned to run but bounced off one another in the process and fell to the ground.
The combine’s blades snapped at a blurring rate as they neared, and the two men kicked into the dirt trying to push themselves away.
The machine loomed over them.
The lights were blinding them.
The two men rolled out of way as the blades sheared the corn stalks from the earth and the combine passed between them.
Jake got to his feet and beat against the machine looking for a hollow spot, a belly in the beast. He screamed the cyborg’s name. “Glitch!”
“I’m okay.” The voice came from behind the combine.
Jake rushed to the rear of the machine and found Glitch lying in the cleared field naked to the skin.
“Glitch! Glitch, are you okay?” Jake asked.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“How the hell are you okay?!”
Mason ran around the far side and saw the two men. “Why are you naked?”
“That thing ate my clothes.” Glitch stood, revealing that every shred of material had been thrashed away on his journey through the machine. Also, that his crotch glowed in the dark.
“Geez, Glitch. Even your junk? Can’t you leave anything alone?”
“Shut up, Mason.”
“Let’s talk about Glitch’s little light show later,” Jake said. “It’s turning around.”
The combine roared as it turned and bore down upon them once more.
“Man that thing is surprisingly nimble.” Mason checked the status on his disruptor.
Jake held up his own and saw that it was ready to fire once more. “Maybe if we both hit it at once?”
“Sure,” Mason nodded enthusiastically, “that will never work.”
“Just shoot.”
Both men fired and the front of the combine turned blue as the disruptors let flow a steady stream of electric bursts. The engine sputtered, wheezed and died, leaving them in silence but for their panting and something on Glitch that beeped.
The work lights flickered, popped and went out leaving them in the dark with only their flashlights and Glitch’s junk providing any kind of light.
Mason looked at the weapon in his hand. “That really shouldn’t have worked.”
The combine boomed and all three men jumped. A hatch squeaked open and Kat jumped to the ground. “It looks like I saved you all once— Glitch, why is your dick glowing?”
4
Bruises and fatigue made it a long walk back for everyone, but even more so for Glitch, as the tarp they’d found in the barn covered his nakedness but did little to hide the glow in his crotch.
“Tell me it’s just to make peeing at night easier.”
“Shut up, Mason.”
“I’m not judging,” Mason said. “Just asking.”
“No, you’re judging.”
“Okay, you’re right. I’m judging.”
They reached the office parking lot to a round of applause.
The rest of the ZUMR team had arrived and were busy unloading their reclamation equipment. Four robots standing seven feet tall and four wide at the chest stomped into the parking lot from an old model moving truck. Designed to take a beating from anything the company had ever manufactured, they were built thick and shook the ground when they walked.
The technicians turned at the team’s approach and clapped fervently, whistled and made other congratulatory comments that they obviously didn’t mean in the least.
Mason told them all to go to hell and walked back over to the Beast.
Hailey didn’t clap, but she was smiling when she walked up to Jake. “How did it go, Jake?”
“It went fine.”
“You have a funny definition of fine, Ashley.” The man’s name was Colton Porter. And he was a dick.
He walked up to the couple and held up his phone. A splintered ray of light shot from the end, projecting a large screen into the air that was playing drone footage of the exact moment Glitch was dropped naked from the combine into the cornfield. “So that’s how morons are born. So much for the cabbage patch.”
The ZUMR technicians laughed at this.
Glitch turned red and rushed to the Beast, where he sat inside wrapped in his tarp and sulked.
“You’re a class act, Colton,” Jake said.
“Sorry, Ashley. I wasn’t thinking.” He put his arm around a reclamation bot and smiled. “You see, our machines don’t have feelings. They just do what they’re told and keep their pants on.”
“You put a little too much faith in your machines. I wouldn’t trust them to fold my laundry, much less stand by me in the field when it mattered. One little hiccup and I’ve got two renegades to worry about.”
“That’s not how it works, junker. A machine can’t turn other machines.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” He patted the machine on the back. “I coded the Guardian series myself. They are completely incorruptible and incapable of anything but compliance.”
“Yay for you. I’ll remember that the first time I’m called to bring one down.”
“You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Jake smiled at Colton and took Hailey by the arm. He led her a few feet away under protest.
“What are you doing?” She snapped her arm out of his hand.
“I need to talk to you about something. How long did you have your drone overhead? How much did you see?”
“I saw it all. You managed to destroy a barn, a crop, a combine and Glitch’s pants all in a few minutes. I’d call it your highlight reel.”
“You saw it then?”
“Saw what?”
“The second anom.”
“What? No, there was no second anomaly.”
“Then what do you call that giant corn cob chomping monster that tried to run us down?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say salvage error.”
“You think we turned it on ourselves?”
“Oh, I’m sure it was an accident.” She put air quotes around “accident.” He hated it when she used air quotes. “I’m sure a stray shot probably triggered its programming. And I say that because I’d never accuse you of intentionally sabotaging a machine just to justify a second bounty.”
“You’d never do that? That’s sweet of you.”
Hailey nodded. “Just like I’d never even think for a half a second that you would fry a machine and make it go renegade just to extort more money out of the poor farmers here at Happy Dell Independent Family Farms Incorporated.”
“Isn’t that nice of you to say.”
She smiled at him and nodded.
He leaned in close. “Look, you and I can play I Hate My Ex all night long, but I’m being serious here.”
She folded her arms and cocked her hip. “Yeah, because you’re Mr. Serious.”
“Hailey, we never touched it. Not once. It went renegade on its own. I swear.”
“First of all,” she said. “We are not exes. We would have to have been a thing before we could even be a couple. And we’d have to be a couple before we could be exes. That’s how it works. And you and I were never a thing. You get me? Second of all, you don’t get to swear. I get to swear. If anyone has a right to swear it’s me, dammit.”
Jake took a deep breath, focused on removing all sarcasm from his voice and looked her in the eyes. “Hailey, both of them were ZUMR tech. Don’t you think that’s at least worth looking into? At the very least to cover your company’s ass?”
Hailey looked away and sighed.
“Look,” Jake continued, “I want to be wrong. And I want you to be the one that proves me wrong. Because I know how much you’d enjoy that. So please, prove me wrong and call me up and tell me you told me so.”
She looked at the ground and ran her fingertip over her lip as she thought. Then she nodded. “I’ll look into it.”
“That’s all I ask.” Jake turned and stepped toward the truck. His mind was working on how to explain everything to Forester.
“Jake,” Hailey called with no trace of hate.
This surprised him and he turned. “Yes?”
“Thank you,” she said.
And she meant it. He could tell. His heart tripped and tried to tell him all of the things that her tone could possibly mean because it wasn’t what she said, it was how she said it.
So, how did she say it? She had said it softly. That could mean she didn’t want others to hear, which wasn’t necessarily a good or bad thing.
How was she standing? That mattered. Body language was ninety percent of communication. It was open. She had unfolded her arms. That meant she wasn’t opposed to further communication. That was a good thing.
How was she dressed? That mattered, too. She was in a one-piece blue ZUMR jumpsuit, which meant that she was working and he had lost all perspective on the conversation and was possibly going crazy and why did she have this effect on him?
And how long had he been staring now? Oh, no, he was well beyond thoughtful pause and considered silence and was moving deep into awkward moment territory. He had to say something. “Hey, Hailey?”
“Yes, Jake?”
Something playful, but nothing serious. “Were we at least an item?”
“Good night, Jake.” She turned and went back to her truck.
He watched her walk away and sighed. He decided to bill the farm first thing in the morning. He hoped they paid quickly. Hopefully before they came back out here and saw the damage that had been done. But it could wait until morning. He just wanted to go home.
Read the rest now!
in
JUNKERS
Also by Benjamin Wallace
JUNKERS
Junkers
Junkers Season Two
DADS VS
Dads Vs Zombies
Dads Vs The World
Dads Vs Zombies: Year 2
SHATTERED ALLIANCE
Shattered Alliance
Sends in the Clones
Alone on Altair
THE BULLETPROOF ADVENTURES
OF DAMIAN STOCKWELL
Horror in Honduras
Terrors of Tesla
The Mechanical Menace
OTHER BOOKS
Tortugas Rising
SHORT STORIES
Commando Pandas & Other Odd Thoughts
UNCIVIL
UnCivil: The Immortal Engine
UnCivil: Vanderbilt’s Behemoth
About the Author
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Benjamin Wallace, Crossroads of the Apocalypse
