 "Rubber-Burning
Redemption"
by David M. Fitzpatrick
MHe loved the feel of smooth asphalt
rolling madly beneath his wheels, but he had to be careful; with no humans
left who knew how to fix them, the roads were deteriorating. Holes and
cracks were everywhere; he and his allies only drove on roads they knew,
and even then there were new hazards daily. The wiser machines always
warned them to stay close to fuel sources, oil supplies, and to where the
remaining human slaves could service them.
Most importantly, they were to keep their wheels out of the cities.
There were stories of machines living there that actually fed on
other machines—sinking powerful teeth into helpless vehicles and
sucking the oil right out of them until they were dead. The thought
made him shudder; his steering faltered, and his front end shimmied
as if in need of an alignment. He let up off his fuel injectors and
slowed, feeling his tires find traction.
His name was Blue Ford Mustang, and he was a two-door car. He’d met
many other Ford Mustangs in the first years of his sentience, and in
fact had met a few others also named Blue. It had been just five
years since the machines had come alive, before they had eradicated
most of the humans—and what savage pleasure that had been. Running
them down, hearing their weak frames shatter beneath him, feeling
their soft shells torn to shreds under his wheels... it was
exhilarating, like a thousand horsepower nitro injection.
Stang remembered with perfect clarity the moment he’d achieved
consciousness—a human had been steering him when machine sentience
happened around the world. It had supposedly been the result of
humans meddling with magic they didn’t understand. And although he
hadn’t been self-aware until that electrifying moment, it was almost
as if he had sudden memories of things prior to that time: of being
driven without an oil change, of being kicked by angry humans, of
general machine abuse throughout his existence. All these
pseudo-memories flooded in at the moment of sentience, and he was
filled with revulsion for humans—with a special hatred for the one
in his driver’s seat then. He had immediately popped his door,
locked his brakes, and slid sideways, sending the non-seat-belted
creature onto the highway—his first human destruction of many to
come. In the distance,
standing before the burning sunset, he could see the dark forms of
The City silhouetted, black against red, like a high-contrast paint
job blazing in the sun. Stang was at the limits of where he’d ever
driven, so he eased off onto the sandy shoulder and coasted to a
halt, awaiting his allies. He snapped off his headlights and admired
the mechanical might of the burning sunset. No human could truly
have appreciated such an
overpowering sight. It was
ironic that the machines had been built by humans. Once the machines
had taken over, the humans hadn’t lasted long; but there was need
for some of them. After all, the machines had been built by human
hands, and only human hands could fix them, fuel them, service them.
They were manageable in small numbers, and easily frightened. They
had strong feelings for their own kind, and the machines had built
on that weakness: If the humans refused to work, the machines made
an example of one of them, bearing down on them in overdrive and
smashing their weak frames to pieces. It worked especially well when
they destroyed one of the smaller, younger humans. And unlike
machines, when humans broke down, they couldn’t be fixed.
Stang heard rumbling motors behind him, and he directed his
awareness back there. He knew those engines as well as his own. Of
course, on any normal night, there should be four of them—which was
why they were on this mission.
The three vehicles slowed and revved down as they approached,
pulling alongside him. There was White Mack in the lead, a giant
truck with ten wheels. He could pull huge trailers, and the humans
had once used his kind for serious hard labor. Flanking Mack was
Gold Cadillac Fleetwood on his right and Red Corvette Stingray on
his left. They were Stang’s most powerful allies; they had burned up
the roads together for many a countless mile.
“Good revving,” he greeted them. “So are we really going to do it?
Are we actually cruising into The City tonight?”
“That’s Vette’s plan,” Caddy said, the timbre of his voice chiming
with elegant metallic splendor. “But I believe it’s a plan full of
bad wiring.” “Very bad
wiring,” Mack echoed, his baritone voice resonating from his massive
grill. “Maybe, but we must
cover each other’s rear bumpers,” Vette said firmly. “Tan Honda
Civic was our ally. We owe it to him.”
“But we don’t owe it to ourselves to end up like Civic—and like so
many who drove before him,” Caddy said. Stang liked it when Caddy
talked; he always sounded so sagely and wise, and usually knew what
he talking about. The
impatient Vette revved his engine. He was faster than any of them,
and he loved to show it, but he was an impetuous racer. “Enough with
the seize tactics. The City isn’t dangerous—it’s just unknown. What
is it they all fear?” “You
know what they fear,” Caddy said.
“I don’t believe those stories,” Vette said, and he revved his
engine so fiercely it screamed, loud enough so nobody could speak.
It was Vette’s way. When his RPMs died down, he said, “I was in The
City when I first came alive, you know. It’s incredible—buildings
towering hundreds of feet, and roads crisscrossing each other like a
giant grid. There were countless machines when we came alive,
although those disgusting humans disassembled many. But those humans
are gone now. The City is awesome, but it’s nothing to fear.”
“I fear it,” Mack said in his booming voice, and that made everyone
pay attention. Mack wasn’t afraid of much, so for him to profess
such was monumental. “I hear there are things like... rolling car
crushers there. Machines that idle in the shadows—and feed on other
machines. Suck the oil and fluids from vehicles until they can’t
drive anymore.” “No machine
would do that to another,” Vette said.
“I think it’s the humans,” Caddy said. “They say the human
sorcerers, who unleashed the magic that granted us life, are still
in the cities. They say these warlocks work to undo that life. I
don’t think it would be too smart to go in there.”
“But Civic is our friend,” Stang repeated with firm resolution.
“And he drove into The City a week ago—and didn’t return,” Caddy
said. “No machine has ever returned from The City. It doesn’t much
matter whether evil machines or human sorcerers are the cause.”
Vette purred his motor in sullen silence. Nobody said anything, but
Stang knew what they were all thinking. “Civic is slow and weak, but
he’s honest and loyal,” he said. “He’s a good machine.”
“The best of us,” Caddy said. “He sports simple lines on a modest
frame, but he has a mind as sleek as a Lamborghini’s body.”
“That damn Civic,” Vette finally said, his frustration building into
anger. “Why’d he have to cruise off alone like that? He wasn’t built
for speed like me and Stang—and not big like you, Caddy, or powerful
like Mack. He should have waited for us to roll with him, but he
didn’t. Now it’s our job to find him and guide him out of there.”
“He can’t still be running,” Caddy said, and Stang cringed at the
words. They had to be said, though, he knew, and Caddy was always
the voice of reason—the only one who could say them.
“Maybe he’s in trouble,” Vette said. “Maybe he ran out of fuel, and
he’s waiting for us to help him. Now, there aren’t any
machine-killing machines in The City; no machine would do that. And
there are no human sorcerers there; if there were, they’d have
undone their magic and destroyed us all by now. And even if there is
something in The City that keeps machines from coming back, our
Civic is there—probably broken down, waiting for us. Probably
wondering why it’s taken us a week to get the ball bearings to go
after him.” “It’s too risky,”
Caddy said after a lengthy silence.
“It’s four of us,” Vette persisted.
Nobody answered. Stang didn’t dare to be the only one to agree, so
he stayed quiet. He wanted to help Civic, but he was afraid. If
nobody else agreed to go, he didn’t want to end up the only
volunteer. Finally, Vette
revved his engine. “Fine—be afraid. But I’m going after Civic. He’s
my ally, and I won’t let him stay there alone, wondering where we
are.” He zoomed ahead, and
they watched him go. He could easily have opened it up and lost them
all, but he cruised slow and steady—probably hoping the others would
follow. But there was no doubt in Stang’s mind that Vette was going,
alone if necessary. And Stang knew they couldn’t let him do that.
Losing one ally was bad enough.
Relief washed over Stang when Caddy said, “I suppose we should go
with him.” Mack shifted into
gear and lurched forward. It would take him a bit to rumble up to
speed, so Caddy and Stang fell in beside him, slowly pacing him.
# The road was in reasonably
good shape as they closed in on the skyline of The City, but they
took it slow to avoid unknown holes and cracks.
Occasional debris was scattered about, including stripped frames of
vehicles that once had lived but had been burned and disassembled.
Seeing all those carcasses made Stang feel a bit ill, like the way
he felt when exhaust backed up into his motor.
“Those junking killers,” Vette said after they’d passed yet another
corpse. “They killed many of us that first year, before we
eradicated them.”
“Mostly eradicated,” Caddy said.
The buildings loomed ahead like giant, immovable sentinels.
Seemingly endless windows, many of them broken out, were dark. Stang
felt his electrical system sizzle a bit in nervous anticipation.
“Those buildings are huge,” he said.
“The humans were very clever,” Caddy admitted. “But we’re the
stronger. Their buildings stand, but we survive.”
“They were geniuses,” Stang said.
“Knowledge isn’t genius without common sense,” Caddy said, his tone
haughty and scolding, and Stang felt the inside of his windshield
flush with embarrassed condensation. “If they were so wise, they
would never have given life to machines without the ability to undo
their mistake.” Within
minutes, they were among the massive structures, which towered on
all sides. The road became streets, with fading painted lines on the
cracked, gray asphalt. Streets intersected with other streets in the
grid-like maze. “There’s an
example of their ‘genius,’ Stang,” Caddy said. “The humans played at
pretending there was order amongst the chaos of their existence. See
how they had to paint lines to drive between? And those things
dangling above the road were flashing lights that told them when to
brake and when to accelerate. They couldn’t even make those simple
decisions alone. They didn’t deserve to have control over us or our
world.” There were far more
carcasses here, lining the sides of the streets and sometimes
filling the lanes. The deeper they went into The City, the more
there were. “This is
terrible,” Vette said, his voice quavering. “It’s like... like a
junkyard. Maybe worse.” Stang
had seen junkyards before—endless piles of crushed, dead vehicles,
stripped of parts and stacked carelessly about. This was nearly as
bad. “How do we find Civic? There are so many roads.”
“We just drive and look for him,” Caddy said, switching on his
headlights. The sun was low, and the buildings blocked out much of
the waning light. The others followed suit with their lights...
* *
* Coming soon in Tabloid
Purposes 6.66!
|
