Duck and Cover

Here's the beginning of the next volume of "the outsider"- enjoy!

He walked.

It had been six months or so since he had taken down Mills. Afterwards he had been invited by the grateful Chinese villagers to stay with them. He had said no, that he was grateful all the same, but had to move on. The truth was that he didn’t want to get attached to anyone. The world was too harsh a place for that. The other reason was that he had not forgiven himself for what he had done that dreadful, delightful night. He shuddered as he walked as he recollected that deep down in his battered soul, he had gotten a kick from killing those deserters. He still remembered Mills’ terrified face looking up at him as he dropped the hand grenade into the neck guard of the power armour suit.

The world was pretty much the same, lots of detours to take to avoid the vast, shifting rad-clouds that could strip the flesh from a man’s body in seconds. The same violence in every town, looting, riots, prostitution, slavery, and narcotics. The black economy was the only economy left in such a shattered environment. All John did was shake his head sadly and move on. He did not want to get involved any more. What use was it? He could not stop it on his own, and nobody else gave a shit. Everyone just kept their heads down, and tried to live through the day.

He halted; there was the noise again. A strange, lost lowing sound, mournful and melancholy. The radiation had done some strange things to the wildlife, and the Americans had used some kind of bio weapon called “FEV-12�, a mutant strain of some man-made virus, but as to what this virus was meant to do was always completely classified, but there were rumours. Rumours of lab technicians growing extra fingers through handling sealed cases of the stuff. He shrugged it off as pure rumour, and decided to make camp for the night.

Night now, the flickering of the fire making shimmering shadows come alive on nearby rocks in a serene dance. John asleep, flinching slightly in his sleep. Then a noise. John awakes, and holding his knife creeps up to the giant boulder from behind which the clattering noises were issuing. He decides to lean around and see what is coming. As he leans around, a shape looms directly in front of his face. The facemask of a soldier wearing American power armour.
***************************************************

And part 2:

There followed one of those silences where the scene could shift either way, into violence or a relaxation of threats. John felt a bead of perspiration run down his forehead. He held his knife out rather feebly in front of him, while the soldier had a gun pointed in John’s face. This tableau remained stationary for about ten seconds, then the soldier seemed to unfreeze and let a relieved sigh escape, made metallic by the rasp of the respirator. He lowered the gun, and made a hand signal. Six men came out from hiding places in the nearby rocks and moved cautiously forward.

‘Jeez, man are we glad to see another westerner.’ Said the soldier, whom John could now see was the sergeant.

‘Haven’t seen any UN troops in a while.’ Said John. The image of Mills’ face again, the shattered corpses of the raiders, cutting Francois’ throat. John shuddered.

‘What’s your unit, pal?’ The sergeant had a distinctive Southern accent.

‘I was with the fifty-third. We got dropped right in the middle of the shitstorm and… things got crazy.’ More images, the hospital in the village, Virgil begging for his life at the barrel of a gun.

‘Where are they?’ A tone of concern, but also suspicion.

‘They got killed by raiders.’ John replied, lamely. What could he say? ‘I killed them all’? How would they take that?

‘Jeez, that’s too bad man. Hey, we’re getting out of this shithole of a country. Wanna come with?’ Asked the sergeant.

‘How? I thought all communication with the West had been severed after the bombs dropped.’ Said John, bewildered.

‘So did we, but we’ve managed to get in contact with a U.S airbase that survived, somehow, and that’s where we’re headed.’

‘If the airbase is still there, then how come the people haven’t just fucked off home in the Vertibirds?’ Asked John.

‘Ah. There’s the catch. You see U.S airbase FO-37 is special. Its central computers and traffic control system are all computerised. The computer is sentient, and we picked up its signal by chance when we were foraging. The troops are dead. The computer wouldn’t mention how, but they are no more. It told us there are plenty of fully fuelled up Vertibirds good up to one hundred thousand miles before a refuel, even auto-piloting themselves. The computer even gave us exact co-ordinates.’

‘Count me in.’ Said John.

They broke camp at first light, and as they set out, a melancholy lowing sound could be heard in the near distance.

(to be continued soon...)

They moved on swiftly, and as they travelled John got to know them all.

The sergeant was called Sam, and he had been a farmer before the war in Texas.

The corporal was British and was called Simon, and had been educated at Cambridge, had gotten a scholarship from the army, and after graduating had had to join up for an eighteen-month tour of duty. It hadn't seemed so bad then.

The others were called Mike, Joe, Vallas, Cortez and Wade. Mike came from Michigan, Joe from New York. Cortez and Vallas were cousins from Mexico.

Wade was from Colorado, and was a different story. Caught red handed burgling a house, he was given a choice of two years jail time or one year in military service. The others gave him a wide berth, and he was not trusted with any responsibility.

These eight men walked. According to the instructions of the computer at the base, the airbase was approximately thirty miles of their current position in a north-westerly direction. They marched silently under a pale purple sky, across hard baked dead soil, searching for water with the equipment the soldiers had, and taking rad-x to protect themselves from radiation poisoning.

After walking for ten miles they entered a network of gullies and canyons. Here they were slowed by having to find the correct path to proceed and backtracking when they reached dead ends.

'How long does this shit go on for?' Asked John.

'Uh... I'll take a reading off the NavComp. Ah. From what it says here, these gullies lead right up to the base itself.' Said the sergeant.

'Damn' Well, let's get walking.'

Then they heard a peculiar noise, a sort of melancholy lowing sound, sort of sad, longing and lonely. All the men were reminded of their homes, of how they missed their families, of how their families probably didn't survive.

'What the fuck is that, by the way? I keep hearing it, but I've never heard such a noise before.' Said John.

'It reminds me of the cattle I herded back in the day, but there's something extra to it, it's almost like it's lowing and growling at the same time. I don't know what to make of it. It's probably just a wounded cow or something.' Said the sergeant.

'But we've heard it before, every now and then for the last ten miles or so...' Protested the corporal.

'Alright, then. Let's split up and search for this thing, see if Simon here's right or not. Simon, take Mike, Vallas and Joe, and go around that ridge to the right. I'll take the others around the ridge to the left.'

'Yes sir.'

After two hours of fruitless searching they had found nothing, no creature anywhere, and they had been extremely thorough. They agreed that there was no creature following them. Maybe it was the call of a strange kind of bird or something, but that's all it could be.

They set up camp for the night, about twelve hours' walk from the airbase. They were sat around the fire, eating cooked lizard and drinking specially treated water, being sure to pass a Geiger counter over it all first.

John was woken from his sleep by Cortez, who had been on guard duty while the others slept.

'You gotta wake up man, it's Vallas, it's Vallas!' His earnest face was stained with tears and flushed with anger.

John sprang up, reached for a handgun and followed Cortez. They went around a rock formation and down a gulley and John saw Vallas...

Or what was left of him. Vallas was lying down, but his lower half had been torn away and his intestines were strewn all over the gulley, along with liberal splashes of bright gore.

Sitting in one corner was Wade, sitting down hugging his knees and rocking. His arms were soaked in blood, and it was clear that he wasn't fully coherent.

'What happened here?' John asked Cortez.

'That filthy prick killed my cousin, sir. Butchered him like a hog. Vallas had beaten him at a card game earlier, you see, and so while Vallas was patrolling away from camp, he snuck up on him and killed him.' Cortez stated, his tone deliberately flat and calm, but underneath John could see a killer hatred bubbling to the surface.

'You are relieved from duty Cortez. Get some rest.'

'Yes sir.'

John grabbed the arm of Sam as he passed.

'What happened here, Sam? How much do we know?' Asked John.

'Well, we won't get anything from him, he's catatonic. But we can't find his knife anywhere. He must have disposed of it before we found him. Far as I see it, he's guilty as hell. You know when he was pulled in for burglary, they found he had robbed a liquor store with a knife too?'

'No I didn't.'

'Well there you go. This guy has "guilty" written all over him. I'm surprised he didn't do something like this sooner.' Said Sam, the sergeant.

'Well, I think we should all stick together tonight. Keep one man on watch and another watching Wade here. If there's any change in his status, let me know.' Said John.

'Good plan.'

Opinions anybody?

Bleh, I take it you all have no opinions then.
Here's part 4:

John was shaken awake.

'You gotta wake up man, something bad's happened!'

John looked up blearily and through the haze of exhaustion he saw Cortez, whose face was frozen in grim terror. He was bent over John, shaking and sweating, gasping for breath as if he had been running hard.

'What's happened?' He demanded of Cortez, but he had collapsed to the floor and was crying, sobbing into his hands.

John cursed, and picked up Mike's assault rifle and took stock of the situation. He could hear raised voices down the gully where they had left Wade. Joe was meant to be guarding Wade. He ran down the gully, and this is what he saw...

Simon, Mike and Sam were stood over what was left of Wade and Joe. The top of Wade's head had been smashed against something hard, and had smashed open like an eggshell. His legs were missing and certain of his intestines were spread across the floor where they had gushed from his gaping stomach wound. His right arm was missing from below the elbow, and the rictus of fear frozen onto his face was too ghastly too look at. Joe was even worse. He had taken a gash upon the chest that had torn all the ribs out of the left side of his body, some of them puncturing through the right side of his chest. Somehow his spine had snapped and the base was sticking out of his stomach. There was little missing, but it looked instead like he had been hooked by something, then smashed upon the rocks with great force over and over. Broken bones were sticking out of his legs, and the way they were bent was horrible to see. Just at that moment Simon was sick. It didn't look like it had been the first time either, from his pale face and stained shirt.

'What happened?' John asked Sam.

'I don't know, but from what I can make out, we do have a creature onto us. Something stalked Cortez and chased him through the gullies. Luckily Cortez lost it and got back alive.' Said Sam. John looked at his new friend again with pity. The man who he had spoken with just yesterday had gone, and in place of the brave leader was a bent, sad faced, greying and balding old man, a man bending under the weight of his burden.

John came to a decision.

'Come on, we're going to hunt it'

Well, I think that I've already said my opinion, but if you wish... Good story, but don't you think that your posts are too short... And you'll have to get used to get no responses. The fan-fic is very messy stuff and only few want to read it, except moderators... Ok, see ya.

I prefer writing in lots of short episodes anyway. Keeps the story moving nicely. Anyway, there are some nice twists coming up, so keep watching, everybody!

They moved through the night in single file, John taking point, his clammy hands holding a FN-FAL 109 assault rifle. Shadows in the dark took on a malevolence he had not before seen. Any one of them could be concealing the creature that had killed three of them already that night. As they moved silently through the canyons, John fought the urge to shiver. He was tired, he had barely slept all night, and now he was feeling the cold of the desert night sucking the strength out of him. He shrugged it off. Suck it up, that's what his drill sergeant would say if he were here. Suck it up.

Just then a pebble fell down from the rocky outcrop above his head. He shouted, whirled and fired at the noise, fired and kept firing until he heard the click of the empty magazine. There was nothing there. He was getting jumpy, and he knew it, but he knew he had to be strong. The others were too green to do this really and Sam looked ill. He was very quiet as they proceeded and John suspected that Sam blamed himself for the loss of his men. In any case, he was no longer capable of leading the squad, so John had stepped in.

'Sir, look at this.' The voice of Simon.

John turned around and saw Simon looking into a side path that they had passed. He cautiously walked over to where Simon was standing, and as he turned the corner, he saw a terrible sight. Right in front of him was a rotting human corpse, missing most of its intestines and one leg. Behind it were other corpses in various states of decay and fragments of bone going green with mould. John noticed something, a sound, a slow hollow rasping sound, like an animal breathing.

'Shhh! Stay here, I'm going to check it out.' He motioned to his men to take cover, and silently moved forward.

He saw a tunnel entrance in the rock formation, and ducking down, he crawled into the tunnel, holding his flashlight in front of him. The air was stifling as he crawled through the tunnel on his knees. It was too low to accommodate him standing but more than high enough for him to crawl through, and it was very wide. As he crawled, he noticed small clumps of reddish brown fur lying in the tunnel in occasional intervals. The tension he was feeling as he worked his way through the tunnel was unbearable. Very soon he would come across the creature responsible for the death of three soldiers he had known, as well as all the other people outside. The sound was getting louder now. He was getting close. He noticed a small bead of perspiration trickle down his forehead, hang from the end of his nose for a moment, then drop to the floor with a soft sound, disturbing the dust of decades on the cave floor. John wiped away the perspiration as he came out of the end of the tunnel into a large cavern.

The stench in the cavern was overpowering, the charnel house smell of death. As he searched with the flashlight, crystalline structures reflected the light back at him, dazzling him, and he was ill prepared for the torch beam alighting on a titanic creature. John estimated that it must be as tall as a man, up to its shoulder. It had four legs, each culminating in a huge paw with four black retractable talons. Moving the torch over this hulking figure he illuminated the creature's face. It had a prominent muzzle and long fangs, and its face was bloodstained from its recent meal. As the light moved upwards John saw that it also had a pair of large black horns jutting from its forehead. As John noticed this he realised too late that he had shone the torch in the monster's eyes. The creature bellowed, and from a lying position it stood up, looked at John with anger in its eyes and pounced.

(Just a little chapter now, but I like to keep the quick, punchy feel going):

John dived to the right and the creature missed him, slamming its right shoulder into the cavern wall, a deep reverberating boom resonating through the cavern. It turned lightning quick, movements as oiled as those of a snake, and struck out with its paw. It caught him full in the chest, and he flew backwards, his assault rifle skidding across the cave floor well out of his reach. As he lay there stunned, it padded over to him slowly, snarling, slavering and baring fangs. It stood over him, and moved its face close to his. This is it, thought John, one bite and it'll all be over. But it started to sniff him. John tried to covertly move, but suddenly found a paw on his chest, restraining him. However, as the creature continued to snuffle John, he noticed something. There was the handle of a dagger protruding from the creature's chest, obviously it had not been thrust deep enough. He looked up as the creature opened its jaws, preparing for the bite. The creature brought its face yet closer, maw wide open, and John struck out with his hand, utilising all the force he had left, and drove the dagger completely into the beast's chest. It roared and reared, staggering backwards, shocked that the prey had managed to wound it so. John took his chance, got to his feet and scrambled for the machine gun. The creature was sitting on the floor, head drooping, breath coming in heavy rasps. John pressed the muzzle to the creature's head and fired. Fired until the magazine was empty. Then he took out his own knife, and rolling the beast over onto its back, he cut open its chest and retrieved the dagger. They were the same, as he had suspected.

John saw it all in an instant. Wade had been surprised when he saw the creature eating Vallas, and the creature had attacked him. He had stabbed it, and it had fled before the others had arrived. He tossed the knife aside, clattering on the cold floor. Then, wiping his hands on his clothes, he headed back to the others.

(The penultimate part)

As they wandered on through the gullies and crevasses, dawn came. They had not dared to stay encamped for fear of what else may be lurking nearby. They had buried what was left of their comrades and set out straight away, intending to reach the airbase as soon as possible that day and avoid further tragedies.

They reached the airbase at about two in the afternoon of that day without further incident. The base was large, with imposing concrete walls and a thick steel gate, but the silence emanating from the place was eerie. There was also a terrible stench on the air emanating from the base, the smell of death.

Wondering how to gain entry to the imposing fortification, they went right up to the steel gate, and found an intercom system. John pushed it, and it buzzed.

'Hello, I have been expecting you. Please come in.' Said a computerised voice, the voice of the supercomputer which controlled the base.

The gate slid into the right wall and they passed into the base. Nobody could be seen. There were not even any bones. However, they could smell death in the air, and they were extremely cautious as they entered the main hub of the military base. Inside they found the base had been kept immaculately clean, and John saw a little floor cleaning robot scurry away around the corner.

'All right, let's split up. Sam, you take Simon and go down that corridor there, see what you can find. Mike, you go out and check the building across the courtyard. I'll go this way, and let's all keep a lookout for any kind of records, and keep in radio contact, I have a bad feeling about this.' Said John.

They all went their separate ways, and John went down the corridor he had designated to himself, and found all the doors electronically locked. All except one. The last door on the left was open, and John cautiously entered, tensely gripping his assault rifle. The room was spotlessly clean, nothing out of place. It was a dormitory, made for one man, probably an officer. It was perfectly tidy. Then he noticed something. A speck on the carpet. He knelt down to investigate, and came to the conclusion that it was a speck of dried blood. His blood froze. He knew he had to contact the others.

'Sam, Simon, do you read me? Sam, Simon, I repeat, do you read me? Fuck! Mike, are you there? Mike! Can anybody hear me?' He shouted into his radio, panic rising within him.

'They are beyond your reach now.' The same cool, clinical synthesised computer voice, coming out of a speaker in the wall.

John screamed in rage and fired a burst at the speaker. It exploded in a shower of sparks. He ran out of the room, and saw several Mr. Handy droids wielding the same rifle as him coming down the corridor towards him. He fled. They fired. He made it to the end of the corridor, slammed his fist on the button and the door opened with a pressurised hiss. As soon as he was through, he pounded the button on the other side, closing the door again. Then he smashed the box holding the button to pieces with the butt of his rifle and tore out the wires, preventing the door from opening. A bullet grazed his right ear. More droids coming from his right, so he kept on running, and dived into the first open doorway. He quickly got to his feet, hit the button to shut the door and broke the door in the same way as before. When he turned around, he realised he was in the armoury. At the same time, there was a dull thump on the door and a great dent appeared. The droids were trying to break through the door. Panicking, he grabbed a large belt fed Colt assault rifle, loaded it with a belt of thick, armour piercing rounds, and fired at the door. The slow repetitious thumping of the unwieldy gun counterpointed the holes appearing in the door and the sizzling noise of circuits being smashed by thick rounds. A few seconds later, he could hear no more droids on the other side of the door. He took a plasma grenade, ran to the far end of the armoury, pulled the pin and threw it at the door, then hit the deck. The explosion sent shards of white hot metal over his head, to lodge in the thick steel wall behind him. He grabbed a few more belts for the gun and ran out of the ruined door, turning right, in the direction the robots had been coming from.

At the end of the corridor was a small room. In it was a computer. John noted instantly that it was not linked to the main computer, as there was no wire linking it to the mainframe like one he had seen earlier. He sat down in the seat, and switched it on. He knew there had to be records of what happened here, and once the MilComNet computer had booted up, he began to search. He found the personnel records, logging the number of troops present at one thousand five hundred. Nothing was logged about any kind of attack, but searching about the mainframe itself, he uncovered an interesting piece of information. The mainframe had been updated just days before the nuclear holocaust had happened. It had been a minor update to the code, designed as a countermeasure for the new biological warfare techniques developed by the Chinese. The update told the mainframe that if an infection took hold of the base, that it must do what is necessary and eliminate the contagion. Then he searched for the most recent entry, and found a report that a cold had swept through the base, and the mainframe had decided to eliminate the contagion by eliminating all the soldiers at the base. The gate could not be opened, and they had been whittled down until the survivors had holed up in the main building. As John finished his search he noted a bloodstained fingerprint on the keyboard and at once knew what had happened to the person who had written the report. He was dead, along with the rest of them. Along with the others he had brought with him. All at once he realised he was alone again. Yes, he had always been alone, but he decided it was time to find the vertibird and get the hell out of here. Not even a small army could stand up to these robots.

He opened the door on the other side of the hallway, and reeled back in horror. The rotted remains of over one thousand people, the stench of a charnel house. And lying among the bones and rags, three bloodstained corpses. Sam, Simon and Mike.

At once he changed his mind. He would avenge his comrades, and then leave. He released the safety catch from his gun, and moved out.

Having backtracked to the armoury, he located three sizeable plasma charges, and slung them in a backpack. Coming out of the armoury again, he was confronted by another Mr. Handy droid. He fired before it managed to even ready its gun and it flew backwards, chunks knocked out of it by the powerful gun John was carrying. It slammed against the wall and lay there, fizzing and sparking, and twitching its multiple limbs spasmodically. However, then a door at the end of the corridor burst open and at least six more droids started firing at him, so he ran in the opposite direction, through a previously shut door. The he saw more droids coming down the corridor to his right, and ran left, down the corridor. He saw a door closing, and dived, slid across the ground and under the door, just clearing it on the other side before it connected with the ground with a clunk. As he got to his feet, he saw robots coming towards him, and dents started appearing in the door behind him. He pulled the trigger on his gun again, and the three droids in front of him were downed in seconds. He stepped over their smoking wreckage and into the first open door he came across. He gasped at the immensity of it all.

He was in the main hub of the mainframe. Right in front of him was the main body of the supercomputer that had run the base, and all around the vast hall were endless banks of data, rows of terminals and miles of power cables.

'Welcome, lifeform. I have been expecting you.' Said the same synthesised computer voice he had heard before from one of the speakers concealed in the ceiling.

'What do you want from me?' Shouted John.

'Cleanse, purify, do what is necessary, purify, cleanse, cleanse all, purify. Necessary. Necessary. Purify. All.' Said the computer in a jerky, muddled voice, altering vastly in speed and pitch.

The main supercomputer housing the consciousness of the supercomputer suddenly shut down. John took advantage of this to plant the plasma charges in the room, one by the main supercomputer, one by the power source, and one by the main databank. Just as he finished however, he heard the computer come back online.

'What are you doing? You cannot leave here now.' The computer said.

'You bet I am, and you're going up in smoke. I found you, I'm going to blow you up and then I'm going to get out of here.'

'HAHAHAHAHAHA!' John could not believe it. The computer was laughing.

'What? What's so fucking funny?' Shouted John over the cacophony of synthesised laughter.

'I apologise. It's just that you think you found me. On the contrary, I lured you here. Did you think it was coincidence that only certain doors were open? Or did you not notice that my droids were driving you towards the centre of the building? God, you are so naive. To think that you actually thought you found me of your own accord? I apologise, but now I think is your time to die. Goodbye.'

John noticed that while he had been talking with the computer at least fifteen Mr. Handy droids had surrounded him. He stood perfectly still, aware that they were all equipped with FN-FAL assault rifles. He tensed, knowing that any second now they would pull the trigger, and he had only one chance. He saw one of them increase the pressure on the trigger, and hit the deck just as they all started firing. They all missed him and several were hit by their fellows, collapsing to the floor, sparking and twitching lifelessly. He quickly scrambled behind one of the ruined droids and stuck his gun over the top of it, firing blind. He heard the chattering of machine guns, but over the top of it he heard the sound of metal being torn apart by his gun and droids collapsing to the floor. The only problem was that his cover was disintegrating under the firepower being levelled at it.

He risked looking over the top of his cover, and saw more droids flooding in behind the ones he had already destroyed. He ducked and reloaded his gun, sticking it back on the top of the dead droid and firing blind, firing and hearing robots drop. However, he could hear more coming, and they were getting closer to him. He heard his gun click as it ran out of rounds, and heard the droids surge forward. He looked over the remains of the droid he was hiding behind and saw them approaching, firing all the time. Several bullets skimmed over his head, narrowly missing him, sizzling through the air and embedding themselves in the computer banks behind him. They were pouring over the remains of the multitude of robots he had taken down. Then he realised he had no more choice. He flipped the cap on the detonator, and set off the charge by the power source, right by where most of the droids were.

The flash was blinding, and the noise deafened John for several seconds. Shards of superheated steel shot over his head, destroying the computer bank behind him completely. He took the opportunity to reload, and stood up, firing at the few remaining robots, destroying them quickly. The hall was devastated, electrical fires running along the wall to his right, sensitive computer banks exploding, showering the room with sparks and fragments of debris. The remains of the droids caught in the explosion had been scattered all over the room. A robotic arm had even lodged itself in the front of the giant supercomputer, which was emitting strange noises.

'It is. Not over yet. Yet. Yet. Not over. Nonononono not over. Not yet. Die. Die. Die. Die. Not over. Die. Yet.' Said the computer in a scrambled voice.

John ran to the nearest functional terminal. It read "Downloading to emergency host". He searched to find what the "emergency host" was. The screen came up with "Error, error, invalid data query, re-enter stated query". John cursed and hit the panel with the butt of his gun. It burst, spraying him with sparks, but he was too high on adrenaline to feel it.

'This is what the emergency host is.' Said a voice from behind him.

John turned and saw a robot about one foot taller than him, shaped like a human being, with a flawless impassive steel face, beautiful and terrible at once. Its arm shot out and caught John around the throat. The other wrenched the gun out of his hands and crushed it in the middle before casting it aside. It lifted John in the air.

'You have ruined the base. You have brought disease to the base. Contamination. Disease. Destroy contamination. Take all available steps. All available. Take. Steps. Steps. All. Steps.' Said the robot, in that same odd mixture of pitch and speed as before.

It threw him across the room, and stalked after him. As he got to his feet, it punched him hard in the face, and he fell again. His hands alighted on an assault rifle, and he brought it round, and fired. He hit the robot in the face with a burst of gunfire and it did not even slow it down. As he rose, he swung the gun like a club, holding the barrel in both hands, and hit the robot on the side of the head. The gun shattered, and it punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over. The robot grabbed his hair and pulled his head up, and punched him in the face again. He collapsed to the floor, knowing that he was finished. There was no way he could defeat this robot in a straight fight. The robot kicked him hard in the stomach, and he curled into a ball, holding his stomach, face creased with agony. The robot picked him up, and swung its fist around again. However, just before it connected, it stopped.

John noticed that the lights had gone out in the robot's eyes. He struggled to free himself from the robot's immobile grip. He knocked the robot to the floor with a kick, and ran to recover the remaining explosives. These he attached to the body of the robot, one he lodged in the stomach, and one in a cavity in the back of its neck. It had still not recovered from whatever had caused it to shut down. He ran back to the armoury, noting on the way that all the Mr. Handy droids had shut down. In the armoury, he found what he was looking for. Wrapped around some vast storage boxes were some extremely thick steel chains. He gathered a good length of this chain, as well as some metal spikes, presumably used for putting up razor wire. This he loaded into a big box, and loaded onto the front of a forklift. He drove the forklift back to the computer hall, through the narrow corridors. He found the robot still offline, lying motionless on the floor. He unpacked the chains and spikes, and tied the robot's arms to its body, then with further winding around its body, bound its legs together. Then, taking another discarded rifle from the wreckage, he hammered in the metal spikes as far as they would go into the floor. Then he sat next to the robot and waited. An hour or so later it came back online, and as it regained movement, it strained against its chains, bellowing furiously in a garbled voice.

'You cannot destroy me! Destroy! You! No! You!' Bellowed the robot.

John drove the forklift back as far as possible, and then detonated the two remaining charges. The immobile robot was obscured by the sheet of flame that shot upwards, blasting a hole through the roof. John kept watching with straining eyes, and saw something walk out of the flames. It was the robot. As it came nearer, John saw that it was limping. A hole had been melted in its stomach, and there were wires hanging out of its throat. The remnants of the chains had melted to its body, but it was still in one piece. John quickly got into the forklift, and drove it at the robot at full speed. The robot stood still, waiting for the impact. The forklift smashed into the robot, crumpling the front end, but John kept up the pressure, and pushed the robot inexorably backwards, while it was trying to grab him, lashing out with powerful fists, crumpling the front of the forklift. However, the robot had not noticed that it was being pushed towards the wall, and John kept the forklift going until the robot and the forklift were jammed into the wall. He got out of the truck, and saw that the robot was trapped, flailing ineffectually, trying to remove itself from the wreckage of the front end of the forklift. John ran as far back as he could, and shot out the fuel tank of the forklift. The vehicle exploded in a great plume of fire and noise, showering the wrecked room with hot metal.

However, out of the rubble came the robot, now moving extremely slowly and jerkily, and emitting strange noises from its voice synthesiser. It roared, a bestial, guttural sound, and slowly walked towards John. Just then, a section of the ceiling collapsed above the robot, but it just shouldered the wreckage aside and kept coming. John fired at the robot, fired until he was out of bullets, but it just shrugged it off and kept coming. He cast the gun aside and fled out of the room, to the armoury. He remembered that his only hope lay in there now. He ran all the way back, noting that the fire that had started in the computer hall had now taken hold of the main building. He jumped over a section of burning floor, and turned into the armoury. Just as he did so, the wall behind him burst outwards and the robot lurched at him. John ducked, and ran to the back of the armoury, and pulled the dust cover off something he had found earlier. An anti-aircraft gun. Too heavy to move, he had not given it a second thought until now. Now he desperately tore the lid off a box of ammo, and jammed in a belt of huge, thick bullets. He pulled back the handle, aimed it at the robot, who was ten feet away and closing, and pulled the trigger. The steady thud, thud, thud of the gun jolted John hard and he had difficulty keeping a steady aim, but the gun was blasting chunks out of the robot. He aimed at its head, and a round smashed through its eye, and it jerked backwards, spasming as it moved. He fired until he ran out of bullets and all that was left of the robot was a husk, covered with dents and holes, jerking on the floor. He walked over to the robot and grabbed the wires hanging out of the hole in its throat, and pulled, tearing them out. The robot stopped moving and the light in its remaining eye died.

John stepped out the rear exit of the building, and turned to watch the smoke billowing out of the roof where it had collapsed. He knew that it was time to go now. He could see a few vertibirds parked on the airstrip nearby, and he got into one, activated it, and instructed it to take off. Then, taking over the controls, he fired the entire payload of missiles into the burning building, causing it to collapse. Then he set the vertibird to autopilot and flew away. He does not know yet where he will go, but he'll think of something, all right.

(The end of Volume 2, The final Volume, Volume 3 will come after christmas sometime)

Don't mean to be an ass, but you haven't done enough with the characters. You were off to a good start, too bad it all came down to gunbattle-this gunbattle-that.

Yeah, this Volume has been a bit combat intensive, but that's the nature of the wasteland, isn't it?

But there is still one Volume to go (and a bit), and for now at least he has escaped the wasteland. Let's just say that the next Volume will probably be a bit of a surprise for those who have followed it so far.

The robot item seems a bit overdrawn