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Pilchard123:
https://xkcd.com/1133/

Zebediah:
Sorry this chapter took so long - I didn't have much time for writing last week.


The next morning was cloudy and threatening rain. We set out early in an effort to cover as much ground as we could before we had to take shelter. May and I agreed that they didn't look like the kind of clouds that would produce poisonous rain, but you could never be sure.

About noon the clouds started getting darker and the wind picked up. "We should find a place to hole up now," I said.

"Too right," May agreed. "Looks like there's a building just past those trees."

It turned out to be an old barn on the edge of an overgrown farm pasture. The roof looked intact, though all the paint had long since peeled off the acid-scarred wooden boards of the walls. "Ought to do to ride out the storm," I said.

"Let's check it out," May said, checking her rifle.

We both held our weapons at ready as we went inside. The barn had old stalls for horses or cows, but naturally they were empty now. "Looks clear," I said.

But then May brought her weapon up. "Something up above," she hissed.

I looked up at the hay loft. "Rats? Birds?" I guessed.

But then something shot out of the darkness overhead and hit me hard in the chest, knocking me flat on my back. My rifle was torn from my hands and flung away from me. Then it turned on May.

It looked like a large dog. A large, hairless, metal dog with glowing eyes and chrome teeth. May got off one shot that ricocheted off the robot dog's steel skull. Then it charged. May tried to dodge, but it sank its teeth into her left leg and started thrashing her back and forth like a rag doll.

I struggled to my feet and looked around for something – anything – I could use as a weapon. I saw what appeared to be a rusted pitchfork leaning against a wall. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. I grabbed it, moved behind the dog, and stabbed downward with all my strength.

It worked about as well as I expected. The tines on the pitchfork broke, though one lodged itself in the dog's hip joint. It shook its head, and there was a loud tearing noise as flung May against the wall of the barn. Then in an instant it had turned and was facing me. It paused for a moment to size me up, then readied itself to attack again.

Just before the dog charged, I heard a high-pitched whine. May had crawled up behind the robot, and she grabbed the robot just as it crouched to leap at me. There was a bright flash and a smell of burning electronics.

The next thing I knew the dog was on its back, thrashing about in convulsions. May crawled towards it, tore open a panel on the dog's chest, and yanked a handful of wires out. The robot beast stiffened and lay still.

"Fuck," May said softly.

"What," I gasped, "was that?"

"Wolfhound," May said. "Military bot. I was friends with the prototype, a long time ago. Fuck." She grimaced, and sat down, trying to straighten out her damaged leg.

"Shit," I said. "How bad?"

"Bad," was May's only answer.

I looked, and could see that she wasn't joking. A large chunk of blue plastic flesh had been torn from her knee, and white fluid oozed from inside. Worse, the torn end of a metal cable protruded from the wound. May probed the damage with her fingers. "Shit," she said, in a strangely flat voice. "I am so fucked."

"Can you walk?"

May just frowned and dug her fingers deeper into the injury. "If I can just..." she began, with a look of intense concentration on her face. Then there was a metallic click, and she sighed.

"There, I've got the knee joint locked," she said. "I can hobble along, for a little while."

"For how long?" I asked.

"Not long enough," she said. "That shock I gave the wolfhound damn near drained my batteries. I've got a mile, maybe two, before I shut down."

I could hear heavy raindrops starting to hit the roof overhead. "Well, looks like we aren't going anywhere for a while," I said.

"So what now?" May's face was devoid of hope.

"We wait out the rain, then we turn back," I said. "They have some working solar panels in Barre – if we can get you that far we can at least recharge you."

"If the vamps are even willing to help us," May muttered.

"They aren't vampires," I said. "They're actually good people. They'll help."

"Then what?"

"We get you back to Northampton and get you fixed."

May eyed me curiously. "You'd actually give up on finding your girlfriend to help me out?"

I shrugged. "Once you're fixed we can try again. The message from Clinton, if it really was Clinton, is three years old. A week or two more won't make much difference."

"Guess not," May conceded. "Look, I better shut down until we're ready to go again. Wake me up when the rain stops, okay?"

"Um, where's your on/off button?"

"Ha! Wouldn't you like to know?" May actually grinned a little. "Just tap me on the shoulder. I'll wake up."

So there I was, hiding in an abandoned barn in central Massachusetts with only a sleeping robot for company, while the rain poured down. I took a look outside. I had seen rain before that could raise blisters on exposed flesh and dissolve plastic. I had seen rain that stripped the leaves off of trees and bushes. I had seen rain that fell in fluorescent colors that evaporated into a choking fog that sent me frantically digging in my pack for my gas mask. This was none of those. This appeared to be... just rain. Plain, old-fashioned water falling from the sky, the way it used to before the world ended. It held out a promised of hope for a future I probably wouldn't live to see.

Meanwhile the present was problematic. If May really only had a couple of miles left in her batteries I'd have to carry her. She was small, but I knew from experience that androids weighed more than humans of the same size. I'd have to stash our packs somewhere – probably right here in the barn was the best place. And even if it hadn't been raining, there weren't enough hours of daylight left to get us back to Barre. So we were stuck in this barn overnight.

I looked over the  metal carcass of the wolfhound. I considered hooking its power pack up to May, but given that this was military-grade hardware I feared compatibility issues. I kicked it idly out of frustration.

"Watch it, meathead," a voice barked from behind me.

I turned, and then slowly raised my hands. There were three rifles pointed at me. The people holding them – well, one looked more-or-less human, apart from the green skin. One looked like an aluminum gorilla. And one could have been the steel-and-chrome skeleton of an old-school movie Terminator. None of them looked friendly. And they were between me and my weapons.

It was just that kind of day.

Pilchard123:
Cybrogs?

Zebediah:
Hmm.... I honestly hadn't thought of that. And trying to think of a way to work that into the story makes my head hurt.  :psyduck:

Pilchard123:
I did wonder if people would just think that was a typo. Evidently you didn't.

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