David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

In the morning, when it rose, the sentinel came down off the mountain and into the Tucson foothills. From the Soldier Trailhead, the sentinel got a clear view of the dead city. Milagrosa, The Homestead, Laurel Hills, Outpost Preserve. The abandoned, desert manors of the rich. The sentinel rolled silently through the dust of the Catalina Highway. No cars blocked the path. The stucco mansions, set away from the road, flashed in the periphery — their solar panels and double-panes, cracked and filthy, alighting in the glow of the winter morning. The air was silent save for the shrieks of a lone Caracara that appeared in the sky overhead, disappearing into the south near the city center.

The sentinel was tracing the pack movement of revin tracks off the mountain and into the city. A herd. The tracks would appear on one side of the road and then cross over, disappearing in the asphalt — a trace line of toes in the dust, and skin fragments in the cracked asphalt. The tracks would splinter off — a smaller group darting off suddenly and into a subdivision or a large estate away from the road. The sentinel followed each of these broken trails, only to lead back to the main road. In one house, in Telesis Terrace, the sentinel found a family laid still in the master bedroom. They were dressed in church clothing, holding hands, eyes closed. Serene. The door had been forced open and revin footsteps circled the bodies, which were undisturbed. Excrement and urine filled the corners of the room. The revins had sat in this room, possibly for days, approaching the bodies then turning away. A medical doctorate diploma hung on the wall. The sentinel scanned the air and plucked the hand of the father. The bodies were full of formaldehyde and trace propofol. A German Shepherd, stuffed and preserved, was propped in the corner of the room, posed and staring into the entrance of the room.

Further down the road, the highway split off into Tanque Verde Road and the sentinel followed it, going deeper into the city. The houses were smaller and closer together, separated at times by a baseball field, a Safeway, or the Pantano Wash, which split the ten-lane road. Many of the buildings were boarded up, barricaded, and sandbagged. Some were burned to the ground. Some were untouched. They belied a city that had devolved into chaos and confusion. The silence of the ruined city contrasted with the deepening scene of memory lost — a trail of tumult and blood like wax cast from a dying candle. Graythorn and saltbush engulfed the remnants of a gas station.

Past Grant Road, the sentinel came upon Trail Dust Town — a Wild West theme park. A caricature façade of old saloons, rail stations, and banks, set away from the road, greeted families and visitors wanting to relive an earlier era. The evening sun, the amber and violet borealis, washed over the firmament and cast a shadow on the sentinel, which looked into one of the theme park buildings at an array of mannequins dressed in western garb. A showgirl in corset and petticoat. A marshal in suspenders and cotton trousers. And a dandy in duster and Dorchester. Another mannequin, undressed, was behind them in the shadows, looking out at the road. Its eyes fixed into the distance. It faded into the dark of the room and looked into the solitary optic lens of the sentinel. Then it was gone.

DDC39 rolled back slightly into the entrance of the park and pinged the periphery. There was no motion detected nearby and there was no thermal signature. There was a revin in the darkness of the display window, but the sentinel couldn’t detect it. Something was wrong.

The sentinel scanned around the adjoining buildings — the darkened plank boards and faux fronts, speckled in faded gold trim. The eventide lay wreaths of shadowlight through the park, shifting through the dust with the swaying sycamores. Something was interfering with the sentinel’s radar and detection array. It was operating on visual optics and closed-circuit network alone. Its audio flickered, picking up intermittent sounds — rustling of the trees, a cricket chirping, and the shuffling of feet.

The naked revin exploded from an alley to the left of the sentinel, crashing headlong into its frame, gnashing at its optical array and prying at its edges. The sentinel sped forward and slammed to a halt, throwing the revin into a hitching rail before the saloon. The revin crashed violently backwards, the rail bending back in the collision, snapping with the revin as it went legs up and landing on its head in the dirt. It righted itself quickly, unfazed by the crash. It stood there panting, glaring back at the sentinel. In the fading light, DDC39 saw it now in full view. It was sunburnt to a leathery and wrinkled sienna. Its knees festered, the skin unfurling, bone cap showing through. It snarled and bent forward. A splintered wood spire from the post stuck out from its side but bled very little — the body of this dark wasteland hunter was nearly dried to the bone. It walked towards the sentinel, ripping the wood from its side and holding it like a dagger. Its eyes wide, mouth agape — a hairless creature devoid of cognition.

A tinny hum whirred in the air and the revin’s skull erupted into the twilight. The sentinel’s railgun buzzed and then came to a silent still. The boiled and leathered revin fell to the ground in a clump. A bag of tissue and bones. It bled out slightly from the gash torn open in its head, but no neural matter spilled to the ground.

As the sun came down on the desolate city road, the sentinel turned its optics to the sky. In the distance, the three drones from the mountain pass banked high and rolled off into the orange and violet. In the back of the park, an Albertsons towered into the sky — the sentinel drove towards it. Dusk was falling and the sentinel was processing that something was wrong with its detection array, but couldn’t comprehend it yet. It found the external freight shaft of the supermarket and shot it open. It crawled the three stories and came upon the roof with minutes of light left in the day. A pile of sandbags were stacked in the southwest corner. The sentinel inched up to the canvas mound and then steadily steered up the zenith. From the top, here in the corner of an abandoned supermarket, the sentinel caught a fading glimpse of the city core. Tucson. The satellite connection was lost and all incoming signals were intermittent. The sentinel narrowed it down to one primary cause: ECM jamming. Something, deep within the city, was disrupting all communication and detection systems. It zoomed in, finding the UofA football stadium miles away. Rayon tarps flapped in the wind above the stadium grounds. Pac-16 flags fluttered high atop the stadium circumference. Huddled in the evening, circled in the depths of the concrete structure, were thousands of revins. They swarmed and wormed about the stadium benches — the steps and aisles an unmistakable brown and black from the detritus of years gone by.

The horde of Sonora huddled in the city center — sheltered from the predator drones by an unknown disruption, a powerful electronic jamming emanating from somewhere within the city. The child, if somehow still alive, would be trapped in this horror — the devolved hallow. If it were to be found, the sentinel would have to find the child blindly — into the heart of the uninvented man. All the gods of the firmament, all the time. The way in is near, and the way out is an unbeating heart into the ether. The sentinel stared out towards the darkening of the city as the starlit desert sky unfurled like a tapestry. It wanted to look further, longer, but its network wouldn’t allow it. The nightly shutdown procedure commenced, there on the scaffolding of the Albertsons in the high desert.

• Solar power cell — 10%. Solar armor — 100%.

• Drivetrain — operational