John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

Richard held the toddler under his bodyweight although the little tyke was kicking, screaming, and biting at him. But he was afraid if the kid got up a piece of flying debris would decapitate the little guy. Helena and Sara Jo used their bodies to shield Precious, who was also screaming the most gut-wrenching screeches. Between the children’s screams and the hellacious noise the bots made destroying the truck, it was difficult to concentrate on anything but holding still. And the horrific sound was something along the lines of crossing an overcrowded preschool at recess with a monster truck rally.

As quickly as the bots had appeared they were flying away. Two of the bots were lagging behind and hovering about two feet above the ground flying sluggishly and waiting for something. They had both gathered enough raw materials from the truck and now were both twinning.

“Helena! Look!” Richard pointed to the twinning probe nearest to her.

Helena rose to her feet quickly, grabbing her club in a homerun hitter’s stance, and knocked the boomerang-shaped probe skittering in a shower of sparks across the ground like a stone skipping on a pond. The boomerang-shaped machine twisted and twirled across the road as it bounced and landed in a briar patch on the far side. She spun and jumped the six feet or so over a pile of truck rubble to the second twinning probe and commenced smashing it.

“Goddamn alien tings coulda killed dese babies!” She bashed it again. That particular bot was for certain dead. “Goddamn it you all to hell!”

The first bot she had batted out of the park was skittering around and around, tangled up in the thick briars on the side of the old logging road and could not seem to break free. She started toward it to pound it some more.

“No! Helena, wait. I want it alive!” Richard grabbed a torn canvas duffle bag and some other material made of nylon that was left over from the remains of Jeff’s tent. Richard rushed across the road, tossing the material in front of him, and tackled the bot, wrapping it in the bag. That didn’t work worth a damn. The bot threw him and the bag head over heels deeper into the briar patch, scratching him from head to toe. “Shit!”

“Hold on, I’ll get it!” Helena grabbed another large piece of the tent material that had been slung out of the bot’s metal-eating whirlwind and she popped it like a bed sheet over the briars and the bot. “Grab de goddamn end!”

Richard forced his way up through the briars ignoring the pain of being cut and pricked by the briars just in time to snag the middle of the light green nylon material with his left hand. He pulled it to him and got purchase with both hands and then rolled over onto it and the wildly spinning bot. Helena fell face first into the back of his head, busting her lip and cussing with every breath. She shook her head twice and raised up pushup style so she could put her knees in the middle of the tent material and on top of the boomerang. She punched at it several times through the material, never once missing a chance to use an obscenity.

“Goddamn fuckin’ sonovabitch ting!” She kicked at it. “It von’t fuckin stop, Richard!”

“Good! Let’s wrap it up more if we can and tie it off to something inside.” He bear-hugged the boomerang and the wad of tent and duffel bag and rolled with it out of the briars. Helena grabbed at the other side when Richard came to a stop. Richard and Helena fought with the bot and it looked to Sara Jo and Jeff like two idiots wrestling a cougar in burlap sack. A cougar might have been easier.

The two held tight to both sides of the wad of bot and nylon and carefully moved toward the entrance to the mine. The propulsion system of the bot even in its damaged state was strong enough to lift both of them off the ground a few feet at a time, but it was no longer strong enough to get away from them. But it tossed them to and fro quite readily and was beating the two of them together, pushing them to their physical limits. Helena cursed some more.

They made it into the mine about thirty feet and tied the bot to the nearest support beam they came to that Richard thought could hold it. He pulled the tent material around the backside of the twelve-by-twelve beam between it and the rock wall of the mine shaft. He looped it through several times and tied it in a large knot. The wad of nylon and canvas material rose upward toward the ceiling of the shaft and pulled the material tight, looking like an odd shaped helium balloon tied off to the post — a helium balloon with a cougar trapped inside it. But it was holding.

Jeff and his family sat huddled together sobbing and hugging one another and trying to shush the infant. They were covered from head to toe in canned goods and radiator water. Fortunately, Jeff had about run out of gasoline or they’d have been covered in that, too. There was little left of his truck but there was a pile of supplies that were dried or powdered goods in plastic or cardboard containers strewn about. And things like pinto beans, creamed corn, baby food from jars, baby formula powder, and various other food stuffs all mixed up.

“Helena, stay with them. I’ll be right back. Find out if they’re hurt.”

“Poor poor babies! De goddamn mean robots scare you? Don vorry, dey gone now.” She knelt beside Sara Jo and put her hand on the baby girl’s head. The baby was still crying. “I tink she needs feeding?” Helena looked at Sara Jo.

“I need a bottle and the formula is all smashed!” Sara Jo cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she panicked.

“Don you worry, baby. Can you breastfeed her?”

“I can’t produce enough milk,” Sara Jo cried.

Helena looked at Jeff as she stood. He was still holding the toddler to him. Both of them were covered in a gooey mess but they seemed unharmed. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“De baby?”

“Yes.”

Helena picked up an empty torn baby formula container. The cylindrical shaped container was cardboard but it had a metal top and bottom, both of which were gone. The coffee-can-sized container lay in a pile of white powder. She scooped it up with the cardboard container, holding it sideways so as not to spill. Sara Jo realized what she was doing and started scanning the pile of debris.

“There — the diaper bag. There’s a bottle in it.” Sara Jo pointed.

Helena rummaged through the little blue and white cloth bag until she found a clear plastic bottle with a nipple on the end. She unscrewed the nipple from the top of the bottle and then looked at the side of the formula container.

“It takes one scoop for two ounces of water.”

“How much is a scoop? Dere is no scoop.” Helena looked around the pile of foodstuffs for a scooper but did not see anything useful.

“Uh, about a heaping tablespoon. Shhh, Precious… it’s all right, honey.”

Helena found a bottle of water amongst the debris and mixed the formula per Sara Jo’s instructions. She guessed at the amount of powder in a scoop by pouring the powder into her cupped hand. She handed the bottle to Sara Jo and watched as the little infant took to the bottle and almost immediately stopped crying.

“Thank you,” Sara Jo sobbed.

“Told you. Fuckin’ crazy you have dese babies out with dose goddamned aliens about.”

Richard walked out of the mine shaft entranceway with an armload of things. He set a five gallon bucket in front of Jeff and handed him a ladle and a dustpan.

“These will have to do. Collect up all the foodstuffs you can. Beans, peas, creamed corn, all of it and dump it in this bucket. If it looks like it got any fluids from the truck on it don’t take it.”

“We can’t eat this! It’s, uh, it’s ruined.” Jeff looked confused.