David Wong - This Book is Full of Spiders

She was getting frustrated at this point, but she knew that wouldn’t help. This was a system, one set up by people, and it had flaws. What was the flaw here?

Diesel.

The Gladiators (or TUGVs or whatever) needed fuel and that meant they needed people to fuel them. Even if the human operators were on a base in Japan, the refueling job had to be done by people here, on the ground, operating out of this very building. Which meant that there had to be some mechanism by which they could disarm the guns so they wouldn’t get shot when they approached them with gas cans. She just needed to find it. And she would.

From the room behind her came the sound of metal scraping against floor.

Something was pushing the vending machine out of the way.

Amy sprang to her feet. She couldn’t panic. She had a door on the opposite side of the room she could unlock and run through. Where it led, she didn’t know, but she would get there as fast as her feet could carry her.

Molly ran over and faced the door standing between them and the intruder. She let out a low growl. The scraping continued. When it stopped, what replaced it was the sound of something stepping over the vending machine. Then, there was the crunching of glass, something stepping across the shards that had crashed out of the machine when Amy tipped it over.

Amy ran for the opposite door and cranked open the dead bolt. Molly did not move from her spot. Amy was about to call to her when she heard—

“Who’s there?”

A tiny voice, from the room the intruder had entered. It sounded like a little girl, and Amy had the crazy thought that Nevaeh McInnis had somehow teleported in from Nevada.

The little voice said, “Can you unlock the door? Hello?”

Amy cautiously made her way over and said, “Who’s there?”

The voice answered, but Amy couldn’t hear. Then, louder, it said, “What’s your name?”

“My name is Amy. Are you lost, little girl?”

“I’m not little, I’m eight.”

“Who’s with you?”

“It’s just me. Can you let me in? I’m scared.”

Amy glanced back at Molly, who looked as skeptical as a dog can look.

Amy unlocked the door, and opened it just a crack. “Uh, hello. Who are you?”

The little voice said, “Anna.”

I ducked down and banged my head on the window crank on the Caddie’s door. I anticipated the thunder of gunfire and the sound of lead punching holes in the Cadillac’s door panels. Then I realized I may very well hear nothing at all, because John had grossly underestimated the caliber of the sentry guns. The twin barrels on that turret looked big enough to put my thumb into, ready to fire bullets that would effortlessly pierce the thin metal of the Cadillac’s door panels, a microsecond later taking a nice leisurely path through my squishy internal organs.

But the guns did not fire.

John screamed, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

“What? No!”

“We got ’em confused, we have to get out before they get their shit together and turn us into Swiss meat!”

He opened his door and dragged me out. He reached into the backseat and grabbed something—the green mystery box from my toolshed.

We ducked down, putting the Cadillac between us and the gun—not that there wasn’t another, identical gun on the other side—and ran. We hurdled the concrete barrier and there, in front of us, were the woods. Beyond it, a convenience store bathroom that would hopefully take us away from here.

Déjà vu.

Only there were no soldiers chasing us now. No, now there was a crowd of armed townspeople, carrying shotguns and hunting rifles and machetes, half of them running, half of them aiming their guns and drawing down on us. And, unlike the National Guardsmen in those disorganized early hours of the crisis, here were people who knew what a breach in that fence meant. I risked a look back and saw the gaping hole we’d torn in the fence. Red jumpsuits were gathered on the other side, everyone gawking out at the outside world, as if a hole had suddenly been ripped open in the sky.

And then I saw the gathering crowd, onlookers on the other side of the fence—every one of them armed—with the exact same expression on their face. Two sides of a mirror, the same ideas dawning on both sides.

The fence was broken.

The sentry guns were not working.

Everything had changed.

Shots were fired. We plunged into the darkness of the trees, we scrambled across the muddy ditch, we emerged from the other side and ran for BB’s.

Assuming that BB’s is even still there…

It was. And this time, we didn’t even care where the magical shitter door spat us out, as long as it wasn’t here. If the door wasn’t working, if the network of interdimensional wormholes or whatever they were had been shut down by the shadowy fuckers in charge of all of this, then we were dead. We would be torn apart by the mob.

We tumbled into the bathroom and pulled the door closed. A gunshot punched a hole in the door right as the door did its thing and then, we were tumbling—

It was a baffling sensation. The whole world turned, like we were on an amusement park ride. I fell on top of John, both of us suddenly flat on our backs. The door that had been in front of us was now on top of us, we were looking up at it. I got a leg untangled from John and kicked the door. I was looking up at an overcast sky. I pulled myself out and realized I was emerging from the ground, like a vampire rising from his coffin after sundown. Boards and bricks and broken glass covered the grass around me. I climbed out, and looming above me was the old Ffirth Asylum. There was a huge hole in the wall, the debris of which was scattered all around me. We had teleported less than half a mile away. We were alone for the moment, but could hear the shouts of the mob down the street.

I stumbled out onto the wreckage and John emerged behind me. He stared down at the hole we had come from, confused, and then closed the door I had thrown open. I saw that the door and its frame were in fact laying loose on the ground, flung aside when the blast destroyed the wall. When John picked up the door again, underneath was just dead grass.

John said, “Shit, I left my shotgun shells back at the Caddie.”

I took a breath and said, “Look… you remember when we watched Star Wars with Amy? And she’s like, ‘Why is Princess Leia being such a bitch when those guys just rescued her?’ Well I don’t want to be the Leia in this situation and I completely appreciate what a sweet ramp job that was back there. But did you have any kind of a plan at all?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Because time is running out here…”

John was looking up at the old building, staring hard at the mossy brick walls.

I said, “What?”

“I took some Soy Sauce earlier.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. And I came by here.”

“Okay…”

“And… there were shadows here.”

I followed his gaze. The rows of windows in the moldy brick were boarded over with ancient, warped plywood. It kind of made it seem like the building had cataracts. I saw no shadow people.

I said, “Do you see any now?”

“No.”

He turned and saw something else, though, and said, “Here,” handing me the green mystery box. He jogged away from me, heading for the corner of the building. I spotted the ass of an RV parked there. I followed him. Faint shouts from the armed mob were growing louder.

“John! What are you—”

My words died at the sight of bloodstained grass surrounding the loose earth of a huge, freshly filled-in hole. Like a mass grave. John pulled out his ridiculous customized shotgun (he had it wedged down the back of his pants) and ducked into the RV. The windshield was busted out and when I followed John through the driver’s-side door, I saw that the tan upholstery of the driver’s seat was one big bloodstain.