Daniel Wilson - Robopocalypse

Click .

“Unmoor us now, Arrtrad.”

“It’s a chem spill, Lurker. We should shut the windows and—”

“Unmoor us, you sodding fuck!”

I scream the words right into Arrtrad’s dim-witted weasel face, painting his forehead with my spittle. Out the window, London looks normal. Then I notice a thin column of smoke. Nothing big, but just hanging there, out of place. Sinister.

When I turn around, Arrtrad is wiping his forehead and muttering, but he is walking toward the flimsy front door of the houseboat as he goddamn well should be. Our shoddy wharf is old and rotten and has been here forever. We’re tied to it tight in three places and if we don’t get untied, we won’t be going anywhere.

And on this particular afternoon, I happen to be in quite a hurry to be off. See, I’m near to fairly certain that this is the end of days. It’s the sodding apocalypse and I’m teamed with the village idiot and shackled tight to a waterlogged pile of rot.

I’ve never even started the houseboat engine before.

The key is dangling in the ignition. I walk to the nav station at the front of the room. I prop open the front window and the smell of muddy water wafts in. For a moment, I rest my sweaty palms on the fake wood of the steering wheel. Then without looking I reach down and turn the key, quick.

Ka-rowr .

The engine turns over and sputters into life. First try. Through the back window, I see a haze of bluish smoke billow up. Arrtrad is crouched on the right side of the boat, alongside the dock, getting the second mooring rope untied. Starboard, I suppose the boating types call it.

“Memento Mori,” calls Arrtrad between pants. “That’s a funny name to give a boat. What’s it mean?”

I ignore him. In the distance over Arrtrad’s bald spot something has just caught my eye: a silver car.

The car looks normal enough, but somehow it’s moving too steadily for my taste. The car wheels down the road that leads to our wharf as if its steering were locked in place. Is it a coincidence that the car is aimed toward our dock and us at the end of it?

“Faster,” I shout, rattling the window with my fist.

Arrtrad stands up, hands on his hips. His face is red and sweaty. “They’ve been tied a long time, all right? It’s going to take more than a—”

At near full speed, the silver car hops a curb at the end of the street and leaps into the dockside car park. There is a faint crunch of the auto’s undercarriage bottoming out. Something is definitely wrong.

“Just go! GO!”

Finally, the facade has cracked. My panic shines through like radiation. Confused, Arrtrad fairly lopes along the side of the boat. Near the back end, he drops to his knees and starts working on the last decaying mooring rope.

To my left is open river. To my right is a crumbling pile of warped wood and two tons of speeding metal careening toward me at top speed. If I don’t move this boat in the next few seconds, I’m going to have a car parked on top of it.

I watch the auto bounce through the immense car park. My head feels stuffed with cotton. The houseboat motor throbs and my hands have gone numb with the vibration of the wheel. My heart pounds in my chest.

Something occurs to me.

I snatch my mobile phone off the table, crack the SIM card out of it, and chuck the rest into the water. It makes a small plop. I can feel a bull’s-eye slide off my back.

The top of Arrtrad’s head bobs in and out of view as he unwinds the last rope. He doesn’t see the silver auto streaking across the deserted car park, sending trash fluttering into the air. It hasn’t changed direction by an inch. The plastic bumper scrapes concrete and then flies completely off as the car bounces over a curb and onto the wooden dock.

My mobile phone is gone but it’s already too late. The devil has found me.

Now I can hear the thrumming of tires over the last fifty yards of rotten wood. Arrtrad’s head rises up, concerned. He’s hunched on the side of the boat, hands covered in slime from the ancient rope.

“Don’t look, just go!” I shout at Arrtrad.

I grab the clutch lever. With one thumb, I pop the houseboat out of neutral and into reverse. Ready to move. No throttle though. Not yet.

Forty yards.

I could jump off the boat. But where will I go? My food is here. My water. My village idiot.

Thirty yards.

It’s the end of the world, mate.

Twenty yards.

Hell with it. Untied or not, I slam the throttle and we lurch backward. Arrtrad shouts something incoherent. I hear another pencil tap to the ground, followed by dishes and papers and a coffee mug. The neat pile of wood next to the potbellied stove collapses.

Ten yards.

The engines thunder. Sunlight flashes from the scarred silver missile as it catapults off the end of the dock. The auto soars through empty space, missing the front of the houseboat by a few feet. It crashes into the water and sends up a white spray that comes through the open window and slaps me in the bloody face.

It’s over.

I throttle down but leave the boat in reverse, then hurry to the front deck. The prow, they say. Ashen-faced, Arrtrad joins me. We watch the car together, trawling slowly in reverse, away from the end of the world.

The silver car is half-submerged and sinking fast. In the front seat, a man is slumped over the wheel. The windshield bears a crimson spiderweb of cracks where his face must have hit on impact. A woman with long hair is flopped next to him in the passenger seat.

And then, there’s the last thing that I see. That last thing that I never wanted to see. Didn’t ask to see.

In the backseat window. Two pale little palms, pressed hard against the tinted glass. Pale as linen. Pushing.

Pushing so hard.

And the silver car slips under.

Arrtrad drops to his knees.

“No,” he shouts. “No!”

The gawky man puts his face in his hands. His whole body convulses with sobs. Snot and tears pour out of his birdlike face.

I retreat into the doorway of the cabin. The doorframe gives me support. I don’t know how I feel, only that I feel different. Changed, somehow.

I notice it’s getting dark outside, now. Smoke is rising from the city. A practical thought comes to me. We’ve got to get out of here before something worse comes.

Arrtrad speaks to me through sobs. He grabs me by the arm and his hands are wet with tears and river water and muck from the ropes. “Did you know this would happen?”

“Stop crying,” I snap.

“Why? Why didn’t you tell nobody? What about your mum?”

“What about her?”

“You didn’t tell your mum?”

“She’ll be fine.”

“She’s not fine. Nothing is fine. You’re only seventeen. But I’ve got kids . Two kids. And they could be hurt.”

“Why haven’t I ever seen ’em?”

“They’re with my ex. But I coulda warned them. I coulda told them what was coming. People are dead. Dead , Lurker. That was a family. It was a fucking child in that car. Just a wee baby. My god. What’s the matter with you, mate?”

“Nothing’s the matter. Stop your crying, now. It’s all part of the plan, see? If you had a brain you’d understand. But you don’t. So you listen to me.”

“Yes, but—”

“Listen to me and we’ll be fine. We’re going to help those people. We’re going to find your kids.”

“That’s impossible—”

Now, I stop him cold. I’m starting to feel a bit angry. A bit of my old fire is returning to replace the numbness. “What have I told you about saying that?”

“I’m sorry, Lurker.”

“ Nothing’s impossible.”

“But how will we do those things? How can we find my kids?”