Juan says, “Just gonna cut them off.”
Walter agrees. “Keep them from the mother ship.”
“Better call the sheriff’s dispatcher,” Juan says.
Walter plucks the phone from its holder—“Holy shit!”—and drops it on the floor. “Hot like it came from an oven.”
“Bastards,” Juan says. “Use your phone.”
“Didn’t bring it.”
They are in the narrow vale, parallel to the sprinting robots.
“Maybe they have weapons,” Walter says.
Juan declares, “I’m not backing off.”
“Me neither. Just sayin’。”
They quickly pull ahead of the off-worlders. Walter can see them in the side mirror as they fall farther behind. “They’re not changing course.”
“I see the bastards,” Juan says, shifting his attention back and forth between the way ahead and the rearview mirror.
They are ten years beyond retirement and wishing they never signed on for rest and relaxation, long resigned to the fact that life will never again present them with fresh excitement of the best kind, that henceforth it’s rocking chairs on the porch and walks in the park and did-you-see-this-or-that crap on one streaming service or another until they’re slammed dead by a heart attack or a stroke, or wind up in hospice for a final month. This close encounter is a gift, a miracle, maybe a chance to warn the world of—and thwart—an impending invasion. They’re young men again—hell, they’re boys again—full of wonder and reckless courage.
When he has opened a sufficient lead, Juan hangs a U-turn as sharply and adroitly as any stunt driver might have executed in the movies, and he jams on the brake. The oncoming robots flare in the headlights, come to a halt, and once more rear up on their back legs.
Showdown.
The night has been a journey from one darkness to another, each seeming to be absolute until the next proves darker yet, inspiring a superstitious dread that their inevitable destination is an eternal lightlessness, mere minutes away.
Nina isn’t convinced that the attic is the safest place to be. They have abandoned whatever other options they might have had—unless there’s a way from here onto the roof. And from the roof?
In spite of her concern, she’s followed Michael’s instructions without hesitation, fully trusting him. She had learned to trust her parents without reservation in the years before they died. However, as is the case with John, her confidence in Michael is more than implicit trust. It is belief, and not just belief based on personal observation, but belief of the heart; her reliance on this man is a matter of faith. That this should be the case, after she has known him such a short time, amazes but doesn’t trouble her. In spite of the strange power that has been bestowed on Michael, he is humble. He has about him the air of one who, for many years, has suffered much and lost much. But if his losses have resulted in a settled sorrow, his melancholy is a shoal rather than an abyss. He isn’t a sad or bitter person; he’s quite the opposite of that. In Nina’s experience, except between mother and child, genuine love doesn’t bloom as quickly as a rose from bud to full flower, but requires years instead. Yet her faith in Michael is such a yearning of the soul that she has been brought to love. She doesn’t understand why they are here in the attic, doesn’t know what he means when he insists that the cavalry is on its way, but there will be time for explanations when the threat has passed and their safety assured. Faith and love are the source of a hope that inspires courage and leaves no room for doubt.
One, two, three, four, five: Gunfire tears through the attic flooring, and the air is filled with bits of flung debris.
“Light!” Michael says, and Nina switches it on even as gunfire echoes off the rafters, where alarmed spiders shiver across their gossamer constructions.
They are in the southeast corner of the attic. If they had been in the southwest corner, one or more of them might be bleeding out on the pocked and splintered flooring.
Gog and Magog should be here, but Juan Gainza and his unknown companion are delaying them. The upper-right quadrant of Michael’s vision displays the view from a robot’s forward cameras: the blazing headlights of the pickup, moths dancing in the washed air of the post-storm night.
Assuming that Calaphas intends to quarter the attic with gunfire from below, Michael whispers, “Far end. Quick.”
They can’t cross that long space quietly, but noise no longer matters. Calaphas already knows where they are. What noise they make will translate across the width and length of the floor, so their would-be executioner won’t be able to pinpoint them while they’re on the move.
As he follows John and Nina to the north end of the attic, Michael is also active in the fields of the night, bringing both robots erect. In their most menacing posture, they are harbingers of a future in which humankind has been unmade by what it made. He can instruct them to evade the F-150, but the pickup has the advantage of greater speed. Gainza will only further delay them—or pursue them to this house. Michael can’t afford to have witnesses either to his presence or to what Gog and Magog will do to Calaphas.
He settles into the northeast corner of the attic with Nina and John. There’s no need to switch off her light. They can’t any longer hope to lure Calaphas to his well-deserved end. The agent won’t be pulling the ladder and ascending until he believes they’re all dead. Evidently, he has a lot of ammo, enough to quarter the attic until luck is with him and no longer with them. Their best hope now is that the dogs of Protean Cybernetics arrive in time to save them.
They scurry like frightened attic rats. Unlike rats, which are able to squeeze their spongy skulls and flexible bodies through any chink that’s half an inch or wider, Mace and his companions can’t escape from the refuge that has become their prison. The promise of human evolution accelerated by technology, the vaunted Singularity, has produced nothing more than a desperate outsider, a man-machine who is less than either a man or a machine, who has become nothing more than an animal on the run.
In high spirits, Calaphas leaves the bedroom at the southwest corner of the house, crosses the hallway, and enters the room at the southeast corner. He is the Pied Piper, and this house is Hamelin, soon to be rid of all rats. He’s brother to the farmer’s wife with her carving knife and bloody collection of rodent tails. He’s the exterminator, annihilator, eradicator, obliterator, and his moment of ultimate triumph is at hand. No one can stand against him. In a flash of profound insight, he realizes that he is Death; either he always has been Death but unaware, or he’s an apprentice to Death and has by his dedication earned the hooded robe and scythe. The kingdom of Death is everywhere and always, not just in this present simulation but also in the higher realm to which he’ll soon ascend. Everyone is born to die, but he is not of their kind. He is Death, and therefore deathless, harvesting lesser beings throughout all of time. When this night’s work is done, he must think about this new understanding, the ramifications, the power. The revelation is so exhilarating that he wonders what even greater satori might be visited on him if he took another ten milligrams of Benzedrine.
In the southeast corner of the southeast room, Durand Calaphas aims the rifle at the ceiling and squeezes off five rounds in rapid succession. No one screams, but he isn’t disappointed. They will be screaming soon enough. When eventually he goes into the attic, he will thrust his priapism into the woman, whether she is alive or dead, and he will kiss her on the lips. He will kiss the dead boy, and he will kiss the dead Singularity, and this virtual world will dissolve around him, and he will rise into his kingdom.