Losenko squeezed beneath a wrecked convertible. His coat snagged on the jagged underside of the vehicle before tearing loose. A rusty exhaust pipe scraped against his back. Coming out on the other side, he clambered to his feet. A quick glance revealed little hope of survival, for himself or his men.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered. “They don’t deserve this....”
The vicious crossfire had left only a handful of sailors alive. The terrified survivors were in full retreat, dashing down the road away from the ambush. Their only chance was to get back to the vehicles they had stowed at the junkyard half a kilometer away. They fired back at the robots as they ran, to maddeningly little effect. Smoke bombs, hurled by the fleeing men, offered only minimal cover. The deadly machines rolled out onto the street. Their armored treads trampled over the bodies, grinding flesh and bone into the blacktop.
Losenko recalled Pagodin’s panicky final broadcast.
“Nothing’s stopping them! They just keep coming...!”
He hurried after the fleeing sailors. “Go! Go! Go!” he shouted, although it was doubtful they could hear him over the roar of the chain guns. Eschewing the center of the road, he raced across a series of adjoining parking lots, taking evasive action to avoid the whizzing bullets. “Don’t wait for me! Get back to the boat!”
Somebody had to warn Ivanov and the crew back at the sub.
Hairs rose on the back of his neck. Some sort of psychic sonar alerted him to danger. Glancing back over his shoulder, he found himself looking straight into the crimson sensors of the first robot. A targeting bead lit up his chest. The robot’s right-hand cannon swung toward him.
“Down, sir!”
Gorski sprang up like a jack-in-the-box from behind a roadside bus shelter. With expert aim, he fired at a narrow band of exposed hydraulics around the neck assembly. Valves and circuitry ruptured violently. Oily black ichor sprayed like blood. The robot’s gun-arms jerked erratically as its torso rotated 360 degrees to protect its throat. A blistering volley of gunfire strafed the air above Losenko’s head. Glass from a shattered streetlight rained down onto his scalp.
“That’s for Lieutenant Zamyatin!” Gorski gloated. “See, Captain! We can hurt them. You just have to hit the right targets!”
The marksman’s triumph was short-lived. The second robot avenged the attack on its partner by turning both its guns on Gorski. Twin blasts from its barrels flung him against the back of the bus shelter. His body danced spasmodically beneath the impact of the bullets. The Kalashnikov went flying from his fingers. A faded advertisement on the shelter urged commuters to explore “Exciting New Careers in Electronics & Computer Programming!”
Losenko’s tore his gaze from the grisly spectacle. Running as though the entire American Army was after him, he was half a block away before Gorski’s bullet-riddled body collapsed onto the curb. Broken glass shattered beneath his feet. The damaged robot retreated, perhaps for repairs, while its murderous comrade continued the pursuit. Its versatile treads easily navigated the potholes and crevices marring the two-lane highway. Mechanical limbs moved with unnerving fluidity.
The monster smelled of smoke and oil.
A valiant sailor struggled to assist a wounded crewmate. His arm around the other man’s shoulders, he half-supported, half-dragged his limping comrade as they lurched after Losenko and the others. Seaman Sasha Krosotkin’s heroism, while worthy of a medal, proved fruitless; unmoved by the touching display, the robot reduced both men to bloody pulp. It then trundled past their intertwined bodies without a backward glance.
For the first time in his life, Losenko truly hated a machine.
Running low on ammo, Ostrovosky resorted to flinging signal flares at the robot. Blinding scarlet flames erupted across the highway, adding to the chaos. The robot fired on the flares as though they were armed combatants. Losenko guessed that the machine’s thermal sensors had trouble distinguishing between the road flares and the heat signatures of a firing rifle. Good, he thought, welcoming the distraction. Anything to slow the machine down.
One of flares rolled beneath the robot’s treads just as it bulldozed over the body of another murdered sailor. The incendiary device ignited the corpse’s spare ammo clips, triggering an explosion that rocked the robot from below. Losenko watched hopefully as the robot toppled over onto its side, then cursed as the stubborn mechanism began to right itself. Internal shielding seemed to protect its vital components from the blast but its treads appeared to be badly damaged. Smoke gushed from beneath it as the machine awkwardly limped forward. The chain guns spewed a seemingly inexhaustible swarm of hungry metal slugs.
Bile rose at the back of Losenko’s throat. Could nothing stop these cursed machines?
The next several minutes were like a nightmare. There was no order or precision to the men’s flight, only a dwindling number of panicked submariners being cut down as they ran. Losenko had lost track of the body count within the first few seconds of the ambush. Adrenalin fueled his headlong race along the edge of the road. Stray debris, puddles, and depressions threatened to trip him, lying across his path like pitfalls. He stumbled over a toppled “STOP” sign, almost pitching forward onto his face, but managed to regain his balance before it was too late.
The close call left him gasping. He knew that if he fell, he would never get back up again. The relentless machine would trample him just as it had the first few victims.
We mean nothing to them, he raged. They have no hearts. No souls.
His breath was ragged. A painful stitch stabbed him in the side. The racing of his pulse resounded behind his ears. His mouth was as dry as one of the Gorshkov’s airtight compartments. He couldn’t remember the last time he had run so hard or for so long. Sweat dripped into his eyes. He cursed himself for not spending more time on the treadmill back on the sub. How dare he let himself get so out of shape!
For the first time since the missiles flew, he realized that he wasn’t ready to die yet.
If they could just get back to the cars!
Gunfire blasted behind him as the maimed robot disposed of more stragglers. Losenko glanced back. The drifting haze of the smoke bombs obscured his view. Was it just his imagination, or was the killing machine falling behind? He thanked providence for the freak explosion that had damaged its treads. How far, he wondered, was the robot willing to chase them before returning to its base of operations? All the way back to the docks?
Desperate minutes felt like hours, and he had begun to doubt whether any of them would see K-115 again, when he finally spied the dilapidated chain-link fence surrounding the junkyard. Hope flared in his heart. Maybe they still had a chance. He fumbled in his pocket for the keys to the station wagon. From the looks of things, the wagon alone might have room enough to carry all that remained of the patrol. Besides himself, there looked to be only seven or eight men left alive... out of a team of twenty-five brave volunteers.
Someone will pay for this, he vowed silently. I swear it upon the lives of my men!
“Thank heaven!” Ostrovosky gasped, appearing a few meters ahead of the captain. The sight of the junkyard gave the exhausted sailors a second wind. They dashed toward the front gate with renewed hope and alacrity. The assistant radio operator slowed to catch his breath. “I never thought we were going to make it!”
Neither did I, Losenko agreed.
A shocking burst of gunfire, coming from inside the junkyard, froze the men in their tracks. Losenko skidded to a halt, his heart sinking like an anchor. By now, he recognized the telltale rat-a-tat of the robots’ ever-firing chain guns.