Original Fiction: The Anarchist's Almanac, Episode 5
Joshua had never seen a grain elevator in action, but from what he understood, the roadside drive through they entered was where trucks would roll through, with belly dumps that allowed their load to drop into pits below before being taken up by the conveyors and machinery into the huge silos.
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This facility had eight.
Then, on the backside, the grain was dumped through metal chutes into the tops of rail cars that hauled the grain on from here. This elevator hadn’t seen active operation since the mid-twentieth century.
The drive through looked empty. Joshua headed to the stairs for the long trek up to the wooden shed like structure that sat on top of the elevators. “I don’t see any sign of fire, do you?” he asked.
“No, that’s weird. Looked like a lot of smoke in that video,” John replied.
“We think we see soot around a hatch about half-way up, “ Eugene added, “Hard to tell from the night vision. Be careful, if any of those timbers are burned, that whole staircase could collapse.”
He was right, and after a brief discussion, the three men on the ground team decided they would have to risk headlamps so that they could visually inspect the framework as they went. They powered down their night-vision goggles, since even the slightest light could be blinding through them, and John handed out battery operated LED headlamps.
They started the long climb up stopping at every landing to inspect the timber section above.
About halfway up, they spotted it. A burned section of framing was directly above them. The landing at the next level was scorched and showing through a hole in the decking was what looked like the robotic hand of a Reaper. It didn’t move when the light washed over it.
They agreed to continue slowly, listening for any sign of collapse at each step, and staying spread out to prevent over burdening the ancient stair.
John took the lead and about five minutes later, he stood eye level with the floor of the landing.
His headlight beam picked out the Reaper that lay about twenty feet from him. He froze watching for a full minute. Then he slowly scanned the surrounding area for signs of a trap.
“What do you think, John?” Joshua asked.
“Seems okay from down here,” John replied.
“Adam?” Joshua said.
Adam hesitated. “Approach with extreme caution whatever is going on here feels connected to what I’ve been feeling this whole trip. I get the impression we are about to learn something we don’t want to know.”
Joshua took a deep breath and exhaled, “Okay, here goes…” He took the last three steps painfully slowly as he moved towards the giant machine.
There was no sign of life.
“I think we can make it past, and get up the next flight. All the scorching seems to be underneath this thing, but the outside frame of the landing looks solid.”
Joshua moved to the left edge of the platform and crept his way to the stairs on the other side. He could see that the entire chest area of the Reaper was scorched. It looked as if there might even be a hole clear through it. Weird.
These things didn’t usually fire on each other. He wondered who else had the fire power to punch a hole through a Reaper's chest. Joshua made it to the stairs on the other side.
“Okay, Adam, come on across, I’m going to go up a few steps to keep our weight spread out.”
Adam crossed the landing without incident, and Joshua could see that his assessment of the upper stairs was correct. They were intact as far up as he could see. Adam reached the bottom of the steps. John started across the landing, then froze.
Joshua saw his head snap toward the Reaper, his light playing over the thing’s helmet.
The three men stayed frozen for a moment. “What’s up down there?” Joshua asked.
“Could be nothing, but I swear this thing moved, just barely, there it is again. I hear something weird too. Sounds like sobbing," John said, leaning towards the dead machine.
“Can’t be, must just be some hydraulics shutting down. That would account for the movement too,” Joshua said.
Just then, the reaper’s left arm moved to its chest, and John fell back against the landing rail. Joshua brought his gun around and pointed it at the monster, for all the good it would do.
If this thing had been playing possum, they were all dead, but maybe he could slow it down.
The giant hand came to rest on the metallic chest and a hiss that sounded like escaping air came from the Reaper, as the blank front plate of the helmet, where a judge’s face would have been projected onto the visor shaped screen, in the case of a trial, slid back into the top of the helmet, revealing human features.
Joshua’s blood turned cold. There was a man inside this thing.
“What the hell?” Adam said, echoing the thought now racing through everyone’s mind.
Joshua moved closer. All three head lamps were now focused on the man’s face. His lips seemed to be moving. John knelt down beside him and turned his ear to the man’s mouth. When he looked up at Joshua, his face was white.
“Joshua, we know this guy. It’s Vernon from Henry Jackson’s tribe.”
“Oh my god,” Joshua said.
“He was taken over near Salina six month’s ago,” Adam explained.
None of them could believe what they were hearing. They had all seen the innards of a Reaper before, they were nothing but machines.
This one was different. How was that possible? Who would do this?
John began working on removing the Reaper’s armor. Once the faceplate was open, other catches were revealed and he was able to strip the top half of the robotic suit away, revealing a human form, dressed in a white, short sleeved tunic, with a large hole in his chest.
“I don’t think we can move him, “ John said.
All three men were on the landing now, and Joshua was concerned with the weight. He stayed at the base of the stairs, prepared to run up if anything shifted. Adam was now kneeling on the opposite side from John and had the man’s hand in his.
He seemed to be praying, which seemed a little late to Joshua.
“What’s going on in there?” Eugene’s voice interrupted from the ground team outside.
“Hang on, Eugene, we found someone. We’re trying to sort this out," Joshua replied.
“What about the printer and machine shop?” Eugene asked.
“We don’t know yet. We found this guy right about where you saw the scorched hatch opening. You won’t believe this. He’s inside a reaper,” Joshua told him.
There was a long silence. “Like what, the thing ate him?”
“No, he’s part of it somehow. More like a pilot. John’s removing the armor on this thing, the guy looks like he’s wired into it in several places. He’s still alive, but just barely, and Eugene?” Adam said.
“Yeah?”
“We know this guy. He’s a dweller. From Jackson’s tribe. Taken about six months ago, we think!” Adam said.
“No way. How’s that possible? We’ve torn open at least a dozen of them. They're all machine!” Eugene sounded furious.
Joshua looked at the man laying there, helpless, then at the large open hatch above his head. “Hey, Eugene, how much can that drone lift?”
“A buck, buck twenty at most, why?” Eugene asked.
“Did you just bring the one?” Joshua continued.
“Um, we have two, what are you thinking?” Eugene insisted on an explanation.
Joshua grinned, “I’m thinking we can airlift this guy out of here.”
Adam looked up. “He’ll never survive it!”
“Well, he’s dead for sure if we just leave him here, what’s your idea?” Joshua asked.
“If we get him out of here in one piece and up to Walton, the tribe there has a doctor with a mobile clinic. It’s got to be worth a try, right? Not only should we help him, but he probably has some great Intel."
John was the only one with any medical training at all.
He'd once been a premed student for about three weeks. “I don’t know, but it might be worth a shot. What do you think, Vernon, can we move you?”
“He-help me…” Vernon said weakly, but loud enough to be heard.
Joshua moved downstairs to the old office and opened a door labeled First Aid. Inside, as he hoped, there was a backboard.
That combined with the rope from the tool stash in the truck provided them with a lift. All that remained was to get Vernon onto it and then lifted out of the window.
“Eugene, you and Darian come on down. I know it’s breaking protocol, but you’re the two best pilots and there is no way you can do this as a tandem lift from up there. You’re going to need line of site,” Joshua said.
“Adam, let’s get this guy onto this litter and John, see what you can rig up in the truck for this thing to ride on."
Twenty minutes later, the two drones were lowering Vernon, minus the Reaper armor, into the back of the truck. John had rigged a cargo net stretched tight over the bed, to make the ride as soft as possible.
Eugene spent a few minutes disarming the tracker in the Reaper suit and he, and Darian wrestled it down the stairs to their vehicle.
There had been a few tense moments when they were afraid to unplug Vernon from the suit for fear it was keeping him alive, but closer examination had revealed that his wounds, while severe, were mostly surface and he seemed to be breathing fine and had a strong pulse.
In the end, they had decided it was a chance they had to take and cut the wires.
A human inside a reaper, what will this mean for dweller strategy, why was he in there? How many of them are like this? Stay tuned for the next episode...
Earned my sub
Thank you. Glad you liked it.
this looks like a thriller...
It is a political manifesto, wrapped inside a thriller. Have you read the first episodes?