For a moment, I’d lost my senses. I could not hear, smell, or feel the sensation of anything. It felt like a waking nightmare, like the world around me moved in slow motion, with a sick ringing noise deafening my ears. Before I knew it, I was being dragged along the floor. I raised my head to see Helena. Father Thomas was ahead of her, firing his hunting rifle with precision way too accurate for some old reverend.
A Tick came leaping at him from a corner, and he still had time to spin around and hit it in the air. He was like a machine himself. Helena yelled something, which I couldn’t make out. I was too busy looking ahead, towards the altar, as I was dragged down the aisle.
A huge, black and red body standing atop a railing, immovable with impossible balance as it unleashed red glowing projectiles around the room in a quick manner. Another joined it, through the back entrance from which we had came.
How could they find their way inside so quickly? Is there nowhere safe from the Hunters?
Something was forced over my face. Rubbery, tight. A mask. A gas mask. I could barely see out of it, my quick breaths fogged up the protective glass quickly. But Helena strapped it on, and secured it firmly. A quick double-take towards her and Father Thomas, and they had done the same. For now, the church started filling up with thick, viscous gas.
I grasped for my Kulspruta, still dangling from it’s sling around my neck, and opened fire on the red and black monstrosity by the altar. I probably missed every shot, but it was enough for it to refocus it’s continuous attacks. The thing didn’t care for taking hits; it was a Machine. But it was clever enough to prioritise threats. Fortunately, it was a poor shot.
I was bundled outside, and jammed inside a car. Father Thomas in the driver’s seat, Helena diving into the seat next to mine as she threw a grenade inside the church. A cloud of debris, smoke and fire erupted from within. As we drove out onto the road, four or five Hunters emerged from the entrance to the church, and started to give chase.
Helena tore her mask off, and then mine. Then, she slapped me across the face a couple times and I seemed to return to the normal world again, however fucked up it had become.
“Hey, you okay? Say something, Karl!”
I had to take a few breaths of clear air before I could muster a response.
“…that didn’t go so well, did it?”
I cast an eye on Father Thomas. He kept his eyes peeled on the road ahead, pressing all he could muster into the engine of the old Björk car to outrun the Hunters. Every so often, a red glowing projectile would whizz past us.
“They hit us hard. Some kind of mobile artillery, it bombarded the church from afar. Maybe a Tank Machine, I couldn’t tell. But one of the blasts knocked you clear off your feet” Helena told me, looking me over like some obsessive doctor.
“But you look alright.”
“Where are we going” I started.
“Away from here” Father Thomas answered. “To a safe place.”
We soon outran the Hunters’ flechettes, and were alone on some dark country road in the middle of nowhere. My whole body ached, but I was alive. We, were alive.
“I’ve never seen them so organized” Father Thomas continued. “It’s getting worse.”
“What do you know,” Helena asked him. “What can you tell us?”
The old man kept a wary eye on the road, but seemed to slow down somewhat.
“Not a whole lot… I’ve seen the Machines patrol together, and I’ve seen them fight. But not in these numbers. And these red and black ones, they’re new. Whatever this is, I think they’re getting more aggressive.”
“You’ve seen them fight the military?” Helena questioned him.
“Yes. Brief, sporadic fighting erupted all over the island just a few days ago. The military mobilized quickly, it was impressive. They ordered a full evacuation of all major population centers on the island. From what I heard, war was coming. Someone thought the Machines were Soviet creations. Rumours ran wild. I held mass at the time, my congregation was worried when trucks arrived to collect them.”
“I didn’t hear any of this,” Helena interrupted him. “I’m an airforce pilot, they would’ve told-”
“I don’t think they knew for sure,” he said.
I looked between them both, unsure what to say as they continued talking.
“I watched the trucks drive down this road… But the Östertörn Bridge is the other way.”
“Were they taken to the bunkers? In case of aerial attack, civilians are to be protected” Helena replied, as if on point.
“I followed them,” he continued. “At a distance, the trucks took some strange routes, until they disappeared into the mountains. I heard tell of a military installation somewhere around here, a command bunker. But I wasn’t aware it was a civilian rescue zone.”
“It isn’t,” she answered. “Hermelinen is an airforce command central for the region. They’re staffed mainly with military personnel and some aircraft, I don’t think they’d have that kind of capacity…”
I suddenly remembered, where I had woken up. The dark bunker. And… The dreams.
Before I could respond, the car pulled into a small, poorly maintained gravel road, leading into the forested mountains. I looked outside the windows, but it was already dark. Only the headlights of the car illuminated what was ahead of us.
“The trucks came here,” Father Thomas said. “They drove up this path.”
“I’ve no idea where we are…” Helena answered, grabbing her weapon and rolling down the side window.
“I can’t see any signs. There’s a military installation here?”
“That’s what I thought,” he answered her. “I have friends in the military here on the island, many of their families are with my church. They were all reasonable, friendly individuals. We learned to count on our hands the number of safe places that existed here in case of war. But none of them were in this region.”
The car stopped, and the headlights revealed a large, closed chainlink gate. The barbed-wire fence was too high to be climbed, and disappeared into the forest on either side. Helena warily stepped out of the car, letting the cold night air into the backseat. I shivered.
Father Thomas left the car’s lights on before choking the engine, grabbed his hunting rifle from the side seat and joined her.
“I came back here the following night, hoping to clear things with your people and join my congregation in safety. But there was no-one at the gate to greet me, no guards. And the trucks seemed to have departed since.”
I took hold of my weapon and stumbled out of the car to join the others.
“I ran into my first patrol of Machines soon after. These, four-legged dog-like ones” Father Thomas went on as he approached the gate. “I destroyed them, but I had to run. Even a silenced hunting rifle’s report travels far in these woods.”
I looked at him. “You know your way round that rifle…”
He placed the weapon in front of the car and looked at me sternly. “I wasn’t always a priest. There was a time, before all this, that I had another life. Lived somewhere else. Worked far away from home. Found God in the most hellish of places. Now do me a favour and grab the boltcutter from the trunk.”
The lock gave away easily to the cutting tool, as did the chains around the gate. They fell to the ground, and we made our way into a small clearing, with nothing but a large, green-coloured steel gate seemingly pressed into the mountain. A few shipping containers sat along a concrete wall, and various discarded crates. It was strange though, the gate had no visible handles or locks. As Father Thomas approached, a red laser-light shone out of some kind of emitter hidden above it, which seemed to scan him ominously. It made Helena raise her weapon defensively… But as a negative beeping sound followed and the light went out on it’s own, she seemed to relax a bit more. Father Thomas turned around.
“Well… Damn. I didn’t expect this.”
“It’s an identification scanner,” she answered. “We have them at most of the command bunkers. Basically, you carry a card with you. If you’ve got that, -or- the proper clearance, you’re allowed inside.”
“Don’t suppose we could ram the gate with the car?” I proposed.
“I doubt it. These gates are meant to protect against missile attacks” Helena answered bitterly. “I doubt even the Granatgevär would’ve—”
She was interrupted, by a familiar sound. It was ever so faint, way out in the distance of the dark night, but slowly approaching from afar. Stomping sounds.
“It’s too late,” Father Thomas said, following a sigh. “They’ve caught our scent.”
“How the hell is that possible?!” Helena proclaimed. “We had -lost- them. There is no way they could just find us again this quickly. I don’t doubt the reconaissance capabilities of these Machines, or their ability to reason faster than we do, but nothing could make them pick up the trail so fast.”
Father Thomas seemed to agree, and went back to the car. As we followed, he raised his hand.
“We can’t use the car, they’ll hear. I say, we take what we can carry and go north, through the woods. With some luck the terrain is too harsh for that Tank Machine, at the very least.”
Helena nodded. “Me and Karl will check those containers, maybe there’s something of use inside.”
As we approached the stacked shipping containers by the gate, the red laser light came on again.
It beeped in protest. Helena and I ignored it, and started to work on opening one of them.
“This one’s locked…” She began, feeling a heavy duty padlock in her hand.
“I’ll get the boltcutter again” I said, and went back towards the gate. The red light switched on again, but this time it suddenly shifted into a bright green, and a loud, clear beep followed.
“What the hell…?” Helena exclaimed, looking back.
The heavy bulkhead locks could be heard giving away and automated machinery began to slowly swing the doors open in front of us, revealing a dimly lit corridor.
Father Thomas came back, with a genuine look of surprise on his face.
The stomping grew closer. Now it was accompanied with strange howls, and the sound of mechanical engines humming. We could hear the sound of trees being felled, like some sort of prehistoric beast approached through the woods.
“We can discuss this later,” I added and headed inside. The others followed without hesitation, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had some explaining to do fairly soon.
