3rd day
I woke up late in the morning. The sun was already higher in the sky than yesterday and the seagulls were screeching outside the window. I almost forgot what a dangerous situation I was in and wanted to go to the small balcony facing the sea. But the pistol on the bedside table quickly brought me back down to earth. I put on my jacket again and my shoes and put the guns back in my waistband and checked that they were loaded and secured. Some had already shot away the crown jewels because they had gotten caught on the hammer of the pistol. I shouldered the hunting rifle and looked carefully out of the window before leaving the house.
With my gun drawn I walked through the door and looked around to the right and left. I stopped in the garden and listened. Apart from the surf and the screeching of seagulls, nothing could be heard. Slowly I went up to the street and looked left and right again. Even with the binoculars I couldn’t see anything, so I set off towards Yttervik. Next to me a rock face rose up, on my left was the shore. I walked carefully along the rock face around a bend and about 300 m away from me I saw the small storage shed and some cars.
One of them was burning. Around the cars lurked some runners. I watched them for a while and counted three of them. I quickly changed to the other side of the road and jumped into the embankment which gave me more cover. I slowly walked along the embankment closer to the spot to have a better field of fire. I took the hunting rifle from my shoulder without making a sound. Then I lay in wait. I watched them through the scope. They patrolled around the cars and I waited until two of them turned their backs on me. With these machines I had no scruples I fired at the first one who was on the right side of one of the vehicles. The one in the middle didn’t even notice that his comrade exploded. He stopped and before he could even turn around I also blew up his tank. The third one turned around and made this strange barking sound. He ran towards me and I had trouble keeping an eye on him. But when he stopped and fired, I had him safely in the crosshairs of my scope and finished him off as well.
Then spray dirt in front of me. Damn… there was another one shooting. I pulled back a little more into the embankment as the bullets whizzed over me trying to locate the shooter. Carefully, I looked again in the approximate direction the shots had come from. Again a yarrow of bullets hissed over me, but now I saw that it came from a bush next to one of the cars. I continued to sneak forward, because there was a boundary stone at the side of the road. I wanted to use it as cover. Carefully I pushed the rifle over the edge of the embankment and set my sights on the bush. I could see the robot behind it.
Through a gap in the foliage I could see its red glowing sensors. I aimed a hand’s breadth above it - his tank must be about there. I took aim and fired. The shot was missing then the robot came rushing forward. I could see it was sparking, so I damaged it. It pointed at me again and I pulled the trigger. It exploded in a bright cloud.
It was very quiet after that. The water behind me was splashing and I could hear some seagulls screeching away. I reloaded the rifle, pulled the pistol and carefully left my cover. Then I examined the destroyed robots and took their bullets. I turned to the military shed. I broke the lock again with one of my hairpins. Unfortunately I found no weapon in the room, but five hand grenades. I screwed in the detonators and made them ready for use. All you had to do was take the grenade in your hand, press the handle on the side of course, pull out the safety pin with the ring and then throw the thing far enough. There was then a violent explosion with a shower of shrapnel that killed or at least seriously injured 20 m around. A terrible weapon to use against humans.
I also found various ammunition that found its way into my pockets. The cars outside were plentiful too. One of them was a car used by the military. I searched them in a hurry because I didn’t know when the next robots would show up. Then I walked the road towards Björgsnäskogen with my gun drawn. I walked through the reeds to the small island. There was nothing I could use in the hut. On the shore I came across a tent camp. In the sand of the beach a heart had been laid with stones. Here a couple of lovers had probably spent some romantic hours.
But there was no one to see, not even their bodies. Maybe they got away.
When I went back, my breath almost stopped. In the street, a humanoid robot, almost four metres tall, walking upright on two legs. Every step of the machine was accompanied by a bright Djiieep, Djiieep, Djiieep, Djiieep and the crunch of heavy steps when its footplates touched the ground.
The body was cubic. Where the human shoulder was, there was a large shoulder machine gun on his right side. The robot’s head was approximately in the middle of the body and stood about half a meter off to the front. It swung constantly back and forth and seemed to scan the environment. I crouched down in the reeds hoping that he would not catch me. I believed that I had no chance against him with the hunting rifle.
On his left arm, instead of a hand, there was a large caliber weapon. On his right arm was a box from which a long sword was temporarily fizzing out. This killer robot was a beast. I did not move and tried not to attract attention. I went through my arsenal in my mind. I had the hand grenades, my pistols, but they had little effect on the robot, depending on how heavily it was armored. My hunting rifle, which I assumed wasn’t strong enough. It had the smallest caliber of all the weapons. Then I had my gas cartridges, the emergency flares and the fireworks.
I thought about it, I could not get involved in a pistol fight with this highly dangerous machine. The hand grenades would be a good choice but what if one is not enough. Then he knew where I was and then …sayonara (japan… Bye). Waiting in the reeds for him to grab me and shoot at me was no solution either.
So I had to come up with something. The robot suddenly turned around and went towards Yttervik. It had come from that direction. I crept after it through the reeds and tried not to make any noise in the knee-deep water. My feet were freezing and I hardly felt them anymore. I always kept the robot in sight so that I could duck quickly when he turned around. I was lucky and reached the embankment.
I crawled through the wet grass up the embankment to get a frog’s-eye view of the road. I could only hear the robot at the moment. Silently I crept along the embankment behind him. If I couldn’t see him, then maybe he couldn’t see me either. I thought about it, the robot can see in the x-ray range, in the infrared range and with residual light amplifier. For sure he also had a clear vision device.
I remembered the image recognition I had seen in a machine. This machine could recognize images in a fraction of a second. Maybe this robot had one of those.
Then I wondered if he couldn’t see me in the infrared, because I had not left any traces of heat in the water, and he couldn’t see me in the embankment either, because the bundled scanner beam he sent out could only cover a certain area. And I had assumed the temperature of the ground, because I had been lying in the grass for so long. In the X-ray range he could see my bones, which naturally stood out from the surroundings. If I lay motionless and breathed shallowly, I would have to look like a corpse and be of no interest to him. In the visible light I was also invisible to him because he could not tilt his head down, I had already noticed that.
I heard the steps coming closer again. The ominous djiieep, djiieep, djiieep, djiieep slowly grew louder. The robot emitted a loud humming sound that went through marrow and leg. Psychological warfare, I thought you were trying to intimidate me. When the robot passed me it suddenly stopped.
My blood froze in my veins. Did it have me on the screen yet? Did he see me? I breathed shallowly and pressed myself into the grass. The scanner beam lit up yellow and swung over me. My heart was beating up to my neck and I forced myself to rest. Secretly I prayed that he would keep going. The scanner waved over me twice. The sword kept hissing and clacking its way in and out of its housing. Probably he wanted to make me nervous and lure me out of my cover. I stayed lying there and did not move.
Then he went on suddenly. And in the direction I had hoped for. He probably went patrolling and would walk to his end point, which I had just seen when I was in the reeds.
I lusted carefully over the edge of the embankment and saw him go away. Of course he would turn around at his end point and come back. I carefully took two gas cartridges out of my bag and rolled them out onto the street. They remained lying about in the middle. I walked a bit further towards Yttervik. I still listened to the hum of his engines. After about ten paces I turned around, quietly taking the hunting rifle from my shoulder. I had already loaded it through and only needed to turn the safety lever and cock the hammer. I put the Klaucke next to me in the grass, unlocked.
I looked through the rifle scope of the Meusser and clearly recognized the gas cartridges. I carefully cocked the hammer of the rifle. It clicked quietly into place.
Suddenly the robot turned around. Its lamps suddenly glowed red and a sharply focused red light beam passed over me. Then it fired. The big projectiles hissed over me and hit close behind me. He must have recognized me somehow.
I had opened Pandora’s box.
A sheaf also shot out of his arm machine gun, which sprayed the dirt in front of me, I ducked behind the edge of the embankment. The ricochets just whistled over me. Fortunately he did not hit the gas cartridges, because then I would have been almost defenceless. Good, I still had the hand grenades. Then I heard a loud lion-like scream. I guess it was the robot doing the screaming. I heard quick steps coming towards me. I looked over the edge of the embankment and saw the robot running towards me very quickly. It was too late for the hunting rifle, by the time I had aimed it would have been on me. I pulled the Klaucke up because it had almost reached the gas cartridges. The Klaucke barked BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM. The dirt splashed out in front of the gas cartridges and one of my shots hit.
One of the gas cartridges exploded and almost simultaneously the second one. The robot was lifted and torn from its legs in full swing. An enormous explosion tore him apart and his debris fell to the ground on fire.
Debris rained down on me and I pulled my arms over my head. My heart was beating wildly and only now did I realize that I was trembling all over my body. I gasped for breath and tasted bitter adrenalin. I was tense like a feather. I bent down slowly at gunpoint and picked up the Meusser again.
I examined the robot. It was huge. It had large calibres on board in addition to pistol ammunition. I took them out and put them in my backpack. Then I examined the robot for potential weaknesses. There were vents to the left and right of the head with fans behind them. Behind them, on the left side, where the arm with the gun was sitting, was an ammunition container, from which a belt led into the MG. This container was not particularly armoured. I could imagine that if you shot into it with a steel jacket bullet, a heavy explosion could be caused. If you fired from the front, the bullet could penetrate to the rear and hit the tank. It looked similar to the runner’s, only much bigger. The tank was located on the back inside a tubular frame. I could imagine that if you hit it with a rifle it would explode. Whether it would work with one shot was still to be clarified. On the right side he had a similar ventilation shaft. There was also a ventilator here. I thought that if both of them were shot, it could cause great damage to the robot. The sensors were similar to those of the runners. Night vision, infrared, X-ray, and normal vision. I guessed right.
The shoulder gun was huge. Also here, on the shoulder was a low armoured ammunition container, which could cause a big explosion if it was fired at. The suspensions of the weapons were not very strong. I could imagine that if you fired at it with a large caliber weapon, it could be detonated and the MG would fall off. The same applied to the arm MG.
Some quick pistol shots from the Klaucke or from an assault rifle could disarm this robot. The pneumatically extending sword was better attached and seemed to be the close combat weapon. One should not get too close to him if one did not want to end up as sushi (japan food called sushi). I estimated that the robot must have weighed a ton.
The joints of the legs were also stable, but could be destroyed safely by fire. In the lower area the robot legs had an inverted second joint. This indicated to me that the robot could jump.
After I had finished my investigations I continued and reached Yttervik shortly after. Relieved, I entered my parents’ house. I locked the door, because I did not want any more company.
I searched the house and looted the pantry. In the fridge were two bottles of beer, which I drank one after the other. I went upstairs, undressed and lay down on my bed. I put the loaded Klaucke and the burden on my bed. Hopefully I would wake up if someone broke into the house. It was dead quiet and I felt very tired. My eyes closed and I fell asleep.