Empire (Empire 1)

“Those weren’t blanks,” said Rube. “It was a recording of gunshots.”

“You know what that thing reminds me of?” said Cole.

“The Empire Strikes Back,” said Rube.

“I was thinking War of the Worlds.”

“Yeah, but those were computer-graphics bullshit. Why do they think two legs will make a thing like that work better than tracks?”

“If we’re still talking,” said Cole, “we’re not really running fast enough.”

They sped up again as the live bullets began striking around them. The corner of Greenwich Street was on their left, a couple of steps away.

“Not a recording now,” said Cole.

“So do we try for Murray Street or settle for Park Place?”

“You pick now to play Air Monopoly?”

The thing turned the corner behind them sooner than they had expected. It fired immediately.

“The warning message apparently ran out,” said Rube.

They dived between parked cars, then kept low as they moved along the sidewalk.

A car just behind them blew up. The blast knocked them off their feet.

Cole was up at once. Rube was maybe a little bit slower. It might have had to do with him being blown into a fireplug. “You okay?” Cole asked.

“That is the ugliest girl I ever kissed,” said Rube. He was okay enough to keep running.

They made the corner of Park Place just as the tank-on-legs lined up with the sidewalk so it could shoot them without having to go through cars to do it. The bullets tore up the concrete of the sidewalk and Cole felt little bits of concrete spatter the back of his head. It would be hell getting them out by himself. He hated to pay the deductible to have an emergency room do it. It?

??s times like this, he thought, when it would be really nice to have a wife. Cecily will pull all the concrete bits out of Rube’s head.

The things that run through your head when the fear of death comes on you, thought Cole.

They were nearly at the corner of Broadway when the thing rounded the corner and started shooting at them again.

“What kind of threat . . . do we pose?” said Cole between breaths.

“Plenty of civilians . . . would act like this,” said Rube, also panting. “Shoot anything . . . that runs . . . bad order . . . collateral . . . damage.”

“Maybe it’s . . . cause we . . . run too . . . damn fast,” suggested Cole.

“Maybe it’s . . . our uniforms,” said Rube.

Cole had forgotten they were wearing uniforms.

He saw a deeply recessed doorway and dodged into it.

Rube joined him but didn’t like it. “We’ll just be . . . pinned here,” he said. “When it comes . . . up the street.”

“If it’s just a machine,” said Cole, “it won’t see us . . . and it might retarget.”

“That would be a really . . . stupid program, too,” said Rube.

“So maybe the guys who . . . built this are really stupid.”