Free Droids Don't Cry by Sam Kepfield Page A

She dove to the ground, rolled once, twice, aimed and fired. The slug went into the cop’s thigh, and he twisted in agony and went down on his left side. The gun came up, gleaming in the blue-and-red flashers atop the cruiser. She fired again, overriding all programming, and sent the slug crashing into the cop’s forehead. The body twitched several times and then went slack, the gun falling to the pavement.
    She went to the cruiser, shoved the first cop to the side, slid behind the wheel, and roared off down the alley. At the entrance, she slammed on the brakes to avoid another cruiser rushing by. With a squeal of tires, the cruiser fishtailed and headed in the opposite direction. She shut down the emergency lights and sped down the pavement, swerving around larger potholes. No street lights, but no traffic lights, either. It was five miles out of the dead zone. The cruiser shot through the chain-link gate, into the living world and one more day.
     
    “I’m just past the 92 turn-off on US 83,” Ray Platt said into the headset, keeping his voice low. “Nothing so far. At all.”
    “Last report was she was headed west, toward the dead zones.” The voice of his supervisor crackled over the earbud; reception out there was lousy.
    “Naturally,” Platt drawled. Everyone kept whispering about the droid sanctuaries, out west in the dead zones, but no one ever got a location.
    “Don’t be a smartass, Platt,” his supervisor shot back, irritated. “Just find the damned thing. It nailed Lee.” Who deserved it , Platt thought, snorting. Lee was a hotheaded prick given to quick-drawing and rapidly escalating nonviolent situations into full-blown crises, like that standoff last month. Five dead, ten wounded, and the best shot at taking a droid gone in a flash-bang. Tried to be a hero but finally wound up as meat on a slab with a medal and a widow to show for it.
    The western Nebraska countryside scrolled past as he piloted the unmarked cruiser down the northbound lane of US 83. It was a federal highway, so it was still in fair condition, meaning no washed-out bridges, no meter-deep potholes, no shoulders crumbling like cheap pie crust. Some of the state highways had grass growing in the untarred cracks and were disintegrating from sheer disuse.
    And who, he asked, looking at the tallgrass-covered hills in the cold morning sun, was out here to use the roads? A few farmers, sure—most of the ranchers had resorted to horseback for cattle drives—but a fair percentage of the towns out here were ghost towns. Just over ten years since The Plague fizzled, the world was still digging out. One-third mortality, a couple billion dead worldwide, a hundred-fifty million plus here; the last two census numbers were iffy. Back east, it meant you could finally get an apartment in New York City or Tokyo without having it willed to you. Out here, it meant entire counties populated only by jackrabbits and coyotes.
    He spotted a farmhouse off on a side road, a mile distant. Maybe , he thought. Might as well give it a look-see . He doubted that a patrol cruiser could have made it this far without refueling. He made a note to call back and have them check fill-and-dash incidents between here and Omaha. Platt slowed and turned off onto the dirt road. He checked his GPS transmitter and the recorder, and unracked the laser rifle from the dash.
    The house, he saw as he pulled into the drive and passed the small shelterbelt, had been deserted long before The Plague hit. The paint had peeled off, the windows were all broken out, the barn roof sagged, and a shed beside the barn had tilted and collapsed. The farm machinery—a tractor, a hay cart, and two pickup trucks—were all of a late-twentieth-century vintage and were coated in rust. He stopped the cruiser in front of the house, grabbed the rifle, and stepped out.
    The barn door was slightly askew, so he decided to try the barn first. Rifle at the ready, just like the Marines taught him, he