Old Doors

The things you hold on to are important. I’d had a very long time to think about that. It was that feeling that kept my knuckles white as they gripped the sleek, plastic relic in my hand as I stared along its barrel. Well, my knuckles would have been white if they were still knuckles. I had found this thing a ways back on the road and, as you can see, I was starting to get attached.

A naught-eight surplus that I had found in a marine base. Never found anything like it since. Automatic, easy to field strip, accepts standard bore shells. I accepted something else but between me and that something else was a new obstacle which was, of course, unacceptable.

“I ain’t seen lots like you, Skelly,” the obstacle said. “What business you got in our roadhouse.” His voice was a smoky growl and his body was a heavy, imposing wall, slowly rising before me.

“You Ethl Ranger?” I asked as my gaze rose up with him. The big, thick man just looked at me funny so I decided to continue on. “Because the sign out front said; “Ethl Ranger’s br n booz. So I assume if you aren’t Ethl Ranger then this isn’t your roadhouse.”

A skinny blond smiled and shook his head, then sneered his lips back to bare his teeth - all meticulously filed. I had to admit; he was pretty for his era. Certainly prettier than dime-a-dozen thug A over here. I could see ‘the brains’ practically written across him. “See here,” he said, gesturing all around him. “We don’t have to put our name on this place. Everyone who’s anyone in this town knows that the Assault Raptors live here.”

Thousands upon thousands of words in the English language and this was the particular combination they landed on? If only my eyes could still roll. There wasn’t a gang called “the Piranhas” within the distance that word travels. They could have been The Code, Ghosts, Night Shift or anything else. All I knew is I wasn’t keen on being the reason that ‘Assault Raptors’ became a name to fear.

“You tryna change that, I bet,” thug B said. “You want a cut?” He gave a big, menacing smile, but teeth aren't what kill you when you meet some nameless gangbangers out in the desert.

I coughed. “Are you just going to keep assuming?”

The big guy slammed his fist into a nearby table. “No, we’re going to start-“

I grimaced as I held down the trigger. The first three shots thumped from the barrel of the bizarre gun in my hands, aimed at the big guy ahead of me. He flew backward. I didn’t bother watching the aftermath, because the little guy thought he was a gun-fu artist. He was pulling out dual, glimmering, raw metal lead-spitters and about to try and go royally akimbo on me. Two more shots. One knocked the gun from his left hand. Next hit him in the chest.

My reflexes are so last century, back when they made them good.

They coughed and wheezed, one with their piles of wrecked drinks and overturned furniture smeared back against the wall. Noticeably absent was any sign of blood or holes in their tacky leather jackets. Sandbag rounds, perfect for teaching idiot thugs a lesson they'll never forget and making sure they live long enough to remember. I let my eyes scan across the mismatched tables and crates that passed for seating, waiting to see if anyone else would start to rise or make a move.

“Don’t anybody get any smart-ass ideas.” I walked over to the register and patted the hapless cashier on the shoulder. The man looked ready to pop. “Just wanna’ buy some voltage from this fine citizen. You all stay cool,” I clicked the magazine from my piece, put it away and swapped it for a large drum while they were still sizing me up. “Because these next rounds are lethal.”

Size that.

“Alright!” someone distantly quailed from below a table. “Get it and fuck off! Go in peace, man!”

“Good. Now...” I said, turning to the cashier. “I recognized the logo on the side of this old building. You still have one of those red plugs going into the wall? Running up to the roof? Plug these in for me, bring em back after 5 minutes.” I was quieter with that sentence, feeling no need for show. I handed him 2 battery cassettes.

I raised my voice. “Single millimeter, tungsten carbide flechettes,” I pondered the words. “You thugs know what those do to people?”

Silence

“Good, because you never want to find out.”

Luckily for me and mine, they didn’t.

I took my cassettes out back where I could safely pop them in, stashing away the hashed together cord. One end was a sleek, shiny terminal connector, the other one a slightly bent set of two metal prongs. I had only about four of one end and could find the other end around the corner in the hundreds, probably.

The crumbling stucco against my back grounded me. It reminded me I wasn't all routines and training, even after all of these years. I slid the dust protector covering the cassettes closed and stood up.

My available amps rose rapidly and I felt the strength returning to my joints. Yeah. That was the feeling of buying yourself another few weeks of life. I would have sighed with relief if I still could. Just a little bit longer.

It was hard being among the neverdying, a 'pload, a clanky. The world was running out of parts to fix me, but I was still around for now, still moving, still awake even though the hundreds of others were gone, so far as I knew. I'd even had to convince myself to go through the indignity of dismantling one or two of my fallen brothers for parts. At least I’d kept their tags.

I start walking and pull out an old, faded piece of plastic. It had started to get brittle and scratched, but through the impurities I saw an unfamiliar face. Presumably it had been me - or at least the first tenth of me going by lifespan. Marquise Mathews was recovered from the front with extensive injuries. I remember the foam tiles and glaring lights, getting stuck with an anesthetic with barely any explanation from one of the people hurrying to save me… for whatever capacity saving meant.

I didn’t remember too much before that, honestly, except that I had someone. I remember a locket. I’d forgotten the face, forgotten the person but I still remembered the metal in my soft hands, then in the hands I had today. “Seal beach” the card said. It just so happened that I was just up the road from there. I remembered the day that place stopped mattering, when we were run out of there in a sudden attack by ‘irregular forces’ and the base became just another scavenger hotzone.

It was another day or two out, but with my charge topped up, I could continue day and night until I hit the causeway. The concrete monolith of the base rose from the ocean, a combination of rusting offshore rigs and inclined palisades. The rest of the walk was peaceful with the hiss of waves licking at my synthetic ears.

I’d left this place far behind long ago along with everything that I hadn’t gone to my station with. It had happened so fast, but I knew the soul of Marquise was still in the ruins somewhere, buried in a foot locker by a ruined bed frame. It hadn’t mattered before but now there wasn’t another reason to keep going.

It had the feeling of finishing some crucial business before turning off the lights and locking up. That feeling only became stronger as I picked my way through shadowed halls with sunlight bursting through the ruined roof. It took me a while to find my way through the sprawl and, in the process, I realized I wasn’t alone.

I watched them from behind a wall. The only part of me they’d see was a little, antenna-like arm sticking out from behind some debris. One lone scav. Two, three. Little ones. Little ones? My pinhole eye watched them with curiosity, features flattened from the distance and magnification. They were all wrapped in tan cloth to hide themselves as best they could. The big one carried a kalach, the wooden stock and black gunbarrel gleaming as it swung at their hip. When they turned away I slipped by and moved back into the darkness of the barracks.

I begin to feel more sure as I take turn after turn. A certain building number, a certain letter. I don’t know anymore if I’m correct but I keep going. I’ve been alive so long, I have time. I check each nameplate quickly. I start to wonder if I might be wrong. Or maybe the particular barrack I need happens to be one of the collapsed ones I pass.

Somehow, though, I find myself staring at the nameplate. “M. Mathews.” My guts would have clenched if they hadn’t rotted away in some far off biohazard bin. I didn’t feel the sensation, but I felt assured I would - again, if I could.

It glints in the sun as I sit with it, feeling the coldness of the heart-shaped container through my scratched, pitted hands. I’d taken it here, ostensibly, so I could see what was inside, but I’d sat here for who knows how long just holding it, turning it, watching its detailing glint.

My shoulders rise. I would be taking a deep breath if it was still possible. I thumb the button.

Inside is someone I don’t recognize. The picture is so faded I can’t even say for certain what gender they are and, in spite of the facial features I can make out, it doesn't light even a single spark inside of me. I feel time passing as I keep staring. It feels like I’ve become stone, as if I’d somehow lost power to my motor system in that instant.

A crack rings out and, instinctively, my head backs up against the weathered cement wall. Rapid pops like distant fireworks echo off unseen structures and my mind goes to the little line of tan-cloth scavengers.

It isn’t what I came here for, but what I came here for had changed just like I had. Even if it had been perfectly preserved, I don’t think I would have been able to dredge up anything more than an old ghost of what was from inside that old metal.

I had been fixated on that old door, open on the ground now as I stand up. Its glinting as an unfamiliar ghost of a face looks up at me, gaze unacknowledged.

Old doors close, though. This one had closed a long time ago. But I had spent such a long time focusing on that old door, maybe I had been missing the new ones in front of me. Spent so many years of my infinite, metal life looking for that locket. It never changed, but I did. Maybe that was fine. You fixate on those old doors and you’ll miss the ones opening in front of you.

I shoulder the long body of my weapon. It was no locket, but it mattered to me. Maybe it would matter to those three. Maybe they were still alive. Maybe I could keep it that way. In that moment, I looked forward and my foot crossed the threshold.

The old world is dead. Long live the new world.