Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

Macy was already firing. He leaned back, letting the recoil of the MK48 drive him into the ground. The 7.62mm rounds snapped through the air alongside Coutts’ lighter 5.56mm bullets, the heavy tungsten projectiles peppering the behemoth. Folen and Nielsen joined in a second later, followed by the steady crack of Erwin’s marksmanship rifle.

The beast dropped onto all fours, charging despite the firepower leveled against it. It swiped at Coutts, its claws ripping apart his ceramic armor and sending his M249 flying. He fell, rolling to his feet and yanking the recovered claw free. The soldier lunged forward, hacking at the thing’s nose and maw, screaming incoherently. Nielsen circled, trying to get a better line of sight, blasting away at the thing’s thick, knotted skull.

“Fuck you honey badger!” Coutts shouted. Its huge head snapped forward, catching him around the waist. He screamed, coughing up blood as he rammed the claw furiously into its snout. The claw snapped in half as the beast shook its head wildly, hurling him like a shotput. Coutts went flying, disappearing over the edge of the plateau.

Erwin lunged, driving the barrel of his EBR into its chest. He pulled the trigger until his magazine was dry. The creature roared, ramming him with the spines on its shoulder. They burst out the back of his skull, shredding his body armor. It grabbed his body with a clawed hand and shoved the remains into its cavernous maw.

Nielsen cursed as he reloaded, fumbling with his polymer magazine. The thing turned on him, snarling, its white eyes rolling back into its head. He slammed another magazine home as it charged, Macy and Folen’s shouts drowned out by its thick, throaty bellow.

It was nearly on top of him when it suddenly began thrashing about. It shuddered, skidding to a halt, throwing up clogs of dirt in all directions. It pawed at its own head, snarling, foaming at the mouth.

“Hey! Over here!”

Nielsen turned to see a soldier emerge from a stand of trees on the other side of the plateau. His thick beard was covered in blood. There was a vicious wound on his left arm, a claw slash nearly six inches long. In his right hand he clenched a dish-shaped device attached to a massive backpack by thick, gray wires.

He aimed the device squarely at the bellowing monster. A high-pitched whine filled the air. The creature’s snarl turned into a mammoth squeal of pain. It turned and fled, thundering back the way it had come.

The young sergeant turned toward the stranger. The other man huffed with exertion, the device shaking in his arm.

“Goddam thing is running out of juice,” he said. “You all right?”

“Fine,” Nielsen answered. “Just peachy.”

“Who the hell is this?” Macy asked, coming with Folen to stand beside Nielsen.

The other soldier clipped the device to his belt. He pulled a wrinkled cigarette pack out of his shoulder pocket and offered one to Nielsen. Nielsen stared at him. He shrugged, and lit it for himself. “Sergeant First Class Morris,” the soldier said. “Attached to Task Force Griffin. Stationed up at Camp Eisenhower a click north of here.”

“Bullshit, that’s where you’re from,” Folen said. “You’re stationed at Camp Bullshit, and you drink from a Camelback full of fucking lies.”

“You wouldn’t know about Eisenhower,” Morris continued, ignoring Folen. “It’s a subterranean facility. CIA built it back in 2002 right after the invasion. We’ve been moving in and out for the last ten years.”

“And let me guess,” Folen continued. “You’ve got all kinds of crazy nasty shit down there including that... thing.” He frowned, noticing the cigarette dangling from Morris’ lips. “Wait. Let me get one of those.”

Morris handed him a smoke, and said, “Yes. All kinds of nasty shit, including Codename: BARGHEST, which you just met.”

“That’s a stupid name for a honey badger,” Nielsen said. “A really fucking stupid name.”

The SF soldier frowned. “It’s not a honey badger. It’s a genetically engineered grizzly with a load of mechanical augmentation. Small arms don’t work for shit; it’s got a solid inch of ballistic-resistant gel and synthetic spider-weave beneath its skin. Most of its organs are redundant, and the damn thing has a graphene battery as a power source if it suffers brain death.”

“Can you kill it with that?” Nielsen asked, pointing at the device clipped to Morris’ waist.

“No. It’s supposed to be a remote control,” Morris said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “But the only setting that seems to still work is the one set to ‘screw off’. I can’t control them, but I can make them leave for a while. If we can make it back to camp I—”

“Stop,” Folen interrupted. “You said ‘them’. Please tell me you meant ‘it’.”

“No,” Morris sighed. “That’s one of two that are still left.”

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