Broken Things Page 13

  The answer slept on the couch. Neil had his feet kicked up on the cushions, still wearing his shoes. His left arm dangled off of the couch, remote control on the floor just out of reach where he’d dropped it. Just above his head, a nearly full soda rested on the end table balanced on an open gamer magazine.

  He paused, glanced at the bedroom, and huffed. If he allowed Neil to keep his shoes on his furniture, the damn kid would think he could do it all the time. He strode up to the couch and grabbed Neil’s feet. As precariously as Neil rested on the edge, it didn’t take much to shift his balance. Cody nudged his shoes, dumping the kid onto the floor.

  Neil woke up, hissing and spitting like a cat dumped into a wading pool. Cody stared at him emotionlessly, letting the kid run through his repertoire of curse words. Failing to raise Cody’s ire he finally calmed down and said, “What was that for?”

  “You had your shoes on my couch.”

  Neil kicked them off and flopped back onto the couch. They both turned in time to watch the magazine with the boy’s soda resting on its pages slowly slip from the table to dump on the carpet.

  “What the hell,” Cody cursed, “You have klutz programming?”

  Neil glared back. “It wasn’t my fault. Make Angel clean it up. Angel!”

  Cody turned, waiting for her to enter the room. The house remained strangely silent. “She’s probably asleep. Get a towel and clean it up yourself.”

  “That’s what Angel is for. AAAAN-GEEEEEEL!”

  He flinched at the shrill screaming. If anything set her off, it was Neil bossing her around. He normally would let them fight, but he really wanted to get back to bed. “If she doesn’t clean it up, you got to do it.”

  Cody walked back to his bedroom, the promise of continuing his dream beckoning him back to his sheets. He heard Neil scurrying through the house, trying to pass off his mess. He knew Angel would eventually deal with it, she always did.

  Just as he settled back into the warmth of his sheets, Neil stuck his head in the doorway. “Is she in here?”

  “Get out of my room.”

  “Because if she’s not, I don’t think she’s home.”

  Cody sat back up, any promise of resuming his neighbor fantasy slipping away from him. Neil continued to stare expectantly, waiting for him to do something. Not for the first time he questioned his decision to let the boy stay. Neil created a risk, if anyone ever bothered to follow the kid, or if he ever brought attention back to him for his unethical acquiring of android parts. Still, the benefits the boy provided outweighed the risks. “Where would Angel go? She’s afraid to leave the house.”

  Groaning loudly to let Neil know just how much of an inconvenience this was, Cody climbed back out of bed, sliding his feet into his slippers. He went room by room with the boy on his heels, but there was no sign of her.

  Finally he stopped in the kitchen, and noticed next to a stack of dirty dishes and an empty pizza box his notebook lying open on the counter. Had he left it that way? It hung open to his notes on the new kid, Josh.

  Now that had been a messed up kid. His arms and legs had scars as though he’d been tied behind a truck and dragged. The damage to his head implied serious physical trauma as though someone had beaten him severely. Cody understood him wanting to go home. Every owner was imprinted in the mind of their child. That was part of the bond. Unfortunately, it only worked one way. Owners didn’t feel the same attachment. Maybe they had with real children, but Cody didn’t know anything about that kind of psychology. No matter how real the children seemed, how real their programmed emotions, people were never able to consider them as anything other than a toy. Though there existed laws to protect real biological children (that didn’t exist), it didn’t apply to androids, and there would never be a law that said you couldn’t break your own toys.

  But the damage done to Josh had destroyed his value. Nobody would ever take a kid like that.

  Cody didn’t much care for children either, but he loved what he could make them do. He could use them to do things that he couldn’t, thanks to his own program, Cain. It allowed him to give them personality traits that the other Kidsmith programmers had avoided, things that made the kids more fun. There were other programs that did the same thing, android hacks that made unpredictable chaotic children, but they didn’t have his background.

  “Did you bring Josh back?”

  “What? No. He bailed on me.”

  Cody eyed Neil with suspicion. Neil folded his arms across his chest and stared defiantly back. Maybe he’d put a bit too much chaos into Neil. “Why wouldn’t he come back? He wanted that upgrade pretty bad. That seems a bit out of character.”

  The boy shrugged. His expression dared Cody to accuse him of anything.

  “Whatever. I wonder if Angel went after him?”

  “Angel? Why would she care?”

  Because I gave her a maternal personality. He didn’t say that out loud. Neil might be an android, but he would still tease him. He didn’t need a flashback to his own childhood caused by a miscreant kid.

  That had to be it, a kid had come along that needed help and it had overridden her mild agoraphobia. He’d have to increase its severity. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on her. He grabbed another tablet and typed in her registration number.

  It couldn’t locate her.

  “What’s this?” he mumbled. He typed it in again, just in case his fat fingers had made a mistake. The same answer returned: ‘Can’t Locate Subject’. Somehow she’d gone off the grid.

  Had she erased her identity? The thought sent a chill through his body. What if she told somebody about him? What he liked to do? She was like a walking diary of all his habits and fetishes. She had no reason to keep his secrets.

  But if she were going after Josh, she’d have to be tracking him. Yes, Angel did know his secrets. She would be able to track a kid as easily as he could. If she had gone after Josh, he just had to find him first. Then he’d get his Angel back. If he couldn’t trust her after this, then she would spend her nights sleeping in the closet with his other girls.

  Part 4

  1

  The map application on James’ tablet led Josh across the foothills. He had to crawl through a barb wire fence once, but otherwise there wasn’t much else to hinder him. James had seemed nice, and had even fixed his arm, but he couldn’t help but feel manipulated, which meant that he wasn’t any different from everyone else he’d encountered.

  He had no illusions that James wouldn’t be able to find him. The man had somehow managed to find him once already. However it would be that much harder for him if he avoided the roads.

  The foothills were covered in sagebrush, making his travel difficult. He could barely see in the minimal light that the city below him put off, glowing like a distant ocean of candles. Finally he realized that he could use the tablet as a flashlight. It didn’t work great, but it kept him from tripping over the flora immediately in front of him. From somewhere distant came the short yips of a coyote, but he could no longer hear the sounds of the city.

  His destination wasn’t too far away. Two miles from the city limit was the Ada County Landfill. Next to that had been built another landfill designed for the disposal of androids. A Kid Cemetery.

  He hadn’t been asleep when James had left the workshop, or not too deeply at least. He’d been thinking, mostly. If he needed kid parts, why not get them from old broken ones that didn’t need them anymore? If he could find Kid Cemetery, he could get the part himself, and take it back to Cody. If Cody wouldn’t upgrade him (thanks to Neil) he’d find someone that could. He’d heard the door shut, and realized that he had a single opportunity to leave.

  Josh’s parents had rarely let him use their computer tablet, but he still knew how to look things up on it. He’d snagged James’ tablet and used the voice recognition to find Kid Cemetery, or officially, the Kidsmith Hazardous Waste Disposal Repository. Only the official website and the maps app called it that. Even online, people refe
rred to it by its other moniker, or Kid Pit.

  Sitting around waiting for the monster had to be the worst plan ever. James didn’t know what he was messing with. Even now, moving across the desert he felt as though it was right on his heels. James claimed it was an adult android. Why would anyone make it a monster though? Did they hate kids so much that they needed to make one to hunt them?

  The monster was probably designed to hunt down abandoned kids. Hopefully once he got home it would leave him alone. If not, his dad would know what to do.

  Soon a glow beckoned from just beyond the next rise. As he got closer, he no longer needed the tablet’s light to guide his way. He crested the hill, finding a chain link fence blocking his route, stretching out beyond sight in both directions. Atop the fence, security lights illuminated the perimeter.

  Josh slipped his fingers through the fence and stared beyond. Featureless gray buildings stood as inert sentinels, watching over their eternally sleeping charges. A road separated the fence from the buildings, rough tire tracks in its dirt surface a testimony of life, but he saw no other signs. He didn’t see guards or security of any type, but cameras hung from the corners of the buildings, like silent guardian eyes.

  He couldn’t see any broken children lying around. The facility surrounded what looked like dozens of small hills that rose even above the buildings. They were shadowy silhouettes beyond the brilliance of the security lights. Maybe that meant that they buried all of the broken parts. That made sense, for a cemetery.

  Tentatively he climbed the fence. At the top, three lines of barbed wire were strung to prevent people from getting in. He kept his head low and kept tight to the metal bar that comprised the top of the fence, and his small frame passed easily beneath it, without even snagging. This place didn’t worry about kids getting in.

  Or out.

  Within a few feet of the ground, he dropped down easily. He looked behind him, but the darkness was absolute, as thick as a wall. If anything were out there, he would never see it. He glanced up at the security cameras, but they watched impotently. No one came to challenge him. He walked cautiously across the dirt road and into the shadows between the buildings. Every step he took crunched in the gravel, but he supposed no one here expected to see a kid walking about.

  All of the windows were dark. He walked up to the nearest door and tried the handle, and found it locked. He walked further into the landfill wondering what he would find. Did they store the children in a crypt, like a mausoleum? Maybe they were buried, each placed reverently within the earth. He walked cautiously. He didn’t want to step on any graves. If his future had gone differently, he might’ve joined them yesterday. Only luck had saved him from this fate.

  Josh reached the hills, still looking down, mindful of each step. He walked deeper still, yet he found no graves. Graves would be bad anyway, he didn’t have a shovel. There weren’t broken parts or children lying about either. Maybe he needed to go back and try more of the doors. Soon the hills blocked out the lights at his back. He hesitated, unsure of his next step. Turning the tablet back on, he used the screen as a flashlight. Gaping before him stretched a gigantic trench, almost the size of a small canyon. He couldn’t make out how far it stretched, or how wide. Kid Pit.

  A few more steps and he would’ve fallen in. The drop wasn’t too bad, maybe ten feet, but still more than he wanted to fall. He leaned down, trying to use the light to see the bottom. Everywhere he looked lay dark shapes. Bodies, he realized suddenly, that’s why they call it Kid Pit.

  He shivered. He stood upon a precipice overlooking the dead. It hadn’t truly sunk in as to what he would find. He’d hoped it would be parts, but not contained still within the fragile shells of the children. How many of them could there be?

  “Hello?”

  Josh nearly jumped out of his skin. The voice had come from his left and he turned so fast he nearly lost his balance. The thought of falling into the pit with the other children made his heart skip a beat. He flashed the tablet’s light about, but there were only the hills.

  And the hills were arms and legs and heads and bodies… stacks and stacks of children. Blissfully ignorant, he’d been walking among them all along. He staggered and his foot slipped. He reached out and fell against the hill of children behind him. He pushed himself away, desperately trying not to continue to touch their still, lifeless bodies. Their skin was cool and soft to the touch, as though they only slept.

  He scanned wildly about, trying to see who (what) had spoken. There were so many discarded children, so many broken and thrown away. How many? His mind couldn’t fathom the numbers he saw. How many mountains of children?

  There were all ages, boys and girls, from broken infants to broken pre-teens, his age. They were all his brothers and sisters, products of Kidsmith, novelties, mockeries of life, all extinguished.

  “Help me,” said the voice again. It was weak and distant, as though it struggled to say the words. It was androgynous, it could’ve been anyone. Josh sat still, afraid to answer the ghost of the piles, the disembodied voice of thousands upon thousands of children. The silence stretched as though they waited for his answer. The wind picked up, whistling through the artificial valley, as though the android landscape breathed out one last melancholy sigh.

  Maybe they’d made a mistake. Maybe someone had thrown away a kid that wasn’t broken! He steeled himself to face his fears. On trembling knees, he half crawled toward where the voice had come from, trying to hold up the tablet’s light, yet unable to get to his feet. His legs couldn’t support him. He couldn’t imagine what would go through one’s mind, discarded here, no one to help you out, nobody even around to hear your call.

  “Where are you?” His own voice came out high-pitched and laced with fright. He couldn’t fake being brave, but neither could he run away when there could be another child trapped here.

  “Here,” came the voice, “Help…”

  “Okay.” Please don’t be a ghost, please don’t be a ghost, please don’t be a ghost… He reached the mound, but there were so many empty eyes, so many still limbs. He shone the light up and down through the bodies, but none of them responded. “I can’t find you.”

  He waited but the voice didn’t answer again. He forced himself to look closer. There was a sadness to each child, their expressions reflected what he felt in his heart. Some had the back of their heads opened, robbed for parts. Others had signs of mistreatment, bruises and scars. Still others looked healthy, as if they were here by choice, to rest in the arms of their brothers and sisters. None of them rotted. None of them looked malnourished. Other than the abuse they’d suffered, they looked perfect, frozen forever in time.

  “Are you there?” he asked a little louder, “Is anyone still alive?”

  The mound rippled. Here and there it shifted. Suddenly an arm shot out and grabbed his wrist. A little dark-haired girl, maybe ten, lifted her head and cried, “Help us!”

  Josh screamed and tried to jerk away, but she held onto him tightly. He dropped the tablet and pushed away using her face for leverage until she let go. She continued reaching, her thin arm outstretched for a few seconds more until she collapsed, too weak to put up any more struggle.

  The light from the dropped tablet continued to shine upward, revealing movement all along the mound. Not the girl, she didn’t move anymore, but countless others did. All of them were too weak to move much. Some gasped for breath, while others managed petulant cries for help. The wail of an infant carried above it all.

  “I can’t help you,” he said, scooting backwards, “”I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.”

  He staggered to his feet and stumbled forward into a blind run. He didn’t know where he was going, only away from the pit, attempting to leave their cries behind. The further he ran the children still slept, oblivious to the diminishing cries behind him.

  Josh ran toward the lights of the buildings, heedless of obstacles. As he entered the cusp of where the light hit the shadow he tripped over
something, maybe nothing, or even his own feet, and he fell to his knees. He buried his face in his hands, seeking to block out his surroundings. He couldn’t run anymore, his strength sapped out of him.

  His fear of the monster paled in comparison.

  He didn’t hear the engine of the truck approaching, nor did he look up until the headlights were right in front of him. The white truck with the Kidsmith logo drove slowly, throwing up a trailing cloud of dust, but he couldn’t get back to his feet. Nightmares surrounded him no matter what direction he chose to run.

  The truck stopped a few feet away. “Josh?”

  It was James. He opened the door and the cab light revealed his female passenger, Angel. He carried some sort of weird gun. She followed right on his heels as he got out and walked slowly over to him. The headlights lit up the nearest mound, exposing the still, broken children. Angel’s steps faltered as it sunk in what she saw.

  Josh watched her, expressionless. Her eyes were wide, horror and disbelief waged against each other across her face. She looked at them, and back to the bodies. She tried to speak, her mouth moved with no words coming out. She could only shake her head. She gulped, forcing her throat to work and asked James, “What is this place?”

  “The Kidsmith Repository,” James said, “It’s for the unfixable children. You okay, Josh? Is your monster here?”

  “It’s hell,” Josh said, fighting back tears, “God doesn’t see us, does he? All of the children, they’re still alive. I just want to go home. Please take me home.”

  “There’s so many,” Angel said as she knelt down beside him. “What’s that sound? Where’s it coming from?”

  “It’s just the wind,” James said, “Did you see the monster?”

  Josh’s glared at him through his tears. When he spoke, he couldn’t restrain his bitterness. “It’s not the wind. It’s the children. You’re the monster. You… people...”

  “Now that’s not fair, not all of us are. I’m here to help you. Just like how I fixed your arm, remember? We’re not all bad.”