Velvet Dogma by Weston Ochse

Author:Weston Ochse [Ochse, Weston]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

All hell broke loose.

Ack Acks descended upon them, first knocking them to the floor, then manhandling them into a standing position. Three men and a woman gripped Rebecca. Four men gripped Andy. She barely noticed. She couldn't stop staring at Cody. Clearly he'd known he would die, so why had he done it? Anger began to bubble through her disbelief. Did he know about Olga? What an amazingly tactless way to kill yourself.

She stared at his face, where there once was such a beautiful smile. He'd held so much life in that expression, and now his cheeks were scarred by electric burns from the POD as they had virtually exploded on his face. Blackened sockets replaced his eyes. Smoke still curled from his lips.

In the corner, a squad of Ack Acks struggled to put out a fire. Like a Chinese fire drill, they jumbled and jostled, each stomping and beating at the flames with broken lengths of polymer, their hands, and anything else they could grab. Finally an Ack Ack dressed in a red jumpsuit pushed them aside and used an old-fashioned fire extinguisher on the flames.

Within seconds the fire was out. Nothing remained except the stink of burned flesh and the toxic fumes of charbroiled computer parts. But this, too, went away as the air came on and sucked the haze into an overhead air duct.

Finally the Ack Acks turned on Rebecca and Andy. Fifty faces folded into angry masks as hate-filled eyes judged and juried. They all began to speak at once in their crazy Ack Ack way. They were a mob, and like a mob, they pushed Rebecca and Andy from the room. She fought them, lashing out with her feet and hands. Sometimes she'd score a hit and the hands would fall away, but there were always more to grasp her. They drove them through the large room in which she'd awoke, out a long narrow hallway, then into a smaller room dominated by a singularly immense being.

The first word that came to mind was Frankenstein.

So tall.

So impressive.

So not human.

Something else didn't go unnoticed. When the mob entered the room, it was as if a switch had been turned off. The silence was so complete that she could hear the Deacon breathing—the sound like the pendulous piston of a powerful and predatory machine.

He stood seven feet. Only his torso was visible. His lower legs disappeared at the thighs into a tracked propulsion unit. The curved front of the casement boasted lights and LEDs with cascading code. The slender, multi-wheeled tracks positioned where his feet should have been were six feet long and reminded Rebecca more of something found on a tractor. Tubes perforated his bare chest, redistributing red and yellow liquids. His skin was painfully white, not something that she believed could have occurred naturally. Another LED had been set in the center of his chest. He had no arms. Instead, impossibly thin, polymer, skeletal appendages protruded from his shoulders and ended with wickedly-taloned hands which, even as she watched, opened and closed with menace.

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