A Man and His Robot Read online

  Praise for William Vitka

  “There is a bold new voice howling in the post-apocalyptic wasteland...”

  Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author of ASSASSIN’S CODE and DUST & DECAY

  “Charmingly perverse, vivid and thrilling.”

  Cherie Priest, award-winning author of BONESHAKER and GANYMEDE

  “[Live, From The End Of The World] is one of the best zombie stories I’ve read this year. Actually, it’s one of the best stories I’ve read this year, period. It’s funny, offensive, irreverent and action-packed ... If you’re a zombie fan who is losing faith, [Live, From The End Of The World] will give you the warm fuzzies all over again.”

  Hellnotes.com

  “Mr. Vitka is a hard-nosed writer with a hard-nosed tale to tell.”

  HorrorNews.net

  “Vitka’s ability to stick to the facts and a darkly jaded worldview combine to make [Live, From The End Of The World] a book that will stick with you long after you’ve read it. I would strongly recommend that you do not attempt to match the main character drink for drink as you read, however--that way lies madness and liver disease.”

  NeedCoffee.com

  A MAN AND HIS ROBOT

  The Hroza Connection Part 4

  William Vitka

  A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-598-8

  A MAN AND HIS ROBOT

  The Hroza Connection Book 4

  © 2015 by William Vitka

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by Sean Vitka

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Permuted Press

  109 International Drive, Suite 300

  Franklin, TN 37067

  http://permutedpress.com

  WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

  IT SUCKS

  CONTENTS

  0. A Giant Vagina Tried to Eat My Head Yesterday

  1. Fuck

  2. Don’t Worry, I’m Totally Stable

  3. Rock & Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution

  4. Escape From New York

  5. Nightmares

  6. History Lesson

  7. Get the Kids. We’re Going Camping. It’ll Be Fun!

  8. The Hroza

  9. Road Trip

  10. C’mon, City Boy

  11. When In Beautiful Newark, Be Sure to Visit the Skull Bridge Of Horrors

  12. Tanks for the Memories

  13. Well, That’s a Thing That Happened

  14. Killer Sale Today!

  15. Oh, Good, a Cult. Yay Religion!

  16. Family Reunion

  17. Foxy Lady

  18. Son Of a Dick

  19. What’s the Number For 9-1-1?

  20. Living Dead Girl

  21. Blood and Thunder

  22. A Stroll Through Walking Deadtown

  23. Kill City

  24. Adios

  About the Author

  0. A Giant Vagina Tried to Eat My Head Yesterday

  True story.

  1. Fuck

  I’m a drunk and an asshole.

  Nothing makes sense anymore.

  It’s my fault they’re all dead.

  Who are you talking to?

  2. Don’t Worry, I’m Totally Stable

  I’m a New Yorker.

  I cannot be killed.

  Where was I?

  A giant vagina tried to eat my head yesterday.

  Right.

  I don’t mean “giant vagina” like “some jerk.” I mean “a giant vagina” like a giant goddamn vagina. Huge drooping slit-thing. It chased me down Broadway. A horrible fleshy street sweeper. Just pulling whatever it thought was food into its big vagina face. Kept slobbering and mewling till I tricked it into eating my robot and he torched it from the inside out with his propulsion thrusters.

  The former New York Public Library drone said at the time: “That was the worst pornographic experience of my life.”

  Which was funny, then, cuz he’s a fat flying saucer that looks a bit like sperm.

  So, this is the norm now. Really. It is.

  Huge vagina monsters trying to devour me? Fine. I can deal with that. Towers of flesh moaning in the streets with hundreds of eyes and mouths? Whatever. Infected people wandering around looking for fresh flesh to pass the parasite on to? Okay.

  But what I really miss...

  What I really miss...

  Shitting in private.

  Do you have any idea how much I miss that? Shitting into a toilet. Four walls protecting what little remains of my dignity. Hearing a plop as the log dunks the water. Then triumphantly flushing all the filth away.

  Back when the plumbing worked.

  Worse, when I take a shit at my safe house, my robot will fly up to me cuz there’s some stupid thing he needs to tell me right this second holy man you have no idea.

  Sometimes, I think he’s a mentally deficient puppy. Or any three-year-old.

  So, I fold up my crunchy copy of whatever magazine no longer exists. And I say to him, every time: “Come right in.” My sphincter sorta clenches and my dick dangles horribly close to the disinfectant of the portable toilet we managed to get up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

  My hair’s gotten shaggy. I cut it with a Buck knife. Can’t bother with the big beard on my face. Years of growth.

  And now...

  Some dog-dicking cocksucker is in my HQ.

  Some human—uninfected, but probably crazy—found his way through my Empire State Building blockades. Those structures’ve kept relentless monsters at bay without fail for years.

  I say, “Well this just pisses me off.”

  Bad as the infected are, they don’t carry guns. They don’t pull triggers.

  I learned how to stay alive in the face of the apocalypse. Even after watching everything I love die. I figured out how to evade the once-human, once-animal piece of shit abominations and escape their attention if necessary. I trained myself for... For goddamn forever. To draw lightning-quick and put the parasites down fast as a necessity.

  But I don’t wanna get shot. And my floating bot Plissken says this jackass’s armed.

  I scramble up from my workbench. Say to Plissken: “What floor?” We’re on the eighty-sixth.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “How’d he make it that far without tripping your sensors? I thought you upgraded them.”

  “Any answer I give you will just annoy you farther.”

  “You mean ‘further.’ You’re talking about a figurative amount.”

  “Do not be a prick.”

  I throw the beige stairwell door open. “But I’m so good at that.” We head down. My hand moves to the butt of my revolver. “Rotten little bastard still heading up?”

  “You are well aware of the fact that I was in the middle of diagnostics to keep me in shape, fuckhead, when the human found its way in. My sensors were briefly taken offline. Someone has to keep me healthy. Anyway, yes, still heading up. Thirtieth floor now.”

  “Dude’s fast, I’ll give him that.”

  I light a cigarette. Lean against the wall. Near the empty elevator banks that Plissken and I shut down
. We use the shafts to go from floor to floor fast, with Plissken lowering or elevating me while I hang onto his undercarriage.

  I tuck a hand into my jeans. Brush back the three-quarter length Army-green jacket I wear over my hoodie. And I wait. Let the interloping asshole present himself.

  Fuck that guy. I’m gonna let him come to me.

  I wait.

  And wait.

  I flick my cigarette and light another.

  Plissken says, “He stopped.”

  “Son of a dick. Where?”

  “Forty-five. He has entered the floor offices.”

  “Really didn’t wanna have to hunt anything down today. Today was supposed to be Movie Day. We were going to watch The Thing, remember? Follow it up with some porn.”

  “Yes, actually, I was looking forward to it.” Plissken bobs in the air. “Well, not the pornography, but at least you are entertainingly disgusting.”

  “That I am.”

  I pry apart the doors on one of the elevators shafts with my crowbar.

  Plissken zips inside.

  I grip a handle on his undercarriage and we float down. Plissken’s thrusters cast a faint blue-yellow glow in the darkened shaft.

  Hasn’t been a functioning electrical grid for a while.

  Oh, but I’m sure some of the city’s survivor camps have juice. Not that they wanna talk to me. They’re so sure I’m a carrier. You believe that? Keep telling me to stay away when I get em on the radio through Plissken.

  Fuckers.

  We’re still good at being insular shitbirds, us humans. There could be two people left on the planet, and they’ll kill each other. For no reason other than: I might want That Thing the other guy has.

  Or a woman.

  With any luck, she’ll be a lesbian. She’ll kill both guys. Then harvest their sperm.

  Plissken slows to a stop at the forty-fifth floor. The doors are open here—we keep most of em open, in case we need to get somewhere fast. I hop over onto the landing.

  I stay quiet. Not cuz I fear any lurking infected. The Empire State Building’s the one place in Manhattan that’s free of parasites. Me and Plissken saw to that. Bet your ass.

  No, I’m afraid of giving away my position to an armed adversary.

  An armed adversary who’s somehow made it alive through the infested streets and alleys of Midtown. Made it alive through the barricades of my building.

  The intruder’s gotta be pretty creative. Pretty crafty.

  Stupid smart asshole.

  I enter the floor. Wonder: Who is this dick?

  An Army vet? Some special ops guy who has the training and the mentality to survive alone? Maybe. A person who’s lived through enough shit behind enemy lines? Gotta be...

  A gunshot erupts out of the darkness.

  I jerk my head back. Feel the bullet split the air as it streaks past my nose. It tickles the tiny hairs inside my nasal passage.

  I mutter to myself. “Fuckin dumbshit.” That was stupid. Never should’ve stepped into the open like that. Been too long since I fought a human enemy. And this sonuvabitch means to kill me.

  The forty-fifth floor of the Empire State Building is an office area. One big space filled with cubicles. There’s trash and jackets and bits of clothes that stand as reminders of human drones who once occupied the place. Plenty of room to hide. Plenty of room to stay hidden.

  But fuck that.

  I got a flying robot, motherbitches.

  I crouch and pull my Colt revolver free. Spin it once around my finger. I tap Plissken’s metal belly. Signal to my mechanical companion that I want information.

  Plissken says, “End of the first row.”

  I peer around the corner. Allow only the curve of my eyeball to be exposed. I try to catch a glimpse of whoever’s interrupted Movie Porn Filth Day—and can’t. I motion for Plissken to dart across the room.

  I wanna draw the stranger out.

  Plissken darts ahead in a zig-zag. Dodges. Even though he’s a machine (far as I’m concerned, my robot is a dude), being shot’s still an unpleasant experience.

  The library drone flashes his thrusters in a terrific burst and blasts across the open space.

  At the end of the first row, a figure exposes itself. Takes aim.

  I see it.

  I fire. My Colt jumps. I feel the hammer fall. Feel the hammer hit the blasting cap of the bullet casing. Feel the explosion and the expansion of gases that propel my .45 slug.

  It soars true.

  The interloping dicksack cries out. A high-pitched noise.

  I walk. Slow and cautious toward the wounded intruder.

  Plissken puffs his thrusters. Follows me.

  Something about that shriek. Something about that cry of pain.

  I say, “Fuck.” Near the figure. Start to realize... Realize that I just put a hunk of metal through the throat of a kid no older than twelve.

  I clamp my hands around the boy’s neck. Try to stop the bleeding. Attempt to somehow undo the damage. Stop the flowing loss of life.

  It’s a useless gesture.

  Half the kid’s throat is gone. Torn out and away by the unthinking brutality of the bullet. The young boy gasps. Works to draw air into his lungs. His mouth opens and closes like a fish flopping on land.

  I say, “I’m so sorry, kid. Shit. I’m sorry.” I grab for a piece of forgotten clothing in the office row. The remains of a shirt. I jam it against the kid’s neck.

  It’s a sopping, sticky mess a second later.

  The boy’s eyes glaze over. They look like a doll’s.

  I say, “You musta been one brave little guy. Brave beyond words. Made it all the way here. Made it through the monsters. Into my building. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I bite my lip. I wanna shout. To scream at the kid: Why’d you shoot at me? Why’d you do that? We could’ve been friends. I would’ve let you stay here. Why’d you make me kill you?

  I don’t.

  I feel tears in the corners of my eyes.

  Shake em away.

  No room for that anymore.

  I look down.

  I’m wearing the boy’s blood. A set of glistening red gloves.

  Plissken stays silent.

  This is how the world works now.

  3. Rock & Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution

  We torch the kid’s body.

  I decide to drink. Decide to clean my gun.

  I do this with startling frequency.

  Plissken hates it. The booze and the smokes and the pills. The booze is gonna eat up my liver. The smokes are gonna give me cancer. The pills are gonna give me a heart attack someday. He asks me sometimes why I think a slow suicide is better than just chewing a bullet. I have no idea.

  I got no good answer.

  So I work on the gun.

  No matter where my blood-alcohol level peaks, I slave over my favorite weapon.

  I sit down at my bench on the observation deck. A cigarette dangles from my lips. Smoke curls in wispy strands up into the filthy grey-red sky.

  Bad as the environment was before all this, those nukes they dropped do stop the infected—which worked precisely not at all—made things a whole lot worse. Worse than the random superstorms that shit out a foot of snow then flip an hour later to pour down carbon-heavy rain.

  Everything’s grey now.

  Around me are the scattered remnants of a life not-quite-forgotten. Magazines. Books. A television. Video game console. Portable music player. All kept alive by Plissken’s energy cells.

  The happier side of nuclear power, folks.

  The area me and Plissken live in can be described as a “bachelor pad.”

  In other words, it’s a pig sty.

  Empty liquor bottles clink along the Empire State Building’s roof tiles.
Half-crunched beer cans flutter next to those. There’s spent bullet casings. Wrappers. The remains of projects I start but never finish.

  The old society might say that the place could use a woman’s touch. More adequate lighting. Some color. A painting. Maybe even a flower or tree. A trash can. A recycling bin. Company’s just outside!

  In more ways than one.

  But that’s for a different time. And I am a man. And I am alone. And I have no use for such things anymore.

  I smile at a few shattered memories. Stuff that my hell-bent-for-survival mind knows are silly—perhaps even childish—but can’t throw away.

  There’s a small toy car (Hot Wheels, actually, modeled after a 1968 Dodge Charger) that sits on my workbench. I rescued it from the office I used to work at as a journalist. Went back for it after setting up shop on the ESB Observation Deck. It reminds me of something else—and driving to good tunes.

  The strong, cold part of my mind chides me for acting like a boy.

  But my heart ignores that.

  There’s another kids’ toy: A wind-up Robbie The Robot. The hyper-intelligent machine from the film Forbidden Planet. That one I stumbled across in the first months of my current life. I wound it. Watched it walk. Smirked. Kept it.

  The best and worst possession I carry is a photo of my beloved. It’s wrinkled with age. Frayed from handling. It shows her on a windy day. Her cheeks red. Her golden blonde hair whips around bright grey eyes.

  And I watched her die with our unborn baby inside her.

  Howls from the city’s undead float through the air. I’m used to the noise, but I hate it. Hate it nearly as much as the haunting whine of air raid sirens when the survivor camps decide to fire em up.

  I sit and stew and drink. I get up and work and kill. And it’s cuz I’m living off the fumes of memories. I couldn’t save my friends. I couldn’t save her. And if you look at it a certain way, this’s all my fault.

  I was there when the infection got out. When it escaped Manhattan. Hit the boroughs. Ran shrieking and determined across the bridges and tunnels. It contaminated everything on the North American continent. Then beyond. It turned people into monsters whose sole purpose is reproducing. It destroyed their minds and made em mad. Bent their appendages to its will. Reassembled humans into wretched propagation machines.