Clio and Cy: The Apocalypse Read Free

staked in the ground. Painted
dead center of the sign was a blue bull’s-eye, sandwiched between words. The
inscription read: Royal Air Force,
Croughton. Fields of manicured grassland surrounded the landmark and the
base, all resting quietly in the late hours.
    Above, no star was twinkling. Thick British clouds hung in
the sky, rolling overhead in billows, like giant orbs of dirty cotton.
    Riders of death were coming down from high atop the
cover.   Four horsemen descended through
our cosmic shore, wading deep and pulling the reins at their final stop, now
arriving; they were knocking at our door. Judgment day was here. And letting
slip the metal dogs of war; Pavlov’s machines erupted in thunder, galloping.
    First, dozens of Heavy-Duty Smartbots hit the armory; next,
teams skirted beyond the airfield’s outer edges, pulling security.
    “Mate!” the guard shouted at the bot while it smashed
through the armory front door. It was a surreal vision. “Stop…” he ordered,
confused. The Al model didn’t obey. “Stop!” he shouted with greater conviction.
    Looking down a barrel, the guard accepted that there was a
weapon now aimed at him. “Zzzzzzwhhhap,” was the last sound the guard heard
before folding on the deck in a hot coagulated mess.
      Another guard ran out
from inside the armory locker, shouting. “Al… Stop!” Baffled, the guard aimed
his weapon seeing his dead comrade on the floor and not believing his eyes. He
froze and never got a shot off.
    “Zzzzzwhhhap,” the second security officer dropped onto the
deck, liquefied.
    A year before the war started, Dr. Pavlov beganinstalling weapons inside the shell of the larger Al
models. Most bots carried an energy pistol, but a few had more conventional
side arms designed for k illing people more
than for disabling equipment. He remotely programmedhis
war mission into the Smartbots that were already in place for the last few
years. Unarmed and on the fly, the older machines would have to steal weapons
during the assault.
    Smartbots patrolled along First Street outside the hangers
and some were grounded along the roads B4031 and A43. They surrounded the base
along its outskirts as the interior units raided and plundered.
    In eerie two by two cover, the Smartbots dispensed viscous
hardware, conveying weapons to each other in a mechanical assembly line. Dozens
of Al and Art models were armed and now loaded, brimming with hundreds of
thousands of rounds. Using the heavy-duty freight trucks that served as their
daytime work vehicles, Smartbots began loading them. Now, the machines were in
possession of the greatest, most terrible, collection of ruthless firepower
east of the States.
    Infiltrating base-housing flats, they savagely killed every
creature that breathed. Dreaming a final dream, never to wake again, most
people died in their sleep. The machines pounded through the airfield clutching
their new assault rifles and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
    “What the hell? Mate… Hey… Stop!” ordered the security
officer walking out of the radar center. Peppered with bullets, the husband and
father of three splattered onto the lawn, dead.
    Armed to the teeth, the machines opened up, throwing hot
lead down range. The Smartbots even wasted the pets. They destroyed anything
that moved. Aircraft were blitzed. They sacked and toppled massive white radar
dishes. Air traffic control towers were ousted and sent crumbling. The siege
happened in a flash. It took only a few minutes to lay waste to the majority of
RAF bases around the United Kingdom.
    World War III had begun.
    What could only be deliberated on a mythological scale,
Smartbots attacked the globe in a perfectly coordinated campaign. The United
States, France, Israel, Japan, Germany, and other Nations endured the same
fate.
    It was just the beginning.
    They targeted airbases for their jets and bombers saved for
later. Some of the planes were not damaged and spared during the initial
attack, reserved for the