Eric and the Quantum Dragon

Epilogue Three

Mighty Bots Scrapyard, Haven City

“I’m telling you it’s haunted” insisted Blake Wendt, a smallish boy with jet black skin and hair so closely shorn he was nearly bald. As if to hide his lumpy skull he wore a Pan City Demons cap all the time, the black and red logo standing out in the dim light. “The owner of the yard was killed by his own robot hound! His ghost still roams the yard, moaning at night”

“Rubbish” scoffed Milly Tran, a tall girl from the Nor-Kor Republic whose bright purple hair seemed to glow of its own accord in the pale moonlight. “My dad says the guy who owned this place was arrested by the Guard and got shipped to a Labour Camp up north. It’s just full of old junk!”

“You are both full of crap!” Rando Stone laughed. He was a mid sized lad in terms of height but was solid with muscle. He was famous at his high school for doing all kinds of crazy stunts, earning him the nickname of Random. It was far better than his real name of Randolph, so he was happy to let his school mates use it.

“Everyone knows this yard is haunted by the Red Eyed Dog!” he said conclusively. The three of them were crouched near a gap in the fence that Rando had found on a previous scouting mission, keeping a wary eye out for any adults. The moon was up, shedding its silver glow over the abandoned scrapyard and highlighting the ruined central office building.

Ever since the big fire, the yard had been closed. Old Police Auxiliary warning signs around the perimeter had faded in the harsh sun, their commands to stay out surely no longer applicable. At least that was Rando’s theory.

“Look, if we go in there tonight and grab some proof, we’ll be able to say we are the bravest kids in school” Rando said encouragingly. “No-one else is game to go in there at night, so we’ll be Number One!”

“How will we prove we came here at night-time?” Milly questioned him. “We could have just stolen something in daylight”

“That’s why we are going to film ourselves” Rando announced. He fished a palm sized drone out of his jacket and showed it proudly to his school friends. “It’s got a low light camera setting so it will show everything”

Blake eyed the drone sceptically, unconvinced it seemed.

“Why have you got a spy drone with a low light camera, Random?” he asked the bigger boy. “Sounds like something you use for recording people through their bedroom windows”

“Whaaattt?” Rando squeaked guiltily. “Nah, this belongs to my brother. He’s letting me use it tonight because he respects how brave I am”

“Sure, we believe you Random” Milly laughed and Blake joined her. “So, since this is your big idea, how about you go first and we’ll follow you”

“Huh?” Rando replied. “How about we go in by alphabetical order? That sounds fairest”

Blake and Milly exchanged a glance, each able to see the other by the light of the moon. They grinned and flashed their teeth in unison.

“Sure” Milly agreed. “We’ll do it by last names. You’re up first, Stone!”

Rando knew when he was beaten so he moved to the gap in the old security fence and pushed the wire mesh aside. It was a tight fit but he managed to crawl through, his shirt only snagging once on the rusty wire. Once he was on the inside, he took out his phone and activated the drone.

It lifted from his open palm with a nearly soundless whirr of tiny rotors and oriented itself one meter over his left shoulder and one meter back. The program it ran on would keep it hovering in that position, sending the images it took in a live stream to his phone.

“Good luck, Random” Blake whispered loudly from the other side of the fence until Milly shushed him with a punch to the arm.

Rando set off, crouching low as he dared while shuffling forwards. Mounds of burnt and broken robot and drone parts surrounded him, with narrow tracks winding between the piles. Many were higher than his head, even if he stood up and he soon lost sight of his two school companions.

He oriented himself by the blackened outline of the old office building, its walls and roof beams visible over the junk piles. Rando crept resolutely forwards, checking every so often that his drone was still up over his left shoulder.

“This is going to look so cool!” he told himself then stopped as he heard his voice echo back to him. “So cool...so cool” the words seemed to repeat. Rando gulped and spun slowly in a circle, but all he could see was dark shadows and dead robot shells.

“It’s fine” he muttered to himself. “Just keep going”

“Keep going...keep going” the scrapyard repeated to him. Rando’s heart flipped a somersault in his chest and he ran madly through a gap in the towering piles of junk.

He burst into the open and saw he was next to the old main building, a clear space all around it. The walls were scorched and full of holes, letting him see into the moonlit interior. A sound came from the scrap mounds and he slowly turned to face it, his heart hammering like it was ready to explode.

“Boo!” said Milly and Rando screamed and jumped backwards, slamming his back into the building wall. With a sharp crack the wall section gave way and Rando fell into the interior, sending up a cloud of white ash and black dust.

“Oh man, that footage is going to be golden!” Milly laughed and reached in to pull him onto his feet. “I hope the drone caught that bit where you screamed and fainted!”

Rando shook her hand off his arm once he was upright again and vainly brushed at the coating of white and black now adorning pretty much all of his clothes.

“I didn’t faint” he mumbled. “I tripped over, that’s all. Anyway, why were you following me and repeating all the stuff I was saying?”

“Repeating what stuff?” Milly asked, a look of genuine confusion on her face in the pale moonlight. “I only just caught up with you”

“Caught you .... caught you” echoed hollowly from the darkness. Milly looked at Rando and he nodded his head knowingly.

“Okay, Blake, you can knock that crap off” he called to the mounded piles that surrounded them. “We know it’s you playing a game. Come out here and join us”

“Join us .... join us” insisted the shadows.

“Um, are you sure that is Blake?” Milly asked nervously and put her back to the wall. Her eyes darted left and right and she reached out a hand to Rando’s muscular shoulder. “He told me he was going to stay outside”

“Stay outside...stay outside” the yard warned them.

Rando took out his phone and sent a command to his little drone. It buzzed out from where the two of them stood, relaying its camera view directly to his phone display. He set it to complete a full rotation, recording all the time. In the tiny screen, Rando and Milly saw it scan across their faces, easily visible in the dim light using the special camera, then show a full sweep of the surrounding yard.

Broken Auto-Cab bodies, construction robots, bits of household mechanicals – they all looked perfectly normal on the phone screen.

“See, it’s fine” Rando assured the girl. “There is nothing out there to be afraid of. Just some weird echoes, maybe from some old mechanical that is still functioning under a pile of junk”

“I don’t care, I’m going home!” Milly cried and set off towards the fence, dragging Rando by his arm. He grinned at her terrified expression and let her pull him along, making sure his drone was keeping pace with their hurried exit.

Milly must have had had way better direction sense than Rando because she led them unerringly to the gap in the fence. When they got there, Milly squirmed urgently through the opening first, tearing her shirt and leaving a small bloody furrow on her hip.

Rando was about to follow when he noticed something on the inner side of the fence, not far from the opening. He reached down and picked it up, turning it over in his hands.

It was a Demons cap like Blake had been wearing, still a little warm even as his hands brushed the inside.

“What are you waiting for, Random?” hissed Milly. “Get out of there you stupid boy!”

“But where is Blake?” Rando asked her, looking around at the dark masses that filled the scrapyard. “He wouldn’t leave his favourite hat behind”

“He probably went home already” Milly said low and urgently. “Just climb through the fence and let’s go home”

Rando cast one last look around and with a sigh he pushed his way through the mesh fence. It caught him too, leaving a small but deep gouge in his right arm. He cursed the stupid fence, then the stupid scrapyard and finally his stupid friend Blake for running off and leaving them.

“You all done now, Random?” Milly whispered as she rubbed at her hip. “I really think we need to leave”

“Fine, whatever” Rando answered a little too loudly and both of them crouched instinctively. No weird echoes followed so they slowly got to their feet and scurried away.

Once on the main road, Rando noticed his drone was still over his head, circling around in a slow orbit as it followed him home. Milly was subdued and kept glancing around, once even stopping and staring intently back in the direction they had come from.

They reached the corner they had met at, Milly’s house in one direction and Rando’s in the other. A solitary street light shed its yellow glow over the intersection, giving them a sense of security inside its circle of illumination.

“Scary adventure, huh?” Rando said with a forced laugh. “Wait until I stream the camera footage to the school. We’ll be heroes!”

“Yeah, right” Milly answered, still uneasy and looking around her like she was being hunted. Then she brightened and smirked at Rando as a thought crossed her mind.

“Don’t forget to leave in that part where you screamed and fell though a wall! That was my favourite bit”

“Sure, Milly” he lied to her. “Anyways, I’ll see you tomorrow”

“Uh-huh” she replied and headed off towards her place, head bowed and shoulders hunched, her purple hair the only spot of colour as she walked into the darkness.

Rando turned and walked quickly in the direction of his parent’s house, stepping lightly in his soft soled runners. Every so often he paused and looked behind him, feeling kind of silly for being so paranoid. As expected, there was nothing to be seen but empty streets lined with trash and the odd parked car.

He made it to his home, a two storey house built years ago in a local housing boom on the outskirts of Haven. It was run down and needed the leaky roof fixed but it was home. There were no lights on so he figured his parents were still out at the local drinking hole, frittering away their meagre salaries.

At least that meant he didn’t have to sneak into his room through the second floor window. He could walk inside like a regular person, which was a rare enough treat in his life.

His smart key unlocked the basic security system after the third attempt, which was better than most days. Once inside he left his dirty shoes in the entry hall and walked in sock covered feet upstairs to his bedroom. The little drone buzzed in his footsteps and he let it follow him into the room, closing the door behind it.

Safe in his room, the sense of foreboding he had been feeling drifted away and he laughed at his own gullibility. Someone had been playing a prank on them, probably Blake, and tomorrow he was going to punch the little twerp. He tossed Blake’s cap onto his bed and summoned the drone to land on his palm.

Rando made sure it had downloaded all the video footage to his phone then switched the machine off. That got tossed onto the bed too, landing beside the Demons cap. He sat on the thin carpet that adorned his floor and got to work reviewing the footage that had been captured.

It was remarkably clear, which made him wonder exactly what his older brother Mikhail used the drone for. With a shrug he set that thought aside and continued checking over the video. He saw himself get startled by Milly and crash through the building wall. It was actually quite funny so he decided to keep it in the stream he was formatting.

Never hurt to let people know you were human he reckoned.

Then there was the footage when he sent the drone to sweep the area around Milly and himself. Once again he saw their terrified faces, looking wide-eyed out at the scrapyard. Both of them had the look of victims in a horror film and he laughed at how silly they both appeared.

The low light camera then panned across the building behind them and Rando saw a flash of movement in there. With a frown he paused the footage and reversed it, replaying the scene. In a gap to Milly’s right he saw a low dark shape flit past, maybe half as tall as Rando was. He scrolled back and paused on the brief instant then zoomed in.

Details weren’t clear and it was moving, but for a moment he could swear he saw red eyes gleaming through the gap. A chill ran down his spine and he rolled the footage forwards. There was nothing else to be seen inside the building.

Rando sat back on his haunches, that feeling of unease settling over him once again. With a trembling hand he set the video footage playing again, watching from the drone’s eye view as he and Milly crawled out of the scrapyard and began walking home.

Every so often the drone did another sweep, rotating the camera lens over the hurrying shapes of Milly and himself, then over the way they had come.

He saw it then, that flicker of movement right at the edge of the drone’s vision. A low dark shape, slinking stealthily behind the pair of them. Rando tried to swallow but his throat was dry and his legs refused to lift him up to find some water.

His phone kept on playing and Rando watched himself say goodbye to Milly at the corner. Her hair shone brightly under the street light, then she walked off into the dark. Rando headed home too and his faithful drone followed, recording everything it saw.

At the last moment, the drone swept around and caught a glimpse of a low, four legged shape. It moved at the very edge of the circle of light, following Milly down her street.

Rando stopped breathing for a few seconds, his mind utterly paralysed. Then he snatched his phone up and dialled Milly’s number. The phone rang three times then switched to voicemail.

“Milly!” he shouted into his phone. “Lock your doors. Don’t let anyone in until I get there!”

He leaped to his feet and cast about his sparse room, his eyes alighting on his old baseball bat. Rando had been a solid slugger in his Junior High days, but he hadn’t played since starting High School. He had reckoned Baseball wasn’t cool enough for Rando Stone to play anymore.

On his socked feet he scrambled out of the door to his bedroom and rushed to the stairs. He nearly slipped and fell down, his socks giving no traction on the hard tiled floor. Rando cursed, caught himself on the stair railing then ran down, taking the steps two at a time.

He hit the ground floor running then saw the open front door. Rando tried to stop but instead his feet slid out from under and he landed heavily on his butt. Pain shot up his spine and he yelled some choice swear words until he remembered why he had tried to stop running.

Rando lifted his eyes to the wide open front door, the one he knew he locked quite carefully when he had come home. Nobody in Haven left their doors unlocked for many good reasons. Only bad things were outside your door in Haven.

In the darkness beyond the doorway, shadows moved. A hiss of metal joints followed by a scraping of hard claws on the pavement. Two red eyes gleamed at Rando from that dark void and he desperately wanted to scream but his mouth was frozen wide in terror.

A battered, mechanical hound, the kind used as guard dogs around Haven, walked into his entry hall. Light glinted off the scratched and dented body, metal and plastic moving with animal like ease as it came slowly forwards.

On its chest he could see a metal plate, engraved with a name. It simply said “FANG”.

In it’s big metal jaws Rando saw a tuft of colour. Like a moth to a candle his eyes were drawn to it until at last he understood what it was. A lock of bright purple hair, splashed with crimson.

“Oh Milly, I am so sorry!” Rando sobbed. His sorrow turned to anger and his hands scrabbled for the baseball bat he had dropped. With fury building in his heart he got painfully to his feet and faced the red eyed dog.

“I am going to hurt you so bad!” Rando yelled and ran forwards, swinging with all his young strength.

“Hurt you so bad…. So bad” echoed the darkness.

The red eyes blinked, showing solid black like they were made of oil. Then the hallway lights went out, leaving only darkness.