the car was mangled, the bonnet buckled and raised.
Enda tried the ignition, but it only clicked. “Fuck.” She turned to the others in the back: “You okay?”
Dax nodded, and turned to check on Troy, who rubbed his neck with his hand but said, “I’m alright.”
Enda took her gun from its holster, and pulled her coat’s hood up over her head. She zipped it right up so the collar covered her mouth and nose. “Stay here,” she told Dax and Troy, her voice muffled by fabric.
Enda strained to push her door open. Water flowed in through the gap and collected beneath the seat and pedals. She stepped out, felt the grimy water soak into her boots and trousers, reaching almost to her knee. Steady shush of rain still falling, the pool of water across the intersection splashing hissing dancing like dead channel static on an analogue TV.
A whine pierced the curtain of rain—the uniform whir of drone legs. Enda aimed at the noise, coming from somewhere beyond the wall of cars that surrounded her. People screamed at the sight of the gun, the sound odd, contained inside their vehicles.
A dog leaped onto the roof of a minivan—more screaming, and the distinct cries of terrified children. The dog stalled atop the van, frozen like overtaxed software. Enda fired, struck the dog’s exposed chest—plink of ricochet, armor plating too thick for the 9mm rounds to penetrate.
The dog spasmed with the jolt of faux life returning. The machine crouched and jumped, limbs outstretched as it tried to strike her. Enda dodged aside and the dog slammed into the side of the WRX, the door panel indented in the shape of the dog’s blocky head.
Enda fired four rounds point-blank at the band of visual sensors across the front of its skull. The dog fell aside and disappeared into the water, leaving behind the acrid smell of cordite and burnt electronics.
Enda turned and saw Dax still sitting in the car, door open, one foot dangling into the dark water.
“Get these people out of their cars,” Enda said.
Dax blinked and turned to look at her. “What? Yeah, okay.”
Dax grabbed Troy’s arm and pulled him out of the car, both stepping high through the water to ferry the family out of the stranded minivan.
Another whine of leg actuators to her right. Enda spun, ducked below the dog as it leaped through the air. It landed with a splash. Enda fired again and again, aiming for the joints in its neck. She struck something important and the head hung forward, muzzle submerged as the dog tried to navigate with its sensors dangling at ninety degrees.
The angle of the dog’s head exposed the thick bands of cable that slotted into the rear of its skull. Enda shot three rounds into the weak point and the dog slumped, dead, only the armored ridge of its torso jutting from the water.
Enda’s ears rang with tinnitus. Her P320 was breached—out of ammo. She let the empty clip drop from the gun and into the floodwaters, took the last spare from her holster, and loaded it into the gun.
Dark lumbering shapes caught Enda’s eye—two more dogs, moving in concert. They leaped onto the roofs of stranded cars, the vehicles sinking an inch further into the water under the weight of all that armor plating.
The dogs separated, one moving to the left, leaping across the roofs of cars, the other dropping to the road and moving right through the water. Enda aimed at one, then the other, waiting for a shot, but seeing only their armored torsos and the frightened faces still trapped inside the vehicles. Water seeped between her skin and the pistol, and she tightened her grip.
Both dogs turned to face her. Screech of metal tearing as the dog on the left dug its claws into the roof of a silver Toyota, crouching, ready to jump. The other was to Enda’s right, a blue mass shifting in her peripheral vision.
The dog on the right jumped—Enda turned, opened fire, and side-stepped. She peppered the dog’s head with bullets and cracked apart its skull casing. It knocked her shoulder as it passed, crashing into the water and sending Enda reeling. Too late Enda saw the second dog. It pounced. She was off-balance, unable to dodge away. Its weight slammed into her chest and knocked her to the ground, beneath the waters.
Actuators churned the filthy water, stained by every bit of trash that ended up in the gutters—stained by the garbage that made the foundations of