City 1 by Gregg Rosenblum

couldn’t tell—the bot’s face had been crushed, the neo-plas and leather patches shredded and ripped, and there was no way for Kevin to know if the pattern of leather patchwork had been 23’s. He studied the body, surprised that he felt almost the same level of unease as he had when staring at the human corpses. He clenched his jaw. Enough , he told himself. No time to be a baby.
    He examined the bot’s body more closely. It was missing its left arm, and its chest cavity had been scorched, like it had been hit by a lase. Both legs were intact. Good , he thought. He’d figure out how to detach one, or just hack it off somehow if he had to, although he did want to preserve the circuitry and mechanics as much as possible . . . and then he realized something, so stupid it almost made him laugh out loud. He wasn’t sure which of Farryn’s legs had been amputated. He tried to picture Farryn, in the cot, one leg unnaturally short, wrapped in gauze—he thought it was the right leg, but he wasn’t sure.
    He shook his head ruefully. “Just have to take both,” he said to himself. He stood and turned to Grennel. “I need the legs,” he said. “And the head, too, for the control circuitry. Can we hack them off, as cleanly as possible?”
    Grennel unsheathed his hunting knife, bent down, and impossibly fast, leveraging his weight against the blade, with a few grunts of effort he removed the legs and head from the torso. He sheathed his knife, picked up the legs, and tossed them to Wynn, who caught them neatly. Then he grabbed the head and tossed it to Wynn, who quickly shifted both legs under her right arm and caught it with her left hand. She grinned. Kevin felt vaguely sickened.
    On the short walk to the supply shed Kevin saw four more human bodies, but no more bots. One of the bodies was small, definitely not an adult. Kevin didn’t look closely. He didn’t want to know.
    The door of the supply shed was crumpled and lying on the ground, and the contents of the building were in disarray—most of the equipment was on the floor, in jumbled heaps. Kevin picked through the mess, not sure what he was hoping to find. He needed something to help him solve the puzzle of the camouflage suits, but he didn’t know what that thing might be. Nothing he found helped. Basic circuitry, conduction wire clamps, some cracked and shattered vidscreens—useless. He found a few tools that might help his tinkering—a nanosolder, a set of scope glasses that had miraculously survivedintact—but nothing else. He nodded at Grennel, who was watching him from the entrance. “Done,” he said, pocketing the few tools he had scavenged.
    Grennel held out his hand. “I’ll hold the tools,” he said.
    â€œWhat am I going to do, use my scope glasses to look you to death?” said Kevin.
    â€œI recall a report of your misuse of a nanosolder not long ago,” said Grennel, still holding out his hand. “You can have them when we return to the camp.”
    Kevin scowled, annoyed, but he handed over the tools. He pushed past Grennel and headed toward his grandfather’s workshop. This trip was starting to look like a big mistake. The Island was nothing but an open graveyard now; he didn’t think he was going to find anything to help him with the camouflage suits, and judging by the complexity of the little he had seen of the bot leg circuitry, he wasn’t going to be able to do much with them to help Farryn. What had he been thinking? His grandfather had been a genius; he was just a kid who had been taught to tinker with power grids by his dead friend Tom. He trudged forward in silence.
    And then they had to step past two more bodies lying in the path, a man and a woman. The woman’s head lay on the man’s stomach, faceup, like they were a couple taking a nap after a picnic . . . except for the blood, and the unblinking eyes, and the