Hoods and Bots: Part Two by Irena Szirtes - inspired by a '555' prompt -

   “They passed Lester’s, the coffee shop on Eighty-fourth where Robert used to take Grace for breakfast sometimes before school.”

 The fifth line of the fifth page of the fifth chapter of “The Horse Whisperer” by Nicholas Evans

credit: Canva/Irena Szirtez

In honour of Wilhelm Imiołczyk, whose name I've taken for this story.

In the living hell of WW2 Poland, his forged papers saved lives.

Hoods and Bots: Part Two

In the dark before dawn, the terriers leapt high as my waist. They loved an assignment like this, an early walk through the forest to ‘lift’ a defector from the rendezvous agreed on Cafe Cameron Day. I intended to arrive a good half-hour early: I’ve always been OCD about timekeeping, and besides, there’s always sunrise to enjoy. Dawn dragged my attention from the beleaguered forest. Unchecked deer populations were stripping the countryside bare, and the venison we took made little impact. Seedlings were devoured before they had time to grow, so bird and insect life was failing. Hay meadows had gone too, along with their complex ecosystems, because there were no farm animals to feed through the winter, and few horses, because Benson Parry had decreed riding or working horses was cruel. Even resourceful feral pigs were struggling; a few more years, and they’d starve along with the deer. Sometimes I wondered if disease would take them first, like myxomatosis took rabbits. I dreamed of revived land, grazed by horses, their empathetic bond with people rekindled, and by the free-range cattle and sheep I just about remembered from childhood. Even then they were scarce, and farmers had walked like the disembodied: dishevelled, displaced, soul destroyed. How often I’d longed to live in Northern hills, where prescribed crop growing was impossible, and resourceful stockmen developed new strains of sheep from non-sheared breeds. Unmarked and unattended even at lambing time, living feral on fells and mountains, these sheep appeared to be a Regime triumph. We knew better. They were secretly shared, monitored and managed, and how I longed to see them! 

   It was when I reached the top of the ridge, I knew something was wrong.

Through black, chill air I could just about see a lone figure under the ancient oak, far too early. No Bots showed on my system, but I double checked.  Nothing. I sent the rat-pack off into the forest as a precaution. All our dogs had technology too: we’d trained them to disappear into the forest if needs be and recalled them by activating a come-home signal in their chips when all was clear. But I kept Hercule the Belgian Shepherd Malinois     with me, the dog Frank had once gifted me and named after the only fictional character to have an obituary in the New York Times. I wanted to slip back, wait and watch, but it was too late: the figure had seen me. I told myself it must be a courier with news the mission had been aborted, but he looked vaguely familiar. Then it dawned on me, and for a moment I stepped back into shadow. 

   Well-being drained; I bent over several times, restoring my blood-pressure; adrenaline pumped my heart till it hammered: it really was the pig-eyed, pale-cheeked Bot from Cameron’s. He seemed more loathsome than ever than ever in the half-light, dressed in camouflage head to foot. I tried recalling my smug smile at his brain, bits and our fine technology, but the tugging in my belly grew like a tumour.   

     I must stay cool, bluff it out, assume he didn’t know I was Hood, didn’t know why I was there. I knew Hercule would be my best defence but still fingered the knife in its detector-proof scabbard under my jacket. I strode down the track with a cursory ‘good morning’. I would hurry by and send a coded message to headquarters: if the mission hadn’t been aborted, it must be now. 

“Wait!” he lurched forward with surprising agility for an older man and grabbed my arm as I passed. “I’m... your bag of apples.” 

I stopped dead. Bag of apples was the code name for today’s defector and guide. My heart kept hammering. 

“No idea what you’re talking about! Let me go right now, or I’ll set the dog on you!” 

Had my tracker failed? How did he know code words? Where was the guide?

“I understand...  your confusion,” he went on. “But ... let’s say I’m not exactly... I mean I’m not .... what you think I am.”

 I even hated his voice. It was a light, hissing kind of voice that often halted, randomly spitting saliva. 

“Search me...  if you like – I’m not carrying...  a weapon. And I know you’re Hood, Mia Imiołczyk Barker...  oh yes, Hood born and bred...  twenty-five years old, undergoing... a divorce from Frank Barker, thirty years old and second-generation Hood...   so don’t deny it.  But I’m...  not here to arrest you. I won’t hurt you... not today. I am your... bag of apples.”

He dropped my arm, lifted his palms in a gesture of surrender.  I thought of protesting my innocence and running, but he knew who I was, and that changed my mind: letting him out my sight could be suicide, and here was a chance to bring him in. I scanned him twice, top to toe. Nothing! Nothing but a new identify chip, and the small, laser-healed wound below it, where his former identify, rank and number, had been removed. His new name was Roland Hawkes.  

“Why wasn’t I told my assignment was Bot?”

He shrugged. “High security. I’m not.... I wasn’t... just any Bot. You were not.... supposed to know my ... old life.”

 “Not just any Bot? I don’t care if you’re some kind of Highly Revered big-bowed-down-to bloody Bot Emperor, all Bots are a waste of space to me! And where’s your guide? All assignments come with a guide.”

He shrugged. 

“You could’ve murdered the guide and hid your weapon!  How do I know you’re not undercover, instructed to infiltrate? Why would I even begin to believe you’re telling the truth? Bots like you have been lying to us for years.”

“That’s true. We all live...in a world of... lies. But if I was...  undercover, I wouldn’t have - killed a guide. Let’s say the guide has – gone his own way – for ... security reasons. Because I'd no idea it was...  you picking me up. Unfortunate... after the way you looked at me... in Cameron’s. Make no mistake, I felt... your hate.”

“Good! I’m glad. Well, feel it again, Bot, feel it again!” Revulsion settled in my throat, and I commanded Hercule to stand by.

 “No need... for the dog. I mean...  didn’t you wonder why... I let you be that day? People have been arrested...  liquidated... for less than that.”

There was something about the way he said “liquidated.” I suppressed a shudder. Best not show fear. 

“What you say could be double bluff, all of it. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could spit!”

  He looked away, and anger rose like bile, scalding fear away, anger at today’s confusion, anger with Benson Parry, anger at the necessity to live a double life. And anger because something in the manner and appearance of this Bot triggered mental pictures of him groping and man-handling me. That did it: I whipped out my knife and he threw both hands in the air. Our knives could often take Bots by surprise, but the high-tech weapons they'd come to expect were much harder to conceal. The only time I’d drawn my knife was for self-defence in an alley, because my missions rarely involved confrontation. In that alley a different Bot had paled to see the teen he’d intended to rape produce a weapon. His moment of shock had given me time to run. My blade was virginal, but I determined to give ‘Roland’ a strong impression it wasn’t. 

“I'm born and bred alright! Hood, pure Hood, courses through my veins!” Fury suddenly broke through reason and the knife began to shake. Hercule’s neck hair bristled, fight lit his eyes, and he strained forward, willing my command. 

“The blood of Poles who fought Silesian uprisings runs in me! And of Poles who died in Auschwitz for resisting Nazis - then it was Communism! An old lady shot on the streets, for one tiny word of sarcasm when some thug of a Red guard spot-searched her – she was ninety-three, like she was a threat to almighty bloody Stalin!”

  Rage blazed and spread through my being like wildfire, without caring it was consuming every last bit of training to stay calm.  “And so, it goes on, more Imiołczyks – my own grandparents - fighting neo-Nazis and power-crazy imperialists in WW3 and what for? To be sold down the river by the Greens they’d fought cheek and jowl with...  betrayed by the Greens’ idiotic alliance with Benson Bubonic-arsed Parry, his army of moronic Bots and the Party for Animal Rights!” 

Unhinged now, I kept shoving Roland against the tree, spouting a voice that sounded as if it belonged to someone else. “Yet people like you and your precious master never learn! You insist on methods doomed to fail, that failed through all of history, a definition of insanity if ever there was one! You think you can put thoughts between a person’s ears, think outward conformity makes lies true! Some mindless Bot killed my father, when I was four years old, because they couldn’t control his heart, because they couldn’t control his mind! And I’ll fight for him, and for all the Imiołczyks before me, and for the forest, and the farms, and the future, until Benson Parry and all his hordes are brought to justice for their crimes! Because they will be! One day, they will be, just you wait and see!”

   This was the post-betrayal-trauma me; deep down, I knew rage about my family history had ignited afresh in the wake of the pain Frank caused. I shook Roland hard, still thrusting air with the knife. He remained ridiculously passive, while a blaze of bloodlust consumed me piece by piece, and my blade shifted itself to where it begged to caress his throat.  

“Tell me what you’re really doing here, Bot!”

“I ... told you.” His halting was worse now, perhaps because pallid faces and slashed throats of ambushed colleagues were flashing before his inner eyes.  “I ...am .... your bag... of apples.” 

“No way!”

“Take me.... take me to...  base! Plans have been.... made. Your leaders know... about me... contact...  them... they’ll tell you.”

 “If you think I’m taking you anywhere, you’re crazy! I’d rather set my dog on you right now and leave you for feral dogs to finish off!”

  Hercule took a step forward and snarled without sound, sure the attack command was imminent. But I knew I wouldn’t give it. The fury which burned me up was dying back now, taunting me for losing control. The fantasy of leaving this Bot to a gruesome fate had some appeal, but ferocious dog-packs descended from outlawed breeds were Resistance invention. We sometimes sent groups of our own dogs past camera traps as ‘proof’, because propagating the myth kept the forest relatively undisturbed, especially by the authorities. 

But there was something else. My ancestor Paweł Imiołczyk, who saved the life of a young German deserter while resisting Nazis in WW2, had passed a saying down the family line: “Fight as hard as you must, but be careful you don’t become the thing you hate.” 

On some visceral level that saying had always resonated with me, though I’d never fully articulated what it might mean in practice.  Many resistance workers simply shrugged it off as a cop-out. 

We all stood motionless for a moment, the Bot, my knife, Hercule like a snake ready to strike.

“Ok, I’ll take you in,” I said eventually, “but blindfolded and handcuffed. If not....”

Roland paled a little, then let out a long breath and nodded assent.  I wouldn’t lead him to our underground base, of course. Defectors were taken nearby, to houses equipped with camouflaged bunkers or hidey-holes for emergencies, where they were processed. Those in danger stayed on, others returned at random intervals to learn more. Once defectors earned our trust, we helped find their best way forward.  Some would become active Hoods; a very few became spies; some would remain ‘Hoodless’ and engage in less obvious ways to support the cause. I would present Roland Hawkes to our leaders, and his fate would be out my hands. 

    I took one of our black hoods from my backpack, placed it on Roland and drew the eye-slits together. I fitted cuffs as quickly as I could, then tied a length of rope round his waist. Doing so felt far better than it should have, though my hands were trembling. I activated the terriers’ come-home signal, and we set off as dawn began scalding the horizon. Just as we cleared the rise, I thought I glimpsed a shadow melting into the forest, and Hercule paused, turned his head and flicked an ear toward it, before re-focusing his protective gaze on me.