Humans, Bow Down Read online

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2017 by James Patterson

  Excerpt from The Black Book copyright © 2017 by James Patterson

  Author photograph by Sue Patterson

  Cover design by Kapo Ng

  Cover illustration by Sam Chung @ A-Men Project

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First ebook edition: February 2017

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  Illustrations by Alexander Ovchinnikov

  ISBN 978-0-316-35892-7

  E3-20170116-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PART ONE CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  PART TWO CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  PART THREE CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  A PREVIEW OF THE BLACK BOOK

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  BOOKS BY JAMES PATTERSON

  NEWSLETTERS

  A complete list of books by James Patterson is at the back of this book. For previews of upcoming books and information about the author, visit JamesPatterson.com, or find him on Facebook or at your app store.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  BE WARNED. YOU. Yes, I’m talking to you. Reading a treasonous book or digital tract like this one is punishable by hanging. That’s if you’re one of the few left who even knows how to read.

  Can you read, friend? I know, I know, it’s a stupid question. Or maybe a test? Maybe a trap?

  Listen very carefully. It’s fair to say that there’s not much hope anymore—not for you, and definitely not for a poor wretch from the Reserve like me.

  The joke on the food lines at the Res is that they’re measuring us all for body bags. But that’s being way too cheery. It’ll be mass graves at best.

  I’m just saying… look around, and what do you see?

  Trash piled high as a Colorado snowdrift in January, smelling like mid-July in Bangkok, or Los Angeles, or Paris. A jagged junk heap of broken pallets and busted-up furniture: baby cribs and cradles, smashed door frames, windows and mirrors. A greasy, toothless hag—the former Mrs. Cullen—who captures stray cats (one of them mine) and boils them in soup.

  Welcome to the Reserve, where the wind whistling up the mountain feels cold even in the summer. Where the sky’s the only clean thing there is.

  There’s nothing to do up here. There aren’t any jobs, and there’s no good soil to farm. It’s like living in a giant, open-air, high-altitude prison.

  Babies die in childbirth every day—some in the gutters, or in abandoned cars, or on filthy mattresses in dark and tiny rooms. The kids who do survive grow up hungry, bitter, and desperate. Most people croak before they’re fifty, and if they don’t, they wish they did.

  There’s a rumor blowing in the foul winds that the government’s going to come out here and raze this mountain ghetto to the ground, exterminating every man, woman, and child.

  I believe it. That’s the truth, not just a filthy rumor. Actually, I know it’s true. I know things that you don’t. Be patient. I’m going to tell you everything, all the sordid details.

  But try walking around with the weight of that knowledge on your shoulders: Pretty soon, we’ll all be dead. Exterminated. Annihilated. Massacred.

  And there’s not a thing we can do about it but wait.

  Maybe that’s why I stole a motorcycle that night. Because what difference did it make?

  Besides, I needed transportation. I was going to see my family, such as they are. Misfits. Jailbirds.

  So power on, power up. Release the clutch slowly and gas it at the same time, easy, easy, not too much—now enjoy the ride!

  I jerk forward, dizzy on gasoline fumes and hopped up on adrenaline, feeling the power of the bike rattling between my legs. I squeeze the clutch again, shift into second… and stall out.

  My best friend in this hellhole’s on a Yamaha up the road, a good fifty yards ahead. Even from here, I can hear him groan and laugh at me.

  “Girl, you’re on fire. You almost made it to second gear this time,” Double Eight (I call him Dubs) yells over his shoulder.

  I flip him off, then bend down to adjust my headlight, which is sagging toward the ground. Our motorcycles are boneyard specials: m
ismatched rusted parts held together by bolts and luck. We’re supposed to be learning how to fix them in the Reserve Trade School.

  Usually we just skip dumb-dumb school. But today… well, today we decided to steal the classroom materials.

  But I’ve never driven anything more powerful than a bicycle before, because it’s against the law.

  I kick piles of trash out of the way, trying to clear a smoother path for take-off. Dubs circles back and glides to a stop next to me.

  “You gotta relaaaax,” he says. “Otherwise we’re going to have to put the training wheels back on.” Dubs grins like the lovable fool he is and revs the motor. “Ready or not, here goes nothing!” he yells.

  Clutch, throttle, gas…

  “The road to prison waits for no man,” he crows, “or woman.” He peels away first, leaving a fat black streak on the pavement, a puff of dark smoke in the air. “Yeeeeehaw!”

  There’s Dubs for you. He could be the poster boy for everything the ruling Hu-Bots say is wrong with the human race. He looks like a born thug: dirty, scarred, missing about six teeth. His jokes are crude. And he’s about as wild and crazy as they come.

  It wasn’t my idea to steal the bikes, is what I’m saying.

  “Loosen up, Six,” I say to myself. We all just go by the first few numbers of our IDs, since they’re a bitch to remember. Once upon a time, I had a real name. No one calls me by it anymore.

  Power on, power up. Clutch, shift, gas, clutch, shift…

  You’re going to see your family today. Yahoo!

  I hear the choking cough of the engine and I tense, but then I ease up and give that baby a little more gas. The bike bucks beneath me and roars to life, and suddenly I’m riding.

  Second gear, then a smooth upshift to third. Fourth.

  The wind whistles in my ears and brings actual tears to my eyes. The slums of the Reserve start to recede in my rearview.

  The bike’s a Yamaha R6, a dinosaur compared with what they’ve got in the City—what used to be Denver, Colorado. But pushing 90, 120, 130, miles an hour down a winding mountain road, it feels like flying. And if it means I end up in prison or as smear on the highway, at least I’ll have had this moment.

  I’ll know what it felt like to be alive.

  At least, for one bright and shining morning, I’ll be able to say I was free.

  CHAPTER 2

  AT THE EDGE of the mountain, just before the highway dips down and splinters into the smaller streets of the City, I skid to a stop next to Dubs.

  Below us, the buildings shine and the lights glitter tantalizingly. I take a deep breath. Here—unlike on the Reserve—the air’s warm and clean.

  “We’re gonna be early,” Dubs says.

  I nod—I know. We’ve got places to go and my family to see, but I don’t want to think about that yet. Instead I think, What if we could live here, instead of high up on the mountain, in a stew of human filth? What would life be like in this city?

  The Hu-Bots would never let that happen, of course. They think we’re hopeless savages. And, with our sunburned skin and our holey, dirty clothes—well, we look the part. I drag my fingers through my hair, but that can only take a girl so far.

  “Whaddya say?” Dubs asks. “Wanna go stink the place up?”

  I rev the engine. “Yeah,” I say. “Let’s get us some trouble.”

  We roll into the City—not Denver now, never Denver anymore, because lowly humans named it that—and ditch the bikes on a back street before a robot cop can bust us for illegal operation and theft of a motor vehicle.

  And to think: we humans created this world. We designed and built it all—including the robots that nearly destroyed us and want to finish the job soon.

  On foot, we head toward the city center. Dubs gnaws on a bug bar, offers me a bite. “Some delicious, nutritious insect protein for you?” he asks.

  “No, thanks.” Our rations include a half dozen bars a week, but I don’t eat food made from cricket flour unless I’m truly desperate.

  Everything’s so perfect in the City that it’s creepy. You might call it inhuman.

  As Dubs and I approach downtown, we start to hear it: the white noise, the hum of a city whose residents run on electric current. The Bot buzz: it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  Today the low drone seems more ominous than usual. Like maybe, if I listen hard enough, I’ll be able to make out whispered words, something like Diehumansdie.

  I shake my head. I’ve got to stop thinking these morbid, depressing-as-hell thoughts.

  Dubs breaks a branch off a tree and begins whacking the heads off rose bushes dotting a church lawn. Through a stained-glass window, I can see rows of Hu-Bots, their heads bowed, reciting the prayers of my ancestors.

  Now that’s something I’ll never understand. My people used to pray to the gods they believed made them: Our Father, who art in Heaven, etc. But we made the Bots.

  First we built regular Bots, with limited, programmable powers of reason. They could cook, clean, babysit, I guess. Simple, functionary stuff.

  But that wasn’t enough for us. We wanted robots that could think for themselves. That were smarter, stronger, faster than we were. So we created the Hu-Bots.

  And that was our fatal mistake.

  Dubs bats a bright-pink rose so hard, it crashes against the window of the church. He lifts his arms up to the sky. “We built you! I am your god!” he bellows.

  “Dubs!” I hiss. “Don’t.”

  Thankfully, the “parishioners” are too devout to avert their eyes from the pulpit. That’s another thing I don’t think I’ll ever understand: the Hu-Bots loathe humans, and yet they imitate pretty much everything about our culture.

  “I just don’t like this place,” I say. But what I mean is: We don’t belong here, and I hate that. Everywhere I look, I see the remnants of human creativity, of our ingenuity, of our past.

  If only I could do something—anything—to make it different.

  We round the corner and enter a busy avenue lined with expensive boutiques and five-star restaurants. Very glitzy.

  Even if Dubs and I had a plateful of money, we couldn’t go into these places. They’re Bot only.

  I grit my teeth as we pass a crowded bistro and the smell of seared meat rolls out the open door. I don’t care about being able to buy fancy clothes, but I’d kill to eat a steak sometime. I know I’ve had one before, but I can’t remember what it tastes like.

  Tall, willowy Hu-Bots and shorter, stockier Bots stream by us on the sidewalk as we stand there, drooling. The Hu-Bots are all elegantly dressed, and their faces are too perfect looking—like high-end mannequins given the breath of life. With their large, clear eyes, high cheekbones, and flawlessly smooth bioskin, they look distantly related to each other.

  Which, in a way, they are. I mean, synthetic polymer skeletons do all come from the same factory, right?

  I peer through the steak house window. A Hu-Bot—a blue-eyed, silver-haired female sporting the metallic choker worn by all Hu-Bots—delicately chews her meat.

  “I mean, she—it—doesn’t even need that protein,” Dubs moans.

  He’s right. Sometime in the past few years, Hu-Bots engineered themselves to eat, simply for pleasure. (And yeah, that means they crap, too. I don’t understand the biomechanical details, and I don’t want to.) They make themselves out to be superior because their emotions aren’t messy and “savage,” like ours, but it’s apparently totally civilized for them to cram their gullets with lobster, pizza, and milk shakes just because they taste good.

  Meanwhile we humans, who do not run on batteries or electric current or nanotechnology, survive on bug bars and mildewed bread and the gristly bones of wild turkeys.

  “Maybe we should just go over to HCF,” I say, “where we belong.”

  In the shadow of the gilt and glitter of the promenade is the HCF, or Human Charging Facility. It’s the only part of the City where we humans can actually enter a restaurant. Eve
n the Reformed humans—the ones who live in the City and serve our robot masters—have to do their business in this biological ghetto.

  It’s cramped and grungy over there, with big, ugly signs for H-RR (restrooms), H-L (lodging), and H-E (eats).

  I keep staring at that juicy T-bone. “We’re going to go there with what money?” I pat my empty pockets.

  “Humans!” I jump at the sudden electronic call of a Bot-cop. It’s hard not to be jittery when you’re basically breaking a law just by breathing.

  CHAPTER 3

  “HUMANS!” IT SAYS again. It sounds like hoo-mons. “Papers.”

  The Bot-cop is rolling toward us, holding out a gloved, robotic hand. What an ass. A hard-ass, right?

  Papers are the key to the kingdom, a pass to get around the City. My papers list the nine-digit number I was assigned—easier than names for the Bots to track—and identify me as a Reserver, and no, I don’t have them on me. Why carry around something that identifies me as the lowest of the low?

  Dubs finally wrenches his eyes away from the steak and turns to me. “Got yours?” he whispers.

  “What do you think?” I mutter. “You?”

  He grins. “Oh jeez, I used mine as toilet paper.”

  And that’s all that needs to be said. Time to get scarce.

  We run toward the market, which is always crawling with the Reformers—essentially human slaves—doing the weekly shopping for their robot overlords. Maybe we’ll be able to blend in, but I doubt it.

  At the corner, Dubs and I split and run in opposite directions. It takes the Bot-cop a second to pick a target. When it looks like he’s going for Dubs, I slow a little.

  “Yo, Sparky,” I taunt the Bot—because Dubs might be a year older, but I’m a whole lot faster.

  The Bot-cop hesitates again. Then it switches course and motors after me. I dive into the crowd of Reformed humans, shoving my way past the dead-eyed workers of the City. I hunch my shoulders and turn my gait into a meek little shuffle, and suddenly the Bot can’t pick me out of the crowd.

  The human slaves shoot me uneasy looks; they know I’m not one of them, and they don’t want to touch me. Honestly, I can’t totally blame them.