We picked up his trail ten miles in the Zone,
The stolen car was burning on a closed-off access road;
You could still feel the fire where the tracers cut the air,
See the outlines on the pavement where two more troopers fell.
You wonder if they carve a notch for each and every time,
You wonder just what kind of thoughts go coursing through their minds;
You could swear they were human and never realize
'Til the steel flashes when the light shines in their eyes.

A motel on the highway called in a complaint,
After sixteen years it's grim enough to make you feel faint
Whoever his companion, there was little of her there,
The crew from forensics took the bone chips and the hair.
My partner pointed westward as we drove down 63,
"There used to be a city there before the century;
Some buildings still are standing as if to remind,
But never in our lifetimes will we see those windows shine."

He was holed up in a warehouse, in an old machinery mill,
The tactical division pulled up in the pre-dawn chill;
They took it in a fire-fight and when those doors came down, 
Through the smoke and cinders he was nowhere to be found.
O automatic pilot, high above the sea, 
The chain of command relayed the details to the chief;
Well it's a long way from a hired gun up to the CEO,
From the broken streets of Reno to the shrines of Tokyo.

Inside a screaming ambulance they bear the dying man,
They view the devastation from a pair of iron hands;
They packed his limbs in ice and they bandaged up his head,
They switched off the siren and they radioed ahead.
Now in the cold streets of a city where the empty moonlight shines,
Clutching at a lamppost, slumps the CX-9;
Crying like an ape unto the human god,
Where the future is unwritten and the road ahead is broad. 

Copyright © Thomas Anderson, Angry Young Grad Student Music