The Rising(61)
So how had the drone things found them? And who was the guy who’d driven his car into the store, saving them from the man-like machines, at least for the moment?
Alex couldn’t bother considering that or any other question right now. He needed to figure out a way to break free and escape.
And take Sam with him.
“Sam!” he cried out and felt a hand clamp over his mouth, crinkling like a soda can.
Her eyes were gaping in terror.
He needed to do something, but the drone thing was now holding both his hands in a single, gloved grasp by the thumbs. When he struggled, he felt the wrenching pain of the thumb jerked so hard, it strained the bonds of its tendon.
Sam’s taser was still tucked just behind her hip in her jeans, hidden by her jacket. If he could reach it, maybe, just maybe …
But he couldn’t. Only thing that would get him was more pain. He needed to bide his time, wait for an opportunity—which came when a shape lunged out from an idling trash truck, complete with compactor and arm-like assemblages, parked across the alleyway directly before him.
*
The route out blocked, Raiff projected himself through the passenger window of the garbage truck, having looped all the way around the strip mall to avoid being spotted. He hit the ground tucking, rolled once, and was back on his feet. His whip was useless to him with Dancer pulled in so close to the android holding him. The android didn’t let go, pulled Alex in even tighter against it, backed up closer to the trash hauler. Raiff let it, showed the whip he had no intention of using to make the android retreat even farther.…
Directly beneath the pincer apparatus’s electronic eye.
It had engaged automatically when Raiff had put the truck into “park” and now it lowered with a mechanical whir and captured the android in its grasp at the shoulders, a near match to the width of the trash containers for which it was fitted. The pincer apparatus clamped on tight, lifted the android up and out. The thing desperately tried to free itself, almost managing to when the pincers lowered it into the compactor.
Raiff grabbed Dancer and shoved the boy behind him before he could move to rescue the girl. Above, the android was clawing desperately for anything it could grab, as the compactor sucked it further and further inside, until a crunch sounded and nothing but its hands remained visible. The compactor bucked once, settled, then opened anew.
The other android tossed the girl aside to move for Raiff, who went for his whip, now to find it gone, lost when he’d grabbed Dancer in its place. The android flashed its laser knife, reeled it back to send the first blade flying, Raiff’s best hope that it might miss him.
He caught a flash of motion at the android’s rear and then the girl was on it, something in her hand coming forward.
A taser, Raiff realized, in the moment before she jammed it against the back of the thing’s neck.
A buzzing sounded and kept sounding, as the girl held the taser firm against one of the android’s most vulnerable spots, where conduits of wires joined together, all spooling out of its computer brain. The thing lashed out with an arm that sent both the girl and her taser flying. Not a blow so much as a reflexive response.
The thing’s arms began to flap about. It spun and smoked and sizzled, but still somehow lurched toward Raiff, blindingly fast.
To Raiff’s amazement, the boy—Dancer—broke free and threw himself on top of the android, giving Raiff time to dive headlong for his whip. Taking it in his grasp and lashing it forward to catch the thing hard against the left side of its head, which snapped and lopped to the right. The android beginning to snap, crackle, and pop as sparks flew from its steel neck like Fourth of July sparklers.
Two more down.
Raiff pulled himself back to his feet, feeling pain in too many places. Watched Dancer heaving for breath, steadying himself against the garbage truck’s frame directly below the robotic arm that had dumped the other android into the compactor.
Raiff had just started moving toward him when a pair of disembodied hands grabbed hold of Dancer from inside the truck’s rear.
*
Raiff glimpsed what remained of the android still attached to the forearms and hands, which were all that were still intact, the rest of it no more than a flattened husk of steel and wires compressed into a jagged assemblage, still sparking and popping but maintaining enough “brain” function to complete its mission of capturing, or killing, Dancer.
Its hands had found the boy’s neck, tugging on it as if to pull his head off, when Raiff lashed his whip into motion and sliced the forearms free of what remained of the thing’s body. That, though, made its fingers clamp down, sure to squeeze mindlessly until there was nothing left in their grasp.
Raiff knew they couldn’t be pried free, knew he couldn’t risk using his whip, either. That left …
The girl’s taser!
She seemed to read his mind, or form the same thought, located the taser and tossed it to him. Raiff snatched it out of the air and lunged toward Dancer, who was gasping for breath now and fighting desperately to work the hands killing him free as his face purpled.
Raiff touched the taser to one hand, then the other.
Dancer jerked and spasmed both times, but the fingers snapped open and locked there. Raiff peeled the fingers off the boy and tossed the hands into the trash truck’s rear, hoisting Dancer to his feet and shaking him to keep the boy from passing out.
“Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”