by M. G. Herron
I absorbed the blow as best I could. The breath swept out of my lungs as what looked like a bicycle gear pierced my skin. My empty, useless weapon spun from my hands and clattered across the ground to slip under the small wooden deck attached to the back of Vinny’s house.
I had enough experience getting the shit kicked out of me that I managed to curve my arms over my head as I flew through the air and, when I hit the ground, roll with the momentum. Stunned and breathless, I bounced and tumbled a few times, smacking against the fence near the edge of the wooden deck.
Reaching my arm out, I groped under the deck, feeling for the weapon I’d lost. My breath was beginning to trickle back in as my lungs fought for air. I focused, forcing breath through my nose as I extended my arm and reached for my gun. Black spots crowded my vision. I felt a cold and metallic object under my fingertips.
Seizing it, I hauled back. My pistol, a Kimber 1911, is a tank of a weapon—heavy to hold, serving double duty as a bludgeoning instrument. I swung it in the direction of the nearest metallic creature. Considering how heavy I knew my gun to be, I couldn’t believe I was brandishing a twisted soda can at the nearest robot, who was running at me full speed again.
I swore and let go. The soda can bounced ineffectually off the robot’s rusty body. Then, that body slammed into me, knocking my ass back onto the deck.
I scrabbled to my feet, using an object on the deck for leverage. Once I hauled myself up, I chanced a glance to see what it was. Apparently, luck was on my side. I lifted an aluminum chair in my best impression of a professional wrestler and heaved, slamming it into a robot as he came at me another time. I guess I was no Hulk Hogan. The beast staggered, but didn’t fall. I slammed the chair into it twice more. The chair crumpled, but the blows at least made the creature stumble sideways with jerky movements. I kicked out while it was unbalanced, and it fell onto its side.
As that one fell, a second robot closed the gap between me and Vinny’s back door, blocking my escape route in that direction. The third paced across the exit toward my truck.
This had become a no-holds-barred kind of battle, and my eyes zeroed in on a shovel that leaned against the fence. I grabbed it and turned back to the injured robot, slicing the blade of the shovel down at its body, searching for a weak spot.
The shovel scraped off the metal. The other two continued to shuffle side to side, penning me in like sheepdogs as their compadre struggled to regain its metal feet.
Their lack of fear or concern did more to affect me than anything. These weren’t soldiers or goons that I might be able to fight off. These were mindless bots sent on a cold-blooded murder mission. I found a strength in my arms that I didn’t know was there a moment ago. Good thing the shovel was sturdy. I aimed the blade at a seam between the creature's body and a piston-leg, then plunged the shovel down with both hands. The blade caught in the crack. I cranked to the side, and its leg popped off.
“Ha! Take that, you rusty mutt.”
The robot sat on its hind legs like a dog, supporting itself with one hoof-shaped front foot.
A low thrumming noise sounded. The leg, bending and straightening on the deck as if it were still attached, suddenly spun, then snapped magnetically to the round joint I'd just pried it from.
"Son of a—"
The robot dog spun and kicked backward with both back legs. I blocked with the wooden shaft of the shovel, but the impact shot through the wood, numbing both my hands and sending me staggering back from the sheer force of the blow.
It jumped forward. I blocked again and this time, the shovel spun free of my hands. On the next rush, I got knocked on my butt.
While I was staggering to my feet yet again, another of the robots rushed forward, slamming into my ribcage.
Then another, into my ankles.
Then another. And another.
I curled my arms over my head as they battered me. Blow after blow, they came seconds apart like automated hammers, bruising my body and keeping me perpetually falling down and struggling to gain my feet.
Finally, one caromed off the top of my skull, blackening my vision and making the ground tilt sideways.
When my vision returned, I was on my back, the taste of blood thick on my tongue, my body swollen like a heavyweight boxer’s favorite punching bag. My attackers were straddling me. One set its dense weight down on my chest. I bucked my legs, but the effort was useless. I was a flattened leaf, the robot a two hundred pound paperweight.
I watched helplessly while they bound my wrists and ankles with some kind of plastic twine. Blood pulsed weakly in my wrists as the cord cut off my circulation.
Tendrils of smoke burst from the flanks of the robot sitting on my chest as thick webbing with several heavy anchors fell over top of me. The anchor points turned out to be the sharp-edged gears which protruded from the robot’s body and had sliced me up so bad. The webbing tightened down suddenly, pinning me to the ground. I tried to move my head, but couldn't.
The beast leaned down close to my ears and, out of a hidden speaker, the recording of a soft voice I’d never heard before drifted to my ears. It was a flat voice; a hard voice. Nothing like the Gatekeeper’s arrogant flippancy, or Rashiki’s Russian rasp, or Vinny’s boisterous New Yorker tone.
“Last warning, Earther,” the soft voice said. “This is not your war to fight. Unless you’re willing to die for the cause…”
It was not a boastful voice. It did not waste time. It did not even seem to enjoy articulating this particular sentiment.
It was simply a statement of fact. The soft voice, pointing out a foregone conclusion, as if to a dumb child.
It chilled me to the very marrow of my bones.
Message delivered, the robot triplets flipped away, twisting, reshaping, and snapping together with the two others into the hunchbacked, humanoid shape they first appeared in.
I struggled against my restraints as the automaton ambled away, clacking softly against the pavement of Vinny’s driveway. It left the cloak, rumpled in a heap on the ground.
I struggled mightily, but it was no use. The web pinning me to the ground held firm, gears biting into the dirt or into the wood of the deck attached to the back of Vinny’s townhouse.
I’d be stuck here until one of the neighbors came home and let me out—or called the cops.
The robot lifted the Daacro’s limp body, strapped it to its back with more of the cord produced from somewhere within its body, and jumped out of sight.
12
Something snapped. I didn’t remember passing out, but I woke to tingling in my hands and feet as blood trickled back into my extremities. Looking at my hands, I was startled by the bluish-purple color of my fingers, now unbound. I tried to clench my hand. My fingers were like a blue crab’s claws, twisted and with severely limited range of motion. The sensation turned to stinging.
I turned, but the net’s taut webbing draped over me had tightened so much it cut into my face and body with a relentless pressure.
“Gorram offwohdah confrapshins,” I mumbled.
My cheeks were swollen and my mouth felt like it was filled with cotton balls. I chewed on my words then swallowed a mouthful of copper-tasting saliva.
Gross.
“Oh thank God, you’re awake,” said Annabelle Summers. She exhaled a deep sigh of relief. “I was just trying to figure out how the hell I was going to carry you to the car.”
“Amma?” I mumbled. “Wut ahh ew thooing ere?”
I remembered watching the robot carry the Daacro off, then struggling against my restraints as they seemed to tighten down. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn I had a concussion from being rammed into by blocks of solid steel. Whoever sent those things after me—and took Samael—meant business.
“I followed you to the police station,” Anna said as she examined the netting holding me down. “Then you started driving crazy and I lost you. Then, I called Vinny’s new girl, Willow, and she told me you were going to drop off soup at Vinny’s house because
he was sick today. Imagine my surprise to find you here like this. Is Vinny even here? No, I can see by your face that he isn’t. You have a lot of explaining to do.” She struggled with the netting for a few seconds, yanking on it. “What the hell is this net even made of?”
I swallowed, meeting her eyes. Had she seen the robot attack dogs? What did she know?
Anna certainly had a knack for finding things she wasn’t supposed to. Or, should I say, Marsha did. Which one was the real Anna? Which one the shadow? Anna shook her head and broke the gaze with a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.
“Well, you didn’t deny anything. That’s a start. I spent the last few minutes looking for something sharp enough to cut this damn cord. Not even the kitchen knives worked. Found this bad boy in your truck, though. Hold still.”
I guess I forgot to relock the box where I kept the weapons. Talk about a stroke of luck.
She slid the bowie knife’s blade under the heavy netting along the inside of my thigh. I tensed.
“Um… Anna?” I knew she wasn't going to cut me. Or was she? That oversized blade was uncomfortably close to so many important bits that it made me nervous.
“Stay still,” she said. There were black bags under her eyes. Her pupils jumped around, darting quickly from my face to the blade. It was impossible not to see the nervously intense focus in the way her jaw clenched into a hard line.
My ability to control my hands and feet was slowly beginning to return. With needles. I shook my hands, trying to get the blood to circulate faster. Coughing, I spat a bad taste into the grass next to me. It took a little concentration but I managed to articulate my words this time. I had to talk slowly.
“Do me a favor and try not to puncture my femoral artery down there, would you? That knife is sharp.”
The blade of the bowie knife pressed down, making an indent in the cloth of my jeans. “While I have you here, tell me something.”
I gulped audibly.
“My instincts tell me you’re a good person, but I need to be sure. Good people don’t generally get tied up and left for dead like this. So, tell me… How exactly did our date end?”
I groaned, but didn’t relax. It would be sheer lunacy to lie to Anna while she held a knife to my leg. If she saw an ounce of deception in my face, we were finished. Any chance I had at having a real relationship with this woman was on the line right now—not to mention some important bits.
I couldn’t tell if she was bluffing. She had been pushed to the edge. So I did what seemed like the only option I had left.
I told her the truth.
“You got a phone call,” I said slowly. “Left the restaurant without me. Then I got called away on the Kovak case.”
Well, a summary version of the truth, anyway.
“So why,” she shouted, a vein bulging in her forehead. “can’t I remember that‽”
The blade of the knife pressed harder against my inseam.
I clenched my jaw. “Easy, Anna.”
“Why?”
She took a deep shivering breath that trembled through her whole body. Angling the knife, she pulled up sharply, then sawed back and forth with a delicate movement until a three inch section of cord split. I flinched hard enough to instantly map the bruises all over my body. Anna was breathing hard and, with shaking hands, positioning the large blade back against my leg.
Please don’t slip and cut me by accident, I wished silently.
“Why, Gunn?” Anna demanded. “You’re the last person I remember seeing! What happened to me?”
The whites of her eyes shone bright against the bruised shadows around her eyes. She hid it well with a little artfully placed makeup, but up-close, I could see the toll the memory loss had taken on her. She must have been wearing her best pokerface when we'd bumped into each other back at the restaurant.
God, I could be dense when it came to women.
“Easy, Anna. It’s nothing like what you’re thinking, I promise you that.”
Her nostrils flared. Her shoulders moved up and down in time with rapid breathing. The vein in her forehead twitched.
This was Annabelle Summers standing on the edge. This was Anna at the center of a tornado of unexplained events and mucked up emotions. This was Anna like a guitar string bent to its limit, one discordant off-pitch pluck away from snapping.
“I’ll explain everything,” I said, still struggling against the netting that held me down. “I promise.”
She stared at me with those bloodshot eyes.
“Tell me now!” The knife pressed into my groin again.
“Okay, okay! You were taken. Kidnapped. After you left the restaurant, we got separated, and he found you somehow. We had to go after you. I swear I’d never do anything to hurt you, Anna.”
Tears glistened in her bloodshot eyes. “Why can’t I remember anything, Gunn?”
“Better if you don’t.”
“Why didn’t your memory get erased? Why me and not you?” A small gasp escaped her lips. She looked into a middle distance.
I didn’t know what she had just realized, but I was getting annoyed and—yes—feeling very helpless stuck under the webbing. “It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you everything if you will please just get me out of here.”
She laughed bitterly. “Feeling helpless sucks, doesn’t it?”
The heat of my anger rose. I took a few deep breaths so it didn’t creep into my voice and further set her off.
“It does. Feeling helpless is my least favorite emotion, and I’ve spent practically my whole life trying to avoid it. But it keeps coming back to punch me in the kidneys.” I arched against a particularly deep bruise on my lower back.
Anna remained still.
I sighed and tried to relax my body. It wasn’t her fault I was stuck here, and it certainly wasn’t her fault I had been ambushed by attack robots the size of Labrador retrievers for reasons not yet entirely clear to me.
Since Anna had stopped trying to cut me out of the web I was trapped in, I felt that it was time to play my wildcard.
“Listen, you have questions,” I said. “I get it. So, if you let me out of this goddamned robot spiderweb, Ms. Marshall, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
She stared at me for a second as the name sank into her brain. Her mouth fell open with a soft, oh.
“Yeah. I know all about your secret identity. Now, come on. I have ice packs back at the office. I’m already feeling like I’m going to need them. I’ll make coffee and we can talk.”
“My memory,” Anna said softly. “Did it get erased because of my website? Because of Marsha?”
I shrugged. I’d only realized Anna was Marsha Marshall after her memory had been erased, but it stood to reason that the Federation would want to keep what we’d seen quiet. A paranormal blogger was the opposite of quiet. Maybe Dyna had figured it out before I had.
Anna was nodding to herself as the pieces began to fall into place. Her lips pursed as she seemed to come to a decision. Wordlessly, she snapped another few pieces of netting, freeing up one of my legs. The strings holding my ankles had already been severed. She paused, opening her mouth to say something else before deciding against it and continuing to cut a line down the net.
Finally, the hole was big enough to squirm out. With a hand from Anna, I managed to lumber painfully to my feet. My legs were still numb, wobbly, as I took a step forward, toward my truck. A sudden wave of nausea threw me sideways.
“Careful,” Anna said as she steadied me with one stiff arm. “I think you might have a concussion.”
“Bahh.”
Another step nearly took us both to the ground. I teetered, my knees buckled, and I ended up leaning my whole weight against Anna. She staggered under my two hundred and fifteen pounds of mostly muscle. The girl only weighed a hundred and ten, soaking wet.
She managed to catch me, then blushed a furious red as my hand accidentally grabbed her butt as I groped for something solid with which to hold myself upright.
I cleared my throat. “Uh, sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Together we walked slowly to my truck. On the way, I bent and swept up the gray cloak, which now looked no more menacing than a rumpled bathrobe on the bathroom floor. By the time we reached the vehicle, I felt I could stand on my own, and did so.
When I opened the driver’s side door, Anna reached out a hand and pushed it shut.
“No way, dude. You can barely walk. I’ll drive.”
There was no sense arguing the point. It didn’t take a genius to see she was right.
“Suit yourself.”
13
My office showed no signs of attempted break-in or even disturbance. That was curious. Now that I had a second to think it through, the fact that I had been ambushed at Vinny’s place rather than my house or office only served to reinforce Samael’s suspicion that the two incidents were connected. Or maybe they didn’t know where my office was.
Maybe.
Once inside, I checked the bolt on the window and found it secured. I was grateful that I’d spent some of the money I got for the Kovak job on beefing up security in the place. Extra deadbolts for the door had also been installed. After shutting us into the office, I threw the bolts.
The extra security, however, did nothing to enlarge the tiny, cramped space. The room fit a single wooden desk, two chairs, and not much else. Anna lowered herself into the chair closest to the door, crossed her arms, and watched me check all the locks a second time.
Just like she’d been doing the whole ride here, Anna watched me in silence. The knowledge that her memory had been wiped because of her pseudonym seemed to mollify her. Or at least make her more thoughtful about her approach.
I could understand that. It wasn’t a full explanation, but at least it provided some reason for why it had happened. And, even more importantly, it implied that her pen name mattered. Writers just wanted to feel like they mattered, didn’t they? I supposed all people did. But writers more than most.