by James Axler
"Think we're close to Krysty and the others?" Dean asked.
"Been wondering about that myself. Can't tell how far behind them we are. I figure it can't be more than twenty-four hours or so. We just keep going, and we'll find them camped someplace. Then everything'll be just fine."
"Wish you'd shot two rabbits, Dad."
"Why?"
"Then I could eat this one all on my own and you could have the other one."
Ryan laughed. "I prefer it where I eat this one and you get the one that we haven't shot yet."
The wood burned bright and true, sending its column of smoke vanishing above them. It was light enough that Ryan didn't worry about it being spotted by anyone, particularly after it had been dissipated through the branches. Occasionally a globule of fat from the cooking meat would crackle in the flames with a burst of sharp sound.
"Soon be done."
"Good. We can drink water from the pool there. Looks clean enough."
Ryan stretched out, feeling the growing heat of the sun soaking into his strained and abused muscles. It had been hard going for the past week or so. Despite the bad news of the homestead having to be burned against the disease, it would be good to spend a month or so helping Jak and Christina rebuild it.
"Be good," he whispered to himself.
Dean waved a hand, mouth open, pointing to the fringe of the clearing, close by the pool. Ryan looked and saw a small deer, standing stock-still, almost invisible among the dancing shadows. Its delicate feet were hidden in the long grass, the narrow head focusing on the two intruders.
The boy mimed drawing a blaster, aiming it and squeezing a trigger, then rubbing his stomach with a comical expression of hunger fully satisfied. Ryan shook his head.
There was a time to kill.
The mountains were teeming with game, and when they next wanted to eat it would only take a few minutes to shoot something for the pot. To wantonly butcher the young deer would have been to defile the beauty of the quiet place.
With a cold shock, Ryan was suddenly aware that the clearing had become even quieter.
The piping of the birds that had been swooping overhead, etching their silhouettes against the azure sky, had stopped.
The whole forest had fallen quiet. There had been cicadas clicking rhythmically in the brush. Now there was a silence that was broken only by the faint sounds of the cooking fire.
Dean had caught it as well, eyes turning nervously toward his father.
Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer, touching it to his lips in a warning gesture to the boy.
The deer had been drinking from the pool, long neck arched. Now it had stopped, head lifted, brown eyes open wide.
Ryan started to stand, when his eye caught the flicker of movement.
There, in a pool of spilled sunlight at the edge of the clearing, death stood poised and waiting.
Chapter Eight
RYAN'S MIND FLASHED back to the redoubt that he'd visited only a few days ago, to the row of machines that he'd seen in a dim, dusty hall: Five humanoid robots, standing patiently, legs slightly bent at the knees, arms dangling at their sides. They were no more than five feet tall, built mainly from rods of chromed steel. They still gleamed in the overhead lights, untarnished by the passing of long, solitary years.
Their heads were polished domes, with small crystals set in place of eyes. They were dull and lifeless. Below them was the android equivalent of a mouth, a metallic slit, half-open, with the hint of teeth within. Was there a sharpness there? It wasn't possible to tell.
Their necks were tubular, articulated, like the small scales on the the throat of a serpent. Their chests were armored, broad, containing all the comp controls. Each arm was slightly longer than a human's would be, in proportion to its height, giving the robots the appearance of an orangutan, slouching toward eternity.
One arm ended in three digits. Two were like pincers, with honed edges. The third was a clubbing hammer. The other arm terminated in four sharp blades, their points winking like needles.
The droids' legs were a little shorter than those of a man, ending in flexible platforms, each tipped with shorter versions of the finger knives.
They were the ugliest creations that Ryan had ever encountered.
"Wouldn't like to meet you guys in a dead-end street at midnight," he had said.
Ryan was about to turn away, but a fallen notice captured his attention.
Part of his concentration was focused on the quintet of stunted robots, and he ignored the red line and the warning painted on the floor. He stepped across it and bent to pick up the large card.
Far away one of five dark panels on a control console became illuminated with a single word: Activate.
The card was creased, corners dog-eared and bent. The writing was covered in dust and Ryan wiped it clear with his sleeve, his forehead wrinkling as he followed the faded printing.
It was headed with a single line in maroon capital letters: SEC HUNTERS.
Underneath there was an explanation, as though the five creatures had been exhibits in some sort of military museum.
Developed in the nineties using latest cybernetic technology, the sec hunters are the most sophisticated devices known to man and are years ahead of any comparable machinery from the Eastern Bloc. They "sniff out" the genetic body pattern of their prey. Once locked on to that one individual they will follow and destroy, even though it takes them to the ends of the known world. Nothing short of total destruction will divert them from their lethal purpose.
On that distant console, another block of screens had lighted under the heading of Genetic Recording.
THREE OF THE ANDROIDS had already been destroyed, narrowly thwarted in their lethal pursuit of the human life-form known as Ryan Cawdor. All of the information about his genetic makeup was irremovably programmed into the core of their linked, gestalt, computer souls.
A fourth robot had malfunctioned, though Ryan had no way of knowing that.
Now, the last of the sec hunters had pursued him, following by the merest luck, via the Last Destination button on the mat-trans gateway, emerging some distance behind Ryan and the boy into the blistering heat of New Mexico.
Like a wasp in summer, it now had no possibility of returning. It would slay Ryan Cawdor, then its own death would follow only a second or so after his life ceased.
That was how it would be.
Chapter Nine
THE TECHNO-CREATURE that stood among the thimbleberry bushes bore little relationship to the polished exhibit that Ryan had first encountered in the forgotten depths of the far northern redoubt.
One of the red eyes glowed like a ruby fire, but the other was flat dead. Its mouth was open, and something moved quickly within it, from side to side, like a razor.
It took a hesitant step toward them, its head turning slowly from side to side, as though it were checking out the boy and the motionless deer. Ryan noticed that it seemed a little unsteady, and he could hear the loud whining of gears that weren't quite meshing properly.
The once-glittering carapace of hardened, chromed steel was now dented and smeared with dirt. One arm was making strange, twitching motions, the pincers continually snapping open and shut.
Ryan noticed that this android had a number stamped into its right shoulder. A neat, geometric number five. In the nightmare battles against the previous three techno-assassins, there had never been time to spot something like that. Now, in bright sunlight, it was very clear.
If this was the fifth of the five, then somewhere along the line something must have happened to one of the others. It must have malfunctioned before it even reached him, perhaps in the black, airless tunnels of the old mining shafts.
There was a tiny consolation in knowing that this must be the last of them.
If Ryan could defeat this one, then at least he wouldn't have to keep glancing over his shoulder for yet another programmed butcher.
"If," Ryan said.
Dean had
stood, drawing the big Browning, glancing across at his father, waiting to be told how they were going to play this one.
The deer still hadn't moved, seeming hypnotized by the appearance of the metal android.
"Bullets won't stop it, unless we hit something vital," Ryan said.
Now that it had reached the climax of its pursuit, the droid seemed lethargic. There was the clearing between them, then the large, deep pool. The trees were thick around the edges of the open space, and Ryan wasn't sure that he and Dean could outrun the lethal creature. And in his heart he didn't honestly think he wanted to do that.
"Come on, you dumb fuck," he snarled. "Let's end this right here." Ryan smiled grimly at the futility of talking to a heartless collection of wires and circuits.
"Why don't we run different ways?" Dean hissed. "Can't get us both."
"It'll take one of us. Best try to chill it together."
It was still moving, lifting the left foot up then setting down. The servomotors hummed, and the right foot repeated the action. Slowly.
Its arms were spreading like grotesque wings, telescoping outward to cover any attempt to break past it. The hammer suddenly whirred around at fantastical speed, and Ryan readied himself to duck, in case it propelled it at him.
But the motion stopped as unexpectedly as it had started.
"Could swim for it, Dad."
"You're full of ideas, son. Told you. Want to finish it here and now."
"But, Dad—"
"Concentrate, Dean. Watch for the moment and then grab it."
Ryan took two slow steps to one side, planting his feet like an expert in martial arts, keeping his balance on the shifting carpet of pine needles. The android's head jerked toward him, and it altered its direction.
"Go the other way, Dean," he said. "Want to see what it does."
At the boy's movement, the head twitched back to follow him, but it kept on its inexorable progress toward its programmed prey.
A ceaseless whine came from deep inside the metal shell. Ryan had a flash of hope that its terminal malfunction might happen now. There would be a flash of sparks and grinding of gears, and it would fall over only inches from him.
But he had lived long enough to be certain that things like that only happened in books.
He backed away, toward the fringe of the lake, his eye never leaving the killer droid as it moved after him.
"Why not blast it, Dad?"
"No need to whisper. It can hear you, but it sure can't understand what you say. It's armored. Have to be a fluke if you hit anything real vital. By then it's on you."
The grating sound grew louder, and the droid clicked into a murderous overdrive. Both arms started to revolve in opposite directions. The hammer whirred and the cutting shears clicked and clacked. The needle blades in the toes went in and out so fast that the movement was only a glittering blur.
"Out the way!" Ryan yelled, balancing on the balls of his feet like a knife fighter, the gun probing at the air in front of his hand.
Dean ran a few steps farther to his left, then stopped, crouching and leveling his own blaster, bracing his wrist as J.B. had shown him.
It was like facing a madman, a crazed lunatic with triple speed and high-tech weapons.
For a moment the hunter droid waited, like a fighting bull, pawing the ground before the last charge. Then it began its rush.
Ryan opened fire, pumping ten of the fifteen rounds in the clip at the middle leg joints, seeing sparks fly and hearing the bullets scream off into the trees. Dean also opened fire, more slowly, having to re-aim after each heavy kicking explosion of the Browning.
One of his shots came within a finger's width of taking out the robot's only functioning eye.
As Ryan powered himself toward the water, the young deer, terrified out of its skull, broke for safety.
With one eye gone, and propelling itself over the treacherous ground at an unsafe speed, the droid was distracted by the flash of speed from the panicked animal.
Hardly pausing, it swung the clubbing hammerhead at the deer, catching it a glancing blow across the side of the neck. The force was enough to knock the animal to the dirt in a tangle of kicking hooves. The droid swooped down on it, battering at the helpless creature as though it were its target.
It was almost as though it had a human killing urge, like a berserker.
Ryan thought it was probable that the first strike had butchered the fragile animal, breaking its neck. But the sec hunter was demented in its blind fury, kicking, cutting and hitting the mangled corpse, all at the same time. None of the bullets seemed to have had the least effect on its lethal power. The slaughter was happening less than a yard from the edge of the small lake, and Dean's suggestion about getting away by swimming suddenly came to Ryan.
"The water," he said.
It was the best shot they had.
He dodged around the droid, wading into the pool, feeling the cold shock as it rose above his combat boots to his knees, making his movements slow and fettered. He paused when it was halfway up his thighs, keeping the SIG-Sauer leveled.
"Hey!" Ryan shouted. The robot took no notice, preoccupied with mangling the corpse. "Come on, shit for brains! Get over here." He snapped off three more rounds, leaving himself with only a couple of bullets.
This time the droid stopped, its head moving with an infinite slowness, the metal greasy with slick blood. Its single red eye looked at the one-eyed man for long seconds.
"Be careful, Dad!" Dean called.
The hunting robot turned to focus on the boy, taking a hesitant step toward him. Blood was dripping from the steel hammerhead, and a length of muscle tissue was trapped between the pincers.
Ryan fired off the last two shots, bringing its attention back to him as the 9 mm rounds hit it in the chest.
The metal was pitted and scored from the amount of lead poured into it, but the droid's efficiency wasn't impaired. It took two steps that brought it right to the edge of the dark water, where it stopped.
"Come on, you piece of rusting shit," Ryan taunted. "Here I am!"
"Dad," Dean said quietly.
"Things go wrong, head north for the others. This bastard won't follow you."
"But I—"
"Just this once do like I say, Dean. Please."
One foot touched the surface of the pool, then drew back. The robot's head turned, and the comp controls buzzed angrily.
Ryan holstered the empty blaster and waved his hands in the air, shouting at the droid to keep it coming at him. He backed away a little deeper, nearly falling as his foot slipped on a slimed, rotting log, buried in the mud.
The robot seemed to be assimilating a jumble of input information, its red eye blinking off and on, its arms trembling at its sides. Then it made its decision and took two bold steps into the lake, to its armored knees.
Ryan was now waist-deep, drawing the heavy panga in his right hand and hefting it, though he knew it would be like waving a piece of straw at a charging stickie.
"Come on," he urged, beckoning it deeper, closer.
The water had risen to what would have been the android's groin.
And there it stopped.
Ryan took an instant chance. Instead of moving farther away, toward the possible safety of the lake's center, he chose to go forward, closing the gap between himself and the hunter-killer robot.
Holding out the long panga, he growled, "Lost your balls, have you?"
The droid extended its arms and swung them both toward him, but it was just too far away. Ryan waved the steel blade, bringing the creature a cautious half step toward him.
He needed to have it at least chest-deep for there to be a chance of the water soaking through into its main control unit.
A small part of his brain wondered if the original inventors had taken the precaution of sealing the comp unit and making it waterproof.
If they had, then Ryan could look forward to about ten seconds more of life.
<
br /> Judging it to perfection, he offered the panga again, bringing the robot another foot closer. Now the dark lake was lapping at the bottom of the droid's round, fluted chest unit.
The sec hunter was making a strange chittering sound, as though a flock of tiny metallic birds were fluttering inside its controls.
It stopped, head fixed toward its prey, arms retracted and froze, both pointing in Ryan's direction. For twenty, thirty seconds, nothing happened.
Ryan watched it, hawklike, waiting for the next move in the murderous game.
A minute. Two minutes.
"Think it's fucked, Dad?"
"No. Eye's lit. Can hear it still whirring away in its guts."
But the droid wouldn't move deeper.
"Fireblast!" Ryan yelled, the anger that was always present suddenly breaking out.
He dived beneath the surface of the dark pool, kicking hard with his legs as he drove straight at the waiting robot.
His groping hand felt the rigid struts of the leg supports, and he grabbed at them, swinging and pushing himself off the bottom of the pool.
The droid responded quickly, pumping its arms below the frothing spray. Ryan felt a savage blow on his right shoulder, but he hung on. The steel of the panga clashed against the robot's other arm, blocking the slicing cutters.
It was stumbling, struggling to keep its balance, the free leg shuffling, the other pulling against Ryan's grip.
With a titanic effort, Ryan managed to get the leg out of the mud. He braced himself and heaved, lifting the heavy android, tipping it.
The droid smashed another blow into the small of Ryan's back with its hammer hand, but it was done.
The breath exploded from Ryan as he surged out of the chill water, seeing the sec hunter disappearing, only its arms remaining above the pool.
There was a bright flame beneath the surface, like flaring phosphorus. Ryan let go and splashed his way quickly to the shore, looking back over his shoulder, nearly falling into the bloody bones of the mangled deer.