by Ramy Vance
“I can’t hear you. What’s going on?”
“Rueben-Z…minions survived…”
“Minions?”
Aki yelled, “Rueben!”
Rueben jerked his head around to see one of Rueben-Z’s robot minions—burly arms, beard, and lumberjack flannel—trotting up to them over the decrepit basketball court.
It raised one thick hand up and backward with a basketball balanced on its palm. The next thing Rueben knew, the basketball was flying straight at him. He raised his hands but was too late. The ball knocked the air out of him as his back crunched against the brick wall behind him and he crumpled to the ground.
Chapter Sixteen
Thursday, May 25, 3:12 p.m.
The other lumberjack minion crashed through the precinct building’s third floor like a juggernaut, shoving desks aside that were mounted to the floor, sending paperwork into the air. As intimidating as his burly physique was, his verbal silence was even more unnerving.
The building’s fire alarm wasn’t silent though. It was droning on and on like the trilling of a giant insect.
Martha grabbed Marshall’s wrist and tugged him around the corner. Marshall was already panting.
“We can’t just run from that asshole. We got to stand and fight.”
“With what?” Martha said. “It’s an unstoppable robot.”
“Honey, nothing’s unstoppable.” Marshall stopped and picked up a heavy golf outing trophy from an officer’s desk. A moment later, the lumberjack robot stepped around the corner, and Marshall chucked the trophy at it. The award clattered off the robot’s barrel chest. It stopped.
“Ha! I think I wounded it.”
The minion slowly turned and started walking away from them.
“What a coward. I scared it…oh fuck.”
The lumberjack robot bent and wrapped its massive hands around the sides of a commercial printer, lifting it with ease. The power cord tore free from the wall as the robot launched the printer Marshall’s and Martha’s way.
They barely avoided death by printer.
Martha guided Marshall to her boss Kenneth’s office. He’d just hung up his phone and was drawing his service pistol. “Dragone? The fuck is going on—”
The office wall caved in as the lumberjack robot shouldered his way in. Sparks shot out from the wall, and the lights all flickered off in the building. The fire alarm, thankfully, also died.
The robot raised both arms with its meaty fingers splayed out like bear claws. Kenneth opened fire, and his bullets ricocheted off the robot’s torso and face.
“Come on,” Martha shouted as she grabbed Ken’s shirt and pulled him toward the office’s doorway where Marshall was now standing.
Even though the lights were out, the sunlight coming through the windows lit up the floor. The lumberjack robot crashed through the wall from somewhere behind them.
“Where’s everyone at?” Martha demanded.
“The fuck is that thing?” Ken kept saying. “It’s not human. It can’t—”
Martha slapped the man, and his eyes focused on her. Maybe he’d fire her for that after this was all over, but at least he might survive it if he listened to her.
Marshall stepped in front of Ken. “It ain’t human. It’s a machine.”
“L-like the Terminator?”
“Yup.”
“Oh shit—”
“Where the hell is everybody?” Martha asked again.
“Jerry. Jerry’s retirement party on the ground floor. They better have saved me some goddamned cake.”
Martha took the lead and guided them toward the elevators. “Damn. No, the power’s out…” She changed direction and headed for the fire escape.
“Duck!” Marshall called.
Martha ducked as a fire extinguisher shot over her head and crashed into the window. Glass blasted outward and fell in shards to the street below.
“Christ,” Ken sputtered as a burst of cool wind swept papers up into the air.
Marshall helped Ken up. “That robot might be dumb as a box of hammers, but he’s a strong bastard.”
Martha pulled up short when she saw the door to the fire escape. Several tall filing cabinets and a sideways mahogany desk blocked it.
“Not so dumb after all.” Ken ran his hand through his sweat-slicked hair.
Martha dialed Buzz’s number as she, Marshall, and Kenneth crouched against the cabinets in the breakroom. The robot had trapped the three of them on this floor, and if they didn’t do something fast, it was going to find and kill them.
At least the fire alarm was off so she could think more clearly. The smell of burnt coffee annoyed her, though. Someone had left the pot on the burner for too long again.
“What did you do to piss that thing off?” Ken checked how many rounds he still had in his pistol’s magazine.
“Its master is a time warper from a parallel universe who we stripped of his time-warping abilities.”
“Umm…okay?” Ken massaged his forehead and closed his eyes.
“Come on, Buzz, answer,” Martha said.
Marshall leaned against the cabinet with one hand for support. With a grimace, he said, “We need to find a way to show Ol’ Metal Head we mean business.”
Kenneth looked at him incredulously. “How are we supposed to do that?” He winced at the sound of computer monitors smashing to pieces somewhere outside the breakroom.
“We need firepower.”
Kenneth held up his pistol.
“No. Something bigger. Much bigger. You got an evidence room on this floor?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Anything that goes bang?” Marshall made an explosion gesture with his hands.
The phone in Martha’s hand stopped ringing. “Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.
Martha kept her voice to a whisper. “Carolyn?”
“Oh, Martha. How are you…are you near a trash compactor?”
Martha could barely hear her over the sounds of destruction outside the breakroom. “Buzz. Where’s Buzz?”
“He’s in the lab. I’ll go get him…”
“Wait,” Martha said but air was already whooshing past the phone in Carolyn’s hands. Martha turned to Marshall and Kenneth.
“There’s nothing like that in the evidence room,” Kenneth said slowly.
“Well goddamnit, it was worth a shot—”
“But there is something in my office. Locked in my desk drawer.”
Marshall’s eyes told him Yes, yes, go on.
“A smoke grenade…”
Marshall waved him on. “And…”
“And what?” Kenneth swallowed. “That’s it.”
“A goddamned smoke grenade? That’s all you got? I thought you were gonna say you had a…something that went boom.”
“Ah, Martha,” Buzz answered cordially. “To what do I owe the pleasure—”
“What’s the quickest way to disable your lumberjack robots?”
“Say what?”
“You heard me. They both survived the mansion blast, and now one is after me and Marshall, and the other is probably after Rueben and Aki.”
“Oh dear…”
“Tell me!”
“Water.”
“Water?”
“Bob doesn’t like water. Now it won’t short circuit him completely, but it will slow him down a bit more. Might start suffering some malfunctions.”
Heavy footsteps approached the breakroom, and Martha held her breath. All was quiet.
For a moment, it seemed like it would stay that way. Then a swivel chair smashed against the other side of the door. There was another heavy footfall and a fist punched through the door. When the robot withdrew its hand, the door came with it, tearing from its hinges. As it stood there blocking the entry, trying to get the door off its wrist, Martha got to her feet and searched the breakroom for a weapon.
She lunged toward the coffee maker and grabbed the glass carafe. Bob the robot had succeeded in freeing his hand when the
carafe exploded on his chest, splashing his chin and neck and upper body in scalding coffee.
“Rrrr-rrr.” Bob stumbled back a step from the doorway out into the hall as a few tiny sparks snapped and hissed from beneath his red and black checkered flannel shirt. A moment later the shirt combusted into flames.
Marshall fist-pumped. “All right!” He clambered to his feet and selected a break room chair. Then he hobbled out through the doorway and raised it, bringing it down across the robot’s shoulder. The robot swatted it away, knocking Marshall backward to the floor.
“Marshall!” Martha said as she rushed out into the hall and checked on the man.
He groaned. “Will I make it?”
“Just a bump.” She helped him up as Bob started to recover. Behind her, Kenneth exited the breakroom. “Go and…get the smoke grenade.”
Kenneth nodded and took off running through the ruined office.
“The window,” Marshall muttered as he and Martha picked their way through the ruined floor.
“The window?” She glanced down at the phone in her hand. She must have hung up on Buzz by accident.
“We’ve got to throw that motherfucker out the window—it’s our only chance.”
The robot stomped around somewhere behind them, blindly knocking into desks.
“How?”
“We lure it over by the broken exterior window. Then we use the smoke grenade to disorient it. Then I push it out the window.”
“Are you crazy?”
“More than a little. That’s why I’ve got to try.”
Bob had righted himself then. The fire had gone out on his chest, exposing a set of impeccably defined abs. He tromped toward their position. Martha and Marshall picked their way through the demolished floor until they met up with Kenneth. In one hand, he held the smoke grenade—it looked more like a canister with a pin you pulled—and in the other, an inhaler.
“I’ve got to sit somewhere.” He handed Marshall the smoke grenade. “My lungs…”
Marshall laid a hand on Kenneth’s shoulder and nodded.
While Kenneth disappeared to find some cover, Marshall turned back to Martha. “You ready?”
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the robot wasn’t coming yet. “Marshall, don’t take this the wrong way, but your hip is busted, you’re overweight, and you’re older than you used to be.”
“Damn right. It’s time I got to it.”
Martha shook her head. “You’re going to get yourself killed. I can’t let you do this.”
”Yes, you can, and you will. I’m going to give you three good reasons why. One, you need to be backup in case I fail. The others need you more than they need me. I know that. You know that. Two, I am your superior officer, and I am ordering you to help me—”
“Don’t pull bullshit rank on me. I’m not going—”
Marshall cut her off. “And three, I have been a useless, mean son of a bitch for a decade now. I aim to change that. I need to do something that matters. I need this. Now, you gonna help or not?”
Martha pursed her lips. “Fine. But we do this together. I’ll lure it toward the broken window. I’ll drop the smoke grenade and get out of there. And you…shove Bob out the window.”
“Aye-aye, kiddo.” Marshall gave her a salute.
“Hey, over here!” Martha shouted, and the robot turned its head toward her. She headed for the broken window and fake-slipped on the floor.
“Rrr-rrr.” Bob started for her.
Martha clutched her ankle. “Help, my ankle. I think I twisted it.” She tried not to sound too fake. Judging by the renewed vigor in Bob’s steps, she hadn’t overdone it.
Martha regained her footing and fake-hobbled behind a desk close to the window. The wind blowing through it whipped her hair up. Before she left the cover of the desk, she pulled the pin on the smoke grenade and dropped it in a wastebasket. Bob was soon right up next to her, and he took a powerful swing at her.
She ducked his blow, admiring the robot’s six-pack as she backstepped. Smoke was now pouring out of the wastebasket and quickly filling the room. “You’re up,” Martha said as she sprinted away from the broken window.
She stopped and turned back and listened. She didn’t hear anything. “Marshall? Marsh—”
“Yippie-ki-yay—” Marshall charged through the smoky room wielding a wooden coat tree like a lance. Time seemed to move in slow motion. She caught his eyes for a moment. Then he disappeared into the smoke. There was a crunch and a whoosh, then nothing.
“Marshall?” Martha took some steps closer to the window. Now the wind was blowing smoke in her face as well as whipping her hair. From the street below came a crash and several car horns. “Marshall? Marshall? Please tell me you didn’t fall out too.”
“Who? Me?” Marshall was grinning from ear to ear, lying on the floor beside the window.
Relieved, Martha edged up to the opening and peered out. Bob the robot was lying on the street.
“He dead?” Marshall called, still on the floor.
“He’s not moving… Ouch.” Martha winced as a garbage truck ran over the robot. “Yeah, he’s dead.”
“Good. Now can you please help me up? My lower back…”
She helped him up. He wasn’t injured—just old. A few minutes later, a SWAT team breached the stairwell door. Medical personnel poured into the room, and Martha indicated where Ken was. Then she and Marshall slipped out of the building.
She would call Zach later to see if she still had a job. But now, they had more important matters to attend to.
Chapter Seventeen
Thursday, May 25, 3:12 p.m.
Rueben had enough time to pick himself up off the ground and suck in a painful deep breath before the lumberjack minion was upon him, towering over him like a red and black checkered behemoth. It drew back one massive fist to pulverize him.
“Hey!”
The robot glanced over its shoulder, and Aki delivered a kick to its back. It didn’t faze it. The robot turned back and saw that Rueben had gotten away. It searched for him as three gangly men rushed outside the Paper Warriors building, one of them with a camera in his hands.
The lumberjack minion turned and studied them curiously.
“Hey,” one of the three papermen said, “is that, like, Paul frickin’ Bunyan?”
The robot took a lumbering step toward them. One of the papermen started filming. “Sir, what’s your name—”
The robot swatted the camera from the man’s hand.
“Hey, what the heck, man? That wasn’t cheap.”
One of the man’s companions grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back a step. The robot took another step forward, but before it could attack the papermen, Rueben snuck up on him from behind with a tire iron from the Jeep. He swung it at the back of the robot’s head, and the iron made a loud clang.
The papermen gasped, and the robot turned and tore the tire iron from Rueben’s hands. After sending it soaring over the basketball court, it grabbed Rueben by the neck in one meaty hand and suspended him off the ground.
Organic Jim shuddered and stood by the door.
The papermen watched in stunned surprise. “He’s not human.”
“No. Can’t be.”
“Then what is he?”
Aki rushed forward and kicked the robot in the groin, but all she did was hurt her foot. The robot raised Rueben even higher off the ground while shoving Aki back a step with his free hand. “He has to have a weakness!” she said as she caught herself before she could fall.
“Are you a superhuman species?” one of the papermen called.
“Are you reptilian? Nephilim? Abominable snowman?”
Rueben’s face was beet red. He could barely breathe. He stopped trying to tear the robot’s hand from his throat and took a good look at his opponent’s face.
The robot’s lumberjack face was ruggedly handsome and windblown. While up close, the beard and mustache looked very real, its eyes did not. They looked
robotic. Cold.
With his life slipping from him, Rueben jabbed one hand forward, his fingers connecting with the robot’s eyes. He felt them swivel under his fingers like marbles, and the robot released its grip on him.
Aki helped him up as soon as he hit the ground.
“We…come in peace?” one of the papermen said.
Rueben was about to tell the three men to get lost before they got themselves killed when his phone rang. Martha. “Yeah,” Rueben answered as he dodged the robot’s fist.
“We survived. Hope you’re okay…”
“Little busy at the moment.” He sidestepped a fist that crushed the brick wall behind him into powder. He put the call on speaker.
“What happened to your robot minion?” Aki asked as she stepped up behind the robot and flung a loose chunk of concrete at the robot. It crumbled on the back of the robot’s head.
“We killed it.”
“Killed it?” Rueben used some of his old ballroom dance moves to quick step to the robot. Using the combat skills he’d learned when training for the Pout mission, he planted a disabling kick to the side of the robot’s knee. The knee didn’t budge and the robot backhanded Rueben, sending him skidding backward in the grass.
“Threw it out the window. Maybe you can do the same?”
“We’re already on the ground.” Aki shook her head. She dodged a robot punch. “And the building in front of us is only one story tall.”
“What kind of building?” Martha asked.
Rueben glanced up at the robot as he tried to pick himself up from the grass. The robot lunged forward and would have stomped Rueben in the gut had he not rolled to the side at the last moment. “Newspaper place.”
“You followed Rueben-Z to a newspaper place?”
“No,” Aki said. “We came across Jim outside the hotel. He helped lead us to this place.”
“Hullo,” Jim said bashfully, waving to the phone in Rueben’s hand.
“Maybe there’s a weapon of some sort inside the building?” Martha offered.
Rueben rose to his feet and dashed over to Aki. “Let’s get inside.”
“But we’ll be trapped—”