Abby’s fingers finally found what she was looking for, something she had hoped was still at the bottom of her purse. She grabbed it tightly and pulled it out with triumph. She slammed it through the window saying, “This!”
Glass fragments flew through the air. She had made a small hole in the window with her tiny hammer. When she started at Avalon U, her father had made her swear to carry it with her in her car, in case her car ever was submerged in water; she could use the hammer to break the windows and swim out. She had always thought it foolish and figured she would never actually use it since she lived in the city now. What were her chances of driving into Lake Avalon? She didn't even own a car anymore! As it happened, her father was correct about needing it to break a window, just not the part about being underwater. She was just glad she hadn’t ditched it when she stopped driving.
“I think I need to start carrying one of those,” said Dane.
Though there was now a small hole in the window, it didn't stop the car. The cab drove into the dark and vacant warehouse. While Abby kept striking the window to enlarge the hole, the car stopped and the warehouse door slowly rolled down behind the car, blotting out the main source of light. There were smaller windows up high, but the whole warehouse was rather dim without the light from the door.
There still wasn't a large enough hole to get out of the car. Abby worked furiously at breaking the rest of the window with the tiny hammer, but Dane stopped her. "Duck!" he said.
Using both feet, he kicked out the window. Glass rained down on Abby, but she had covered her head and it fell harmlessly to the floor. Dane had broken enough glass so that they didn't gut themselves when they pulled themselves out the window. They had both managed to get out of the car by the time the slow warehouse door had fully closed.
They stood in the dim warehouse, wiping glass fragments off them. They took a few steps away from the cab, looking to see if they could notice anything. The warehouse was dim enough that besides the general shape of the room and a few palates of aging crates, they couldn’t discern anything else.
“What now?” said Abby. “Where’s his evil scheme?”
In the darkness on one side of the warehouse, a red light winked into existence. A moment later, a few more red lights appeared. In seconds, a dozen red lights hovered in the darkness. Then the lights began spinning, as if they were sirens.
"That's not good," said Dane.
"What are they?" said Abby.
"R-36s," said Dane.
"R - whats?"
Then they heard the thump of twelve heavy footsteps in unison. Then another step. And another. Dane and Abby backed up, getting away from the car. When the red lights got near a shaft of light from a window, Abby could see what they faced. Honnenheim had sent twelve metal robots to kill them.
Each robot had a simple design. The body was a metal box. Thin legs were attached to the bottom of the box, ending in thick metal feet. They had thin steel arms that swayed back and forth at their sides. Their hands were simply two wide fingers and a wide thumb. Instead of heads, there were the red spinning siren-lights, which looked to Abby more like they were advertising a sale on aisle five than menacing someone with the threat of death. It was the shoulder-mounted weaponry which was actually frightening. Dane had recognized them as the stock R-36 models Honnenheim used, so he guessed those were probably plasma cannons on their shoulders.
A screen on the chest of each robot winked to life, showing the face of Honnenheim. “It was unfortunate that our previous conversation was… disrupted, Monday. But I’m sure you heard the best of it. You were a worthy opponent, but this is checkmate.”
All of the robot’s plasma cannons whined as they charged for a shot. Abby closed her eyes, preparing for the end, but Dane yanked her behind a palette of old crates. The whine of the plasma guns continued to grow in intensity. Dane didn't have a move at this point, so he expected the palette to vaporize and possibly kill them. But when he heard the plasma cannons discharge, he was surprised that instead of experiencing the adventure known as death he just heard an explosion.
Peering over the palette, Dane saw that the robots were not even pointing toward him and Abby. The robot's targets were the taxi cab. It had been struck by the plasma blast, superheating the metal. That ignited the gas tank. The car flipped over in the explosion and was now a burning, twisted piece of metal.
“Holy cr-“ said Abby before Dane clapped his hand over her mouth. He put a finger in front of his own mouth for quiet.
The warehouse was silent except for the crackle of flames, making a tinny sound where it echoed through the twisted metal of the car. Then there was a whirring sound from the other side of the room. Robot sensors went into full effect. They realized there was something wrong about the car explosion. One robot driver, but no corpses.
“Unexpected result. No human remains detected,” intoned a robot. “Calculating……………..”
“They’re still alive, you idiots!” said Honnenheim’s face on their chests. “They’re still in the warehouse! Find them! Kill them!”
“Crap,” said Dane when the heavy footsteps started again. He began rummaging through his satchel.
“Tell me you have something in there that stops robots,” said Abby. “This hammer isn’t going to cut it.”
“I have this jamming device that stops Honnenheim’s robots,” said Dane without confidence.
“Why aren’t you using that?” Abby said almost in a shout.
Dane pulled out the jammer and pressed the button with his thumb. He looked toward the robots expectantly. Unfortunately, the footsteps continued. “That’s what I expected. I had it set to Honnenheim’s last frequency. He must have changed it.”
“Then change it to the right frequency!”
“There are thousands! Last time it took me hours to find the right one.”
“Why do you have so many devices with variable settings?” Abby shouted at him.
“Here!” said Dane, handing it to her. “Just wiggle the knob and press the button! There's not enough time to try every frequency, but maybe you’ll get lucky!”’
With wide eyes, Abby took the device and commenced jamming on the button every other second while she turned the dial. Dane kept looking in his satchel for something to help. He found nothing.
"Fine, I'll use the hidden backdoor that Jaya found," said Dane. "I was hoping not to use it and alert Honnenheim to the R-36 backdoor, but desperate times..." Dane cleared his throat. "Robots, shut down. Code word: Lavender."
As Dane paused and waited for the robots to go through their inevitable shutdown, he called out. "Why lavender anyway, Honnenheim? Jaya and I had a bet. Was it your favorite color or your favorite handsoap?"
"Lavender was the name of my dear grandmother!" said Honnenheim's offended face in the chest of the robots.
The robots continued marching forward, trying to calibrate their guns to aim at Dane.
"They're still moving," said Dane "Why are they still moving?"
As the robots crossed into another beam of light, Dane noticed the problem. On the shoulder of the robots, painted in red, was the designation R-37.
"R-37 models? When did you start using R-37s?" said Dane.
"They were intended to be my praetorian guard once the death ray was fully operational," said Honnenheim. "But I was forced to step up their deployment."
"But what about the R-36s? They were doing so well!"
"Your recent scuffle with the R-36s revealed a few... design flaws. Flaws that should be resolved in the R-37s, like the backdoor password."
The crates Dane and Abby hid behind suddenly vaporized. Though Abby yelped and a wave of heat washed over them, they were unharmed by the vaporization or the blast. But they were still left without cover. They scrambled for a new hiding place. They found a different set of crates to duck behind.
“Don’t you have some sort of gun?” said Abby. “A ray gun or some sort of robot-destroying weapon?”
“I
don’t carry any guns,” said Dane. “It’s just not my thing.”
"What about a wand then?" she said. "You do magic stuff. Maybe you picked up a wand somewhere. You can vaporize these rustbuckets!"
"I don't have a wand!" he said in exasperation.
“No wands?” said Abby. “Even boy wizards carry wands. Are you packing less than a boy wizard?”
“I’m not a soldier and I’m not a cop,” said Dane. “I don't carry any deadly weaponry! I don’t expect to kill anyone.”
“How the heck do you get anything done?” said Abby, furiously pressing the button on the jamming device while trying to crane her neck over this new warehouse pallet to see how close the robots were.
“Cunning, trickery, ingenuity,” Dane said weakly. “It just always works out... somehow.”
“Now would be a good time for somehow!” she said.
A superheated beam of plasma cut the top off the crate. Dane grabbed Abby’s hand and ran, ducking low as plasma blasts pierced the air above them. They ran for the walls of the warehouse, looking for some sort of exit. They found an old peeling red Exit sign that hung over an old door.
"Finally!" said Dane, rushing up towards it and throwing himself on the emergency exit bar mechanism at waist level.
The door did not open.
In the dim light, he looked at the door frame. "Oh, that's not fair!"
"What?" said Abby, gasping for breath.
"It's been welded shut!" said Dane, grabbing her arm and pulling her with him as they looked for some other exit. "That's a fire hazard!"
They found a sizeable break room contained in a corner of the warehouse. All the appliances had been removed, the cabinets had their doors ripped off, and there was a thick layer of dust. However, there was a door, one that hadn't been welded closed. This door led to stairs.
Dane searched the break room for anything to help while Abby kept looking for a frequency on the jammer. The heavy footsteps were slowly advancing.
"Ah ha!" said Dane. He found an In-Case-of-Fire box. He broke the glass. “Fire axe,” he said, hefting it over his shoulder while he looked for anything else. There were discarded bits of plastic utensils, paper plates, and Styrofoam coffee cups. There was no refrigerator to block the doorway with, no dishwasher, and the microwave had been yanked out, leaving just the frame which was bolted to the cabinets. Under the sink, Dane found a small fire extinguisher. He lifted that up. “This fire extinguisher has some weight. We could club one of them with it!”
"A fire axe and a fire extinguisher? We’re fighting robots, not fires!” said Abby.
"It's all we have," said Dane. "Do you want to make our stand here or upstairs? I vote for upstairs."
The steps of the robots were loud and close. Abby swallowed slowly. "Upstairs," she said. Anything to delay the inevitable.
Upstairs was a simple office, the boss's office, an abandoned relic of business from decades past. There was a large wooden desk, a ripped picture of the company headquarters in Skokie, IL, a peeling calendar, and charts of dwindling sales figures. There were large windows without latches or hinges which overlooked the outside. Beyond those windows was a steep drop.
“I’d take that over death robots,” said Dane, looking at the drop.
Abby nodded, but kept fiddling with the jammer. “Maybe the fall wouldn't be so bad. Bend our knees, roll. Maybe? There aren’t that many options…”
"Stand back!" said Dane.
From halfway across the room, Dane hurled the fire extinguisher at the window. With the weight of the extinguisher, it could easily break a regular window
Unfortunately, this was not a regular window. Made of some intended-to-be-unbreakable glass, it cracked slightly and the fire extinguisher bounced back. It nearly hit Abby, whose quick reflexes had her ducking under the desk. The fire extinguisher hit the desk and rolled onto the floor.
"Watch it! Are you trying to kill me?" she said.
“Doesn’t anyone use real glass anymore?” asked Dane. He hefted the axe, took a deep breath, then charged the window, swinging the axe at it. The axe chipped the window and made a small crack, but that was it.
“I could spend an hour hacking my way through this and still not get anywhere,” said Dane.
“We don’t have an hour,” said Abby.
“I know! Probably better to use this on the robots!”
By the sound of their footsteps, the robots in question were in the break room below. After a short pause, Dane heard their heavy steps on the stairs. The stairs creaked but held their weight. The staircase wrapped around the break room and office, so at the top of the stairs, a person would need to turn the corner to open the door to the office. Dane took his place at the top of the stairs, brandishing the axe. He heard the footsteps of more than one robot coming up the steps. He was rather impressed they could climb steps; their boxy design made it seem like they’d be off balance.
“If you’re going to find that frequency, now would be a good time,” called Dane over his shoulder.
“I’m trying!” shouted back Abby, sitting on the desk.
The robots continued to ascend the steps slowly. Honnenheim’s voice called out from the screens on the robot’s chests. “Stop hiding, Monday! Why delay the inevitable?”
Dane jumped out onto the top of the staircase, swinging the axe. It planted firmly in the lead robot’s chest, splitting the screen in half. Dane wasn't one who was prone to direct violence against his fellow man, but there was something very fulfilling about taking an axe to Honnenheim’s face, even if it were on a vid screen.
There were two other robots behind it on the steps. Those robots frantically tried to calibrate their targeting in the stairwell so as not to hit each other or the lead robot. Dane pulled back the axe, but to his dismay he found it was stuck. He pulled harder, but no luck. He put his foot up on the robot’s chest and finally pulled the axe out. As it released, it pushed the lead robot backwards, which fell over and knocked over the second robot, which then knocked over the third in a strange Three Stooges robot act.
Dashing back into the room, Dane finally took a moment to breathe. “I think I may have bought us a little more time! Any luck?”
“What do you think? Are the robots still moving?” asked Abby sarcastically, but there was still a frantic fear in her voice.
“Understood,” said Dane, backing off and leaning on the desk to catch his breath. “I can at least keep knocking them down the stairs until they catch on. They seem top heavy.”
A beam of super-hot plasma erupted from the floor right near Dane. He jumped back, now standing close to the desk. In a moment, that beam was joined by a second. Dane brandished the axe, but he wasn’t sure what he could do. In seconds, both beams whipped around in a circle. There was a moment of creaking and tearing.
"Hold on!" shouted Dane. He grabbed the desk for dear life. Abby was already sitting on the desk but wasn't sure what Dane meant until the floor sagged. Then it fell completely, giving her a moment of weightlessness violently interrupted by gravity.
The desk struck the breakroom floor below, jarring and bruising them, but they were otherwise unharmed. There was a cloud of dust from the floor collapsing. In a few moments it cleared and settled.
Robots surrounded them, their red light sirens rotating ominously.
Dane immediately lashed out at the nearest robot, cutting its plasma cannon in half. The attached half still sparking on its shoulder, that robot stepped backwards and another took its place.
“At last I have you, Monday!” said Honnenheim’s face from the center of each robot’s chest. “Kill them!”
The robots paused, their plasma cannons moving up and down, some of the robots taking tentative steps back.
“What’s wrong?” said Honnenheim. “Kill them!”
“Calculating….” intoned a robot. “Looking for plasma trajectories that do not harm other robots.”
“Uh oh!” said Dane. Ducking and making henchmen and hench-robots shoot e
ach other when they had you surrounded was one of the classic hero maneuvers. He didn’t think Honnenheim would have programmed them to avoid that crossfire.
“Just kill them!” said Honnenheim. “Some losses are acceptable!”
“Understood,” intoned the robot. “Calculating…” The robots stopped moving. Dane looked around expectantly, wondering if he could make a run for it through the tightly packed circle of robots. The robots did nothing for a full thirty seconds.
The Professor Honnenheim on every robot’s vid screen chest face-palmed.
Finally the plasma guns whirred as they charged up to fire. Dane prepared to duck, but with this many, there was no way he was going to avoid all their blasts. He wished there was a way to get Abby safe, but the circle of robots seemed to preclude any escape; even if he could wriggle out, she would still be in danger. He was surprised that this was finally it. This is not how he expected to end things. He expected something bigger, something more profound. Something meaningful. How could it end this way? Surely he had some sort of deus ex machina saved up for all those years of strange adventures. Maybe a strange electrical storm. Or a demonic enemy that produces a poltergeist. Or an alien attack. Or his estranged friends who were presumed dead earlier in the movie jumping through the window with heavy ordnance. Something.
As Dane looked into those charging guns, he was particularly ticked off that it was Honnenheim who got him. Is that how he truly ranked? Offed by a B-grade, though admittedly persistent, mad scientist?
Suddenly all the guns charged down. The screens in the robot's chests all went dark and Honnenheim's face disappeared entirely. The siren heads stopped spinning and clicked off.
Dane looked around the circle. Every single robot was now deactivated.
“Did I do it?” said Abby, pulling herself out from the wreckage of the desk she was hiding in. “There is a blinking green light on the jammer.”
Dane was still looking around in shock. He finally smiled. He rushed over to her and grabbed her in his arms, lifting her into the air, causing her to squeal in shock before he put her down again. “Yes! Yes you did, Abby!”
Manic Monday: (Dane Monday 1) Page 7