by Matt Handle
Erika thought she’d have trouble convincing Ben as to the wisdom of this plan, but he was surprisingly accommodating. She wasn’t sure whether it was shock or just plain fear, but when she explained where she was going and started out the door, he followed without a word. Given that she’d never fired a gun in her life and knew a simple pistol wouldn’t be all that effective against the armored monsters anyway, she could only hope the zyborgs were using the elevators or coming down one of the other three stairwells in the building. If they were using the one that led to Steele’s lab, she knew that she and Ben would be dead before they ever made it inside.
***
Mechler scowled as he watched another two blips wink out on his LCD display. Four more resources lost to the intruders. The big, bald-pated soldier and his skimpily-clad female partner were becoming much more expensive than he’d have ever thought. Based on the location of his most recently lost pair of zyborgs, Calvin suspected they were headed for his offices. With the push of a few buttons on the control, he redirected his remaining forces to move toward the same destination. If these intruders wanted to gun him down, he’d give them a firefight they’d never forget.
The sooner the better, Calvin thought to himself as he watched the blips begin to converge via the central elevators and different staircases in the building. I have work to do and no more time for distractions.
Chapter 19
Bandages and pain medication notwithstanding, Sawyer was limping badly by the time he and Angel finally reached the top of the stairs and Angel looked like she might pass out any second. They both wished they had more time to rest and heal before taking on another battle, but they were also shocked they’d made it the rest of the way up without another run-in with the zyborgs.
They hesitated on the landing, each catching their breath, and each imagining what might lie on the other side of the door. It was too thick to hear anything from the other side, but neither of them harbored much hope that their string of good luck would continue once they opened it. The building was big, but according to Erika, Mechler controlled the remaining 20 killing machines. Surely he’d have at least some of them stationed as a last line of defense.
Both of them checked their ammunition one final time and when Sawyer looked at Angel, she nodded. She was as ready as she was going to be. If death lay in the hallway beyond, she’d go down shooting. Sawyer took one last deep breath and then pulled the latch, opening the door just enough to peek past it and into the hall.
It was as empty as the stairs. Sawyer looked back at Angel with a mixture of confusion and relief and then opened the door the rest of the way, showing her what he’d already seen.
“Where are they?” she asked him in surprise.
Sawyer shrugged and then took two steps into the corridor, rifle at the ready. The building’s alarms were still clanging everywhere they went, but there wasn’t any sign of movement or trouble. Angel followed him, letting the door to the stairs close behind her.
“Maybe this is the wrong place?” Angel asked as she glanced up and down the hall, taking note of the lack of decoration. The corridor was carpeted and there was a long reception desk about 30 feet past the stairwell, but it was unmanned, not even a computer monitor atop it. The hall was lit by canned lighting set in the ceiling, every other bulb turned off so that there were shadows between the pools of light. The hallway stretched from one end of the building to the other. There were numerous doorways along its length, all of them apparently closed, but difficult to see as the eye stretched toward those furthest away.
“According to the good doctor, this is it,” Sawyer replied. His eyes tried to take in everything at once, his body poised to strike whenever the enemy presented itself.
“Why would she lie to us?” Angel asked aloud, but more to herself than to Sawyer.
Sawyer replied anyway. “I don’t think she did. One of these doors is the one we want. We just need to figure out which.”
Sawyer started moving toward the nearest door and then stopped to look intently into Angel’s eyes. “We stick together on this,” he told her. “Faster won’t mean jack if they separate us.”
Angel nodded that she understood and then pointed her gun toward their first target.
“Then let’s get busy,” Angel hissed under her breath, as if worried the enemy might be listening. “The sooner we’re not standing here in the open, the better I’ll feel.”
As Sawyer grasped the first door handle he whispered over his shoulder, “You and me both.” And then he opened the door to find nothing but more empty space.
A half dozen doors later, Sawyer and Angel found what they were looking for. Just past the receptionist desk was the only locked door of the bunch. There was no sign or keyhole, just an electronic card reader with a tiny red light shining in the middle. After staring at it for a solid minute, Sawyer took a few steps away and leaned against the desk to contemplate their next move.
“Still glad we didn’t ask Erika and Ben to tag along?” Angel asked.
Sawyer was about to offer an equally snide retort when he looked at her and decided to bite his tongue. They were both hurting and tired and she was right. He’d let his temper get in the way of his judgment and now he needed to come up with a solution fast.
Thirty seconds later, the elevator midway down the hall slid open with a cheery “ding” and the locked door they had been worrying about was the least of their concerns.
Four zyborgs stomped out of the elevator and turned in Sawyer and Angel’s direction. Two bore standard machine guns, but another wielded a six-barrel minigun, and the last was the buzz-saw model Erika had seen in the laboratory hours earlier.
“Oh, Jesus!” Angel cried out as they came into view.
Sawyer shoved Angel hard, pushing her to the floor and behind the receptionist desk, leaping behind it himself as well. His ribs screamed out in agony when he hit the ground, but the adrenaline pumping into his heart prevented him from even noticing the pain.
A split second later, bullets tore into the wall over their heads, turning it into dust as chunks of plaster rained down on their heads. Sawyer rolled sideways until he was at the edge of the desk. Inching the barrel of his gun past the edge, he returned fire, unable to see whether he was hitting anything. The minigun was firing so much ammunition that he didn’t dare stick his head out for risk of having it splattered all over the ruined wall behind him.
Angel tried to help by extending the muzzle of her gun over the top of the desk and doing the same. She screamed the entire time, her voice of despair and rage barely even registering over the steady roar of the gunfire that was rapidly turning their cover into Swiss cheese. Tears streamed down her face as she readied herself to die.
The four zyborgs began to close in, each walking toward the desk as they continued to fire. A few of Sawyer and Angel’s shots found the mark, but the monsters ignored them, their cybernetic-enhanced bodies seemingly no longer capable of feeling pain.
Blood streaked Sawyer and Angel’s faces, the flying chunks of plaster, wood, and metal taking their toll on their all-too-human flesh. Sawyer glanced at Angel and tried to offer her a smile. There was nowhere left to run.
***
Erika had been sure that she and Ben would be set upon by the monsters she’d seen in Steele’s lab long before they ever made it back to that locked and secret portion of the building so when she and Ben reached the bottom of the stairwell without a single sighting of the zyborgs, it was with a sense of relieved amazement. She took note that the light on the security camera posted above the door remained red, signaling that Mechler either hadn’t been able to reestablish the feed or just hadn’t bothered trying. So far their luck seemed to be holding out.
Ben hadn’t said a word the entire time they’d been moving so Erika turned to him before she opened the door.
“The laboratory is down a hallway just inside the door,” she explained. “I saw Steele use a special watch to override the zyborg’s commands. If h
e’s in here, we’re going to take it from him.”
Erika drew her pistol and held it up in front of Ben to illustrate her intentions.
“You got it?” she asked.
Ben nodded but remained silent, his eyes suggesting a state of shock.
“Ben, snap out of it!” Erika said sharply. “I need your help here. I don’t even know how to shoot this thing.”
Ben blinked and some semblance of the man she knew returned to his face. He looked petrified, but at least Erika knew he’d heard her this time.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he mumbled. “What if some of those things are still inside?”
“What if they come down these stairs while we’re standing here wasting time?” she retorted. “We’re out options, Ben. Let’s go!”
Without waiting for his response, Erika turned back toward the door and swiped her security badge. With a satisfied beep, the door clicked open and they stepped inside. The hallway was as quiet and empty as the first time Erika had explored it, but as she and Ben started walking toward the lab, she thought she heard furtive movement coming from that direction. Not wanting to be caught off-guard, Erika quickened her pace, doing her best to tip-toe as she ran toward the bend at the end of the hall that she knew led into Doctor Steele’s laboratory. If anything, Ben had slowed down behind her, but Erika didn’t spare him a glance.
As she came around the corner, she saw Erwin Steele as he tried to duck behind the very cabinet she’d used for cover when she’d spied on him earlier.
“Come out of there with your hands up!” she yelled in the most authoritative voice she could muster. She had the gun trained on the cabinet and her heart was pounding in her chest as she wondered if she’d taken the safety off correctly. “Now!” she yelled when Steele didn’t immediately obey her command.
Steele stepped away from the cabinet right as Erika heard Ben finally arrive behind her. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Steele, but if she had, she’d have seen that Ben looked almost as scared as Steele did. All the older man wanted was to sneak back into his apartment upstairs and hope all of this would go away somehow.
A similar thought went through Erwin’s mind as he stood with his hands up in the air, looking at Erika and the gun she had pointed at him. He still wore his watch on his left wrist.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Erwin began.
“We all made a big mistake,” Erika replied. “I’m just trying to fix it. I want you to slowly remove your watch and lay it on the table over there. Make one false move and I swear to god, I’ll squeeze the trigger.”
“You really don’t want to do this…” Erwin tried to argue. Before he could get out another word, Erika barked, “Hurry up! We haven’t got much time!”
Erwin wasn’t sure if Erika knew how to aim and fire a gun or not, but she looked like she was on the verge of losing it and he was on the wrong end of taking a chance on finding out. He slowly did as she asked, undoing the clasp on the watch and then taking two careful steps toward the nearest metal table where he laid it down before stepping back away.
“There,” Erwin said. “It’s all yours. If I had any money in my pockets I’d offer you that too, for all the good it would do you.”
“Just step back to the back of the room,” Erika countered. “And keep your hands up.”
“Erika…” Ben began from over her shoulder.
“Quiet, Ben.” she said without taking her eyes off of Erwin. “Step over there and pick up that watch for me. Don’t get in my line of fire.”
Ben reluctantly did as he was told before returning to stand by Erika’s side.
“What do you hope to accomplish?” Erwin asked with genuine curiosity. “Everyone’s dead. At least Mechler’s got us holed up here where it’s safe.”
Erika uttered a brief laugh that betrayed more disgust than amusement. “Safe?” she asked. “He murdered my husband. No one is safe. He’s a madman!”
Erwin shrugged. He didn’t know anything about Erika’s husband’s murder, but he didn’t doubt her story either. He’d seen Mechler’s rage for himself. “So now what?” he asked. “You don’t know how to use that thing.”
Erika stepped over to the console to her right and plucked up the larger handheld device she’d seen Erwin use earlier. “I’ve seen more than you think I have,” she replied. “But just in case, we’re going to bring you along.” She motioned with the gun toward the exit that led back to the hallway and stairs. “Come on,” she said. “We need to hurry.”
***
Just as the zyborgs were within arm’s reach of Sawyer and Angel’s hiding place, the high whine of the buzz-saw obliterating even the noise of the minigun, Erika, Ben, and Erwin burst through the stairwell door that Sawyer and Angel had used earlier. Two of the zyborgs turned in their direction, spraying bullets across the hall as they zoned in on the additional targets.
Erika pushed a button on the watch she now wore on her right wrist and all four of the monsters immediately froze in place, their weapons going completely silent.
Erwin fell forward like a stone, his face hitting the floor as his body went completely limp. Ben stood beside Erika, holding Erwin’s handheld device before him in both hands, as if making an offering to the metallic gods they’d just come face-to-face with.
Erika let out a gasp and then bent down to turn Erwin’s body over on the floor so that he faced the ceiling. His eyes were sightless, but full of surprise. A bullet hole leaked a bit of dark red blood, the wound centered perfectly over his heart. Erika stifled a cry when she saw this and Ben turned his head to retch. Vomit flecked his chin and he tried to wipe it on the shoulder of his lab coat before looking back up at the frozen zyborgs.
Sawyer and Angel stood up from the remains of their hiding place and looked at their rescuers in shocked gratitude.
“Sorry feels a little insufficient right about now,” Sawyer said as he looked at Erika and then back at the zyborgs that still stood just feet away but as motionless as statues.
“Apology accepted,” Erika replied.
Sawyer pointed at Erwin’s corpse. “Friend of yours?” he asked with concern.
“That’s the late Doctor Erwin Steele,” Erika answered. She held up her wrist and nodded at the device Ben carried at the same time. “The gun you gave me helped convince him to provide these before we got upstairs.”
Angel looked with horror at the buzz-saw that had come within mere feet of slicing her to pieces and then asked Erika, “What about the rest of the zyborgs? There should be 16 more roaming around here somewhere.”
Erika shook her head with a weary smile. “Not anymore. According to Steele, this watch has a radius of almost a mile thanks to a satellite Mechler has stationed above the Earth some place. Every zyborg in the building is as dead on its feet as those four.”
Sawyer helped Angel around the remains of the desk and she moved over to stand beside Erika and Ben. Meanwhile, Sawyer pried the zyborg’s fingers off the trigger of the minigun before yanking it out of the thing’s frozen hands. He walked over to face the door he and Angel had been trying to open when the zyborgs had shown up. He stood as far back from it as he could, his back nearly touching the opposite wall of the hallway before he asked Erika, “This is his office, right?”
Erika nodded in the affirmative. “That’d be it,” she agreed.
“You guys stay back,” Sawyer told them. “The last thing I need is for one of you to get hit with a ricochet. I’ll call out when I’m sure it’s safe. It’s time to get this over with.”
Sawyer leveled the minigun at the door and opened fire. Despite his muscular frame and the wall at his back, the gun’s kick nearly knocked Sawyer off his feet. The door was made of thick metal, but the barrage quickly turned it into a dented up mess which then became a shredded mosaic of sharp edges and ragged holes. Once he was satisfied, Sawyer released the trigger and dropped the heavy gun at his feet in favor of the rifle he’d left slung over his shoulder. With three strides, he r
eached the remains of the door and kicked it as hard as he could with his good leg, busting what was left of the locking mechanism and sending the door crashing against the inside wall of the office.
Knowing Mechler might be armed or even guarded, Sawyer entered cautiously, listening intently with every step. It was dark inside, the only illumination a green glow that left the large room in a combination of alien-like light and ghostly shadows. As Sawyer scanned the area, a calm voice called out from the far corner.
“I have to tell you, I’m disappointed,” Mechler said. “Those zyborgs cost me a great deal of time and effort. To see them dispatched so easily…”
Sawyer caught sight of Calvin Mechler where he sat at the end of a conference table. The laptop sitting in front of him was emitting the green glow.
“If you think that was easy, I’d hate to see your idea of hard,” Sawyer replied. “Besides, we had a little help.”
“Indeed,” Mechler responded. “I assume Doctor Steele is no longer among us?”
“As dead as you’re going to be,” Sawyer agreed. “Killed by one of his own creations.”
“That’s a shame,” Mechler stated. “He was a talented man. A man I believe shared my vision. Something I doubt you’d be able to comprehend.”
Sawyer called “Come on in!” over his shoulder, never taking his eyes or gun off of Mechler.
Angel, Erika, and Ben entered seconds later. The two women stared at Calvin as if they’d like to kill him with their bare hands. Ben, on the other hand, still looked like he’d like to slink away and hide.
Calvin scanned each of them in turn, a look of genuine surprise crossing his face when he saw Ben.
“Doctor Klein, of all people,” he said with a mirthless smile. “I’m surprised to see you taking up with such a lawless bunch. I always took you for a coward. A smart one, but still a coward.”