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.

 

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.

 

The android was going into appalling convulsions, as if it were suffering a high-tech fit. Sparks showered from its open mouth, and a trickle of molten metal burst through the dead eye.

 

Its right arm bent backward at an impossible angle and snapped off, the jagged stump revolving like a sickle harvester.

 

It fell again, and rose for a second time, mud and water streaming from its surface.

 

Dean moved to stand by his father, the Browning dangling, forgotten, from his hand.

 

The red eye blinked, and the android started to move toward Ryan on dancing, jerking legs. But the lines were going inexorably down, and it fell a third time, rising more slowly. Then the eye went dark.

 

Its good arm rose above its head in what looked almost like a macabre salute. Then it vanished forever beneath the dark waters. The pool became placid once more.