Unpopular Science

Chapter 24

“Don’t touch it!”

Sarah Slate glared at him. “Why?”

Mark Howard had a leaf rake from the toolshed and used it to turn over the blackened metal arm. Sparks shot out of the severed shoulder end and the fingers twitched. Sarah was startled again and she jumped against Mark.

“How’d you know? I could have been electrocuted.” Mark was trying to keep his mind on the situation, but there was this young lady clinging to his arm. “I doubt there’s enough of a charge in there to kill you, but it might have knocked you off your feet.”

Sarah got over her fright, at least enough to put some space between them. “Grandfather Archibald didn’t put batteries in Ironhand’s arm,” she insisted.

“I think there’ve been some updates to the Archibald Slate design,” Mark said. They bent over the arm, a stark, ugly thing in the patio light, and Sarah frowned. “Look at these bolts,” she said.

Mark looked at the five steel bolts that had been holding the arm to the socket. The bolts gleamed, shiny and new.

“The bolts held,” she added.

“Yes?”

“Mark, that means the steel had to rip in order for this arm to come off.”

Mark had nothing to say about that.

“Well?”

“Well?” he asked lamely.

“Don’t play dumb with me, please. Your friend Remo tore through steel plates in order to get this arm off.”

“Probably old steel. You know, corroded.”

“I am not stupid, Mark.”

“No.”

“What I saw happen here was quite out of the ordinary,” she added.

“Yes.”

“I’m not talking about Ironhand. I don’t know where he came from, but modem technology can explain what Ironhand did today. Nothing I know of can explain what your friend Remo did.”

“No?” Mark was furiously trying to conjure an answer. Sarah waited a moment, then looked away, sighing dismissively. Mark Howard felt crestfallen, but now was not the time to worry about it. “I need a container,” he said urgently. “Wooden or plastic, something non-conductive to carry the arm. Two of them, in fact. The other one is around somewhere”

“What’s the hurry?”

Her answer came around the corner in a flashing of lights. The squad car was gone in seconds, somehow failing to notice the broken fence.

“They’ll be back soon,” Mark said.

Sarah nodded and went inside. Mark watched the arm twitch a few more times.

Then his ankle was crushed.

He sucked in his breath and forced himself to take steps. He was a fool! He should have expected…

He collapsed, his upper body landing on the patio bricks, but his CIA training kicked in and he took the fall with a judo roll. He ended up on his back, staring at the second arm of Ironhand, which was clenched like a vise on his ankle with intense pressure. The pain was incredible, but he couldn’t afford to surrender to it.

Sarah emerged from the back door and shouted his name.

“Sledgehammer!” Mark gasped.

She flung down the plastic box and ran to the shed. Mark Howard wanted to scream as the pain reached his endurance threshold.

Sarah Slate didn’t have a sledgehammer, but in her hands was a wood-chopping ax that looked just as powerful. The heavy steel head had to weigh ten pounds, and she brought the back end down on the steel elbow joint. Sparks flashed out of the shoulder socket.

Mark Howard felt the fingers tighten and experienced the nauseating sensation of his ankle bone being crushed.

“Don’t stop!” he shouted.

“It’ll break your leg,” she protested.

“Do it! Fast!” Mark Howard pointed, and Sarah Slate glanced into the yard. The second hand was crawling over the lawn, coming at them.

“Oh, God,” she uttered, then she set about her business with a fierce expression, bashing hard on the first arm. Two times, three times, ignoring Mark Howard’s agony.

The hand released but it looked undamaged as it clawed toward the woman like a fast-moving spider.

“Sarah!” Mark gasped, and made a lunge but failed to grab the thing in his bare hands.

Sarah Slate cocked her head, raised her ax and brought down the blade between the fingers, splitting the steel hand like firewood.

The fingers continued to function, pushing the hand backward. Sarah swung the blade up and around in a wide circle, hit the arm at the wrist, sending it tumbling into the grass.

The second burned hand was damaged, but with three functional fingers it scampered onto the patio and dragged noisily along the bricks. While the second hand hurried up in close pursuit.

Mark Howard forced away the pain of his ankle and looked for a weapon, reaching for the small stack of bricks next to the back step. They were old cobblestones, the corners worn smooth, but they just might work. He witnessed Sarah bash the blackened arm away with her ax, but the other arm slithered around her feet and came fast at Mark Howard as if it had acquired a taste for his blood. This time, it went for the gut.

If it got a good grip on his abdomen and applied crushing force, it could do a hell of a lot more than just break a bone. It could cause massive internal damage—irreparable internal damage.

“Hands off!” Mark said angrily, and brought down his cobblestone brick, flattening the hand just a foot away from his body. The fingers curled up under it again and clawed forward. Mark Howard began bashing the fingers hard and fast unleashing his anger, cursing with every breath, and his fury seemed unending.

Finally a small, slim, flesh-and-bone hand gripped his arm midstrike.

“I think that’s enough,” Sarah said.

Mark looked at her, the vivid scarlet of his rage fading until it was just her beautiful face he saw. Then he looked at the hand in front of him. The fingers were flat, like soda cans smashed on the highway.

“Where’s the other one?” he gasped.

“Right here.” She gestured at the plastic box. Inside was the slowly moving hand and arm. Its five fingers had been amputated with the ax and tossed in after it.

“Are you hurt?” Mark Howard said.

“Not a scratch,” Sarah said with a smile.

Such a flood of relief rushed through him he almost wept, and the tension left his body. He went limp into Sarah Slate’s arms.

The young woman took a minute to realize he was unconscious, and it took her a moment to understand what he had said before he passed out. Something like, “Thank God in heaven.”

Despite everything that had happened to her on this day, she felt peaceful for a moment. She gently stroked Mark Howard’s damp face.