61
Jacob lay buried in the hay, breathing through his mouth, listening intently. Dorothy was curled next to him. For a long time, there was deep silence, and his hopes rose, and then soared, that the men had gone away. He would stay there all night, anyway, just to make sure.
But then, after a while, he heard very faint voices that sounded like two people talking quietly outside the barn door. He waited. The voices ceased, and he began to hope once again that the men had left.
Suddenly, a loud bang! sounded, causing him to jump. A gunshot. Then a rattling sound and the creak of a door opening.
They had shot off the lock.
He waited, his heart pounding like mad, hardly breathing. They would search, but surely they would not dig into the hay. He could hear sounds as the men came into the barn. He heard their voices as they moved around, heard the clank of machinery being shifted as they searched. He told himself that they couldn’t have any reason to think he was in there. They were just being thorough. They would look around, but they wouldn’t search the entire hay pile.
Although they might just fire some bullets into it to check. As soon as he thought of it, he realized that this was probably what they’d do.
He felt Dorothy squeeze his hand and somehow knew that she, also, had figured that out.
There was nothing to do now but wait, and pray. And strangely, that’s what Jacob found himself doing: praying desperately, making God, if He existed, all kinds of promises if He would only save them now. He even took back the “if You exist” part and restated the prayers.
Again he paused to listen. They weren’t talking at all now, just moving around. He still heard the occasional clank or rattle of something being pushed aside or moved. He heard stall doors being opened and shut. The more Jacob thought of it, the more he realized that the big pile of loose hay would be an obvious hiding place. Unless they were complete idiots, they would soon be searching through the hay. Or shooting into it. He was buried pretty deep, and maybe they would just look around the surface. But in his heart he knew that they were going to search the entire pile, one way or another, and that they would find him. He started to tremble, imagining what they might do to him. They were going to kill him, of course. They had already shown that. He had to come up with a plan. But there was no plan.
It seemed so strange to think that this was how his life was going to end.
Another squeeze from Dorothy. It wasn’t comforting anymore; it only brought home to him that there was nothing he or Dorothy could do now. It was over.
And even as he thought this, he heard the rustle of hay, another rustle and swish. One of them was starting to shift the hay, digging into it, just as he knew they would. It was a methodical, repetitive sound. He was sweeping the hay aside, digging deeper and deeper into it with something like a pitchfork and throwing it aside.
A pause, and then a heavily accented voice said, “You, boy, come out.”
Jacob said nothing.
“I know you in there, come out.”
Nothing.
“I shoot into hay or you come out.”
Jacob could hardly breathe.
“Okay, I shoot.” A moment, and Jacob heard a loud bang. He felt the pressure wave in the hay and jumped. There was another bang, and a third. On the third one, he felt a really strong thump with a pressure wave right near his leg. He managed not to scream.
The other man said something sharp in a foreign language, and the shooting stopped.
Had he been hit? It didn’t seem so. A miracle. All three shots had missed him. He started repeating in his head, really fast, a confused jumble of more prayers and thanks, even as he found himself hyperventilating in terror.
“Okay, you don’t come out, I come find you, boy.”
His whole body shook. Could this really be happening? Maybe he could talk them out of it. Why kill a kid? He was only fourteen. He wasn’t a threat to anyone. They wouldn’t shoot him right away—would they? When they saw him and realized he was a good kid, they wouldn’t kill him. He’d have a chance to talk them out of it.
There was no reassuring squeeze from Dorothy this time. He could feel her robot body stiffening, shifting a little. What was she thinking?
Rustle, swish. Rustle, swish. He could feel the vibrations as the man forked away the hay, one sweep at a time. He could feel the shifting and lightening of the hay on top of him as the man dug down. Swish, rustle. Swish, rustle.
Suddenly, he felt fresh air and saw a flashlight’s blinding glare. Next to it was the round black hole of a gun muzzle. That was all he could see. The gun extended slightly, and he could make out, behind it, sighting down the barrel, the gleam of the man’s eye, and he could see the finger tightening on the trigger.
He sat up, extended his hand over his face to protect himself. “No. Please don’t. I’m just a kid!”
The finger tightened, the eye gleamed. They were just going to kill him right now.
Suddenly, Dorothy burst out of the hay and ran straight into the man’s face. The man screamed and fired as he was bowled over, but the shot went wild. Dorothy jumped over the man’s fallen body and kept going as the man scrambled to his feet. He lunged after her, dropping the flashlight, trying to grab her. In the indirect light of the beam, Jacob saw Dorothy run to the opposite wall of the barn, where there was a large electrical circuit panel and a row of heavy-duty electrical outlets.
The man chased after her, and she dodged him again. She suddenly halted right in front of the electrical outlets and turned, as if waiting for the man to catch up with her. Just as he reached her and grabbed her with both hands, she jammed her two claws into an electrical socket. There was a crackling explosion and a spray of sparks. With a roar of pain the man was jolted backward, his hands and hair on fire. Screaming, he staggered away, waving and beating his arms about himself, spreading the fire to his clothes.
Stunned, Jacob looked at where Dorothy had been. There was nothing left of her but two burning plastic stumps, the rest scattered about in melted, flaming pieces of plastic and twisted bits of metal. And wherever the burning plastic and sparks had landed, fires were starting up, dozens of them, everywhere he looked, across the hay pile and all over the hay-strewn floor. The man, whooping and screeching, staggered about, starting more fires in whatever he collided with, a monstrous sight, beating his arms against his burning body and twisting this way and that, now engulfed in flames from the knees up, like a human torch. With a final dry rattle of horror, he fell backward into the hay.
Flames leapt up everywhere.
Jacob, momentarily frozen in horror at what he had seen, now scrambled up and out of the hay pile. He was completely surrounded by fire. He leapt over the burning man and, holding his breath, charged right through a wall of flames. With a crackling hiss of his hair, he came out the other side and made a beeline for the open door. He heard a scream in that same foreign language from the very back of the barn, behind a stall. He stopped and turned at the doorway to see the second man come running out of a back stall, wildly firing his gun at Jacob.
Jacob slammed the door, pulled the key out of his pocket and then saw that the lock had been shot off. A wheelbarrow was leaning up against the barn, and he wrestled it up against the door, using the handles and front edge to form a wedge to keep the door from being opened from the inside.
A moment later there was a slamming sound against the door, yelling and begging in a foreign language, along with frantic pounding. And then shots were fired through the door, the splinters flying outward. Jacob scrambled back and out of the line of fire. More shots ripped through the door. A desperate heaving on the door rattled the wheelbarrow, but it held. Jacob could hear a roaring sound from inside the building and see a bright orange light in the upper row of windows. Piercing screams sounded from behind the blocked door, and some fingers came curling out of the hole where the lock had been, desperately scratching and prying, looking for a way to open the door. A tongue of fire licked out from between the fingers and they vanished back inside, and the screaming turned into another sound, a ghastly, animalistic vomiting or boiling sound like air expelled from a broken bellows, a sudden coughing, and then silence. A moment later a bigger tongue of flame licked out the hole where the fingers had just been, and the entire outside of the door burst into flames.
Jacob continued backing up in terror. He heard popping glass and looked up; the upper windows of the barn were blowing out, one after another like a row of cannons going off, flames shooting out.
There was a second, heavier explosion, and the cupola on the barn caved in through the roof, flames mushrooming up through the hole, sending up a fireball, which lit up the compound as bright as day. He felt the intense heat on his face and stumbled backward, shielding his face, stunned by what was happening. And now the entire barn was engulfed in flames with a sound like a screaming jet engine, a tornado of sparks whirling up into the sky, forming a twister of fire.
Turning away from the terrible heat, Jacob took refuge behind a truck. He was overwhelmed by the sight of destruction, and his mind had stopped working. He didn’t know how long he hid there, but time passed. The building burned and burned, and then the fire began to die down, quite suddenly, and with it his mind began to work again. The first thought he had was that Dorothy was gone, she was dead, and she had saved his life.
He fell to his knees, utterly exhausted, tears streaming down his face.
“Jacob?”
He turned. A man had emerged from the darkness, a tall man wearing a tie. He had a hard, cold face. His hollow eyes flickered in the light of the fire. He had a gun in his hand, and it was pointed at Jacob.
Jacob stared in incomprehension.
“Are you here to help me?”
“Where’s the robot?” the man asked.
Jacob, still on his knees, rocked backward, tried to get up.
“Stay where you are and answer my question.”
“In … there.”
There was no longer a there. Just a pillar of fire.
“In there? Burned up?”
Jacob nodded.
The man raised the gun.
“No,” said Jacob. “No, please. Don’t shoot me. I’m just a kid.”
He shut his eyes.
A shot rang out, and Jacob flinched. A moment later, feeling nothing, he opened his eyes. The man lay on the ground. From the darkness emerged two more figures, a tall man and a dirty woman with blond hair. The woman rushed over to him and took him in her arms.
“Dorothy’s gone?” she asked.
Jacob nodded, and they both broke down, sobbing.
It was such a relief to cry.