Sam’s scream alerted him to the second fake cop just in time. She’d sliced between them to ward off his attack and ended up being shoved violently sideways straight toward a wall, the impact rattling her enough to tear her feet from under her. She noticed plumes of smoke wafting out of the motionless cop’s ears, wisps of it rising out of his skull, as if his hair was on fire, hand still extended as if he’d seized up while directing traffic.
Alex, meanwhile, brought the tire iron straight down atop the head of the second man, not so much caving it inward as splitting it in two right down the middle. It cracked more like an eggshell than a skull, spitting wires like spaghetti in all directions, its eyes still trying to focus on him even though they’d ended up facing opposite directions away from their target with the tire iron itself still wedged into place.
The initial figure was coming at him again and a third figure had emerged from another part of the room holding an odd-looking object that resembled a miniature staple gun. Alex went into football mode, launching himself into a perfect tackle that propelled the third man backward with enough force to crash him through the plaster of the wall. Alex lurched back upright in time to block a blow uncorked by the figure with the impossibly dented face. The man tried to pull his arm from Alex’s grasp, tugging hard.
Alex tugged harder.
And the arm broke off from the shoulder in his grasp, spitting more thick, spaghetti-like strands of wire that clung to both the severed limb and the joint itself. Alex gazed in shock at the arm he was holding, and the now one-armed figure who’d just seemed to realize he was missing it.
A crackling sounded and he swung to find the figure pulling itself from the wall through which he’d slammed it, managing a single step forward when Sam lunged and stuck her taser square against its temple. A staticky sound burst from the device on contact and then it flew into the air as a shock from the impact rode up Samantha’s arm and drove her backward. But smoke, gray and noxious, was pouring out of the man’s nostrils, mouth, and eyeballs, followed by a shower of sparks Alex could only liken to a transformer blowing in an electrical storm.
He swung back around just as the now-one-armed man came at him again, realizing at the very last moment he might not have the tire iron to wield anymore, but he did have something else: The figure’s severed arm.
He used it like a baseball bat, slamming it into the already dented face on that side and then the other. Beating him senseless with it as hot bits of plastic and metal that smelled of burned rubber broke off and flew through the air like fireflies.
Still, Alex didn’t stop until nothing in the skull was remotely recognizable, quite fitting, since whatever these things were clearly wasn’t human at all. The rage spilled out of him, his mind-set the one he brought to the football field, filled with bone-crunching collisions.
They had hurt his parents. They deserved to die, whatever they were.
He was vaguely conscious of Samantha stirring against the wall down which she’d slumped. The burned-metal scent filled the air and he thought he heard cracking and popping as the things he was killing fizzled and stilled. He realized the single lamp was flickering, creating a strobe effect that allowed him to glimpse the remnants of his handiwork in broken splotches.
“It would seem I underestimated you, Alex,” a new voice called from the shadows.
31
THE ASH MAN
ALEX WHIRLED TOWARD THE fallen bodies of his parents, severed arm still in hand, to find a man standing centered between his mom and dad.
“They were just drones, hastily assembled and clearly unfit for this mission,” the man continued, turning his gaze onto the motionless, still standing cop figure with smoke bleeding out of his ears and skull.
He was tall and gaunt to the point of being almost skeletal, his clothes hanging over his body like an ill-fitting curtain. He reminded Alex of the equally tall man from the hospital, to the point where they could have been the same man. At first glance the figure’s skin seemed albino white, almost translucent. But now, up closer, in the flickering light shed by the lamp, it looked more gray, as if the man had rubbed ash all over his skin.
“If you leave with me peacefully now, your parents can live,” the ash man continued. His voice had an odd twang to it, almost a harmonic echo. Sounded like it was coming from somewhere else, a broadcast of sorts, and the ash man was just mouthing the words. “Come with me, and the young woman can call an ambulance to help them. Choose, Alex, choose.”
“Get away from them,” Alex said, straightening himself in line with the man, who cut a dark, eerie figure across the room.
“That wasn’t one of the choices.”
“Who are you?” Alex demanded.
“The better question, my boy, is who are you? I’m sure you’ve been asking yourself that since the hospital.”
“You killed my doctor!”
“Because it needed to be done. Because he knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About you.”
“What about me?”
The ash man’s eyes cast Sam a sidelong glance before returning to Alex. “This is not something to be discussed here.”