A taser, Raiff realized, in the moment before she jammed it against the back of the thing’s neck.
A buzzing sounded and kept sounding, as the girl held the taser firm against one of the android’s most vulnerable spots, where conduits of wires joined together, all spooling out of its computer brain. The thing lashed out with an arm that sent both the girl and her taser flying. Not a blow so much as a reflexive response.
The thing’s arms began to flap about. It spun and smoked and sizzled, but still somehow lurched toward Raiff, blindingly fast.
To Raiff’s amazement, the boy—Dancer—broke free and threw himself on top of the android, giving Raiff time to dive headlong for his whip. Taking it in his grasp and lashing it forward to catch the thing hard against the left side of its head, which snapped and lopped to the right. The android beginning to snap, crackle, and pop as sparks flew from its steel neck like Fourth of July sparklers.
Two more down.
Raiff pulled himself back to his feet, feeling pain in too many places. Watched Dancer heaving for breath, steadying himself against the garbage truck’s frame directly below the robotic arm that had dumped the other android into the compactor.
Raiff had just started moving toward him when a pair of disembodied hands grabbed hold of Dancer from inside the truck’s rear.
*
Raiff glimpsed what remained of the android still attached to the forearms and hands, which were all that were still intact, the rest of it no more than a flattened husk of steel and wires compressed into a jagged assemblage, still sparking and popping but maintaining enough “brain” function to complete its mission of capturing, or killing, Dancer.
Its hands had found the boy’s neck, tugging on it as if to pull his head off, when Raiff lashed his whip into motion and sliced the forearms free of what remained of the thing’s body. That, though, made its fingers clamp down, sure to squeeze mindlessly until there was nothing left in their grasp.
Raiff knew they couldn’t be pried free, knew he couldn’t risk using his whip, either. That left …
The girl’s taser!
She seemed to read his mind, or form the same thought, located the taser and tossed it to him. Raiff snatched it out of the air and lunged toward Dancer, who was gasping for breath now and fighting desperately to work the hands killing him free as his face purpled.
Raiff touched the taser to one hand, then the other.
Dancer jerked and spasmed both times, but the fingers snapped open and locked there. Raiff peeled the fingers off the boy and tossed the hands into the trash truck’s rear, hoisting Dancer to his feet and shaking him to keep the boy from passing out.
“Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”
Dancer managed a nod, still gasping for breath. The red had started to wash from his face, but the bruises left on his neck by the android’s grasp were already turning black.
“Can you move, can you walk?”
Dancer opened his mouth to answer but no words emerged, so he just nodded again. His knees buckled as he moved from the truck and Raiff caught him, held him upright while steering for the truck’s cab.
“Come on,” he said, jerking the passenger-side door open with his free hand, “let’s get you inside.”
Then Raiff turned his gaze on the girl, who stood silent and still ten feet away, staring at him.
“You too. Hurry,” he continued, beckoning her on, “we need to get out of here. Before more of them show up.”
64
AC/DC
RAIFF REVERSED, DANCER AND the girl squeezed next to him in the cab.
“Tell me this isn’t happening!” he heard the girl utter, her words partially drowned out by an AC/DC song blaring over the speakers.
“Highway to Hell,” of all things.
The dashboard was too dark for him to find the controls to shut it off, as a raspy voice screeched something about a one-way ride.
“Alex!” he said, calling him by name.
“Who—”
“Am I,” Raiff completed. “Doesn’t matter. Tell me you’re okay, you’re not hurt. That you’re whole.”
“Whole?”
“Intact!”
“I’m not hurt. I’m not okay, either.”
Raiff looked at him, then back to the front as he reversed the trash truck around the front of the strip mall and ground the gears into “drive.”
“You saved me, us.”
Raiff said nothing.
“Who are you? It does matter.”
“I’m a Guardian, your Guardian. Have been for your entire life.”
“Then you know who I really—”
“Yes, I do know,” Raiff said, completing the boy’s thought yet again.
“Then tell me, please, because I don’t know shit.”
“Yes, you do,” Raiff replied, stealing a look at him. “You know everything. You just don’t realize it.”
*
AC/DC was now headed to the promised land along the highway to hell, Alex sitting board straight against the passenger-side window of the trash truck.
“Am I an alien or not?”
“We both are.” Raiff gave the big truck as much gas as it would take. “But we’re human too.”