Unpopular Science

“Jesus, that sounded like shotgun rounds!” Stan blurted as the Corolla’s front tires went flat. The driver’s door opened and a man tumbled out, scrambled to his feet and fled back the way he had come. Clockwork raised an arm and triggered at the runner’s back, but the Corolla absorbed most of the buckshot. The fleeing man grabbed the back of his head where he’d caught a few rounds of buckshot “Yeow!” he yelped as he ran out of sight.

“Call it in!” Stan shouted, and emptied two rounds; from his revolver in the direction of Clockwork.

“How could you miss?” Remo asked.

“What are you doing?” Charlie cried. “You’ll hurt him!”

“He just tried to kill somebody!” Stan replied.

Remo grabbed them both and pushed them to the earth just in time. Clockwork emptied both barrels up the hill at them. The buckshot that would have imbedded in their flesh sliced into the trees above them and tore at the leaves.

“Oh, Clockwork,” moaned Charlie miserably as bits of green confetti adhered to his teary cheeks.

Remo watched Clockwork roll into the vegetation beyond the road, following Ironhand.

“I think you guys can take it from here.”

Stan watched Remo for a moment, observed that he didn’t get a face full of buckshot, then slowly raised his head from the ground. He looked down the hillside, got to his knees slowly, then cautiously stood.

“He’s gone. Call it in, Charlie.”

“Who would do such a thing, Stan? They took out his heart and made him a monster!”

“There’s bad men in this world, Charlie,” Stan said gently, patting his partner’s thinning comb-over. “I’ll call it in myself.”

He reached dispatch and reported a shooting and an escaped gunman. He wisely reported it as a “costumed” gunner. Let the Corolla driver make the eyewitness identification on the shooter. Only after he over-and-outed did Stan realized the man who had just saved their faces from being bloodied was gone.

Did he have anything to do with these goings on? For that matter, what in Hades was going on?

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.