Unpopular Science

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.

Chapter 25

Remo Williams pressed the 1 button until he heard it ringing.

“Hi, who’s this?” answered an eager man in a controlled Southern twang.

“Give me Smith and give ’im to me now.”

“I’m Bill. Won’t I do?”

“I want Smitty.”

“I think you got the wrong number, but that’s okay. Come on over and let’s party. Bring some babes.” Remo wasn’t in the mood for this. Harold W. Smith had installed a computerized system designed to weed out the flurry of calls he was receiving on the specialized call-transfer system used by his enforcement arm in the field. Unfortunately, this required that Remo spend the first minute of every phone call conversing with some stranger. The voice was supposedly computer generated, but Remo had begun wondering if it really was.

“Smitty, get on the line now.”

“See, nobody cares about poor old Bill anymore,” said the man on the other end. “I’m old news. Even my wife pretends I don’t exist.”

“Smitty, in two seconds I’m calling the Associated Press.”

“Aw, come on—”

The voice was interrupted by Harold Smith. “Remo, what’s the problem?”

“We don’t have time to go over the list,” Remo said. “Mark is wounded.”

“What? How seriously?”

Remo calmed himself, but it wasn’t easy. His relationship with Smith had been getting sour in recent months. Remo couldn’t put a finger on why exactly. “Mark has a hurt ankle. The bone isn’t broken but it’s definitely been bruised. Lots of soft-tissue damage. Chiun’s fixing him up.”

“What happened? Give me a report.”