It turned right and accelerated. There it ran into the off-duty police officer that Decker had engaged to look after Daniels. His pistol was pointed at the robot, his flashlight beam reflecting off the thing’s metal sides.
“What the hell?” the man exclaimed.
He started to lower his weapon as the laser eye ran over him and held on the weapon. The next moment the guard looked down at his chest where a dart was now sticking out. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor.
The robot whirled on, neatly navigating around the fallen man. It reached Daniels’s room. The laser hit all four corners of the room and then drew and held on the empty bed. The robot rolled forward and a tiny probe extended from its front side. This probe hit the sheets and ran its tiny metallic head over it.
Information flashed back to the sensor pack in the robot’s brain and confirmation was made. The probe receded but did not fully return to the cavity from which it had emerged. The robot turned and headed back out as the probe swiveled from side to side, drawing in myriadscentsin its path, as it searched for only one, that of Brad Daniels.
It turned right and left and then stopped at a closed door. The probe twitched, like the nose on a scent hound, and a red light illuminated on the front of the robot’s steel wall. The robot retreated about a foot, a portal opened on the front of it, and stabilizers shot out from its sides and gripped the floor, like a construction crane would employ to keep upright and balanced.
The next moment the round fired from the portal smashed into the door and the force of the impact caused it to topple inward.
Through the smoke emerged Reel. She saw the robot, her gaze ran over its contours, she raised her weapon and placed three incendiary rounds with explosive kickers right into the thing’s hide, with one round impacting the machine’s laser eye.
The laser eye went out, the rounds performed as they were engineered, and the robot disappeared behind a thick cloud of smoke.
Reel heard the alarming screech of a timer and threw herself back into the room, right as the robot’s failsafe counter hit zero.
The blast collapsed the walls of the room Reel had leapt back into.
When the smoke cleared, sirens could be heard.
The two big trucks that had been parked in front of the nursing home, and from which the attack robot had been launched, were long gone.
Inside the room, a coughing and sputtering Robie and Reel slowly rose from the remains of the shattered room. They were alive only because they had taken cover behind a large metal storage unit standing against one wall.
As they gazed around, their collective eyes caught and held on Daniels. He was still in his wheelchair, but he hung limply to the side. His head was bleeding, and his breaths were shallow. A section of the ceiling had fallen on him.
Reel raced over to him and felt for his pulse. “Really weak.”
Robie cleared the debris away and pushed him out of the room and down the hall, toward the front entrance. Reel was right next to him.
“If he dies—” she began.
“—then we’ve lost,” Robie finished for her.
“HE’S IN A COMA,” said Robie. “They don’t know if he’s going to make it. But he’s a tough old bird. My money’s on him.”
It was the following evening and he was sitting in the back seat of Jamison’s SUV. Decker was in the passenger seat. Reel had gone to stay with Daniels at the hospital.
“A robot?” said Jamison. “They sent a freaking robot?”
“A killing machine,” said Robie. “Didn’t expect to see it at a nursing home in North Dakota.”
“So we don’t know what he told Purdy,” said Decker.
“He was just about to tell us when everything went to hell.”
“We keep swinging and missing,” said Decker. “And we’re getting down to our last outs.” A text appeared on his phone and he looked down at it.
“The ME just completed the post on McClellan, and he has some interesting findings.”
“Let’s go hear what they are,” said Jamison.
Robie opened the truck door and climbed out. “I’d like to remain in the background. Loop me in later.”
* * *