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his shoulder for yet another programmed butcher.
"If," Ryan said.
Dean had stood, drawing the big Browning, glanc-ing across at his father, waiting
to be told how they were going to play this one.
The deer still hadn't moved, seeming hypnotized by the appearance of the metal
android.
"Bullets won't stop it, unless we hit something vi-tal," Ryan said.
Now that it had reached the climax of its pursuit, the droid seemed lethargic.
There was the clearing be-tween them, then the large, deep pool. The trees were
thick around the edges of the open space, and Ryan wasn't sure that he and Dean
could outrun the lethal creature. And in his heart he didn't honestly think he
wanted to do that.
"Come on, you dumb fuck," he snarled. "Let's end this right here." Ryan smiled
grimly at the futility of talking to a heartless collection of wires and circuits.
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
"Why don't we run different ways?" Dean hissed. "Can't get us both."
"It'll take one of us. Best try to chill it together."
It was still moving, lifting the left foot up then set-ting down. The servomotors
hummed, and the right foot repeated the action. Slowly.
Its arms were spreading like grotesque wings, tele-scoping outward to cover any
attempt to break past it. The hammer suddenly whirred around at fantastical
speed, and Ryan readied himself to duck, in case it propelled it at him.
But the motion stopped as unexpectedly as it had started.
"Could swim for it, Dad."
"You're full of ideas, son. Told you. Want to fin-ish it here and now."
"But, Dad "
"Concentrate, Dean. Watch for the moment and then grab it."
Ryan took two slow steps to one side, planting his feet like an expert in martial
arts, keeping his balance on the shifting carpet of pine needles. The android's head
jerked toward him, and it altered its direction.
"Go the other way, Dean," he said. "Want to see what it does."
At the boy's movement, the head twitched back to follow him, but it kept on its
inexorable progress to-ward its programmed prey.
A ceaseless whine came from deep inside the metal shell. Ryan had a flash of
hope that its terminal malfunction might happen now. There would be a flash of
sparks and grinding of gears, and it would fall over only inches from him.
But he had lived long enough to be certain that things like that only happened in
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Axler, James - Deathlands 16 - Moon Fate
books.
He backed away, toward the fringe of the lake, his eye never leaving the killer
droid as it moved after him.
"Why not blast it, Dad?"
"No need to whisper. It can hear you, but it sure can't understand what you say.
It's armored. Have to be a fluke if you hit anything real vital. By then it's on you."
The grating sound grew louder, and the droid clicked into a murderous overdrive.
Both arms started to revolve in opposite directions. The hammer whirred and the
cutting shears clicked and clacked. The nee-dle blades in the toes went in and out
so fast that the movement was only a glittering blur.
"Out the way!" Ryan yelled, balancing on the balls of his feet like a knife fighter,
the gun probing at the air in front of his hand.
Dean ran a few steps farther to his left, then stopped, crouching and leveling his
own blaster, bracing his wrist as J.B. had shown him.
It was like facing a madman, a crazed lunatic with triple speed and high-tech
weapons.
For a moment the hunter droid waited, like a fight-ing bull, pawing the ground
before the last charge. Then it began its rush.
Ryan opened fire, pumping ten of the fifteen rounds in the clip at the middle leg
joints, seeing sparks fly and hearing the bullets scream off into the trees. Dean
also opened fire, more slowly, having to re-aim after each heavy kicking
explosion of the Browning.
One of his shots came within a finger's width of taking out the robot's only
functioning eye.
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As Ryan powered himself toward the water, the young deer, terrified out of its
skull, broke for safety.
With one eye gone, and propelling itself over the treacherous ground at an unsafe
speed, the droid was distracted by the flash of speed from the panicked an-imal.
Hardly pausing, it swung the clubbing hammer-head at the deer, catching it a
glancing blow across the side of the neck. The force was enough to knock the
animal to the dirt in a tangle of kicking hooves. The droid swooped down on it,
battering at the helpless creature as though it were its target.
It was almost as though it had a human killing urge, like a berserker.
Ryan thought it was probable that the first strike had butchered the fragile animal,
breaking its neck. But the sec hunter was demented in its blind fury, kicking,
cutting and hitting the mangled corpse, all at the same time. None of the bullets
seemed to have had the least effect on its lethal power. The slaughter was
happening less than a yard from the edge of the small lake, and Dean's suggestion
about getting away by swimming suddenly came to Ryan.
"The water," he said.
It was the best shot they had.
He dodged around the droid, wading into the pool, feeling the cold shock as it
rose above his combat boots to his knees, making his movements slow and
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