Authors: Bryant Delafosse
“Her heartbeat is decreasing,” he stated with alarm.
“I believe she is d-dying.”
Lara stared expressionlessly as he began to strike her chest sharply with his fist.
She found herself torn by conflicting emotions.
She found herself thinking that her family might be better off if she remained unconscious.
“You may have to give her mouth to mouth as I have no actual respiration.”
Before she could respond to him, Lara heard her children’s voices.
She looked up to find them racing toward her, Chance a step behind them.
Lara rushed to meet them, Simon immediately at her side.
Cora threw herself against her mother, while Owen stopped in front of Simon, stealing a look behind him at the body lying immobile in the middle of the corridor.
“It’s Dugan,” Chance announced.
“He’s freaking out or something!”
Simon guided Owen gently around to face the other direction.
“Why don’t you lead the way?”
He nodded in response and raced off back in the direction they came.
Lara cast one last look back at Charlene before starting after them.
“She’s breathing regularly now,” Simon
said,
a step ahead of Lara.
She?
But who is it really, Lara wondered, sparing one more look behind her?
When she turned back and started after Simon, she realized with alarm that what she had noticed earlier was not just her imagination.
When Lara entered, she could hear a steady pounding coming from the back of the room.
She could just make out Dugan standing at the display window, repeatedly slamming a chair mangled beyond recognition into the glass.
As she started forward, Simon laid a restraining hand on her arm.
She brushed it aside and approached the crazed man at the window. “Hey,” she nearly screamed.
Dugan spun toward the voice.
His face was a reddened swollen mass where he had broken the skin with his nails.
His eyes were those of a cornered animal hunted past the limits of its endurance.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Dugan looked into Lara’s face and seemed to calm somewhat.
“I-I’ve got to get out of here,” he announced, in a rough, raspy voice.
“I can’t stay here! Got to get out!
Now!”
“We will, but we need to keep it together.
Okay?”
He stared at her with open confusion, then suddenly dropped the chair and fell to his knees.
When he began to sob, Lara stepped forward and pulled his head against her hip.
Chance approached warily, dropped to one knee, and tossed the man’s arm over his shoulder.
Between the two of them, he and Lara managed to get him over to the black sedan.
They deposited him just inside on the edge of the driver’s seat.
Breathing roughly, Dugan sat with elbows propped upon his spread knees, his head hanging low enough for his stringy black hair to cover his brow.
Lara and Chance stepped aside as Simon approached.
He went to one knee in front of the other and said in a calming tone, “I’m Simon Peter.
Are you hurt?”
Dugan gave an amused snort and lifted one of his drooping hands to form a thumbs-up, though the thumb itself quivered greatly.
“What happened, man?” Chance asked quietly from behind Simon.
“Something just used me as a hand puppet,” he replied in a slurred voice.
“I’m not sure I understand,” Simon stated.
“How about this then: I think I was just raped by the Invisible Man,” Dugan growled, lifting his head.
He cast a caustic eye at Lara.
“Who is this guy?”
Lara gently bumped Simon with her hip.
Simon rose and yielded the space to her.
“He’s okay.
He’s just been working here too long.”
Dugan gave an ironic chuckle.
“Great, is this the guy I should give my comment card to?
Pal, I am ‘Very Dissatisfied’ with my shopping experience today.”
Simon gave an appraising look at the shopping cart full of goods,
then
glanced back at Dugan.
A silent look passed between them.
“It might help us if you can recall everything you remember about what just happened,” Lara coaxed gently.
Swallowing awkwardly, he peered up at Lara and sighed.
“The kid opened the trunk and I stumbled out.”
He glanced up and caught Cora’s eye.
She grabbed her brother’s arm defensively.
“I got pissed off and it felt like something grabbed me, but from the inside, if you catch my drift.”
Owen looked up in alarm.
He recalled feeling the exact same thing when his grandmother had struck him, but the feeling had promptly passed, when he’d focused his thoughts on his family.
Lara gave Dugan a nod, her eyes shifting to glance at the entrance to the dealership.
“I felt something very similar when I got angry at someone too.
What else do you remember?”
Dugan lowered his eyes, avoiding contact with Lara.
“All I know, is I felt mad enough to kill.
It wanted me to kill someone.
Everyone.”
He shuddered and glanced down at an object held tightly in Simon’s hand.
“You’ve had a traumatic experience.
I would suggest you rest now,” Simon said, moving toward the entrance, Lara following with Cora close behind.
As he passed one of the frozen Bots, Simon stopped and peered into its eye with interest.
“Total system failure,” he commented.
“You have something to do with this?” Lara asked.
“Harming a human being, even by accident, causes irrevocable catastrophic conflicts within its logic processors.
When I stopped the Emergency Transmission, every Bot who had attacked you entered full shutdown mode due to the logic paradoxes the transmission caused,” Simon explained.
“They knew you were human beings, yet were told that you were not.
They inherently protect humans, yet were told to terminate you.”
“Basically, their brains fried, right?”
Simon glanced up to pinpoint the source of the voice and found Owen peering at him from behind Lara.
“Are you Simon?” he asked shyly.
“You must be Owen,” Simon said with an almost effortless smile, holding his hand out.
“It’s good to finally meet you, Owen.”
Casting a glance at his mother, Owen reached out and shook the other’s hand, a stern look on his face.
He took a quick step back and Simon’s eyes took a quick look down at his feet.
“Where are your shoes?” Lara said with a bit of a gasp.
“I left them behind in the Sears,” he replied, in a tone that indicated that it was the most reasonable explanation in the world.
“Oh yeah, and I have this and this!”
Owen retrieved a sheet of crumpled paper from one pocket and handed it to Lara.
Then he took the troll doll from another pocket and handed it to Cora.
“My trollie!” she cried, snatching it from Owen with a huge smile.
Lara looked over the page with a sort of amused confusion then handed it to Simon.
“He took inventory of all the things he borrowed,” she commented, looking down at Owen with an expression that he didn’t readily recognize.
She planted a kiss on the top of his head and gave him a warm, pride-filled hug.
Simon studied the ten-year-old.
“That’s was exceptionally foresighted for a child your age.”
Owen glanced over Lara’s shoulder at the man, the beginnings of distrust on his face.
Though the guy seemed fine on the surface, something was strangely intense about him, he thought.
When he finally extracted himself from his mother’s arms, he asked, “Can I look around for a food machine?”
“Okay, but don’t leave this room.”
Owen nodded and started away in a hurry before his mother could change her mind.
“And take your sister,” Lara answered, giving her a nudge toward her brother.
Cora stamped her foot, while Owen patiently held out his hand to her.
“C’mon, Smeagol.”
Snatching her trusty flashlight/radio off a nearby table, Cora dutifully took her brother’s hand and followed him across the showroom.
Dugan studied Simon and Lara as they started toward the front of the showroom, his eyes marking the object in Simon’s hand.
“Was that a hand grenade or am I hallucinating?” he asked Chance.
Ignoring him, Chance held Owen’s flashlight out to him as he passed.
The younger boy flashed a glare at him, snatched the flashlight away from him, and continued deeper into the showroom with Cora.
“Hey, kid,” Dugan called, snapping his finger next to Chance’s ear.
“Don’t mind him. We did the right thing.”
“Did we?
That lady that Simon took the grenade from looked crazy enough to kill us all.”
“He’s alive, right?
All’s well that ends well.”
Running a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, Dugan growled, “Crazy old coots with grenades.
Sounds like I didn’t miss much after all.”
He lay back across the seat with a grunt.
“You still want the gun back?”
“Yeah, I… Nah, on second thought, you better hold onto that.
If I’d had that in my hands when it happened…”
Chance nodded and started away in the direction of Owen, but Dugan grabbed his arm.
“Kid, we have to get out of this place.
I get this feeling in the back of neck, like I’m being followed by an unmarked car, ya dig?”
Chance cast another look out through the entrance into the Mall.
The sun had completely disappeared from the sky and the aurora borealis was the only light visible.
“How about the batteries on the deactivated Bots,” Lara asked as she accompanied Simon to the entrance.
“Couldn’t we use the remaining juice to power one of the cars?”
“For safety reasons, the power source compartment is impossible to open without the proper equipment,” he explained as he slid open the front door.
“And even if we could, the type of current we run on would be completely incompatible with a car.”
Just as he was about to step outside, Lara took him by the hand.
He hesitated a moment, while she rested his hand in hers.