Transformers Dark of the Moon (15 page)

Sam lashed out with his other foot, kicking the cubicle partition. It wasn’t exactly built for such heavy-duty impact. The cubicle wall fell over on top of Laserbeak, sending his blast awry. He tore through the cloth of the partition, but Witwicky was already gone.

All right, then. The high road it was.

Laserbeak leaped up onto the desk and clambered to the top of the cubicle.

But just as he started to climb over it, Sam was suddenly there in front of him, wielding a baseball bat. Laserbeak had just enough time to see an assortment of baseball memorabilia in the cubicle, and then Sam swung the bat with considerable force. It slammed broadside across Laserbeak, sending him flying over the array of cubicles. He crashed through a window at the opposite end. Huge shards of glass fell to the street below. Laserbeak almost went with them, but he managed to snag the sill with one of his claws at the last second.

Hissing and spitting with pure fury, he hauled himself back into the office and charged up the middle aisle. At the far end he saw a door wide open and Sam’s baseball bat lying in front of it. Clearly he had dropped it in his panicked flight.

Laserbeak vaulted over the baseball bat and through the door.

He skidded to a halt.

Around him were rows of machinery. He was in the server room.

What there was not was any sign of Witwicky. There
was also not, as near as Laserbeak could tell, another exit from the room.

He spun around toward the way he’d entered and had just enough time to see a quick image of Sam’s smiling face as he slammed the heavy door shut from the outside. Sam had never been in there; instead, he’d held the door open, hiding behind it, and waited for Laserbeak to go past.

There was a loud, decisive click of a heavy-duty bolt slamming home. Laserbeak charged the door, crashed into it, and fell back.

“Well, craaaaap,” he said.

In Sam’s apartment, Carly was doing her level best to ignore Wheelie and Brains as they peered over the counter, watching her every move as she prepared dinner. She supposed she should be grateful. At least they weren’t on the ground trying to stare up her dress again or staging another impromptu panty raid in the bedroom.

“It’s so frickin’ complicated,” Wheelie was saying to Brains, although who knew if Brains was listening to a thing he was saying? “I’m still trying to figure it out. The chickens they eat. The monkeys they don’t. The cows they eat. The bears they don’t. Fish, yes; whales, no. Cats no, rabbits yes. Pigs sometimes, and the dog … unfortunately, he’s safe. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

Carly sighed, pulled a bowl down from the cabinet overhead, then reached under the sink and got a box of screws. She poured a portion of it into the bowl and set it down on the counter. They immediately started devouring the contents of the bowl. She hoped that this time they would remember to stop eating once they finished the screws. It was annoying having to buy replacement bowls all the time.

“Sure you don’t want to run back to your clubhouse?” she said. That was the term she and Sam used to refer to the structure on the back balcony, since they figured that “doghouse” wasn’t going to go over well with them.

“Nah,” Wheelie said between bites. “View here’s better.” He made a bizarre whirring noise, and his eye shuttered in what Carly suspected was an attempt to wink.

He was coming on to her.

She shook her head at the bizarreness of it all. It was like being propositioned by a microwave oven. At least he wasn’t humping her leg again as he had when he first met her, calling her “New Warrior Princess.” How weird had
that
been?

Suddenly the door to the apartment burst open, and she heard Sam’s panicked voice shouting, “Carly, we gotta go! Get in the car! Go!” He appeared at the kitchen door, pale, gasping for breath. “Decepticons! They’re back!”

She couldn’t believe it. Actually, it wasn’t that she
couldn’t
. When she had assured Sam that she believed everything he’d told her, she had meant it. But still … it had all been in the abstract somehow. It had been so unreal to her. Now, with the potential reality of it staring her square in the face …

Wheelie and Brains, as irritating as they could be, were just that: irritating. They weren’t vicious. They weren’t trying to kill her. They weren’t sprouting guns or arm cannons and firing off hundreds of rounds at will. They weren’t doing any of the horrific things that Sam had recounted Decepticons as being capable of doing.

And the way they were reacting now—shrieking and making a panicked dash for the door—indicated that they certainly didn’t want any piece of their former allies. The transference of their loyalties from Decepticons to humanity probably wouldn’t sit too well with …

 … With who? With what? Was Megatron, the creature Sam had described to her in such vivid detail, on his way, ready to step on their home and mash it to pieces?

She looked at Sam, trying to bottle up her rising fear, and suddenly she wanted to scream at him,
Oh, my God, what have you gotten me into?

Instead she dropped what she was doing and grabbed her bag on the way out, moving almost entirely on autopilot. They dashed to the garage, the entire time Sam muttering, “Please let it work, please let it work,” and it was only when he climbed behind the steering wheel that she realized he was referring to his staggeringly unreliable Datsun. Wheelie and Brains were already in the back, jumping up and down, screaming for him to get the useless bucket of bolts in gear, which was certainly somewhat ironic, considering the source.

Then, despite all odds, the engine roared to life. Apparently the fixes that her boss had made to it had held. Sam backed the Datsun up out of the garage, turned to Carly, and looked at her expectantly.

And she thought,
Wait? Why am I running? These creatures may be coming for him and for the two little freaks, but not me. They don’t know me. I wasn’t part of their war or any of the insane things that Sam was involved in. That was years ago, before I came on the scene. The apartment may not be safe, but Sam … he’s going to be a magnet for them. Wherever he goes, sooner or later they’re going to show up, and if I’m anywhere nearby, I’m going to wind up collateral damage. I didn’t sign up for that. I should go on foot to a nice hotel or maybe stay with friends. I don’t … I can’t …

All of that went through her head in mere seconds.

She looked at Sam, and something seemed to pass behind his eyes. Wheelie was still babbling while Brains was making squealing noises, and Sam said sharply to them, “Shut up. Both of you.” Then he shifted his gaze
back to Carly and said, “Do you have someone you can stay with?”

She blinked. “What?”

“They’ll come looking for me, not you. They don’t know anything about you. It’s safer for you if it stays that way. Just keep your head down, okay?”

“She’s not coming?” said Wheelie.

“No. That would be stupid,” he said firmly. “Carly, no time for a whole big goodbye thing. Just go. Hurry.” Either he felt nothing or he was forcing himself to turn off all his emotion for her sake.

He started to back up.

Carly ran alongside, yanked on the passenger side door, and pulled it open. She clambered in as Sam said in confusion, “What’re you—?”

“I’m a big girl, Sam. I can make my own decisions. I don’t need you making them for me. Just shut up and drive,” she said.

“No way,” he said firmly. “No way in hell.”

She looked at him challengingly and said the one thing she knew would work: “Dylan wouldn’t leave me behind.”

He stared at her. Then he slammed it into reverse as he said, “Dirty pool, Carly. That’s dirty pool.”

“I thought you liked it when she did stuff that was dirty,” said Wheelie.

“Shut up!”
they shouted in unison, and Wheelie withdrew and sank onto the floor of the back of the car.

Sam gave Carly a quick rundown on what had happened at the office even as he drove as if his life depended on it. She gasped when she heard of the death of Jerry Wang and was visibly trembling when he described to her the lethal game of tag he’d had with a Decepticon.

“Laserbeak,” said Wheelie. “Nasty customer even for one of us … I mean, one of them. You’re lucky you didn’t end up in eight separate pieces, scattered all over the—”

“We really need less talking from you,” Carly said sharply, and he withdrew once again.

Sam steered the Datsun onto I-66 West and opened her up, praying that the engine wouldn’t stall out in protest. “Look, Carly, it’s not too late to—”

“You’re not dropping me off anywhere,” she interrupted. “I’m not bailing on you, okay? I’m not bailing. I’m not leaving you. I’m not …” She hesitated and then said, “I’m not
her
. Okay? You understand?”

Sam caught his breath. Then he let it out slowly and said, “Yeah. I understand.”

“Good. So what’s the plan? I mean, there is a plan, right?” she said in a hopeful voice. “Something beyond ‘Mother of God, the Decepticons are coming, let’s get the hell out of here.’ ”

“Yeah. There’s a plan. We’re going to the HQ for NEST.”

“Who?”

“NEST stands for Nonbiological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty. It’s a military alliance that was created to handle … stuff like this. They’re just outside D.C.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “So if, or when, these creatures show up in force, it won’t be a lot of people running around screaming and all manner of things blowing sky high. There’s actually contingency plans in place to deal with it.”

“Lots of plans, yes.”

She visibly relaxed. “Good.”

Sam paused and then added, “But in the interest of full disclosure, the odds are pretty good that there will also be a lot of people running around screaming and all manner of things blowing sky high.”

She tensed up again.

Minutes later, when the car rolled up to a rather mundane-looking gated facility, Carly started to wonder if this wasn’t all some sort of joke. Or worse: Maybe he was trying to make himself look like a dynamic man of action, bringing her along on an adventure, so that he wouldn’t feel so threatened by Dylan. Because she had a definite idea of what a military base should look like, having been to quite a few in her time. And this most definitely was not it.

Sam barely managed to get the car to screech to a halt just short of crashing into the gates. Two guards immediately emerged, their weapons half raised.

Sam hurriedly rolled the window down. “Open the gate! We’ve gotta talk to Colonel Lennox! We’re reporting a Decepticon! The Decepticons are back!”

“Sam, where are we?” she said nervously.

One of the guards, looking not the least in the mood for an elaborate prank being staged by a jealous boyfriend,
said warningly, “Sir, this is Health and Human Services—”

“Right, packing M4s; don’t give me that. Lemme talk to Optimus,” Sam said.

“Sir, you’ve made some mistake,” the other guard said. “Step from the vehicle, please.”

Carly really didn’t like the way this was shaping up. She hated the thoughts going through her head. She despised the notion that it would even occur to her that Sam was staging this whole business just to try to add some excitement to his crushingly mundane life. But the thing she liked least of all was the idea of being arrested while trying to assault the department of Health and Human Services. Hell, these days you risked being detained just by attempting to board an airplane if you happened to have a four-ounce container of Liquid Prell in your bag. Who knew what they’d do to you if you tried to crash security in an actual government building? And what was her defense going to be? Her boyfriend thought there were giant robots in there? She might never be heard from again.

“Sam,” she said, trying to keep the lack of confidence out of her tone. “Are you sure you’re at the right place?”

“Trust me,” he said, and then turned back to the guard. “I’m Sam Witwicky. Don’t you know who I am?”

“Sir, if you don’t have the right paperwork, we don’t care if you’re the president’s daughter,” said the guard. “You’re not getting by on our watch.”

“What part of ‘Decepticons are back’ do you not understand?” At which point, thoroughly out of patience, Sam hit the gas and sped forward.

He didn’t get very far as fortified roadblocks—the type designed to prevent car bombs from approaching buildings—snapped into place to halt his advance. They
came up both in front of him and behind, sandwiching him in place.

Abruptly alarms started blaring, and Carly was sure that they were connected to some sort of security breach alert. As it turned out, she wasn’t entirely wrong.

“We’ve got an Energon reading!” one of the guards shouted.

All attempts at politeness vanished from the nearer guard. “Get out of the car! Now!”

They didn’t wait for Sam and Carly to comply. As other guards came charging out of the darkness of the evening, the first two yanked the doors open and bodily pulled the two young people out of the Datsun. One of the guards peered in through the back window. Wheelie was shaking so hard that Carly could hear the metal of his body clattering. Brains was busy chewing on the buckle of one of the seat belts.

“Got aliens inside the vehicle!”

“Freeze! One move and you’re dead!”

Sam tried to shout above the rising ruckus. “Just tell Bumblebee! Is Bee in there?” The guard who was busy pushing him to the ground had his radio out, informing unseen persons what was transpiring, and Sam tossed off a shout into the radio: “Anyone hear me? This is Sam Witwicky!”

Then Sam grunted as they wrestled him to the ground. They hadn’t done so with Carly since she had offered no resistance, but they were keeping her arms pinned behind her so forcefully that she was afraid they were going to wrench them out of the sockets. Sam, meanwhile, was still struggling as fiercely as he could. One of the soldiers had his knee firmly in his back to immobilize him while another was pulling out zip ties from his belt to bind his wrists.

The gates burst open, and a tall yellow robot stepped into view. He pushed the guards aside as gently as he
could, but for him “gently” was a relative term, and the guards went flying even at his lightest touch. The robot ignored them and instead put out his hand so that Sam could haul himself to his feet. The remaining guards stepped back, forming a semicircle, but none dared come near Sam as the robot loomed over him protectively. Then the robot cast a single glance toward the soldiers who were still holding Carly. Immediately they got the message, silent as it was, and released her.