Machine Man (serial)

I raised my gun-arm. Carl’s head turned toward me. Light fell across his face and I saw his eyes lock onto my arm, widen as he realized what it was. I was going to obliterate him. We both knew it. He was going to die in little pieces and I would weep beside them over whatever he had done to Lola’s body.

Then Carl flicked his forearm and an object hurtled toward me. Even before I saw what it was, this was the moment I realized I had seriously misread the situation. Because it didn’t matter if I was stronger than Carl, faster and smarter and better armed, if he could surprise me by throwing things. The factor I had failed to consider was that I had never fought anyone in my whole life. I had almost hit a girl in elementary school, but before I could decide to do it, she pushed me over. That was the extent of my hand-to-hand combat experience. Carl was trained to physically overpower people.

And he had a car battery; he had stocked up. It tumbled toward me and I flinched away. My gun-arm spat bullets into the ceiling, tearing out concrete. The battery ricocheted off my metal hip, and I thought, Wait a minute, that didn’t even hurt, then the second hit me square in the back and I screamed, because some of that was flesh. I staggered in a circle, and then Carl was on top of me, his sledgehammer arms coming at me like buildings, and I had already lost.

165.