While she squeezed her eyelids shut, a low noise grew steadily on the night air. It was a deep hum, like someone was shaking the ground from several miles away. Like thunder, but through the street. At least — that’s how the ambiance of it came across. As it grew louder and louder, however, it became clear it was a car motor. The sound was approaching them.
Before either Beth, Simon, or the seven Tarovs knew what was happening, the vehicle was upon them. An autovan with bright headlights whipped around one of the nearest corners at speeds unsafe for even highway travel and pulled up to the burning Fog house.
Tarov was taken aback by the sudden blinding lights and the rumbling motor. All seven mechanical heads turned to follow the source of the commotion just as its brakes squealed and skidded it to a stop beside them. Even Beth was too surprised to make a run for it now that her captor was distracted.
One of the van’s door slid open, thrown so hard that it rattled the whole vehicle. A high-pitched hum started tearing through the cold air. It was set at such a high frequency that it made the hairs along Beth’s spin stand on end, and her teeth felt itchy. She clasped her hands over her ears and tried to see over the blinding illumination of the van’s headlights.
At any moment, she expected the squadron of Tarov robots to spring into action, unleashing a barrage of deadly attacks upon the mysterious intruder. She braced for the gunshots and the sword slashes — waited for the thundering of metal feet on dirt. She listened for what seemed like an eternity before raising her head and looking around.
Nothing happened.
All seven instances of Tarov were frozen in place, like Medusa herself had turned them into statues. The colorful lights on their optical panels strobed a little, like the electrical signal that powered them was lagging out. None of the bodyshells could move, but they all seemed to be powered on.
The headlights on the van cut out and a form stepped out from the open doorway. The high-frequency hum followed the shape as it walked towards Beth. It belonged to a man, who knelt down in the dirt before Beth as two more forms came out from the back of the van. Another closed the driver door and walked around to where the seven machines stood petrified.
As Beth’s eyes adjusted to the sudden change of lighting, she saw the man’s face for the first time. He wore large glasses under a pair of bushy white eyebrows. He was smiling, his unshaven cheeks wrinkling as he did so. A beige boonie hat rested on the crown of his skull. In his hand was a small electronic device, no larger than a car key. It was this that the high-frequency hum came from.
“You alright, sweetheart?” the man asked her. He was much older than her, probably in his early 60’s by her guess.
Beth nodded, but was still too startled to speak.
The man turned to his colleagues — two other men and a woman. They were walking up to where Beth was still propped up on her elbows.
“Let’s get her outta here quick!” he ordered. “While he’s still stunned.” He indicated the small army of bodyshells.
“Turn the emitter up,” the woman who was driving the van suggested. “Fry their C.P.U.s.”
“Good idea,” the older man muttered. He fiddled with some button or knob on the tiny device that Beth couldn’t see. He looked up, frowned, then fiddled with the device some more. Suddenly, the bodyshells gave a quick twitch while a small spurt of sparks erupted from their metallic skulls. With seven solid thuds, they fell to the earth. This time, the optical lights were dead. The shells were deactivated.
Beth felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw one of the other men trying to help her to her feet. The older man lent a hand as well, lifting her upright. She brushed the dirt and dead grass blades off the seat of her pants.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“There’ll be time for that,” the older man with the glasses replied. “Right now, though, we have to hurry. It’s only a matter of time before Tarov is able to load into a whole new set of shells and send them this way. We can’t dawdle.”
The younger man who had helped Beth to her feet now guided her to the open door of the van. Reluctantly, she stepped up and climbed into the vehicle. Her guide and the older man hopped in the back with her while the other man took the passenger seat. The driver slammed the van’s sliding door shut before she climbed into the cab and took them away from the smoldering pile of embers that had once been Lobo’s Fog house.
Resistance
The autovan’s engine was much quieter from within the vehicle than it was from outside. Everything beyond the plastic-and-titanium frame was a droning hum that washed out the silence like a steady rainstorm or the crashing of waves on a cliffside. Beth remained silent for a couple minutes while the van drove away from the scene of the burning Fog house and the deactivated bodyshells. She was too stunned by the sudden rescue and how close she had come to death to say anything anyway. The others seemed to respect that need and sat in silence.
No one needed to actually drive the autovan since it was capable of driving itself, but the vehicle had some manual override that the woman in the cab was using to bypass its automated navigation. Her abilities were what kept them from colliding into a house at a hundred twenty miles-per-hour, and the thought made Beth a little nervous. She saw the need, however — if they were going to remain undetected and untraced, they had to take paths the computerized system never would. Not to mention if they
