Strange Robby

by Selina Rosen

  "Damn! That was way too easy," Tommy said. He was kneeling in the floorboards with Carrie. "OK, Robby. Get us the hell out of here."

  There was nothing. "Robby?" Tommy looked slowly up. A big blond guy looked down at him.

  "My name is Brawn," he said. "And I'd say I have just about all the leverage I need now to bring a certain lady cop back into the fold."

  Tommy saw the size of the man's hands, and knew what he was up against, but it was a sure bet that Brawn didn't know what he was up against. Tommy whipped his right hand up quickly, letting his left shoulder drop to add impact. His palm hit Brawn's nose, and he kept pushing. Then he jumped as far up as the car would allow, and plowed the monster's head into the top of the car hard enough to dent the roof. The man's face caved in around Tommy's hand, and when Tommy pulled his hand back the man fell into the front seat and started to spasm.

  "Stay here," Tommy ordered Carrie.

  Carrie nodded. She had no intention of even getting out of the floorboards.

  Tommy crawled over her and out the door they had crawled in. He opened the front door, dragged the body out, and rolled it into the bushes—not without an effort. Then he started looking for Robby.

  "Robby," Tommy whispered. He was ducked down below the hedges. Across the street and around the corner he could hear Sherry still screaming at the SWTF Guys. Then their tone changed. He heard one of them scream over Sherry.

  "Something's going down over there!"

  A quick look through the hedge showed him that the cop had come out of the house and found Carry gone and his partner down.

  "Robby! Damn it, man." He couldn't wait; he had to go. He ran back to the car, jumped in and started the engine.

  "Stay down, this could get hairy." He took off.

  "Sorry, Robby, but you're on your own," he muttered.

  He drove at a normal pace, but they still tagged him.

  "Damn! They're following us," Tommy hissed. He tried to lose them without looking too obvious, but they stayed with him, so he wasn't just dreaming it. Suddenly, there was a loud knocking.

  "Oh! Just what we fucking need! Car trouble. I wish we had fucking Robby." The knocking got louder, and Tommy realized what it was. He laughed.

  "Robby, is that you man?" The knocking got louder and more urgent.

  "Carrie, there's a latch in the top of the back seat that flips it down so you can get in the trunk."

  Carrie found it and opened it. She could see the man—he had a bucket shaped helmet on his head, and she helped him get it off.

  "Tommy! I'm so sorry, man," Robby said.

  He was handcuffed, but with Carrie's help he managed to squirm into the back seat. "The fucker snuck up on me, hit me with a fucking lightning bolt, and then slammed that damn thing on my head. I couldn't do shit."

  "It's OK, man. Can you do something about our tail?

  Robby looked back. "Which one?"

  Tommy checked in his rear view mirror again. Damn! They had picked up another car. "Both of them."

  Robby focused on the front car for a second. "It's not working."

  Suddenly, a large sedan pulled out in front of them. Tommy swerved and hit the gas. The jig was up; no more pretending. This was a full-scale chase.

  "Try again," Tommy begged.

  "I am. It's just not working."

  "Is it the hand cuffs?" Tommy asked.

  "No. It's got to be that damned lightning bolt. My heads still sort of fuzzy. It must have fucked me up."

  Cars were coming at them from everywhere. Suddenly SWTF, FBI, and local police—everyone—was in hot pursuit. Tommy swerved in and out of traffic.

  He saw Carrie pull a gun out from under her arm. She put her arm out the window and started firing behind them. She didn't appear to be hitting anything, but it seemed to be keeping them back a little.

  Just as Tommy was sure they were going to get away, a fucking panel truck turned out into his lane. There was nowhere to go except through the front of a department store.

  "Get down and hold on!" Tommy screamed.

  He drove through the window, diving into the floorboards with his foot still hard on the accelerator.

  The car plowed through the window and most of the way across the store before it stopped against the back wall.

  Tommy kicked the door open, opened the back door, grabbed his gun with one hand and Carrie with the other. "Come on! Let's move it!"

  Robby piled out behind Carrie and they started running for the down escalator, which went to the basement parking garage.

  The cops and SWTF started plowing through the front wall and coming after them. Robby turned, and this time his power was back. As the front three SWTF guys blew up, everyone else hit the floor.

  The three of them made it to the escalator and started running down it. As they reached the bottom, five SWTF men rounded the corner beside them. Tommy let go of Carrie, grabbed the rail with one hand, and bounded over the side. He kicked one guy in the neck, then spun and snap kicked another hard enough to drive him to his knees. Another kick to the second guy's head finished him.

  As Robby hit the other three, Carrie scooped up two of their fallen guns without being asked, and Tommy suddenly realized just why Spider was so taken with her. He'd always known that Carrie was intelligent, but it had never dawned on him that she might also be street smart, and quick. He had certainly never considered that she could be physically tough if the need arose.

  She fired on a troop of SWTF men who were coming down the escalator after them. Two of them fell.

  Tommy grabbed her arm and pulled her behind a concrete post. Robby followed them, watching their back.

  "Tommy," Carrie said a little excited. "I'm still on line."

  He looked at her, a bit puzzled about her obvious implication that this was somehow important.

  "They can track me. But it also means I still have my clearance."

  Tommy nodded. He finally knew what she was getting at. He looked at Robby. "If we can get to a cop car—any cop car—Carrie can get us in."

  They started to move again, and were spotted again this time by the police. Carrie waved her comlink at them, but they drew down on Robby and Tommy.

  "I think we just caught a break," Carrie mumbled to Tommy.

  "Put those away! This is agent Chan and this . . . " she slapped Robby hard, and pointed at the handcuffs, "is one of the men who tried to kidnap me. The others are back there. Be careful! They are armed and dangerous. I need your car, where is it?"

  They all pointed in different directions.

  "Well, don't just stand there! Go after them." The police ran one way, and they ran the other.

  They located a car, got in and took off. No one followed them. No one questioned them.

  Tommy sighed with relief. "All right. But what now, boss? This car is linked up, and so are you."

  "Let's just get the hell out of town for now. We can get another car in Jones Port or fucking walk for all I care. Right now I just want as much distance between us and them as we can get. As for me." She reached in her pocket, pulled out the wand and rubbed it over her ear. "Now I'm off line, and with this we can put me back on line if we need to."

  "Great!"

  Robby, now riding alone in the back seat behind the partition, rattled the handcuffs. Carrie pushed the button to lower the shield, passed her comlink over the cuffs, and nothing happened. She smiled at him and shrugged.

  "Sorry, must be coded different than mine."

  "Hit them with a little heat," Tommy said.

  "That only works in the movies. If I get that metal hot enough to break, it's also going to burn the shit out of my wrists," Robby said.

  He looked at Carrie then and smiled. She looked haggard and rattled, but she was still every bit as pretty as Spider said she was. "You must be Carrie. I've heard a lot about you."

  "And you're the Fry Guy." No hint of surprise in her voice, so obviously she'd already figured it out. Carrie shook his hand as he worked at presenting i
t to her. "You sure did open up a big ole can of worms, now didn't you?"

  He nodded, head down. "I'm sorry."

  Carrie shrugged. "It's all water almost under the bridge now."

  She looked at Tommy. "So, how is Spider?"

  Tommy started to answer.

  "The truth, Tommy. If she was in perfect health nothing would have stopped her from coming with you to get me."

  Tommy took a deep breath. "She's in pretty bad shape . . . They did horrible things to her, Carrie. They beat her up pretty bad. Pumped a lot of drugs into her body. She's lost a lot of weight."

  Carrie nodded and looked out the window. "Is she going to be all right?"

  "I think so," Tommy said. "In time. I think your being there will help."

  They lost the car and stole another out of a parking lot. Robby explained how to do it, and Tommy followed his directions exactly. They stopped along the way for Carrie to get some suitable clothes. When they stopped to sleep for the night Tommy fiddled with the lock on the handcuffs till they came off.

  "I could drive," Carrie said.

  "No. For the hundredth time, Carrie, we need some sleep," Tommy said.

  Carrie nodded. She knew he was right, but it didn't help her much. She needed to see Spider right then. To see how bad she really was. While Tommy and Robby slept like babies, she didn't sleep a wink. She woke them up three hours later and demanded that they hit the road—which they did.

  On the way up to the cabins she kept running ahead of them. Even Tommy's reminders that she didn't know where they were going didn't slow her down.

  When she stepped into the clearing ahead of Tommy and Robby, the first thing she saw was Spider sitting on a rock in the sun. Spider's head turned to meet her, no doubt sensing her there. She cringed as she watched Spider struggle to get up, then she ran to meet her. Carrie threw her arms around Spider, and Spider embraced her.

  They both had a good cry.

  "I thought I'd never see you again," Carrie said.

  "I was so worried. I knew you wouldn't be safe for much longer. I trusted that Tommy would come through for us. I'm sorry . . . I couldn't go after you myself."

  Carrie dried her eyes and then she dried Spider's. "Tommy told me. We'll get you well, Baby."

  Tommy and Robby caught up to them then. "That damn woman of yours tried to run our legs off," Tommy said with a smile.

  "Thank you. Both of you," Spider said. It didn't look like she planned to let Carrie go anytime soon. Or Carrie her for that matter.

  "She's a hell of a gal, Spider. A real trooper," Tommy said with real admiration. Then he took Robby by the arm and steered him away.

  Mark came running out of the cabin, very excited. Laura walked out behind him, looking more than a little shaken.

  Mark ran up to them. "Tommy! Robby! You know what happened? Laura and I were getting water, and there was this snake, and zap! I just fried it." He almost snapped his fingers, but didn't quite succeed. "Just like that. I think I'm ready to go with you guys now."

  Laura hugged Tommy. "It was the most horrible thing; it almost bit me."

  Tommy looked over Laura's shoulder at where Mark was making a face and shaking his head no.

  Laura saw Carrie then, and started to run off to greet her, happy for real female companionship at last.

  Tommy grabbed her arm. "Give them some time, Honey." He looked around. "Where's Francis?"

  Mark started yanking on Tommy's pants leg. "Come on, I'll show you."

  Francis was in a clearing behind the cabins stacking rocks in some weird formation.

  "What the hell is she doing?" Tommy asked.

  "She told Mom she's calling the aliens. Mom told her she hoped that she did, because then they were going to kick her ass for what they did to us. But she ain't black anymore."

  "What do you mean?" Tommy asked in confusion.

  Robby answered him.

  "She's not dark anymore. We see evil people as a black shadow. We can see all the bad things they've done. See their dark desires. Francis was like that, and now . . . Well, she's not exactly light, but she's not dark anymore. She's changed." Robby seemed troubled.

  "What?" Tommy asked.

  "Well, if she could change . . . What about all those people I fried?"

  "I'm not sure she deserved a second chance. Most of the assholes you fried had been given more than a second chance, and they just got worse and worse and worse. If I were you, I wouldn't lose any sleep over those scum."

  Robby had been messing with it for hours.

  "Well?" Tommy asked.

  Robby shrugged. "I just don't know that much about computers. I'm sorry, but I don't know if I can make it work or not."

  "Let me see if I can help. I'm not terribly mechanical, but I do know computers. Between the two of us, maybe we can figure it out," Carrie said.

  Spider sat down on the hearth, and Mark immediately sat down beside her, taking her hand.

  "Why don't you just tell us what's on the disk?" Spider asked impatiently.

  Spider wasn't herself at all. The longer Carrie was here, the more she realized that. She was weak and got winded easily. She was irritable and edgy. Carrie knew who the boy was, but she kept waiting for Spider to introduce them. Kept waiting for Spider to tell her what she'd been through, but so far in the approximately six hours since she'd arrived, Spider hadn't talked much at all. After the initial excitement of seeing her wore off, she had in fact seemed distant—almost cold. Carrie fiddled with some lines on the comlink. There was nothing really compatible about the disk and the comlink; it was a long shot at best.

  She didn't want Spider to see how disappointed she was by her reactions. Laura had told her about the head injury and what she knew about the conditions Spider had been kept in. It explained all of her symptoms, and made her behavior tolerable if frustrating and disappointing.

  "What's on the disk!" Spider screamed.

  When Carrie looked at her, Spider's face was red with anger.

  Carrie took a deep breath and reminded herself that she had to be rational, because Spider really couldn't be held accountable. "It's a list of all the hybrids the SWTF have made. I've found fifty of them, twenty males and thirty females . . . "

  "So, now that we're aliens, we're not women and men anymore, we're males and females," Spider said hotly.

  It wasn't till then that Carrie realized that not all of Spider's reserved nature was directly related to her injuries or her captivity. Carrie hadn't really had time for the implications of what she had learned to soak in. At least not in relation to Spider. Carrie'd had more pressing matters to worry about than the fact that her lover was half alien—half not human.

  It didn't really matter to her. Or at least that was what she'd told herself from the moment she'd pieced it all together and figured it out. But she had just said males and females, so maybe in the back of her head she did see them as different. Of course they were different, but different was not synonymous with bad.

  Carrie was about to explain all that when Tommy said, "That isn't what she meant. You know that's not what she meant. Quit being such a damn moody piece of shit. No one can say anything to you without you getting pissed off."

  "It's the cranial injury," Francis chimed from where she sat in the corner polishing rocks on her shirttail.

  "I'm sorry, Spider. I've just gone through these files so much, and that's the way the files are labeled." Carrie looked at Spider, and held her gaze. It wasn't easy. She was used to seeing love in Spider's eyes, and it just wasn't there right now. Spider seemed to be running on primal energy, almost more animal than human. Existing at least mentally in a place where everyone was her enemy. Where no one was to be trusted. "Feel me, Spider. Can't you feel that I love you? If you are anything different, you are superior to us. Why would I look down on you? Don't you know I love you?"

  "I . . . I can't feel anything." Spider now sounded more confused than angry, or even afraid. "My power is all but gone. But notice that I'm not par
t of us anymore."

  Carrie thought over what she had just said. She decided to take off the kid gloves, because that obviously wasn't working anyway. "Christ on a crutch, Spider! Would you listen to yourself? We're gay; they're not. That makes them, them—and us, us. Tommy's Asian; we're not. That makes him, them—and us, us. You and Robby and Mark are half alien; we're not. So that makes you, them—and us, us. But we're still all human . . . "