At the far end of the garden, past the fountain, was a low stone wall. Steps were cut into it, leading up to the east wing of the house. So close now.
He took a step away from the shelter of the hedge, back into the moonlight, and waved one hand over his head.
Instantly he saw Julia and Angel come running out of the woods, holding on to each other as they barreled across the grass. Smart — they were minimizing their profile, making it impossible for a watcher to tell if it was one person or two running toward the garden. He wondered which of them had thought of that. Not for the first time, nor the hundredth, he was glad he’d picked such bright people to be his partners in crime.
He watched them come, digging their feet in the grass as they made their way up the slope. It seemed to take forever for them to cross the open ground. He waved them closer, even though they wouldn’t be able to see him in the shadow of the hedge.
Just a little closer. A few more seconds, and then—
Chapel’s blood froze in his veins.
He’d heard something. A sound — a very weird sound. A kind of shrieking, but rhythmic, kind of like the cry of an animal. Kind of not. He couldn’t imagine what on earth could make such a noise.
It didn’t stop. It was getting closer.
“Come on,” he whispered, then grabbed for Angel’s arm as she came into reach, pulling her close to the hedge. Julia dropped to the ground, sitting with her back against the dense shrubbery. She reached over and touched his shoulder, pointed.
The sound was much louder now. She must have heard it — and tracked it back to its source. He could see it now, too.
Coming around the side of the house, up past the garden, a dark shape appeared silhouetted against the dark sky. The moonlight was only enough to give away the rough outline of the thing. To show that it was about the size and shape of a horse, with four legs that moved like an animal’s legs. There was only one reason to think that it was not in fact a horse.
It didn’t have a head.
The headless thing screeched as it moved. Each step, each time it bent one of its joints, it let out a high-pitched whining sound that made Chapel’s brain ache. As it walked toward them the sound became a sustained, horrible creaking that made it impossible for him to think, impossible to decide what to do next.
Especially when another of the things came around the far wing of the mansion and started picking its way toward them.
The things pranced more than they walked. They moved like deer, maybe, more than horses, their thin legs probing, testing with each step. They walked like drunkards who couldn’t be sure the ground would be where they expected it to be, who had to be extra-careful not to fall down.
For all that, they could move fast when they wanted to. The one that had appeared at the far end of the house closed the distance in a hurry, running straight at them until it was almost upon them. Meanwhile, the first one they’d seen was still carefully picking its way down toward them, climbing over the debris of the fallen wing, cresting a pile of bricks like a mountain goat, testing and probing its way through the frame of a broken window.
“They’re robots,” Angel said.
Chapel wanted to smack himself across the forehead. How hadn’t he seen that? Of course they were. That terrible sound they made — it was the whine of servomotors firing in sequence inside their mechanical legs. And when he thought about their body shape, he remembered he’d seen video of such things before, video of machines that were being tested by the armed forces for—
“I don’t care what they are,” Julia said. “I don’t want one touching me.”
Chapel nodded. Right. They needed to get away from these things.
“Back to the trees,” he said. “We’ve been spotted — don’t worry about being stealthy. Just run.”
Julia nodded and jumped out of the shadows, headed for the trees they’d just left. If they could get back to the cover of the forest, back out through the gap they’d made in the fence, Chapel was sure the robots wouldn’t follow them. He hated to just abort before they’d even got inside the secret data center, but what choice did they have? He gestured for Angel to run for the trees, then hurtled after her, even as the headless robots converged on the garden. Chapel glanced back over his shoulder as he ran, expecting to see the two robots hurtling after him, skidding down the slope on their skinny legs. Instead they simply took up position back there, like sentries.
He was afraid he knew what that meant. He turned his head to look back toward the trees just in time to see two more of the robots hidden there, crouching behind the branches.
“Angel! Julia!” he shouted. “Watch out!”
Julia saw the robots in time and slid to a stop on the wet grass, but Angel didn’t seem to understand what was happening. She kept running, right up to the edge of the trees. Chapel dashed after her, thinking he would grab her and pull her back, but he was too late.
The robot pounced with a grace no machine should have. It came down hard on Angel, knocking her to the ground. She rolled away, throwing her arms up to protect her head, but the robot reared over her, its front limbs flailing in the air, ready to stab down and smash her where she lay.
Running, not caring if he slid on the wet grass, Chapel caromed into the thing, body-slamming it from the side. If he could knock it over, he thought, leave it pinwheeling its legs in the air like an overturned tortoise, maybe that would give Angel time to get away. He got his shoulder underneath the thing and heaved, throwing it sideways.
It slipped away from him, its feet dancing crazily on the leaf litter, moving in a desperate rhythm and screaming with that horrible noise. It tilted one way, then the other, and he thought it was about to topple over. Instead it staggered and swung around like a drunkard — but it never lost its footing. It never fell over.
Damn.
Once it had stabilized itself, the thing turned slowly, and he got the impression it was glaring at him. If it had snorted like an enraged bull, he would have felt less intimidated. It was about to charge him, he was certain, and he tried to guess which direction to jump, which way to move to get away from it.
Then he felt something tugging at his back. Thinking one of the machines had come up behind him, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Angel dragging something out of the pack on his back.
Instantly he knew what she had planned. After years of working together, he guessed they really had come to know how the other one thought.
He feinted to his left and the four-legged robot started its charge, clearly intending to bowl him over and trample him. At the last second, Chapel broke right, barely getting out of its way. It barreled past him at high speed, its spindly legs squealing.
Before it could change course to come around for another attack, Angel brought a rubber mallet down hard on its side, a glancing blow but enough to make it dance sideways, just like when he’d tried to flip it over. As its feet lifted and fell, desperately trying to find its balance again, Angel dropped the mallet and hefted the same wire cutters he’d used to get through the perimeter fence.
She didn’t worry about finesse — instead she just jammed the blades of the cutters deep into the thickest part of the robot’s front left leg and then squeezed the long handles together. There was a very loud pop and a flash of light and suddenly that leg hung from the side of the machine as nothing more than dead weight.