Editor’s note: The following story is from the book, “The Further Adventures of The Borderland Biker, In Memory of Indian Larry and Doo Wop Music,” by Derrel Whitemeyer.
The Sentinel filled the doorway. Larry looked like David standing before Goliath. The difference being, David knew he had God’s blessing; while conversely Larry knew he didn’t have enough time to siphon gas from his Raider.
“Leave now, all of you!” shouted Larry. “Jax and Gary go first; ride down the ramp to the elevated highway leading into the City. Wait for me at the bottom. John, give them a minute then you and Elisa ride to the top of the dome then up the ramp leading to the portal.”
Thin wires began to uncoil from the Sentinel; electric arcs danced across their ends. In seconds, sooner if the wires had not been hampered by the doorway, they’d have the length to reach Larry and deliver a lethal charge. None of us would be able to leave the pod in time. What may have once passed for a human laugh came out of the giant cyborg’s mouth.
“Hey, big guy;” said Gary who also knew Larry didn’t have time to siphon gas from his Raider and had ridden directly in front of the Sentinel, “pick on someone your own size?”
At the same time Gary issued his challenge his own electrical wires shot out from behind his seat and wrapped around the Sentinel’s rollers. Instantly the pod was filled with the popping and snapping of high voltage. More surprised than immobilized the Sentinel came to a stop.
The Sentinel’s voice sounded like it was coming through a long metal pipe, “I see someone disconnected your red control wires. No matter, you’ve not enough voltage to stop me.”
More popping and snapping followed as the two cyborgs sent electrical charges into each other. Gary, who was being overpowered, began to jerk like a puppet on a string.
Larry reached to help him.
“Too late, no more time;” cried Gary between spasms, “run, you’ve no time to get your bike, run!”
John, with Elisa as a passenger, had already ridden out and onto the catwalk when he yelled back, “They only sent the one hardcore to keep us from getting to the roof of the dome and I’ve dealt with him. I don’t see any others.”
Larry hesitated, realized the futility of trying to help and jumped on the back of my Raider; I then followed John and Elisa out of the pod stopping to the left of them on the catwalk. John was already closing the door behind us when I looked back inside the pod. The Sentinel was rolling over, crushing both the Raider and Gary. Gary wasn’t moving.
“He’s still alive,” said Larry who’d remained turned around looking backward.
John and Elisa would have to wait for me and Larry to ride down to the elevated highway leading into the City. Our action would attract the Wheelers and would be enough of a diversion to give them the time needed to ride to the top of the dome and then up the ramp leading to the portal. However they wouldn’t be able to wait the required time if the Sentinel got to them first. And the Sentinel would be here long before we could create the diversion.
Gary was still alive, had opened his eyes and was lifting his one remaining wire. The end of it was inches above the pool of gas that was leaking out of Larry’s crushed Raider. Gary glanced at us and smiled at the same time the end of his wire sparked. The last thing I saw was him touching the wire’s end to the gas. Had the pod’s door not been nearly closed the resulting explosion would’ve blown all of us off the dome.
John lowered his head for a moment out of respect for his fallen friend then motioned for us to go. I did and was in second gear and nearly to the bottom of the catwalk when I took a peek over my shoulder. John and Elisa were now leaving and Elisa was frantically pointing behind me.
Larry spoke through our radios, “Three Wheelers are about fifty yards to our rear. They had to have gotten onto the catwalk from another pod. They’ll bracket us once we’re on the highway. John and Elisa are out of sight and heading towards the portal. John’s bike’s a Hayabusa; even two-up it should be able to outrun most anything that’s after them.”
Seconds after I’d ridden onto the elevated highway leading to the City Larry made it known we were now fair game. Roads coming up from the Old Places would soon be intersecting with the one we were on. The Wheelers behind us were gaining.
“Hey,” I shouted over my shoulder, “I thought Wheelers wouldn’t attack if you kept a steady speed?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Larry shouted back. “After the mess we caused back at the dome I’d be surprised if the Wheelers didn’t have orders to kill us on sight or worse, make us into parking meters…soooooo PUNCH IT! Let’s see if our red nose reindeer Rudolph, I mean our Raider, can really move Santa’s sleigh.”
Since leaving the dome the hearing aid size ear radio I wear was transmitting everything Larry was saying but also picking up music. “One Way or Another” by Blondie was starting to play in the background. By the time I was into fourth gear Blondie was singing the chorus “…I’m gonna getcha, getcha, getcha, getcha…” Fourth gear could’ve revved higher but I short shifted into fifth at seventy. The Raider’s mid-range torque would pull me into triple digits much quicker than winding the engine out in a lower gear.
Proving what we’d suspected, that the bosses had indeed been eavesdropping in on our plan of escape; all exits leading down into the Old Places were blocked by Wheelers. Our only path now was straight towards the City but it too was blocked, not by Wheelers, but by the granddaddy of all Sentinels.
“There’s no escape,” I shouted.
“They really were,” Larry knew he was stating the obvious at the same time I started backing off the throttle, “listening in on our escape plans. I just hope Elisa and John were able to make it up the ramp and through the portal.”
I’d already down shifted into second gear and was about to downshift into first when Larry spoke through my ear radio. Larry and I were able to speak to one another because we had identical hearing aid size radios.
“Down shift into first then slow down as if you were going to stop, but don’t, not until I tell you; I’ve a plan.”
“We’re trapped, I replied. “What plan, what’s the point?”
Once we passed the Wheelers blocking the exits into the Old Places they’d circle in behind pushing us on towards the awaiting Sentinel. Completely bracketed, we were being herded down a gauntlet of sparking high voltage wires. Hopefully death would be quick; the idea of being taken back to the dome to be made into a parking meter was something I did not want to experience. I was slowing, preparing to stop.
“Remember not to stop until I tell you,” whispered Larry through the tiny radio we had in our ears and at the same time he poured cold coffee over us. “I’m pouring some of Elisa’s hoodoo coffee over our heads.”
Elisa had divided her gallon of coffee into four plastic quart bottles back at the pod; she’d given Larry three of them keeping the fourth for herself.
Already I was feeling the coffee’s effects. First came an exhilaration then an acute awareness followed by a feeling of heightened sensitivity. More importantly the Wheelers behind us and to the sides began to immediately fall back, away from the coffee’s smell creating an opening through to the City’s gate…that is except for the huge Sentinel. The pungent smell of Elisa’s special blend seemed to be acting as more of an irritant to it than a repellant.
“All the Wheelers,” said Larry from behind me, “have broken off and gone back to blocking the entrances into the Old Places. We’ve no other choice but to get past this Sentinel and enter the City. When I tell you to stop, stop just outside the reach of his electric wires…STOP!”
Easily a third larger than the Sentinel that had attacked us in the pod it blocked the road ahead. Larry, however, wasn’t there to make comparisons. His aim was to jump off my bike and hurl what was left of the quart bottle of Elisa’s hoodoo coffee into the giant Sentinel’s face, which he did, no pun intended, with perfect aim. The effects were immediate and caused the giant cyborg to reel backwards as if its face had been bathed in acid.
The Sentinel screamed in pain. Oily green spittle flew from what once might have been a human mouth in what once might have been a human face. Acting like some type of solvent Elisa’s coffee was already eating into the metal surrounding the more skull than head.
“Go,” yelled Larry, “the gates to the wall surrounding the City are opening.”
A second later Larry had climbed aboard the Raider and I was accelerating past the monster. A second after I was out of its reach the scream behind me turned into a roar of rage. When the roar of rage, once a scream of pain, turned into a cry of despair I looked behind me.
The Sentinel was staring at us, no longer with rage but with an awakening recognition. It was as if Elisa’s coffee had also dissolved whatever was blocking old memories and allowed it to remember back to when it was more than a machine, to when it was human. I could’ve sworn it nodded and smiled just before it turned to face the oncoming Wheelers.
Stretching its huge arms and electric wires it turned to block the road. It was helping us escape. Not until I’d ridden to within about a quarter of a mile of the City did I slow down enough to look again.
The Sentinel had been overpowered. Like ants swarming over the body of large spider they’d just killed along with the bodies of their comrades that had fallen defeating it, the Wheelers headed for us. They’d be upon us seconds. With no other place to go but straight ahead I cranked the Raider’s throttle open and kept it open.
“Punch it; pedal to the metal,” shouted Larry directly into my ear, “the gates to the City have stopped opening and are starting to close!”
Faster than when they had opened, the gates into the City were closing; their speed was even accelerating. We’d make it through but by the skin of our teeth. Riding at high speed into a walled city that was descending into darkness was now our only option.
A narrowing path of twilight continued to get thinner as the huge gates behind me swung shut. Too soon it would taper into a sliver then disappear altogether leaving only the Raider’s headlight to illuminate the road ahead.
“The Wheelers have broken off probably because they don’t like being outside the dome after the sun’s set; they’re not following,” said Larry.
“Or probably because they’re smart enough ‘not’ to enter the City.” I said at the same I started slowing down and the gates behind us slammed shut with an echo that kept on echoing…that kept on echoing…that kept on…
When I was within a hundred feet of the buildings I came to a stop. My headlight underlined the fact there was no space between the buildings and that impossibly tall columns seemingly much too thin to support their own weight arched upwards fading into the darkness of height.
“The City’s dome is able with some type of electromagnetic field,” I said, “to block out light after the sun’s set. Once the sun drops beyond the horizon it reacts to residual light like a welder’s electric visor reacts. Unless it’s direct sunlight, all light from outside is blocked from entering and the City becomes as dark as a parrot’s cage after a blanket’s been thrown over it. It must then rely on internal sources. And judging from the columns the dome over this place makes the dome we escaped from look like an overturned cereal bowl.”
“That’s a lot of oatmeal,” Larry laughed as he got off the back of the Raider. “Twist your handlebars more to the left.”
I did as Larry asked and twisted the handlebars further to the left and was able to see the buildings were indeed side by side with no space between them. The only sound other than our own voices was the Raider’s idling motor.
“As far left as you can turn them; what’s that?”
Twisting the handlebars completely to the left illuminated a set of gears, “There’s nothing there but a huge set of gears at the edge of the garden outside those buildings.”
Larry was already walking, “Let’s get a closer look.”
[page break]
I followed, riding to within a few feet of the gears. Discarded from some long ago industrial era they looked as out of place as we were in this futuristic city. Trees randomly planted close by had grown too large cracking their containers. Behind the garden was a large charcoal gray colored building; it was at the limit of the Raider’s headlight beam and rose upwards for more than ten stories.
“Shine your headlight directly on the framework holding the gears,” said Larry who’d walked over to stand beside the gears and was pointing at the framework. “There’s a type of writing or marking etched into the metal.”
I’d forgotten Larry had acute vision and would’ve been able to spot most anything under the rust, “What’s it say?”
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair,” said Larry as he kneeled down for a closer look. “Hey, I’m just kidding and my apologies to Percy Shelley. What’s written are simply the instructions on how to open the entryway doors leading to the buildings.”
I’d left the motor running on the Raider and gotten off and walked to where Larry was standing, “So what exactly does the writing say?”
“It says,” answered Larry at the same time he turned the lower gear one complete turn to the right, “simply to twist the lower gear one complete turn to the right and then the top gear three complete turns to the left to turn on the lights and open the entryway’s doors. They’re just directions; I’m sorry the writing wasn’t more poetic.”
I’d positioned myself by his side so I could help, “It shouldn’t have turned that easily;” I said, looking at the rust built up on the metal, “maybe you should be more careful turning the top gear three turns to the left?”
Larry had spun the lower gear to the right as easily as if it had greased bearings, “You’re right, it was too easy, which is why I’m going to twist the top gear just as quickly.”
“Do you,” I asked knowing we were going to find out anyway, “think it’s a trap of some kind?”
“If the only way of getting into these buildings to deactivate the computer,” answered Larry, “means moving these gears in a series of right and left turns then we’re going to find out if it’s some kind of trap real soon.”
“Those buildings have vertical slits for windows and none lower than the second story,” I knew I was pointing out the obvious. “And the entryway doors might as well have been built for a bank vault; they’d keep most anything out.”
“Or in,” added Larry at the same time he started turning the upper gear to the left, “we’ve no other choice but to follow the directions if we’re to get inside.”
The elevated highway I’d ridden into the City on ended at the entryway doors leading to the buildings; opened they would’ve allowed a truck to enter. How far we’d be able to ride after we’d gotten in was anyone’s guess. Our ride could end just past the entryway or continue on using a series of causeways to intersect with other buildings as well as other levels. We wouldn’t know until we were inside.
At the completion of third and final turn Larry let go of the upper gear and stepped back. Nothing happened. The only sound was the sound of the Raider’s idle and our breathing. Or maybe we were idling and the Raider was breathing?
“We’ll,” I said, “have to find another way; these gears must’ve been someone’s idea of a practical joke.”
“Quiet!”
“I was just saying that…,” I tried to continue.
Larry pointed towards the charcoal gray building with one hand and put his fingers to his lips with the other, “The building’s beginning to glow and the doors just moved.”
Larry’s keen senses had detected the changes before I could and now that’d he’d drawn attention to them I could also see both the movement and the glow. The glow was gradual, growing in intensity until it bathed the space out to and beyond us in a blue gray light. The movement of the doors was equally as gradual but steady and stopped only after they were completely open.
There’s a scene in Frank Baum’s THE WIZARD OF OZ when the doors to the Emerald City open and Dorothy and her companions stand in wonder of what they see inside. What Dorothy didn’t see was a thin man with a long face wearing clothes tailored for a Charles Dickens character about a hundred feet past the doors. He was waving his hands and motioning for us to hurry and enter as the doors were already beginning to close.
“In for a penny,” laughed Larry as he ran forward.
Not wanting to leave the Raider and knowing we’d need it at a later time, I yelled, “In for a pound,” ran back, dropped it into first gear and proceeded to accelerate through the rapidly closing doors. Their slamming behind me punctuated the finality of our decision.
“I’ve only a short time,” said the man who really did look like he’d just stepped out of a Charles Dickens novel, “to tell you how to get through the City and to the airfield where your friend’s waiting. He needs you to bring him something.”
“You’re a hologram aren’t you;” said Larry as he moved to get a closer look, “you’re flickering in and out of focus? How can we trust you; you’re just a projection?”
Before Larry and I could move the man had walked through both of us, turned around and walked back through us again.
“Not only am I a hologram,” said the hologram, “I’m the unintended projection of a program that was supposed to have been purged. I designed and built the very computer you’ve come to destroy.”
I walked a few feet closer, “Isn’t there some way we could just reprogram the computer to stop sending nightmares into dreams; destroy is a bit extreme don’t you think?”
“Oh, make no mistake you’ll have to destroy it and me as well; if you don’t, it, rather we, will destroy you.”
Larry and I circled the man more than once trying to find from where he was being projected but with no success. We finally gave up looking for the source and accepted the fact he was indeed a hologram.
“Why,” Larry asked in a genuinely concerned voice, “would you want us to destroy something you created and in the process yourself; aren’t there other options?”
“As I’m sure you already know, and as your friend nearly fatally found out, my creation has become quite dangerous; there are no other choices.”
I interjected, “When you speak of our friend are you referring to our friend Charon; he visited this place ahead of us. He had to short-circuit the computer before it awakened so he could escape?”
“Ah yes, the legendary Charon, the incarnation of the river Styx;” laughed the hologram, “actually I was the one that gave him the idea on how to do it. When I saw he wasn’t going to escape I got lucky and was able to interface with his mind and give him the idea of releasing all his water to short-circuit the relays. The computer never sleeps. It was a mistake I made when I designed it. I didn’t realize that without sleep it would continue to self-diagnose until it hallucinated then went mad.
“Your friend may have thought the computer was asleep but it wasn’t. It was no more asleep than a spider’s ever asleep waiting to be awakened by the slightest touch to its web. I tried to warn him away telling him it was a trap; I even tried to tell him not to return unless he brought the cavalry but by then his mind wasn’t open to communication.”
Larry interrupted, “Charon did say something or someone reached out to him when he was escaping; was it you?”
Memories of making a high school science report on the scientist that invented the lens used in lighthouses flashed before me as well as his portrait, “You look a lot like the French scientist that invented the lens used in lighthouses. He died in 1827 of tuberculosis; you can’t be him?”
“Yes and maybe,” answered the hologram tipping his hat. “Augustin Fresnel at your service; call me Augie. And yes, I did invent the lens, but a maybe to having died. I remember going to sleep thinking I was going to die but awakening here; maybe this place is somewhere between life and death?”
Fifty feet beyond where we were standing began a circular on-off ramp. It rose spiraling upwards for three stories until it intersected with an overhead road that entered the charcoal grey colored building. That building as well as the buildings blurring into the distance behind it glowed with the same blue gray light and were similarly interconnected with spiraling ramps and causeways. If Larry and I were to travel throughout the city it would have to be by way of those same overhead roads, ramps and causeways.
“Augustin,” I said, “that means you’ve been here almost two hundred years.”
“It’s Augie; and yes, it would’ve been almost two hundred years had I not recently been changed into a hologram. In essence had my creation,” and Augie reached upwards as if to embrace the charcoal grey building, “not grown beyond my ability to control it and had I not been so arrogant in thinking I could regain control we’d be shaking hands, real hands.”
Larry was inspecting Augie starting with Augie’s head then moving down to his feet, “Do you mean literally changed?”
“The Munchkins,” answered Augie, “would’ve said positively or undeniably but literally will do. Actually the change was painless. One second I was as real as the two of you and attempting to download a safety protocol into the computer; the next second I’d been pixilated into an electromagnetic algorithm. Simply put my creation didn’t like having a leash put on it and zapped me. What it doesn’t know is I was able to interface with the thing sent to zap me just before I was zapped. I prefer calling the thing the Hunter.”
“Are you,” asked Larry straightforwardly, “the Hunter?”
“No…I mean yes, but not yet. Fortunately I’d written the Hunter’s program and interfaced with it before I was zapped. I’m now its initiation sequence. I appear just ‘before’ the Hunter arrives to destroy whatever the computer sees as a threat. The irony is I’m being generated by the very thing sent to destroy me. Think of me as the strawberry you think of when someone tells you “DON’T!” think of strawberries.”
“Do you see us,” I already knew the answer, “as a threat?”
“Oh most positively, absolutely, undeniably,” answered Augie in his best Munchkin voice, “You’re a threat, not to me when I’m Augie but to me when I become the Hunter.”
Since we’d first started talking with Augie the blue gray glow coming from the charcoal grey building’s windows had been changing to a blue green that in turn was now changing to a yellowish green. I’d seen the same shade of green in the eyes of a Nile crocodile. Discovery Channel had run a special on the monstrous reptiles. The cameraman had gotten a close-up of a crocodile’s eyes just before it grabbed a zebra that had wandered too close to the river.
“Are you sure you’re not here to stall us,” said Larry as he began to unscrew the cap on the second of Elisa’s three bottles of coffee, “until the Hunter arrives?”
“Of course I’m here to stall you but I’m also here to warn you and to give you this map; there’s a path on it the Hunter can’t step on. I know I created him; I’m him.”
Augie blurred for a moment as if his transmission had been interrupted and for a moment his eyes glowed with the same yellowish green crocodile eye color I’d seen coming from the building’s windows. A second later he flickered back into focus and appeared again as the Charles Dickens character Larry and I had first seen. A second after that he walked quickly to where the Raider was parked and touched its gas tank. There was a flash as bright as an arc welder flash.
“I’ve downloaded a map with the path onto the top of your tank; the path’s route starts at the top of this ramp,” said Augie with heighten urgency while pointing at the base of the ramp. Augie blurred again, “The Hunter’s nearly here; I can feel his presence. You’ve no time to waste.”
Larry and I were aboard the Raider and riding up the ramp before Augie finished talking. Downloaded into the top of the gas tank, the map was telling us to turn left, a left turn that would lead us into the charcoal grey building Augie had recently turned to as if he were being summoned.
“Riding into that building’s a mistake?”
“Maybe not;” replied Larry, “maybe Augie knew the key to destroying the Hunter was to go to its power source not run from it? We’ve got to trust that Fresnel, I mean Augie, means to help us.”
Below us on the level where Larry and I were moments before the lights dimmed to the color of a crocodile’s eyes and a deep kettledrum beat began. And the beat sounded like the engine beat I felt and heard as a young sailor when I was at sea aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lexington just before I went to sleep, and it would resonate throughout the ship like the throbbing of a giant heart.
“Take a look at what’s going to be chasing us;” said Larry pointing to the bottom of the ramp we’d just ridden up, “our friend Augie has become the Hunter.”
[page break]
“You can’t say Augie didn’t warn us,” I said taking a quick peek at our pursuer.
Any resemblance to Augie was gone. In his place was the Hunter. Looking more like a larger than life Olympian athlete, I couldn’t help but wonder had the Greeks envisioned their gods looking like this when they created their mythology? I then had the horrible thought our Raider wouldn’t be fast enough to outrun him.
“Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum,” laughed the Hunter whose eyes glowed with a yellowish green light. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”
“He looks pretty solid for a hologram; I vote we not wait to find out how solid,” said Larry hurriedly gesturing for me to continue following the map’s path.
The map Augie downloaded onto the Raider’s gas tank was a type of GPS directing us to follow a narrow causeway into the building I was certain housed the computer. It was the same building Augie had turned to in a gesture of embrace. The path on the map was colored yellow and I couldn’t help remembering the song’s lyrics in the movie THE WIZARD OF OZ “…follow, follow, follow, follow; follow the Yellow Brick Road…” With no other choice I put the Raider into gear and rode into the building. Larry had already taken a bottle of Elisa’s coffee out of the bag.
Once inside we saw only the small laptop described by Charon on a tiny wooden table in the alcove of a large room. Beside the table was a wooden chair. A common household extension cord ran from the laptop to a floor stand at the base of five parabolic rings. Floating upwards towards the ceiling in order of increasing size, each ring had about two feet of distance separating one from the next. Nothing joined them together but the space between them. The rings ranged from a foot to nearly three feet in diameter. An empty soda can and a Hopalong Cassidy lunch box were also on the table. The rest of the room was bare. The huge processor Charon described must’ve been in the next room.
“I was hoping,” said the Hunter at the same time he flickered into existence about fifteen feet away, “it wouldn’t have been this easy. I was looking forward to the chase. Fresnel may or may not have told you; you’re safe as long as you remain on the map’s path. What he forgot to tell you is the path leading you through and eventually out of the City has a habit of fading away and reappearing…which it will begin to do in a few minutes; I need only be patient and wait.
“After I deal with the two of you, and I think I’ll take my time after the mess you caused back at the dome, I’m going to finally purge Fresnel from my program. He’s been my mentor and I can’t forget he created me,” and the Hunter’s face showed genuine sadness, “but he’s become a pest.”
“If you’re punishing us for our sins,” Larry asked as he walked towards the alcove, “did Elisa and John make it out?”
“Yes, they did, and that’s another reason I’ll take my time with you two;” answered the Hunter, “you’ve found a way to rescue, to unmake cyborgs, and I need to know what it is.”
Larry removed what looked like a large wad of thick twine from the backpack Elisa had given him.
“Speaking of unmaking, did you know,” said Larry, “that among the Hawaiians certain patterns were only to be woven into dreamcatchers by their healers the Kahunas? For the sick it was a blessing to have the web placed over them. The disease would be drawn into the web where it would become trapped in the web’s strands. Free of their disease the sick were able to heal. Kahunas were only feared by the evil ones, the ones that brought disease or those that came to harm others.
“I’ve no interest in Hawaiian folklore,” said the Hunter, “and you better take a drink of whatever you’ve got in that bottle; you’re not going to have time to finish it.”
“It’s coffee!” I shouted. “We’ve more than enough; it’s a special blend from a special friend.”
“Have some,” said Larry just before he unscrewed the cap, took in a mouthful of coffee, put the cap back on the bottle, and then threw the bottle at the Hunter.
With a movement almost too quick to follow the Hunter reached out and caught the bottle. I’d not seen anyone move that fast since Hilts had drawn his Colt .45 revolvers against the Cyclops or Charon had moved in front of Larry and me to protect us from the carnival nightmares that had stolen Marnie’s Borderland.
“You forget,” laughed the Hunter as he popped the cap off the bottle and drank the remaining coffee, “that I’m virtually a hologram. This potion may have stopped the Wheelers and even a Sentinel but it has little effect on me.”
Larry was standing over the laptop with coffee running down his chin and spewed out, “it’ll have an effect on you if you’re unplugged?”
If the Hunter had been fast catching the bottle of coffee thrown at him he now moved as if in slow motion trying to get between the laptop’s keyboard and the coffee Larry had spit out of his mouth. His “Dooooooon’t,” sounded like a record player when the power’s cut. Larry’s mouthful of coffee had already rained down onto the laptop shorting it out and the electromagnetic field holding the suspended parabolic disks. Power to the Hunter had been taken away.
“Hey, over here,” I shouted.
My shout was enough to get the weakened Hunter to look at me and for Larry to throw the wad of thick string at him. Upon release the wad of string opened like a Hawaiian fishnet into a king size edition of one of Elisa’s dreamcatchers and wrapped itself around the Hunter’s body.
Like cheese through a grater, the Hunter was shredded between the web’s strands, and it happened as fast as when Raggedy man was shredded. The difference being some of the pieces on the other side of the dreamcatcher immediately began to coalesce into Augie; the pieces that were left melted, turning into a yellowish green smoke then drifted away.
What else was in Elisa’s backpack of tricks? We’d already used her special coffee to stop the Wheelers and a Sentinel; and now we’d used her dreamcatcher to stop the Hunter.
“I start from the back. Once I’m doing the fender I’ll envision the next part.” -Billy Lane of CHOPPERS INC
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