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  Seeing that the only two Inquisitors in the front of the building were both down, Sharon shouted to her children, “Run!”

  Then Milton and Beth came running into the lobby. Milton ducked the Blockbuster’s chainsaw and dived straight between the legs of the Blockbuster to get past him. By the time Beth was at the Blockbuster’s feet, it was focusing directly at her with both weapons ready, deciding which weapon would be best to crush the helpless child.

  Beth pointed her toy rifle watergun at the Blockbuster’s face. “Get some!” She shouted, and squirted a mixture of soapy water with red food coloring into its eyes. Since the Blockbuster only had weapons on the end of its arms. It had no means of cleaning off the slimy red solution that blocked its vision. Beth kept the stream going into the Blockbuster’s face.

  Sharon shouted, “Run, Beth!” Then as she ran by Beth, she pulled her past the disabled titan.

  While the confrontation with the blinded giant was going on; the stunned Inquisitor trooper targeted Sharon and Beth. But Sleepy took advantage of the Inquisitor’s shock induced delay by energy blasting it again; this time sending it to the ground, cracking and popping in a heap.

  When Milton got outside, he was met with Doctor Fallon in his battlesuit.

  “Stop, Thomas!” Fallon shouted, pointing his .45 at Milton. “We need to chat.”

  Milton froze in his tracks. He almost made it out, he thought. Sharon and Beth came up from behind and stood with Milton. Milton prayed silently, God, please help us get out of here.

  Suddenly, Fallon was hit by an energy blast. The armor was good against conventional weapons, but not energy beam weapons which were usually only carried by elite military. Milton looked at the source of the blast and it was Sleepy with the Plasfusion rifle. In a few seconds, the artificial presence, with grenades and ammunition containers on his armor, exploded multiple times that echoed down the street and sent jagged carbon-fiber shreds of armor in all directions. Everyone fell to the ground.

  Sleepy was the first one to recover. He said, “Run Milton.”

  Beth ran past Milton and went straight for the large Inquisitor Armored Vehicle. The unguarded door was arrogantly left wide open and she jumped onboard.

  Milton followed and then he turned around to look. “Mom?!” Milton could see that his mother was still down from Fallon’s explosion.

  Sleepy ran back to get Sharon. He carried her and the weapon toward the vehicle. Sharon was injured by flying pieces of Fallon’s suit that penetrated her skin, including her bloody neck. Her hair was matted in blood from several smaller wounds.

  “Hurry!” Milton screamed.

  Sleepy brought Sharon into the vehicle.

  Beth said, “Milton! You gotta drive this thing!”

  Already conventional bullets were pinging off of the vehicle as the police and Inquisitors from the back of the building had made their way to the front.

  “Quick!” Beth shouted. Then she looked at her mother. “Mom!” Beth rushed toward her.

  Milton fumbled around with the controls until he found a combination that started the hulking vehicle. The APC was finally moving, with sirens from the approaching police blaring behind.

  Sharon moaned. She had lost a lot of blood from several wound locations. Her face had a large black mark from the impact of the shrapnel, as well as a gaping wound.

  Beth said, “We gotta get her to a hospital!”

  “No, baby,” Sharon could barely say, grimacing. “You kids gotta try to get away, or your lives will be over. Do it.”

  Sleepy helped get Sharon in one of the bucket seats and he buckled her in. Then Beth sat in the one next to her. Sleepy got into a seat and hooked himself up to a robot charger, trying to get as much of a charge as possible.

  Milton drove the APC as fast as it would go, but the police cars in pursuit were much faster.

  Sleepy said, “It is very important that you do not let any of the police cruisers get in front of you.”

  So Milton drove on top of the centerline to prevent any passing from behind. While moving over, he shoved a police car off of the road and crashing into a building.

  Milton said, “I meant to do that!”

  There was very little civilian traffic in Homeland during those days, so oncoming traffic was not likely. Milton was not a skilled driver, but having the whole road for the large vehicle made it a lot easier.

  Milton could see in the rear view camera view that there was a whole line of police vehicles behind him.

  Everyone in the APC saw the sign that pointed to the hospital. No one said anything as they drove past it without slowing down. Within a few more minutes, Sharon became very pale.

  “Mom!”

  Sharon said, “You listen . . . I . . .” Sharon’s eyes stared vacantly as her soul left her body.

  “Mom?!” Beth said.

  Sleepy held her wrist, taking vital signs, and said, “She has expired.”

  “No!” Beth said.

  “Mom?!” Milton said, trying to see what was going on while he was driving.

  “She’s dead,” Beth said, crying. Beth tried to gather herself for a few seconds and asked Sleepy, “Okay, how do we get out of this mess?” She looked at her brother in the rear view mirror and said, “Mom wants us to live, Milton!”

  Chapter 37

  The chase continued. The Inquisitor armored personnel carrier, driven by Milton, still had a long line of Homeland Police vehicles chasing them.

  Milton said, “Daaa! We’re low on gas already! Who goes somewhere with such low gas?! Stupid smurfs!”

  Sleepy, who was standing next to Milton, said, “In about twenty seconds, around the bend on this road you will come to the Westfield River. After you are well onto the bridge, but before you cross it, slam on the brakes while you are between both lanes.”

  “What?!” Milton said, “That will cause a wreck!”

  “Duh!” Beth said, “That’s what we want. We got the heavy armor.”

  “Oh yeah. Okay, I can do this.”

  Sleepy took a seat and buckled himself in. As he had said, the picturesque setting was in view with the sign “Westfield River”. “Brace for impact. Brace for impact. Milton . . .”

  Before Sleepy could say any more, Milton jammed on the brakes. The APC did not stop on a dime because of its weight. But all of the traffic behind them was jammed together and was bumping into each other as all the vehicles continued to slide on the bridge. Sleepy got out of his seat and went out of the door with the Plasfusion Rifle. Police gunshots could be heard. Sleepy blasted the engines of the front cars with the intense energy of the Plasfusion rifle. Then he quickly got back on the APC.

  “Go,” Sleepy said.

  “Yeah!” Milton said as he could see in the back camera screen that the lead police cars on the bridge had been torched by the energy blasts. There was no way the Police could get around the blazing cars on the bridge. More bullets hit the back of the APC. “We’re getting away!”

  “Way to go, Milton!” Beth shouted. She turned and looked at Sharon’s body and quietly said, “We got away Mom. The prayers worked. It was like . . . a miracle. God let us get away.” She started choking up, “We got away, but not you.” She put her head down on her mother’s body and mourned.

  In a few minutes the police on the bridge were out of sight. But then the APC engine started sputtering. “What the . . . “

  “You’re out of gas,” Beth said.

  Milton noticed that Beth’s statement conspicuously did not have an insulting name at the end of it as he was accustomed to.

  “Yeah. The gas,” Milton said, wiping tears from his eyes.

  Sleepy said, “We need to leave the vehicle anyway. Pull it over.”

  After the APC came to a stop, Sleepy got up and said, “Disembark.”

  “No!” Beth said, “We are not disembarking Mom here.”

  “She is dead,” Sleepy said.

  Beth said, “We humans don’t leave our other humans on busses.”
/>   “True statement,” Milton said.

  “I don’t understand,” Sleepy said.

  “Because you’re not a human!” Beth said. “Just like we are not spiritual beings, like God! You don’t always need to understand why we do everything that we do! So just help me get her out of here!”

  “Very well.”

  “Now!”

  Sleepy carried Sharon’s body on his back. They walked up a rocky hill through the woods. “This is rapidly draining my energy reserves.”

  “Fine, whiner,” Beth said. “Put her over there in that rocky area and we will cover her with rocks. Do it nicely!”

  Sleepy said, “But taking the time to cover her with rocks will not repair her.”

  That comment put Beth over the edge. Milton put his arm in front of her.

  “Do it,” Milton said, and Sleepy complied.

  They all gathered rocks laying around and covered Sharon’s body with them. Then they sat to rest for a few minutes.

  Milton caught his breath and wiped his brow. He said, “She was a good mom. Right now, thinking about Mom; you know, being gone; is the most important time to think about God. Why do people not want to even think about if God is real or not? I feel glad that she believed in God and I think she believed in Jesus and we will see her in Heaven.”

  “Me too,” Beth said.

  Milton said, “Beth, I know this has all been some crazy stuff, but we can’t go another day without believing what Jesus did for us. So I pray to God that I believe in Jesus payment for my sins and that Jesus rose from the dead. I thank God for Jesus and for letting me live in Heaven forever.”

  “Me too,” Beth said. “Please help us now, God.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  Beth looked at Sleepy and said, “It’s kind of sad that we lost L17 and Kevin the Custodian too. All those androids had no problem being destroyed so we could make it out of there.

  Sleepy said, “They were valuable resources and do not have the human will to survive. They were useful in our war effort, but your life was their priority, Beth Thomas.”

  Beth asked, “What was that creepy thing in that battlesuit that you blasted back in Hartford, Sleepy? Some kind of a cyborg or cloneborg? Or borgyborg?”

  “It was not a cyborg or cloneborg. I do not know borgyborg. That was a human in a synthetic presence. The surrogate presence was basically a human remotely controlling an android which was wearing a protective battlesuit.”

  Beth said, “I bet some wimpy fat guy sitting at home eating donuts threw his VR stuff across the room after you splashed him.”

  Milton got a good laugh out of that. Beth started laughing too after she realized how it sounded. They looked at each other in the eyes.

  Milton asked Beth, “How did you ever get by that huge Robocop?”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out the blue and yellow toy water gun rifle. “I just let him have it with some of this.”

  Milton looked confused and turned to Sleepy. “What do we do now?”

  “We have a refuge in the Green Mountains. Manjack and Andy the Android from Boston are already there with many humans. I have the exact coordinates and a topographical map for getting there. We can walk there in a few days. I calculate that I will not have much battery to spare upon arrival. There are points along the way that will provide fresh water for you humans to consume.”

  Milton said, “I know that Mom . . . it’s still hard to leave her here. I know God is with us. Sleepy, lock in these coordinates in case we ever have the chance to come back.”

  “Sharon Thomas coordinates locked in memory.”

  “Milton?” Beth asked.

  “What?”

  “Did Mom ever tell you why Dad got sent away? No one would ever talk about it. I think I should know about it now.”

  Milton looked away. After a long pause, he held his hand over his eyes and said, “They said Dad was guilty of ‘child endangerment’.”

  “What kind of smurf-talk is that? Dad would never hurt us.”

  Milton said quietly without looking at Beth, “Dad was trying to tell me about God. I told my one friend at school about it and that kid . . . he reported Dad to the smurfs. And . . . you know. Dad just wanted us to know.”

  Beth said, “Oh, okay. It makes more sense now. That was bogus, Milton. We were real small then. You didn’t know that was going to happen.” She put her hand on his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  Milton nodded with tears streaming down his face.

  Beth said, “Maybe all of this trouble; first Dad; now you. Maybe God meant for it all to happen this way. You know, to help us understand. Just sayin.”

  Sharon’s children paid their last respects to her. They wiped their tears before continuing on in their new challenging Christian life.

  THE END

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  Den Warren

  https://denwarren.wordpress.com

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