Tin Man swung his hatchet and in one fluid movement he sliced Bart Young’s head from his neck. The head fell to the ground and lay there with its eyes still open. The rest of the body went over like rigor had already set in. Crash.
“I’m not an imbecile,” Tin Man said. “Nobody calls me names like that and lives.”
“He was a bit of a bully,” Emerson said, holding tight to the Penning trap, “but decapitation seems extreme.”
“He was the imbecile,” Tin Man said. “He had small goals, motivated by greed. I have no interest in anything as profane and temporal as power and wealth.”
“What then?” Emerson asked.
“Armageddon. The end of the world. Rulers and conquerors come and go with the passage of time. Some are remembered. Most are forgotten. There is only one way to truly be eternal and omnipotent. Destroy that which God created, and you become as a god yourself.”
This isn’t good, Riley thought. He wasn’t just evil. He was insane. And evil and insanity was a bad combination.
“I’ll give you a choice,” Tin Man said. “I’ll allow you to die as a gift to the strange matter. Or I can bury my hatchet in you.”
“I can’t let you do either of those things,” Emerson said, carefully inching away from Tin Man.
“You can’t escape me,” Tin Man said. “I have an army. They’re watching. They’ll advance if I give the signal. You have no way out. My army controls your access to the road, and to the west there’s nothing but ocean.”
Emerson was moving in the direction of the ocean. He was backing up across the meadow behind the house, keeping his eyes on Tin Man.
Riley was following, walking parallel to Tin Man.
“Thinking of suicide?” Tin Man asked. “Maybe leaping off the cliff with the trap? That would be interesting. I could watch it swallow the ocean and the cliff and work its way up to me inch by inch. And then there would be the glory of the ultimate death and rebirth.”
“There might not be rebirth,” Emerson said. “It’s one of those things that’s open to debate. And from what I’ve seen, the death part isn’t good.”
“The pain will be exquisite,” Tin Man said. “And it’s inevitable. I have you trapped.”
Emerson stopped and stood his ground. He and Tin Man were of similar height and build. Emerson was the younger of the two. Neither man showed any fear.
“I can’t give you the trap,” Emerson said.
Tin Man smiled. “Then I suppose I have to kill you.” Emerson set the trap on the ground and moved between the trap and Tin Man.
“Take the trap back to the car,” Emerson said to Riley. “I’ll join you when I’m done here.”
Riley rushed in and grabbed the trap. She wasn’t a cream puff. She went to the gym and worked with free weights, but the Penning trap was heavy and awkwardly shaped. She hugged it to herself and backed away until she was at a safe distance.
Tin Man crooked his finger at Riley. “Bring it here.”
“No,” Riley said.
Where the heck are the National Guard troops? she thought. Why weren’t they here? Why were they taking so long?
“I’m losing patience,” Tin Man said. “I have a mission. A destiny.”
He threw a hatchet at Riley, she jumped away just in time, and the hatchet sailed past her.
She wasn’t sure if he’d tried to sink the hatchet into her or the Penning trap. Not that it mattered. The result would have been equally deadly. Her heart flipped around a little, and she felt a shot of adrenaline get pumped into her system. It burned in her chest and took her breath away.
Tin Man ran at Riley and the trap, and Emerson tackled him, sending the hatchet flying into space. He struck Emerson several times with quick jabs to his head. Emerson’s head snapped back, and a trickle of blood rolled down his lip. They locked on to each other, rolling on the ground, doing a lot of punching and attempted eye gouging before ending up near the land’s end. Tin Man disengaged from Emerson and kicked him toward the cliff and the crashing waves a hundred feet below.
“Falling to your death isn’t the fate I imagined for you, but it will have to do,” Tin Man said, continuing to kick Emerson.
There were no thoughts in Riley’s head. Just instinct and adrenaline. She scooped the hatchet off the ground, charged Tin Man, and with as much strength as she could muster rammed the hatchet into his back.
Tin Man suddenly paused, hands in the air, shock registering on his face. “No,” he said. “This isn’t right. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to end.” He reached around, pulled the hatchet out of his back, and turned to face Riley. “You could have had a spectacular death, but now you’re just going to die.”
Tin Man raised the hatchet above his head and lunged at Riley.
Emerson pulled himself up, grabbed Tin Man’s arm from behind, and yanked him off his feet with enough force that Tin Man sailed off, hatchet and all.
Tin Man flew over the cliff like a giant Frisbee, plunging a hundred feet onto the rocks below. Emerson and Riley peered over the edge as a wave rolled in and washed the mangled body out to sea.
“Oops,” Emerson said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“He had bad karma,” Riley said.
Emerson nodded agreement and looked back at the Penning traps. Multiple military trucks, police cars, and an assortment of emergency vehicles were streaming down the driveway.
“They’re our guys, right?” Riley asked.
“Right,” Emerson said. “They’re our guys. The bad guys are the ones walking out of the woods with their hands up.”
“We should get back to the guest house and secure the Penning traps,” Riley said. “The police will want to talk with us.”
Emerson looked at the cliff and then back at Riley. “You saved my life.”
She grinned. “And you saved the world.”
“We saved the world,” Emerson said. “Now there’s only one thing left to accomplish.” He put his hands on her waist and drew her closer. “You need to knock my socks off.”
“Not until I see you naked,” Riley said.
“Deal,” Emerson said. “I was planning on getting naked anyway.”