Scarecrow Returns

THE BERSERKER’S head snapped grotesquely backward, hit in the nose by a single bullet from Mother, appearing from the other side of the cement mixer, her M9 pistol aimed across the cabin.

Unseen by anyone, after Zack had reversed his cement mixer into the Strela, she’d dived after it and caught hold of the cement mixer’s side-rail.

The berserker swayed for a moment, just long enough for Emma to reach out and grab his Samsonite case before he fell off the running board and disappeared into the fast-flowing river.

“Thanks, Mother—!” Zack called, but he was cut off by a jarring jolt as their cement-mixer-Strela hybrid ran aground against an outcropping of boulders on the south bank of the river.

They were ashore.

Mother looked westward, in the direction of the waterfall: it was barely a hundred yards away—

—when suddenly her view was blocked by the second Strela, bursting up and out of the river ahead of her, wheels turning, surging out of the water onto the shore.

“Fuck me,” Mother said, joining Zack and Emma.

She glanced over at the Antonov—it was now almost at the waterfall.

“Scarecrow!” she said into her radio. “I got Zack and Emma and one sphere-case, but we’re cut off from the cliffs!”

“I’m up to my neck in bad guys here, Mother,” came the reply. “I’m afraid you’re on your own this time—”

The signal cut off.

Mother pursed her lips.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Come on, kids, if we can’t get to the cliffs, we gotta find another way to dispose of these spheres before those bastards catch us.”

They hurried out of their shipwrecked cement mixer and dashed across the shore, heading south into the rugged mountainous interior of Dragon Island.