Freegans part 27

Matt
As we ran, I kept my eyes and ears peeled. Suddenly I heard the sound of running footsteps behind us. Whoever it was was trying to be quiet, but they were still making noise.
"Hey Cara, do you-"
"I know, I can hear it too. Right. Ben, you, Lucy, and Matt take the left. Madiza and I will take the right. I'm not going to be captured a second time." She left no option for argument. We moved to our respective sides of the tunnel, and soon the owner of the footsteps came into view. It was a tall man.

He obviously wasn't one of the Junkmen, since he was about six feet tall, and dressed in black material. He had a beret cocked to the side of his head, and carried a big gun. "That's a plasma rifle," Madiza whispered. I barely heard the words. I'd heard that those were illegal, but obviously not. It was clear who this was: he was from the vice president's army, probably here to kill us. Or, failing that, to capture us. I didn't want to have either happen to any of us. So, when Cara gave a signal, we attacked.

I tackled his legs, knocking him to the ground. The others piled on top of him. However, he was shown to be a better fighter than we thought. He used several complicated judo moves, it seemed, knocking us every which way. "Don't let him point the gun at you!" yelled Madiza. She pulled out her tazer and fired at him, but he did something with the gun so it sort of absorbed the electricity.
"Wait!" he said above the commotion. "I'm not here to hurt you!"
"Like heck you're not!" snarled Cara.
"No, really! I'm a friend! I want to get you out of here!"
Cara raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Prove it."

At that instant, the man suddenly said, "Get down!" He lifted up the rifle. We ducked, just in time for him to blast the robot and Junkman sneaking up behind us into little tiny bits. We stared in shock at the smoldering mess.
"That proof enough for you?" he asked. After a second, I got up and said, "Works for me!"

Freegans part 23

Cara
Unfortunately, we had forgotten about the robots. While we had been talking to the Junkmen, about a dozen more had joined them, so now they attacked us. Of course, we fought back. Ben used his marshal arts skills to smash in several metallic skulls, and Madiza was zapping them with her tazer, and us normal humans did the best we could. I had on my levitation boots, which made it a bit easier. I could zip up out of their reach, and suddenly crash down on them, or kick them. Matt had found a piece of piping, and used it to hit. Suddenly, we heard a shrill scream. Lucy was trapped in a net growing out of one robots arm, and another one was pointing his drill arm at her head. The meaning was clear. Madiza clearly wanted to shock them, but didn't want to risk hurting her. So we surrendered.

In three blinks of an eye we were surrounded and tied up, then slung over our captor's shoulders. Lucy was crying quietly. I could tell she was upset at being captured so easily, but there was really nothing we could have done. The Junkmen awoke, and glared at us maliciously. "Take them to the Room of Horrors," said their leader to the head robot. With that we were marched off. I felt a shiver run down my back. I wondered what the Room of Horrors was. Something told me, probably the name, that it would not be pleasant. The robots went down a long, dark pipe. On the way, I saw another car with a drill on the end, which had more Junkmen in it. The robots stopped and waited for it to go by before continuing. The Junkmen spat at us and called us 'filthy topsiders'. 'Sheesh,' I thought.

Suddenly we came to a door. It was a simple one, made of wood, with no lock on it. That was strange to me. Why not bother locking the door, if it was supposed to be so horrible? The robot carrying me opened the door, and dumped me inside. The others got the same treatment. Once all of us were in the room, a robot walked over to a small lamp in the center of the room. It lit the lamp, and then all of them left, slamming the door. Madiza and Ben managed to wriggle out of their ropes, and then they untied us. "This room doesn't look that scary," said Matt, rubbing his wrists. "I wonder why-" He stopped. His face suddenly twisted in a look of pure terror. I was confused, until a peculiar smell hit my nose. It was sweet, yet at the same time musky. Instantly a dark cloud swam before my eyes. Strange shapes and twisted visions loomed out of it. I didn't know what had happened to the others, and was too terrified to care. Unknown horrors would soon appear from that cloud, and when they did, I would be done for!

Freegans part 22

Ben
The three men were all very short, probably about as tall as Lucy, if not shorter. They all had on big goggles covering their eyes, and leathery clothes. I thought they looked a little bit like leather moles. The one in front, who appeared to be the leader, stepped out of the car and demanded, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"That's none of your business,"Cara replied. She folded her arms across her chest stubbornly. I could tell this would not end well. The man who had spoken walked forward and looked Cara in the face, which wasn't all that impressive, since he was so much shorter.
"We are the Junkmen. EVERYTHING underground is our business," he said. "This is our world."
"Funny, I don't see your name on it anywhere," said Cara. Lucy and Matt both winced slightly.

For a moment the head Junkman looked about to explode. Then suddenly his face relaxed, and he smiled.
"I apologize for acting so rough. You see, we're not that used to having topsiders down here." He held out his leather-gloved hand, and just as Cara was about to take it, Madiza suddenly turned her tazer on him and his two buddies! The leader was knocked off his feet!
"Madiza!" Cara yelled. "What were you thinking?!" I was rather annoyed myself. I always knew Madiza was crazy, but didn't think she had an itchy trigger finger.
"I only stunned them," she replied mildly.
"That's no excuse! He was just trying to shake my hand!"

"No he wasn't," said Madiza. To our surprise, she walked over, and took something out of the Junkman's hand. It was a small glass vial, with some liquid inside.
"Poison," she said softly. "Mostly cyanide, but there is also some strychnine, and a few drops of a newly invented poison known by anti-consumerists as 'Gwilliam's Venom', due to the vice-president's maladjusted antisocial tendencies and slightly murderous nature." Her voice was different, sounding a little bit like a scientist. “Upon shaking your hand, the vial would shatter, and the glass shards cut open your hand, leaving the poison free entry into your bloodstream.” All four of us gaped at her, before Matt finally managed to find his voice.

"How-how did you know that?!" Madiza looked at him for a second, then said in her normal voice, "I don't know." She blinked a few times, then slipped the vial of poison into her pocket, along with the tazer. She then started down the tunnel. After a second, we followed her. I was thinking to myself, "Will wonders never cease?"

Freegans part 21

Lucy
I was frozen with terror, which wasn't that surprising, considering the robot. Actually, there was more than one. I counted at least twelve. They all had what looked like primitive deep-sea diving gear on the tops of their bodies. Some of them had large drills for arms, or nets, or other weird contraptions. However, their legs were different. Some had eight giant spider legs, some had four dog legs, and even a few had human legs. My heart was seized with terror.

Suddenly, they attacked us! I was grabbed by one of the robots in front, and hoisted into the air. I was too frightened even to cry out. I couldn't even move. Suddenly, there was a loud crunching noise, and the robot dropped me. I looked up, just in time to see Ben give the thing another roundhouse kick to the dome, crunching it in. Sparks leaped from broken wires as it fell in a rusty heap.
"How did you do that?!" I gasped. Ben grabbed a pen, and wrote quickly, 'Consumerists are always kept physically fit, and have to learn some kind of sport. I took martial arts.'

The others seemed to be getting on all right. Cara and Matt had found some pipes in the pack, and were now swinging them at the other robots, whacking everywhere they could reach. Ben ran to the pack and grabbed a pipe of his own. He seemed to be everywhere at once, fighting like a maniac. He was so brave.

Suddenly I noticed Madiza. She was holding a weird gun thing in her hand. Suddenly she pointed it at one of the robots, and pulled the trigger. A blast of electricity shot out of the end, shooting it straight backwards and into the big hole! Madiza stared at the gun in shock for a second, then her face split into the widest grin I had ever seen. The next instant she started shooting at top speed, several times nearly missing us. The good news was that the robots felt she was the greatest threat, and so concentrated their attacks on her.

I could tell that Cara wanted to help, but there didn't seem like anything to be done. Secretly I felt relieved. Madiza could probably handle herself, and if she couldn't, well, then at least we could take this opportunity to escape. I ran to Cara. "Do you think you could fly us across the hole?" I asked.
"There's a limit to how much weight these boots can take. And besides, we're not leaving Madiza," she replied.
"Why not? She's just a loony. She's slowing us down!" Cara stared at me in shock. I was a bit surprised myself. I didn't usually talk like that about anybody.

"Well, we have a rope. Cara could fly across the hole, then attach that rope to the ceiling or something, and we could get away like that," said Matt.
"Whatever we do, we need to do it now!" I screamed. Cara stood up, and had just lifted off, when a voice yelled, "Stop!" Madiza instantly quit shocking the robots, who had frozen in place. We looked past them, and saw a strange car. It was a very small one, with a big drill on the front. Inside were the oddest people I had ever seen.