The Havoc Machine by Steven Harper Page B

gushed from his chest wounds.
    “You will not…steal…my work,”
he panted.
“No one…will steal…work.”
    Before Thad could react, rats poured into the room. Tens and dozens and hundreds of them. They poured in from the door Havoc had used. They swarmed down from the balcony. They scampered down the spiral stairs. Thad had seen them before, but hadn’t noticed that theywere partly animal and partly mechanical. Metal claws scratched and sparked against the stones and their eyes pulsed a scarlet that matched the button on the back of Havoc’s heavy hand. The high-pitched squeal grew louder.
    “When enough arrive,”
Havoc said,
“rats reach…critical mass. Boom. You will die with my work…little thief.”
    Havoc slumped back and went still, but the button on his hand continued its red pulse. The half-mechanical rats flooding the room ignored Thad and Dante and the boy to swarm over Havoc’s body in a metal cairn, their scarlet eyes beating a dreadful rhythm that grew louder and pounded against Thad’s bones. A palpable heat suffused the very air and the pulse sped up.
    Thad shot a glance at the ten-legged spider on its junk pile all the way across the laboratory, then down at the boy on the table near him. The boy’s weight would slow Thad down and eat time. So would dashing across the room to grab the spider. Could he do both? Probably not. The pulse was blending now into a near-continuous sound of its own. He had to make a choice.
    Thad shook his head. There was no choice. Besides, he knew damned well he hadn’t really intended to save the invention anyway. Thad swept the ragged boy into his arms and sprinted for the doorway Havoc had used. A steady stream of rats rushed past him in the opposite direction, and his boots crunched some of them. They twitched, still trying to crawl toward Havoc’s laboratory. Thad ran up a ramp and found himself at door. Once again he was in Poland, but this time David was still alive. He smashed into the door with his shoulder, but itwasn’t locked, or even latched. It burst open and he stumbled into the chilly air of the courtyard, the boy still in his arms.
    “Sharpe is sharp,” Dante said. He had prudently moved to the back of Thad’s neck.
    The pulse had become a shriek. Thad ran. This time he would win. This time the boy would live. His arms ached and his lungs burned, but he ran. He vaulted over the pit and plunged through the curtain of vines. The boy huddled in his arms didn’t make a sound the entire time. Outside, the hill’s downward slope made it easier, though his legs were getting heavy and stitch cramped his side.
    The explosion shoved him forward with a rude hand. Heat washed over him and singed the hair from his neck. Thad curled around the boy and took the rolling bumps and bruises as his due penance. When they stopped rolling, Thad cautiously pulled himself away from the boy. His body ached in a way that told him his muscles would scream at him in the morning, but he didn’t seem to have any broken bones.
    “Bless my soul!” Dante squawked from the ground several paces away.
    “Are you all right?”
Thad asked the boy in Lithuanian.
“Can you walk?”
    The boy, still wrapped in his rags and scarf, nodded and got to his feet even as Thad, groaning, did the same. The castle, a ruin before, was now a total wreck. Multicolored flames danced against the night sky. So much for Havoc’s invention. Thad wondered if the villagers would come to investigate or if they’d stay huddled in their homes.
    “Let me see if you are injured.”
Thad tried to pull theboy’s scarf away, but the boy yelped and snatched himself back.
    “Na, na,”
he said. No.
    Thad put up his hands. What dreadful things had Havoc done that made the boy fear being touched?
“All right. I’ll take your word. We should leave now.”
    At that moment, Sofiya came galloping up on her clockwork horse with Blackie on a lead rein behind her. “What happened?” she demanded in English.