Free End Day by James Axler

looked like very expensive alligator boots. All except the littlest one, who was being carried like a child.
    Some kind of cripple, he thought. Poor thing had metal feet.
    McCreedy’s heart did a skip-tee-doo when the purple bunch turned and came right at him. His face flushed with fight-or-flight hormones. He wanted to retreat around the front of the vehicle but couldn’t make his legs move quickly enough. He didn’t notice the assault rifles they carried until the two-horned, front sight of one was jammed up under his chin.
    The eyes shadowed by the hoodie top were yellow. Not yellow brown or yellow green. Yellow yellow, as in a daisy. And the pupils were elliptical slits that ran vertically, like a reptile’s. The double-wide holding the gun had on a rubber, alligator Halloween mask; it and the daisy eyes had to be some kind of prank. Then the mouth opened, and he saw the rows of small, pointed teeth and the flicking tongue.
    As he sagged back against the fender, the creature holding the cripple leaned the little one’s head close to his ear. McCreedy opened his mouth to cry for help, but no sound came from his throat.
    It had only half a human face, the rest was metal. The eyes were both metal. As the fan-bladed pupils opened wider, they made a whirring sound like the aperture of a cheap video camera. Guy wires and grommets connected its cheeks and jaw. Where living flesh abutted the stainless steel it looked angry and infected. It shouldn’t have been alive, but it was.
    In a voice that sounded like wing nuts rattling in a tin can, it said, “You will drive us.”
    As McCreedy was bum-rushed around the front bumper to the driver door, he kept thinking that this couldn’t be happening. In desperation he looked to the slowly passing cars for help, which was absurd—it was Manhattan. No help was forthcoming.
    The limo sagged heavily, springs squeaking as the purple crew began piling into the rear compartment, invisible behind the black-tinted windows. Rough hands shoved him behind the wheel and slammed the door. The monster who got in the front passenger seat carried a very short, very deadly-looking assault rifle. It was only then he noticed the wicked amber hooks on both thumbs.
    â€œKeep the privacy screen down,” the little one said. “Do exactly as I say, or your brains are going to end up on the hood like three pounds of bird shit.”
    â€œYes, sir,” McCreedy managed to croak. “Where do you want to go?”
    The grating voice rattled off the address of a university hospital on the East Side. The bigger ones hadn’t made a peep. He wondered if they could even speak. Without signaling, he pulled away from the curb and forced his way into the sluggish flow of traffic.
    As they crept forward, he considered cracking a joke to break the ominous silence: “Hey, how ’bout those Mets?” But the eye-watering, cat-piss smell wafting from the limo’s passenger compartment made him change his mind.
    Like a meth ho’s thong, he thought.
    He glanced warily back in his rearview. They sat as still as statues on the white leather upholstery. If, in addition to being armed, stand-on-two-legs giant reptiles, they were tweakers, no telling how they would take a joke. Screw it, he needed to bail on the limo. Just get the heck out and quickly, before things got even worse.
    McCreedy studied the traffic ahead. If he had a sufficient gap in front or on either side, he could floor the gas, open his door and roll out. To shoot at him, they’d have to get out on the opposite side and fire over the roof or around the bumpers. By the time they did that, he would be running against the direction of traffic, keeping his head down, using the cars for cover. He’d seen the same scenario pulled off lots of times on TV and in the movies. And what choice did he have anyway? He was fairly sure if he didn’t do
something
, he was going to end up dead.
    As