Renegade Robot

Five

It wasn't long before they heard Randy bellowing for them to get their asses back to the truck pronto. Wyatt and Jalopy shuffled slowly, in no hurry to get yelled at some more, but their pace only fueled the fire. Randy was furious by the time they arrived.

"I suppose you know what you've done!," he shouted. "And I suppose you're pleased with yourselves! I should've known I was sheltering a couple of no-good do-gooder traitors. What's your game, anyway? Only tag the small fry just to let the big fish get away? Is that what you're up to? Who're you working for anyway?"

Wyatt held up his hands as if surrendering and said,

"Boss, Randy, woah, slow down, man. We don't know what you're talking about, do we, J?"

Jalopy shook his head.

"No, man," he said, "What gives?"

"What gives?" Randy nearly screamed. "What gives? Besides you two giving me a heart attack? Jesus H. Crickets. Why'd you let the snake get away?"

"What snake?" Wyatt asked.

"We didn't see any snake," Jalopy stated.

"Of course you did," Randy said. "I've got it all on video. What? You didn't know you were being taped? We all are, all the time. City, county, state and federal. All of them see all of us and everything we do. I'm going to catch bloody hell because of you two, but you, you've done got yourselves out of a job, as of today, as of this moment, as of right now, you got me?"

"We didn't see nothing, boss," Jalopy insisted.

"Oh no," Randy waved his arms around, "Don't give me that. Hazel, you got that queued up yet?"

"All ready, Randy," she replied from inside the tanker.

"Let's take a look, shall we, boys?" Randy sneered, "and then you can tell me you didn't see nothing."

They followed him to the driver's side door, where Hazel had pulled out a tablet computer and played them the video - as seen from Wyatt's extinguisher's nozzle. There it was, the little ape-like creature spitting out the note, and Jalopy reading it, and saying the magic word which made the creature vanish instantaneously into the dirt. Wyatt and Jalopy exchanged puzzled glances. Surely it wasn't a snake. Anyone could see that. It was more like a mini-gorilla. They both started saying the same thing at once.

"It was just restoring butterflies. See the note?" and Jalopy handed it to Randy who snatched it, stuffed it in his jacket pocket and said,

"I suppose you believe everything you read?"

Jalopy could only shrug. Wyatt was only wishing he was miles and miles away.

"I know you boys think I don't know squat," Randy told them. "I know you think old Haze and me are just a couple of redneck bumpkins, but we've been in this business since the very beginning. We knew right away this was going to be a job for professionals, so we ditched our termite gig and headed West to the nearest major infestation. Contrary to your popular belief, she and I know exactly what we're doing, and we know what's a snake and what is not. And this one here, this is the big one. I know it. They call it the Renegade Robot. Goes around pretending to be one of those do-gooders, but its plans are anything but doing good. We had some solid data it was here. Why do you think we came? Because we had nothing better to do? We're out to catch that thing, not just say hello all polite-like and then just wave it bye-bye."

"We didn't know," Jalopy said.

"Yeah," Wyatt piped up. "You could have filled us in."

"I've never been sure about you two," Randy said, "Now I know I was right. Consider yourselves finished, boys. Finito. Better find yourselves some other line of work, because this door is slamming shut in your faces," and with that, Randy climbed into the cab as Hazel moved over, and he literally did slam the door shut in their faces. With a roar, the tanker lurched and made off, kicking up pebbles and dust in the faces of the two newly unemployed former botniks.