Officer Brandt responded to a call at Petroni’s Junk and Salvage Yard. He swung his legs out his cruiser’s door but sat while he finished his radio call.

Two women in babushkas and stout black shoes approached. Officer Brandt held his hand out to signal, “Halt.”

“I can take care of myself,” the shorter woman announced.

“I am through with you.” The second woman waved her hand menacingly in her friend’s face.

They walked on the uneven ground of the junkyard and teetered as if they might fall down.

Brandt returned the radio handset to its clip.

The two women threw themselves against the open cruiser door. Pain shot through Brandt’s legs, and tears blurred his vision as the heavy door ground into his shins.

“For God’s sake, ladies. Step back. Step back,” Officer Brandt spit out his words through clenched teeth.

Lines on the women’s faces deepened, and their lips puckered. Their eyes did not look at Officer Brandt. They slammed their weight against the cruiser door again, and the split clefts of their mouths mumbled as they pressed.

The pain knocked Brandt flat onto the seat.

He reached for his weapon and hesitated at the absurdity of firing on two women who looked like his great-aunts.

“I can take care of myself.”

“I am through with you.”

With force beyond the capability of their diminutive bodies, the women opened the cruiser door and put their shoulders into crushing his legs a third time. Brandt’s shinbones and fibulas snapped. Brandt howled in pain and anger. The muzzle of his gun caught in the steering wheel and slipped from his grasp.

“I am through with you.”

Brandt remembered seeing a man in the junkyard’s center near a pickup truck. “Help me! Somebody, help me!” Brandt screamed. He pulled himself up to the steering wheel. Panicked, he reached for his radio. The cruiser’s passenger door opened, and a man with gray hair and stubble on his chin stood over him.

“Where’s my dogs?”

“Get me out of here,” Brandt yelled, “they’ve broken my legs.”

The man moved his hands to encircle Brandt’s neck.

“Where’s my dogs?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I am through with you.”

The burble of voices retreated into Brandt’s subconscious as his vision dimmed.

Officer Clabard jumped out of his cruiser after coming to a gravel-spitting stop. He wore Kevlar body armor, his gun still in its holster, and his AR-15 swinging at his side. Hardened by tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he expected if called to duty on his home soil, it would be to protect against foreign terrorist activity. A junkyard was hardly the place, but he prided himself on being ready. An ex-marine, he moved with precise, rapid strides into Petroni’s Junkyard and surveyed the area.

He saw a man struggling on the passenger side of the parked cruiser, and two women turned and walked toward him.

“I can take care of myself.”

“I am through with you.”

Across the yard, a heavy-set man in a sleeveless tee shirt scrambled up the ladder to the cab that operated the junkyard’s cast-steel electromagnet. At the bottom step, a woman had her hand on the ladder. She had stark white hair and wore a print housedress.

Clabard saw what looked like a crowbar in her hand. I’ll sort those two out in a minute. First the patrol car.

The two elderly ladies advanced on him.

“On the ground, now!” he thundered. “On the ground!”

The shorter woman ignored his command and ran toward him.

“I am through with you.”

Clabard fired two quick rounds, aiming for center of mass. She went down. The second woman stepped over her and dashed toward him.

“I can take care of myself.”

He fired, and she fell. Close to the cruiser, he saw uniformed legs dangling and bloody on the driver’s side. Clabard clicked on his collar radio. “Code 3, Code 3. Officer down. Officer down. Send units Petroni’s junkyard.” He worked his way around the cruiser. The man had his hands firmly around Brandt’s neck and pulled him halfway out the door with a grip that crushed his windpipe.

Clabard saw that the officer’s face was blotchy red and his lips were blue. “Stop! On the ground!”

“Where’s my dogs?” The man turned and screamed at Clabard, “Where’s my dogs?”

He let go of Brandt, and limped toward Clapbard.

Clabard unloaded three bullets into him. His body spun backward.

Keeping close to a stacked row of pancaked automobiles along the edge of the parking lot, Clabard moved toward the junkyard offices and the woman with the crowbar.  His orders were to neutralize the threat and arrest offenders. With his heart racing and his mind questioning, Clabard looked up to see the woman from the crane in a headlong run toward him. She was only yards away.

“I don’t care; you can’t make me.”

“Stop right there! Do not take another step!”

The woman did not slow.

 Clabard chose a headshot. He fired and watched her body fly. It landed hard on the ground.

The junkyard worker reached the operating cab of the electromagnet. He swung it in a wide arc. Like metal filings on a workbench to a child’s magnet, the woman with the crowbar, the two babuska women’s bodies, and the man who cared about his dog flew through the air until the top of their heads clanked onto the electromagnet’s metal disk.

***

The Police Chief sat behind his desk and rubbed his palms.

“It wasn’t so much people, but machines.” The Chief shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “They were broken. A bad batch.” The Chief picked up a pen on his desk. “This is where it ends.” He tapped the pen point on a blank pad. “A malfunction. Hell, I don’t know what went wrong. ESecond Lab was experimenting with AI, biometrics, and human cloning.”

Clabard’s eyes squinted. He sat erect in the chair facing his boss, and felt his anger rise from his cramped toes up through his body until his fists were clenched, his neck tense, and his jaw clamped.

The Chief went on talking, “EScience was advance-aging their clones. Petroni has supplied the lab with odd parts for years. Maybe they wanted to return home to the junkyard or had it in for Petroni.”

“Those things, those things were machines?”

“Yes and, er no. Obviously, this is hush-hush stuff because the lab has a government contract. You want to stay out of trouble? Keep quiet. This never happened. This is where it ends.”

“And Brandt? How do you explain his death to his family, the rest of the force, and the town?”

The Chief rubbed his chin and stood. “It could have been worse if they’d walked into town instead. You did your job.”

The Chief bent over his desk to shuffle papers. Clabard looked up and saw the Chief’s nearly bald head had attracted three paper clips, a used staple, and a small watch battery.

“This is where it ends. This is where it ends.”