The Shape exploded out from my eye, takin’ form as a fireball that raced over harsh blue dust and into a critter with more tentacles than I wanted to count anytime soon. It let out a noise like a cross between a little girl’s shriek and the cry of a wounded rabbit. Come to think about it, those two sounds are an awful lot alike, ’cept this was worse because somethin’ that had tentacles covered in screamin’ mouths shouldn’t sound like that. It wasn’t natural.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” I growled, puttin’ some extra oomph into my legs as they commenced to gettin’ me the hell outta there.
Not that I had any place to go, really, not on a world that seemed specifically designed to kill me.
The ground underfoot sent up clouds of blue dust with every step. “Hey, Ghost-Lite, you there?”
“Where would I go, Mr. Carson?”
“Rat. Call me Rat. Everyone does.” The second time I had to tell the copy to call me that. I reckoned it might be offended by the notion.
“Noted.”
Ahead lay a green-water swamp with trees more like fractal nightmares. What looked like human organs hung heavy on branches that were all right angles. I wasn’t about to see if they were edible; that’s for sure.
In front of me was an ugly swamp, while behind came monsters.
Yeah, monsters. Really. They were the first things I saw when I woke up on this damned … planet, or dimension or whatever.
My boots threw up clouds as I slid to a stop next water that seemed more jelly than H2O, thick and green and smellin’ like heated molasses. If the Jolly Green Giant hocked up a loogie, I imagined it would look like that scummy water.
“Any ideas?” I panted, voice rough with fear. A few dozen yards away, somethin’ that looked like a jellyfish the size of a forklift with a parrot’s beak in the middle of its bulbous, pus-covered body hopped my way usin’ razor-lined tentacles.
“My suggestion is … not the swamp, sir,” replied Ghost-Lite.
Well, whoop-dee-frickin’-doo. “Thanks for the [DELETED] obvious observation, Captain Obvious.” With no time to think, I let loose with another spell. A ray of white light shot from my palm and hit the jellyfish square, freezin’ it solid in less than a second. It exploded in a shower of icy fragments. Unfortunately, there were about twenty or so other monsters headin’ my way as fast as they could jump, roll, run, and ooze. Disturbin’ shapes that hurt to look at.
No time to lose, I began a slow run along the edge of the swamp, a pace I could keep up for hours even wearin’ NewTanium armor and enough weapons to start my own war. Too bad the guns were almost useless against anythin’ bigger than a bear. That’s why I had to use magic, but even my magic would run out eventually. Everythin’ costs somethin’, even magic. Ain’t nothin’ for free in this world or any other.
When I woke up an hour or so ago after that big ball of red and gray gas knocked me out, it was in the middle of a flat plain of blue dust. I mean blue dust everywhere without a rock or pebble or even a twig to mar the overall blue sameness. And that’s another thing … blue. Blue all around—the sky, the ground, everythin’. Not easy gettin’ your head around where you’re at when you can’t tell the sky from the dirt.
Oh yeah, no sun. Nothin’ to disturb that blueness. I had no idea where the light came from, but there was enough to keep the place in perpetual twilight. Enough to see by, but that was it. Still dim enough to squint.
It was after Ghost-Lite made its introductions as a construct of Ghost that the first monster attacked.
I had just risen to my feet and was studyin’ the mind-numbin’ sameness when I noticed movement from the corner of my eyes.
“What’s that?” I asked the AI, drawin’ my Glock 17 and thumbin’ the safety.
“I do not know, sir,” replied the program. “It looks as if something is tunneling beneath toward us.”
He’d hit the nail on the head. Plumes of azure dust, three inches thick where I was standin’, streamed into the air as the world’s biggest gopher headed my way. Dirt rose in a mound some eight feet across and three high. Distance was tricky, considerin’ the blueness, but best I could guess, it was close enough to worry me some. I aimed the Glock and fired.
Couldn’t tell if I hit—too much dust and stuff—but that didn’t stop me from tryin’ my best to put enough rounds into whatever it was to ruin its day. The pistol had been fitted with a twenty-round mag, courtesy of the Bureau, and I emptied the whole darn thing in less than ten seconds.
I musta hit the thing because dust and dirt exploded everywhere as what was below burst free to the above world. Big as a grizzly, that thing, and I call it a thing because I couldn’t categorize it. Think of a sponge, the natural kind that lives under the sea, not the ones you find at the grocery store, with white bony hooks all over and leprous lookin’, like they was ready to rot off in a hot second. Then throw in a few dozen dark-blue cat’s eyes covered in some sort of transparent, tough membrane. Got it? It’s close, but not close enough to the critter that was makin’ its way toward me at a good trot.
The spell that came to mind was one I’d cast dozens of times before, and it sprang into bein’ so quick I could scarce believe it. Blue flame covered my fist and the heat of it almost crisped my eyeballs, but I threw it at the monster and it hit square and true. I guess it must have been bone dry because it flared up and started to burn quick, lettin’ out a scream like an engine revvin’ into the red line before blowin’ out. Still, it stopped dead and burned, smellin’ like God’s own rottin’ garbage heap.
That was number one. Numbers two through … well, a bunch, came a few minutes later, kickin’ up more dust with the speed of their tunnelin’.
So I began to high-step it. Not much else I could do, considering I was facin’ more critters than I wanted to and my magic could only last so long. I’m good, but not that good.
That’s how I found myself puttin’ one foot in front of the other, joggin’ at a pace that wouldn’t kill me, because if I stopped, it would be the last of Mr. Rat.
As I jogged, I drank a bit from my small canteen and chomped down a few bites of beef jerky. It wouldn’t last me long, but it didn’t matter much because if I couldn’t find a way outta this place …. Well, you know the rest.
I left a trail of blue clouds behind me as I ran, steadily drinkin’ in the dry, stale air, the cries of my hunters spurrin’ me along. Hours or minutes later, I spied somethin’ in the distance, a darker blue against the sameness ahead, a break from the monotony.
“Ghost-Lite, can you magnify?” I puffed. The dust was gettin’ in my mouth, coatin’ my teeth and tongue. Yuck.
The DRAFTlite zoomed in on the anomaly and my heart performed a little stutter skip. Hills, harsh and ragged, but hills nonetheless. Barren blue rock as severe as screams cut the sky at hard angles, as hard as the strange fractal trees with their human-organ fruit. I looked off to the side where the gelid green water stank its sickly sweet stink and glanced at the trees.
Gone were the kidneys and hearts and livers that had hung on the cruel branches. Instead each right-angled wooden monstrosity held a human head that dangled by hair long or short. Instead of ragged stumps, the necks ended halfway down in a smooth skin, as if they had grown there. Perhaps they had, but it was more disturbing than any bloody end. Evidence of beheadin’ would mean that someone had placed them, rather than them growin’ there like peaches.
Peaches. What I wouldn’t give for a ripe one, sweet and soft. That got me thinking of Donna Mae Holbrook in Mrs. Harper’s 10th grade English class and the way her jeans hugged her hips and the heaviness of her breasts ….
I don’t know what I tripped on, but my mind’s wanderin’ was cut short by a mouthful of blue dust as I fell headlong, sprawling, scraping my nose on the dry, hard earth beneath the dust.
Terror flooded my senses because the monsters weren’t that far behind and I didn’t want no critter to be chompin’ on my gluteus maximus anytime soon. I scrabbled to my feet and commenced to steppin’ and fetchin’ because the burrowin’ things, the hoppin’ and crawlin’ things, were right behind—only a couple dozen yards. Fear did its best to get my energy levels up and I sprinted ahead a few more yards, increasin’ my lead, but I couldn’t keep the pace up forever, not luggin’ all my gear, not sloggin’ through a three-inch layer of dust.
The hills were a little closer, and I could see some details without the use of the DRAFTlite. They were as ugly as I feared, brutal-looking humps of stone that led off in the distance, parallelin’ my course.
Before I knew it, the swamp became a memory, the human-head fruit from hard-angled trees fadin’ behind. The critters kept comin’, only now they commenced to howlin’, a strange ululatin’ sound like the whale song of the damned.
“How … far to … those hills?” I panted, gulpin’ down more dust.
“A few hundred yards,” replied Ghost-Lite. “I do hope there is shelter there.”
“You … and me both, brother.” A stitch began naggin’ my side, pokin’ pins into my skin, and the coppery taste of blood coated the back of my tongue. I musta used up most of my reserves puttin’ a bigger lead on the critters after I fell. It wouldn’t be long before the tank went dry. I prayed that the monsters couldn’t climb worth a damn.
The closer I got to the hills, the more the details became evident, especially in the DRAFTlite. What I saw set my spirits a-plummetin’.
Those blue, harsh slabs of rock looked to be too tall and sheer for me to climb, and I was damn sure there weren’t any mountain goats in my ancestry. Boulders the size of boxcars littered the sheer sides of cliffs, and even though the walls were only fifty or sixty feet high, that was fifty or sixty feet I knew I couldn’t climb—so smooth were they. I also didn’t have anythin’ close to a levitation spell in my repertoire.
“Oh, damn,” I sobbed, more afraid than I’d ever been. “Oh damn, oh damn.”
Ghost-Lite cut into my pity party. “Look to center right, sir.”
Center right, center right … there! Barely bigger than a pinprick, it grew into a manhole under the magnifyin’ properties of the DRAFTlite. A split in the rock, a natural fissure that ran from top to bottom, it looked big enough for me to enter, but small enough to keep out most of the bigger critters, assumin’ they couldn’t flatten themselves like cockroaches.
Don’t go buyin’ trouble, Rat, I told myself, clingin’ desperately to hope. I needed that hope because if that wasn’t the way to at least a little bit of safety, I might as well pull a General Custer right here and go down hard, swingin’ for the fences.
Despite the pain in my side and the taste of blood in my mouth, I put on some considerable speed, because even if those beasts could follow me into that narrow crack in the cliff, I could pick them off one by one, makin’ every shot and spell count.
Sure I could.
Pant, pant, pant, pant. Damn, my lungs started hurtin’ and sweat was runnin’ down my face, minglin’ with the blue dust and givin’ me a face paint like those crazy Scots in Braveheart. What did they use again? Oh yeah, woad. Strange word, that. Woad … sounds like a kind of frog.
Before long I’d almost made it to the rocky hills—although ‘hills’ wasn’t the right word because they looked like giant slabs, monoliths that had been punched down into the earth by giants. In fact, most of monoliths seemed planed and smoothed by hand, not by weather, not that there was any weather about in this blue hellhole. The boxcar-sized boulders lay strewn about and I could see where they calved from the main body of the cliff face, perhaps due to some sorta violence or maybe by the force of the blow that planted the monoliths there. Wasn’t important. What was important was gettin’ my narrow ass into that crevice, and it looked to be comin’ up quicker than a blink. The critters behind set to howlin’ even louder, which was a feat because they were puttin’ out more decibels than a speed metal concert.
And I was in, pantin’ and heavin’ and wishin’ I was anyplace else. Hell, I woulda been happy to be back at home in Jackson, Mississippi, takin’ care of Dad’s pawn shop and flirtin’ with all the pretty girls who came in to sell their mamas’ jewelry.
Damn, but those Mississippi girls could turn a head or two, let me tell you. Good Southern girls with big hearts, big smiles and even bigger—
“Mr. Rat?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” Woolgatherin’ at a time like this? What was wrong with me? Next thing you know I’d become a Catholic. I slowed almost to a walk and had to pick up the pace again so I could get to the dubious safety of the crevice. “Thanks.”
“No problem, sir.”
The narrow confines of the crevice pressed in against me as I trotted in, and immediately the world around became dark, the sourceless light not darin’ to enter with me, even though the crevice was exposed to the uniform blueness of the sky. I had Ghost-Lite power up the nightvision.
The crack went farther than I thought, runnin’ straight and deep as far as I could see with the DRAFTlite. Up and up went the walls—sheer, unclimbable, and dark gray in my enhanced vision. From behind I heard the howlin’ of the critters, but they didn’t get closer and that bothered me a bit.
I took a peek and saw strange things I can’t describe hoppin’ and clamorin’ and tunnelin’ about like their asses were on fire and their heads was catchin’, but they didn’t bother to come close to the crevice. That made me happy, or at least less desperate, because the only thing that would make me happy would be findin’ my sorry ass back in the U.S. of A. bumping uglies with a girl with nice legs. That and a shot of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon.
“They look like they don’t wanna come in,” I murmured.
Ghost-Lite chimed in, “That would lead one to conclude that there is something here that they do not wish to confront.”
Damn, but that burst my bubble. I spun about and saw … nothin’. My heart hammered in my chest so hard that it felt like it would burst through my ribs. I turned back to the monsters, but only saw a cloud of blue dust.
“Can you do somethin’ about seein’ through all that?” I asked.
Blobs of orange, red, and yellow sprang into view and near knocked me sideways. It took a few minutes for me to understand that I was lookin’ at the world through the DRAFTlite’s thermal vision. Shapes better left undescribed bounced and rolled and blundered all through that cyan cloud, but they didn’t come too close to the crevice. One would break away from the mob of about a dozen critters, streak toward me, but stop abruptly before it got within ten feet of the cliff face.
Enough of this, I thought. Ain’t doin’ myself a bit of good lollygaggin’ around this place, and Daddy didn’t raise no lollygaggers.
Turning my back on the crowded scene outside, I made my way deeper into the crevice.
I went a few twisty steps before comin’ to the first branch, a soft angle to the right, but I stayed on the straight-ahead path. Gettin’ out of these bluffs or hills or whatever they were had to be my first priority. My breath came loud to my ears, harsh and deep, and I realized I was as scared as I’d ever been, more scared than at any other time in my life. Even more scared than when I lost my cherry to Elizabeth Moffat in 8th grade.
Elizabeth Moffat. Now there was a blast from the past, let me tell you. We were so young, but Lizzie knew what she was doin’, that’s for sure. Damn, when she touched my bare chest for the first time with her tongue I shook so much that I couldn’t hardly get that condom on. But Lizzie said ‘No glove, no love,’ so I got it on despite my tremblin’ fingers, and we commenced doin’ what people had been doin’ since the first of us walked upright.
“Oh, Rat, not you too!”
My skin went colder than the North Pole in January. I knew that voice, knew it better than I knew my mama’s. It was Tweezer, my best friend and Omicron’s Magician. What the [DELETED]?
I called out softly, “Tweeze, man, is that you?”
Somehow the voice came back to me faint but crystal clear. “You shouldn’t oughta come, Rat. It’s bad, worse than Truth or Consequences.”
What? Truth or Consequences? My stomach performed a slow roll as another, very different, blast from the past hit my brain with the force of a thrown brick.
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, had been a mission requirin’ two teams, one on point and the other as backup—an op from ten months ago after the word got out about the Bureau. The op was to track down and kill a nest of Scorpion Men (body of a scorpion/torso, arms, and head of a man—gross as all get out to look at) that kidnapped and presumably ate a few of the local Straights. If it had been one, only one team would’ve been needed, but reports showed that at least eight were involved.
Thing about Scorpion men is that they like their lairs underground, away from the hot New Mexico sun where summer temps could reach an easy one hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit. Team Alpha went down the hole to clean them out and to make sure there were no more. Team Etta’s job was to hang back and provide support in case of need.
Boy, was there ever a need.
Turned out there were thirty-two of those chiton-plated critters. Alpha took a pastin’, losin’ two guys to an ambush when the Scorpion Men broke through a tunnel wall. Joshua Delacroix and Peter Wynman were torn to bloody pieces by the hyper-strong, ten-foot-tall [CENSORED] critters. Alpha had a minigun; it was just a cryin’ shame Delacroix happened to be the one packin’ it when he got killed.
T or C turned out to be a crap party that culminated in the deaths of four Agents and the cripplin’ of two others, and that whispery voice that claimed to be Tweezer (I wasn’t sure it was old Tweeze by a damn sight, that’s for sure) said this was worse. I looked up at the narrow slice of blue sky shinin’ down between dark-blue rock and agreed wholeheartedly.
“Get out of here, Rat,” said Tweezer’s voice. “Get out before you get trapped in this place forever. Before he gets you.”
Before he gets me? “[BLEEP] my life,” I muttered, shaking my head.
Yeah, things were way worse than in Truth or Consequences.