by Dan H Kind
Chapter 33
The Adventures of Huck, Joe, and Ben
The College of Bill & Gary was quiet. Too quiet.
Huck shivered as the rain trickled down the brim of his straw hat and soaked his shirt. He and Joe and Ben had been walking through the campus for a while now, watching and observing, and had so far seen nothing out of the ordinary. Not a soul, human or mytho, had yet crossed their path.
“You sure we got everything we need, Huck?” asked Ben Rogers.
Huck stifled a sigh. They had been over this a hundred times already.
“Well,” he said with as much patience as he could muster, “I got my slingshot and a pocketful of steel balls. And I got a kenned-up notebook full of paper and this bad-ass spitball shooter Cap'n Promo made for me last night.” He brandished a slender blowpipe, no wider than an overlarge straw, emblazoned with rich colors and strange symbols that Promo had told Huck were good luck sigils of the ancient Greeks.
“That there shooter is the nicest I ever seen,” said Joe Harper with undisguised awe.
“I'm sure Promo'll make you one if—” Huck's eyes went wide. “Duck!” Everyone hit the deck. Something screeched like a million out-of-tune trumpets and flashed across the sky inches above them, wicked talons extended to take off their heads.
Huck scrambled to his feet. He got a good look at the beast as it landed on the front steps of Hausman Hall, the academic building ten yards to their right.
It was winged like a bat, with the body of a lion and the stingered tail of a scorpion. It snarled, and its mockery of a human being's mouth stretched across its face to monstrous proportions, exposing waves of rotting gums and rows of black fangs that made Huck think of sharks. Its flapping wings sent blasts of wind and water into the night as its scorpion-tail smashed the windows of the building one by one. Then it stopped its vandalism, and its tail cocked back and pointed their way. A series of scraping sounds sliced over the raging storm, like a hacksaw cutting into metal.
Huck dove left as a bombardment of poisonous quills joined the rain falling from the sky. One of the darts took off his straw hat. He jumped to his feet and dashed for cover behind the trunk of a magnolia tree, joining Ben and Joe.
“What in the hell-Worlds is that thing?” asked Ben.
“It's a manticore,” said Huck, peeking around the tree.
The manticore fired more poison quills in their direction, but they bounced off the magnolia's trunk or went wide. The monster had yet to advance on their position, and Huck had no clue what he was going to do when this happened. He ducked back behind the tree just before a quill landed in his eye and made a path through his brain, then turned to Joe and Ben.
“Say, guys, I'm kicking meself in the behind for not thinking 'bout this beforehand, but I ain't sure how effective our spitballs are gonna be in this storm.”
“We been shooting at the durn thing nonstop, but either the spitballs ain't getting there or they ain't hurting 'im,” said Ben.
“Prob'ly ain't gettin' there,” said Joe. “The rain's just too much for 'em.”
“Right, then. Switch to slingshots,” said Huck. “We'll see how that ugly thing likes kenned-up steel in its guts!”
Joe and Ben leaped one way and Huck the other, steel balls buzzing through the air like metallic insects. The manticore roared as the stinging rounds drilled into it, and blasted quills in retaliation.
Then a feral cry pierced the night, and the remaining windows of Haus Hall shattered as one. Everybody, even the manticore, stopped moving and looked upwards.
A stream of flame poured from the building's roof and into the stormy night, evaporating the water falling from the sky. In the sudden flickering firelight, all saw the beast that had crashed this party unannounced. The chimera had the body, golden mane, and head of a lion, which roared and sent another fireball into the sky from between its jaws. From the middle of its back jutted the head of a goat, which brayed and burped lightning. Its tail was a writhing viper, glistening fangs dripping black venom.
The chimera erupted from all ends at once. A gush of fire, a bolt of lightning, and a glob of venom shot in their direction. Then it pounced—but not on Huck, Joe, and Ben.
The lightning and the venom missed the manticore, but the fireball hit the creature head on. Monster flesh sizzled, and the manticore screamed in pain, doubly as the chimera's claws latched onto its back. The two hellfiends roared, slashed, and fanged. Fire flared, poison flew, lightning flashed, poisoned quills sliced into sides. In no time they had destroyed the west wing of Haus Hall and now worked on the eastern portion in a manner just as efficient.
Half a minute later, a series of deafening roars issued over the storm, followed by a smoky explosion that lit up the campus in a black-light sunset. There was a loud fizzling sound, and thick plumes of purple smoke poured into the sky over the rubble of Haus Hall.
Afterwards, all was silent except for the pouring rain.
“Well, I'll be derned,” said Ben, looking at the smashed building with wide eyes. “They destroyed each other.”
Huck said, “It almost seemed like the chimera was trying to . . . protect us.”
“The chimera,” said Joe, his eyes glazing over, “is the offspring of Echidna, the mother of all monsters, and Typhon, said to be the biggest, ugliest creature in all of creation. Cerberus, guardian of the Underworld, and the Hydra, a many-headed dragon-like creature destroyed by Hercules, are its siblings.”
Huck gave Joe an annoyed look. “All right. Enough with the lectures already, professor. We'll head west to Tranquil Forest. Hopefully we can find the others. My radio busted when I hit the dirt, so we got no other way to get in touch with 'em. So let's slope already.”
And Huck, Joe, and Ben made their way westward as the evening storm—so common to the humid American South during the summer months—rolled on unabated.