by Mark Tufo
“Linnick, how the fuck am I going to kill three of them when I can’t even maneuver?”
“You don’t need to kill all three. What’s with you and the killing? Sufficiently wound one and the others will retreat…for now.”
“I can probably manage that.” I crouched down to make a smaller target of myself and bring one of the Gargoyles in close; I could hear the heavy beating of wings coming from behind me. Crouched down in a narrow hole made it impossible to turn so I did my best impression of a penny on a train track. It wasn’t good enough, as something incredibly sharp ripped into my left shoulder, forcing my face into the ground. I spat out a mouthful of the black rubbery crystals that made up this terrain. At least it kept me from screaming.
“Are you bleeding?” Linnick asked.
“I think that’s safe to say,” I said through gritted teeth. My back was on fire, the Gargoyle had shredded through the latticework of scar tissue I had back there. I gingerly rotated my arm, it still moved, though it sounded a bit like I was making popcorn inside the socket.
“They will become more aggressive now that they smell blood.”
“Too bad. I was hoping they had a fear of it, like, maybe a healthy dose of hemophobia.”
Even though she whispered it, I clearly heard Linnick say, “Struck with the dumbs. Might have been better off in the hole.”
The Gargoyles clearly saw their advantage. Coming at me from the back, left me completely exposed and them completely safe from retaliation.
“I’m going to need your help, Linnick. You in?”
“My choices are either help you or be eaten?”
“Are you really thinking about this?”
“Okay, I will do it.”
“Didn’t think I was going to have to strong arm you for that. I need you to be my rear-facing eyes.”
She crawled out of my pocket and up onto the collar of my jacket. She was peering to my back. I suppressed a shiver from having her that close to my ear. There was a fear she might seek refuge in my ear canal and then burrow her way into my brain. Yeah, yeah, I get it—she wouldn’t get much of a meal if she went that way, but it was still my brain. I needed to keep as much of it intact as I could.
“Two are coming…lined up behind each other.”
“How far?”
“Three hundred flegs.”
“Flegs? What the hell is a fleg?” If it was yards I had a moment if it was inches I was about to be skewered.
“It is a unit of measurement,” Linnick replied.
“Yeah I get that! Just tell me when to…”
“NOW!” she screamed. I would not be surprised when later I would wipe the side of my face to find dried blood. The volume in her tiny body had torn through my eardrum. A lot of simultaneous movements followed automatically that I wasn’t sure I could pull off; it wasn’t like I’d practiced anything like this before. I hopped up and out of the hole as I twisted my upper torso. I was still spinning around as I forced myself backward while bringing my axe up. My left leg missed the hole completely, pushing me back harder and faster than I’d meant to.
That supposed misstep might have actually been the only thing that saved me. A claw with talons to match its teeth just missed latching onto that already damaged shoulder of mine. Still ended up getting close enough to pierce me with one or two of them. My back thudded off the ground and I bit down on my tongue; by this point, my axe was nearly forgotten, but I swung and missed wildly. I had much more luck as the second Gargoyle, upon seeing my stunt, was attempting to move away. The problem with trying to change the direction of something that big with that much momentum is that it is going to take a while; gargoyles do not turn on a dime. He was the Titanic and I was the iceberg, or at least my blade was. I hoped this was the same one that had torn me apart earlier because there was a cosmic justice and a very satisfying plunge as my axe bit deeply into his left shoulder. A hawkish screech, albeit much louder, erupted from his mouth as I dragged the axe down until it lodged into his clavicle, shattering the bone but also dislodging my weapon completely from my hands.
He was swooping away and taking my weapon with him. I could only watch helplessly. Blood began to pour from his wound and he was listing heavily, favoring that side and not able to flap that wing with the speed he needed to keep his flight controlled. The change in the other two was immediate; I became an afterthought as Gargoyles two and three began to make swooping dive attacks on their stricken compadre.
“No honor among scavengers, I guess,” I said as I sat up and tried to get a reading on how badly I’d been injured.
“We’ve got problems,” Linnick said.
“Yeah. I don’t have a weapon and once those two are done with their cannibalism we’ll be back on the menu. Well, I mean, I will. I can’t even imagine they’d bother with you.”
“I’ll have you note that I’ve been told Breatines are delicious!” She seemed genuinely upset that I’d excluded her from the Gargoyle diet.
“I’ll keep that in mind if I get hungry.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Yeah, probably not. I’d eat a cherry glazed ham Pop-Tart first.”
“You stepped outside of my hole.”
I looked at the ground, scanning it rapidly. Nothing was happening. “Yeah, so? I think we’re alright.”
“We’re not.” Linnick pointed off into the distance. I could not tell what I was looking at. Then it struck me; there was a campy movie back in the early 90s, called Tremors, had Kevin Bacon in it. Oh man, what I wouldn’t do for some bacon. Anyway, it was about these giant worms that traveled, pretty fast, underground, and then would pop up and eat some poor unsuspecting person, in the most violent, low-budget way possible. The relevant point I’m trying to make here is that as they traveled, puffs and plumes of dirt would occasionally shoot into the air and that was what I was seeing here. Though instead of some space worm racing to eat me, it was the damned hole I’d escaped, and with the way material was flying out from it, I’d imagine it was getting deeper at an alarming rate to make sure I could not once again escape its clutches.
Not a thought crossed my mind as I took off running. Being a vampire had certainly enhanced all of my abilities; I was much faster now than I had ever been, but even that wasn’t going to be enough. Whatever force was propelling that hole was quicker by far. Linnick had kept her place by my shoulder, keeping an eye on things behind me.
“A thousand flegs,” she said evenly.
I thought about doing the math. With a calculator, a slide rule, a computer, and a teacher that actually knew math, I could have probably figured it out eventually. I mean, I had some of the variables. At three hundred flegs I had a Gargoyle flying at a very high rate of speed, roughly forty miles per hour and he hit me in under three seconds so…carry the five…divide by a factor of pi, add in the theory of relativity…yeah, I had no fucking idea. I kept running. Arms were pumping, legs were thrumming. Not entirely sure if it was by fate, but the two Gargoyles that were dining in were directly in my path. As of yet, they had not taken notice.
“Suicide by mythical scavenger creature. I wonder if that’s what they’ll write on my tombstone.” In an ideal world, I would startle the creatures and they would take off for flight but before one could get high enough I would grab hold of its mighty legs and it would lift us to freedom. I had a better chance of getting a happy ending at the butcher shop. No fucking idea why I put those two together. I mean, I love a good steak as much as the next guy, but, umm, not in that way. I did indeed startle the giant swine-looking things, but for all their size, they were agile enough to get up and gone long before I could even make an attempt for them. Not the one I’d clipped, though, he had more holes ripped into him than I could count. Somehow, it was still breathing. I could see the rise and fall of my axe head glinting some light. I grabbed the handle, hoping it wouldn’t slow my momentum as I sped past.
It released with an audible plop and I was off and running, barely losing half a
step. Not sure what I was going to do in an axe versus a hole bout, but I felt better for having it.
“Five hundred flegs. Should have stayed in my own hole.”
“There’s an idea. How about I put you down and we summon your hole.”
“DON’T DO THAT! Yours will be here first and even if you drop me and go your way I will still be stuck in my hole. Your repugnancy is without limits, yet I do not wish to die alone.”
I mumbled something about her wanting to be in her own hole and then not. I am truly convinced it does not matter the species, females are a special kind of nuts. Listen I’m not saying males are completely sane either—we’re just different types of crazy. For instance, once I realize I am wrong I will concede to reason whereas a woman will sometimes fly into the face of said reason and battle her opponent into exhaustion, thus forcing compliance, heedless or even contemptuous of all facts and figures to the contrary. (Note to self: hide journal from Azile.)
“I don’t want to die at all—at least not down here,” I pushed past my teeth. I was running at full sprint; there was only so long I was going to be able to keep this pace up. I was worried that I would have an eternity to think about how short I had come up; by how many flegs I had failed. There was a small break in the terrain, maybe a half mile from our location. It was a ribbon of white in an otherwise black-gray sea. For all I knew, it was just more of the same, a trick of the light, but since it was the only thing that was remotely different in this place, I veered towards it, and to my left. With a destination in sight, I felt spurred on, I was squeezing my adrenal gland like it was a dry lemon and I wanted one more fucking sip of lemonade.
“Four hundred flegs.”
“Linnick, I don’t have a fucking clue what a fleg is. Look to our front and tell me how far that white line is.” It took all I could do to get that sentence out. It was forced and broken up as I whispered each word during exhalations, but luckily, she was close enough to hear what I had to say.
“Too far,” was all she said.
“How…many…fucking…flegs?” That one extra word took a serious amount of effort, but I felt I needed it to get my point across. Sometimes you just need to swear. Nobody ever hits their thumb with a hammer and shouts: “dandelion, bunny rabbit, sphincter!” Hey, it’s my finger. I can shout whatever I want to.
“Seven hundred flegs,” she sighed with obvious resignation.
The desire to give up, to just stop running, was at the highest level I could ever remember. In war, your enemies tire; sometimes you can outwit them, you can turn and give battle, you can surrender—fight another day. But when the very ground beneath your feet is out to get you, no malice, no agenda, no quarter…well, I was having a difficult time seeing the point to continue. I was one against all.
“Will you eat me when you begin to starve?” Linnick asked.
I wanted to tell her I was more likely to strip my own flesh before I would eat something that looked like her, but I have heard these trick questions from females before and there is no right answer. Instead, I used that image as a reason to keep going, to fight against odds that had never been in my favor. Almost my entire life, I had been staring uphill. Why would it be any different down here? I was a soldier in a war much bigger than myself. Soldiers do what they must to survive, but above it all, they do what they must to make sure the person next to them survives. And maybe we weren’t allies in any true sense, but we faced a common enemy and I was going to use Linnick as my reason to keep going. If I had been alone, maybe I would have stopped and lay down, catching my breath, resigning myself as the hole swallowed me up; maybe not. It’s easy to find an ocean of excuses to support the easy side of an argument; it’s much more difficult to wade through the muck and pull the truth free.
“Tell me when the hole is ten flegs away,” I said to Linnick. I’d slowed my pace considerably, to hardly more than a jog. I needed to catch my breath and do what needed to be done. I hoped physics played its part down here. You know, the part where a body in motion tends to stay in motion type of thing.
“One hundred.”
My heart jumped a beat; it was so close and I totally had no clue if what I was thinking would happen would even happen. I was mere flegs away from knowing, though.
“I wish you were still running,” Linnick said, then added. “Fifty.”
“Forty…. thirty….twenty…ten!” she shouted
“Hold on,” I told Linnick. At twenty I had sped back up to full sprint, though it was severely lessened; at ten I pushed off and dove as far as I could to the right; I struck the ground with my right shoulder and rolled two complete somersaults. I was more than expecting to feel that horrible falling sensation as I tumbled down something I figured was close to a hundred feet deep by now. What I got instead was a heavy spray of material that was being ejected from the charging hole and a large blast of air as the trap screamed past.
“Fuck yeah! Physics,” I said as I got up on a knee.
“What just happened?” Linnick asked, orientating herself.
“Reprieve.” I knew it was only a matter of time until the hole figured out I wasn’t in it and I wasn’t going to waste my hard-fought victory. I was back to moving at a decent clip, better than a jog, but much slower than a sprint. Conservation of energy was going to be the key here; the first rule of out distancing. What was strange now was the role reversal. I was the one doing the chasing, well not really; it was just that the hole was going in the direction I needed to be. Had to have taken the intelligent dirt another two hundred yards to stop its momentum. Now I didn’t really know if this stuff was alive enough and cognizant of being played, but I had definitely anthropomorphized that hole; made it somehow easier to fight, thinking I might affect its strategy, put it off its game. When it finally did stop, there was a huge plume of dirt as it seemed to puff its cheeks in fury before once again charging at me like a great bull.
I’ve been accused before on many occasions of actually running headlong into my death; usually it’s not quite such a literal translation, though.
“Tallboat! What are you doing?” Linnick sounded extremely nervous.
I wasn’t even sure I could answer that question. Step by step we were on a collision course. I didn’t know if it had been better to have the thing chasing me so I couldn’t see it or to be fully aware of exactly where it was. In truth, both vantage points sucked.
“Tallboat?” I could just see Linnick’s head swiveling from me back to the hole, repeatedly.
I could not spare the air to tell her anything. I didn’t think she’d like what I had to say anyway. At fifty yards, I almost failed entirely. I’d hit some imperfection in the ground—a crippling pain shot up my calf, rocketed past my thigh, and plumed in my skull as my ankle turned; I ran through it like a thoroughbred at the final turn. “Five more steps, Talbot.” I urged myself on. Right, left, blinding pain, right, left, red flash across my vision, right—I pushed off and launched straight ahead like an Olympic long jumper. My field of vision was impaired by the water that ran from my eyes; I wasn’t even sure if I’d taken off too soon. I hoped not; in all my years I’d never been known as a premature ejaculator. I think I wore a grisly smile as I looked down at the fathomless pit that was rushing past beneath me.
Linnick screamed as she somehow lost her grip; I swung quickly and wildly with my free left hand, somehow catching her in my palm. I felt a savage pain in my thumb which I would learn was her biting down to anchor her position. I can’t say I blame her, but holy fuck it was like a piranha had taken hold. There was another fifteen feet of hole to glide past and I was already on the dropping part of my flight. I swung my axe hand, sticking it deep into the level ground as my body fell into the pit. I was hit hard in the chest as the back wall of the hole slammed into me and hurtled me up and out. I flipped four or five times in the air before landing roughly on my back. The wind had been pushed out of me so violently it was all I could do to breathe.
“Tallboat, you should get up
.” Linnick had thankfully let go of my thumb and crawled up my chest and into my much safer pocket.
I was sitting up; seeing stars would have been welcome. I was seeing a pinprick of light off in the distance which I hoped wasn’t just my vision tunneling as I forced my body to do things it was by no means ready to do at the moment. “Mind over matter, if you don’t mind it don’t matter.” A faraway voice started off as a small spark inside my mind as I urged myself on, attempting to incite a conflagration by using an old Marine Corps chant. “Talbot? Sounds a lot like malcontent! I’m going to keep my eye on you!” That was my introduction to my drill instructor in boot camp; funny how close to the truth he actually was. I continued my trip down boot camp lane, using every bit of forced motivation I could muster to get my body up and moving.
I more lurched forward than walked, stumbling to one knee when my injured left ankle reminded me of itself. It did allow me a few beats of my over-taxed heart to regain and reassess. Linnick had climbed from my pocket and was looking over my shoulder again.
“It has stopped.”
I knew what that meant. It would huff and puff like the big bad wolf and start coming my way again. And speaking of big bad wolves, at least of the werewolf variety, save one, they can all go fuck themselves. Seemed like a lot of quantifiers, but oh well, there are exceptions to every rule. I stood and did my own version of a huff, though mine was much more anemic and made me cough. I walked, increased to a testing jog, pressed on to a run, then abandoned all pain and thought and made a full-on sprint. I said, “fuck you” every time I brought my left foot down. My foot didn’t care. The leading edge of the new terrain had taken shape and definition; it was a wall of sorts, a miniature cliff of Dover. Couldn’t have been much more than seven feet tall, but that was seven feet that I was charging toward.