Knee-Deep in the Dead

by Dafydd ab Hugh

  A stream of bullets came out of nowhere and I ducked back in. And at last I figured out what the hell was happening: it was Arlene! She must be firing across the hidden teleport pad . . . and her bullets were being teleported to where I had first emerged. No wonder the zombies were confused. This was enough to confuse someone with a functional brain.

  She was doing just as good a job of mowing them down as if she’d been present and accounted for. Encouraged, I helped out and shot the ones who ran past my cubbyhole, hunting for an enemy. So specters weren’t the only ones who could play this game. Of course, the zombies got mad and started shooting each other.

  They were all dead by the time Arlene joined me. She hopped off the pad and I filled her in. Then we returned to the end of the corridor where I had hidden; I’d seen a door awaiting our attentions.

  There was no special key required to open this one; of course not . . . a hell-prince waited for us on the other side.

  It had a blue key card in its mouth; we took it after making a fair trade: he got a whole bunch of rockets. I’m sure the minotaur appreciated our generosity.

  Returning to the mouth of the corridor, we picked up Ritch. We hadn’t forgotten him. Ritch never seemed to regret missing out on our repeated exterminations, although he acquitted himself admirably when backed into a corner . . . the perfect civilian. He’d have done well at Lexington and Concord, provided there wasn’t a lot of running involved.

  The three of us trucked back across the courtyard to the locked door—and none of us was the least surprised when the key unlocked it.

  Inside was a single, ornate teleport pad. We blinked into existence in a vast room, a huge, open pit with a narrow catwalk running around the periphery. Our eyes watered from mist in the air. The place stank of boiled rock and the walls were the color of dried blood, and everywhere was the stench of sour lemons.

  “This is it!” Ritch said, suddenly excited. “This is the place where the spider, the mastermind, interrogated me.”

  I’d been getting to the point of dismissing any differences in the hellish architecture. All the chambers seemed more and more identical. But they’d never tortured me, stringing me up to hang halfway between life and death. There was no doubting Ritch’s memory after what he’d been through.

  We heard a cacophony from below, as if a monster convention was being held under our noses. We dropped on our bellies, hugging the catwalk, and listened.

  I heard roaring, grunting, screaming, wheezing, howling, snuffling, and even a weird piping or whistling. Heavy thumping and thudding left no doubt that some of the big guys were down there. Didn’t hear a steam-demon, though; that was the only good news.

  “If you want to see the spidermind, now’s your chance,” Ritch whispered.

  “Isn’t it special invitation only?” Arlene asked.

  “I can’t help it,” I whispered. “I’m a born Gatecrasher.”

  She crawled to the edge. “Pumpkins, hell-princes, those crazy flying skulls.”

  “Did we ever get around to naming them?”

  Arlene looked at me with a strange expression, as if I’d just missed something. “Gee . . . how about ‘flying skulls’? Any objections?”

  Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but notice Ritch’s expression. He probably thought our little name game the pinnacle of insanity. And Ritch had a gift for it himself: he’d called our steam-demon a “cyberdude,” and “spidermind” turned out to be a perfect description for the thing that chose that moment to make a big entrance.

  It was worse than all the rest.

  If I’d found the steam-demon disgusting with its mixture of organic and mechanical, this completely alien It scuttling across the floor down below completely turned my stomach. Numerous mechanical legs supported a dome housing a gigantic, gray, pulsing brain with a hideous, ersatz face formed in the center of the squishy gray matter itself, complete with “eyes” and “teeth.” It should have been funny, almost a cartoon—but there was nothing remotely humorous about the living incarnation of a nightmare.

  Its appearance was so unnerving that one could easily neglect taking inventory of the most important thing: its weapons. Even from this awkward angle it was easy to see that it came equipped with what looked like an ultraspeed Gatling gun, like a Vulcan cannon. There was little doubt that up close there’d be other unpleasant surprises.

  “Listen,” I hissed, “suppose we can take this spidermind thing. We’d throw a monkey wrench into the invasion plans right here and now! I could run along the catwalk, drop down in front of the creature and fry it with my new toy.”

  “Too dangerous,” Arlene said.

  “It would get you with its machine guns before you got close enough to try,” Ritch added.

  These were extremely good points, I had to admit. Rethinking the idea, I realized that even if I succeeded, I would be ripped to shreds by the throng of monsters surrounding the boss. Ritch seemed to be reading my thoughts when he said: “We should kill some of the other creatures so the spidermind won’t have as much backup.” Maybe this guy could make an honorary Marine after all.

  Creeping along the catwalk rim, peeking over the edge, we made slow progress. While finding a more advantageous position, Ritch sneezed. I think he was allergic to monsters.

  The element of surprise blown, it was time to open fire and blow them away. Their reward for paying attention. Arlene and I worked through the rockets we’d scavenged from the steam-demon chamber. Good distance and angle to use those little darlings.

  There had been so much noise already that plenty of the monsters farther away still hadn’t noticed what was going on. They were partying down. Our primary goal was to keep the spidermind from noticing as long as inhumanly possible, so we never shot a rocket in its direction.

  We still had a lot of unanswered questions: How well did the brain hear? And were other creatures supposed to report back—and were they in constant communication, by radio or telepathy?

  We continued the slaughter. Ritch was proving himself useful again, this time with his Sig-Cow. Finally, the general run of monsters noticed that something was amiss.

  Some became agitated and began to run about, their roars more thoughtful, attuned to the condition of the general community . . . communication, obviously. A few even attempted to apply what mentality they had to “investigate” the mysterious deaths of their comrades.

  Alas, the spidermind lived up to its name. It detected the trouble and began stomping around, trying to identify the source. But my respect for that great quantity of gray matter declined somewhat as the damned thing got frustrated and started blasting away at random, killing its troops!

  Ritch crept over and offered more analysis: “Corporal Taggart, I—”

  “Call me Fly.”

  “Well, Fly, I’ve been thinking that the amount of energy required to actually move Deimos through hyperspace would be monumental. There’s no way they could have snuck such a huge power generator onto Deimos through those fairly small Gates. We’re talking many terawatts, thousands of Hoover Dams worth of power.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. Arlene nodded, while continuing to hold down the fort.

  “The most likely explanation is that the power is coming from an external source,” he said, “and they’re beaming it in somehow.”

  “Ritch,” Arlene said, “are you saying cut the power and end the invasion?” For the first time since seeing the spawning vats, I began to think we might really have a chance. So long as they had power, they could produce an endless number of monsters in their damned caldrons.

  It was time to cancel their service.

  33

  Arlene pointed at a central building, a small pillbox structure right in the center of the monster convention. In all the chaos, none of the creatures had gotten anywhere near this pillbox . . . as if they deliberately avoided it.

  “Could that be the power receiver?” she asked.

  Ritch shrugged. “I don’t know, but it seems li
ke the best possibility.”

  That possibility did as much for our morale as if we’d each been given a blue face-sphere. The spidermind continued firing until many of the other creatures, its own troops, were killed or driven off. It was now or never.

  I jumped first, feeling as if I could fly. Arlene followed and I turned to help, but she didn’t need a hand. We both had to help Ritch, who wasn’t exactly constructed for flight. The three of us made a dash for the central building.

  Monster corpses presented a major obstacle; but we quickly turned grateful for the thick-limbed, heavy bodies all over the floor. The spidermind noticed us and opened fire with its 30mm Vulcans. We hit the deck and used the bodies for cover.

  The incredible creature charged us, firing maybe three hundred rounds a minute, five rounds a second. In a few moments it would be upon us, firing so rapidly we’d never be able to return fire.

  Suddenly the firing stopped. The spidermind was tangled up in the bodies it had helped produce. The mechanical spider legs were not designed for an obstacle course.

  “Run!” I shouted, heading for the building. A quick glance at the location of the spidermind told me what I needed to know—the angles were perfect. “Get between the spidermind and the building—move!”

  I bolted hutward and immediately sprawled gracefully over the prone body of a steam-demon—a steam-demon! My heart leapt up my throat . . . then I realized the damned thing was under bloody construction. Great, and me without my monkey wrench!

  The gigantic monster lay on its belly, face into the deck; the missiles were exposed, and as bullets flew haphazardly over my head I swallowed hard: a couple of good shots might detonate the warheads on those puppies—or, if the warheads weren’t yet attached, the fuel cells could rupture and spray us all with caustic and flammable rocket fuel.

  “Very adroit, Mr. Leslie,” snapped Arlene, yanking me to my feet.

  We made tracks. We had crossed perhaps a third of the open territory when a wave of horror struck me like a physical hammer blow.

  Nightmarish images of Degas, Bosch, Patrick Woodruff . . . blood dripping from the walls and ceiling, sprays of blood in the distance, blood from overhead sprinklers . . . it probed, trying to find a weak spot: my father lurched out of the building, grinning and slapping his body. “Me heap big chief Kamehameha!” he shouted, then gave a Tarzan yell.

  He humiliated me all over again, as he had twenty years earlier; we’d been in Hawaii in a museum, before a life-size (huge) statue of Hawaii’s greatest king. I shrank away from him, praying to God no one knew he was my father; but he followed me, saying, “Did you see what I did? Watch!” And he did it again!

  I was never more ashamed of him in my life. We were lucky to make it out of the museum alive. But goddamn it, he was not going to stop me reaching that building. I pushed on, tuning out the spidermind.

  Then I saw myself brought up on charges again, but this time I was tried and convicted, and they ripped the stripes off my sleeve like, what was it, that old television show, two-dimensional . . . Branded, something like that. They tore off my sharpshooter’s medal, my ribbons, finally the eagle-and-globe that told the world I was a Marine.

  But I gritted my teeth, and through my tears I told myself that I knew I was a Marine no matter what, and Arlene would never let me forget it even if I tried.

  My feet never stopped.

  God knows what horrors it sent to Arlene and Ritch; their faces were white, grim, but determined.

  The monstrosity realized it didn’t have our number psychologically and tried the more direct route: it opened fire. But it was off balance, picking its way through the bodies, and the whole contraption tumbled over. This gave us the time to get into position. Just as we got behind the building, the spidermind freed itself, stood up straight on mechanical legs, swiveled the weaponry into position . . . and started firing. A few quick burps of gunfire probed our way; then it abruptly choked off and there was silence.

  “What happened?” Ritch asked.

  “It’s like it stopped automatically,” Arlene said.

  “It can’t shoot us without shooting the building!” I realized. “The guns were clearly cut off by a circuit breaker.”

  We had to get inside; but the spidermind lived up to its name. The thing scuttled quickly to the side, trying for a better angle and a clear shot. We kept moving, dancing around the pillbox in a tightening spiral, always keeping ourselves between the spidermind and the building. It was like playing some kind of children’s game, only this playground was the killing field.

  Then we had a new problem. The other monsters had been considerate enough to stay away, but now the noise attracted them back into the fray. A random sampling of fireballs, ball lightning, and even the hell-princes’ green fire creased our bow. Under the circumstances, it would have been rude not to respond. We fired back, while we kept running from the spidermind.

  “One rocket left!” I yelled as I fired the penultimate one at a minotaur. I slung the launcher—never know when a weapon might come in handy. But Arlene must’ve figured there’d be no more rainy days: she blew through her AB-10 ammo and dropped the pistol without a second glance, not wanting anything to slow her down.

  Bill Ritch fired his Sig-Cow at the spinys and actually dropped one.

  Despite his bulk, he’d managed to keep up with us, although his heavy breathing was cause for worry. I hoped he wouldn’t have a heart attack. We still needed him. I wasn’t being callous in thinking this; the mission was all-important.

  God, did I actually think that? I guess I did. Arlene had converted me . . . and I didn’t even know when she managed it. My goal had shifted from rescuing her to fighting the last battle as the last Marine.

  I blew the door off its hinges with a point-blank shotgun blast. One of the spinys didn’t approve of my housebreaking; it dive-bombed me and flung a ball of burning mucus that just missed . . . just missed me that is. Arlene took it out—but then I glanced over at Ritch and saw that the imp had done him serious damage.

  Ritch had taken a faceful of the poison and was coughing his guts up. Holding the door open with my back, I racked and fired as fast as I could as Arlene dragged Ritch inside.

  Vindication! The room was full of electronic gear, cables, data banks. While Arlene did what she could for Ritch, damned little under the circumstances, I stood guard on all four doors, shooting anything that ventured close. Naturally, the monsters couldn’t fire back. I enjoyed the situation until one of the imps flung a spitwad and hit the door frame, missing me by a handsbreadth.

  For one moment in the history of the universe, the spidermind and Yours Truly shared the same opinion. The imp’s action was ill-considered in the extreme. The spidermind proved it was no dummy; it blew the imp to cutlets.

  I drifted from doorway to doorway and nothing shot at me; however, every time I passed within line-of-sight of the spidermind, I caught another faceful of hypnogogic horror. It was the only weapon the critter had left; in a way, you had to feel sorry for it.

  Well . . . maybe not.

  “How’s it going?” I asked Arlene, already knowing the answer. She shook her head. Ritch was in a lot worse shock than when we first found him. The flaming goo had stuck to his face, catching him just as he inhaled; his lungs were fried . . . they could no longer transport oxygen to his blood.

  I didn’t know what we were going to do; maybe a hospital could save him . . . but we didn’t even have bandages or painkiller.

  The skin of his face was angry red, and it was bleeding in a dozen spots where enough layers of epidermis had burned away. He must have been in agony . . . and Ritch knew it was hopeless, for him at least; he was a smart man.

  Bill was dying.

  Arlene propped him against a wall and whispered in his ear. He nodded, making the coughing worse; but she wiped his eyes, and he could see well enough to help us.

  In a weak voice he began identifying critical components within the room. He remembered everything from
when they forced him to work on the mess. He told us what we needed to know.

  Arlene left him propped against the wall and came to me. In a low voice she said “I wish we had one of those blue spheres right now.”

  “It’s the only thing that would save him,” I agreed.

  “We don’t even have a Medikit. At least I could make him comfortable.”

  I looked her in the eye. “He told us what we need to know,” I said. “That’s the important thing.”

  I felt professional. I felt several degrees colder than mean.

  But Arlene was as much a pro as I. “Do you want to perform the coup de grace on this energy conduit, or shall I?”

  While I thought about it, she made up my mind for me: “You’d better do it, Fly; we need a real sharpshooter’s eye to keep those bastards far enough away that they can’t reach in and grab us. I suppose even you can’t miss a computer bank from two meters away, hey? Even if you can’t shoot an apple off Goforth’s head.” She grinned.

  I turned and became a one-man wrecking crew. Raising the BFG, I took a deep breath and let fly at the collection of electronics. The explosion knocked me on my butt. I staggered up and took out the rest of the targets Ritch pointed out in the mass of equipment. After four walloping shots, the BFG fizzled and wouldn’t shoot anymore. Out of juice. I finished the job with a dozen shotgun shells.

  “Jesus, Fly! Come look at this,” Arlene shouted. I came, still shaking, ears still ringing like Christmas.

  This was turning into an hour of surprises. The monsters were acting like they were on PCP, wandering in circles and firing at anything that moved—which meant each other.

  The spidermind still seemed to have control over its ugly faculties. It opened fire on several of the hell-princes, no doubt with the idea of removing those of its minions most potentially dangerous if there were no way to give them orders.