For the Thrill of the Blunt

by Tom Sadira

  The canteen finally made its way to Charlie’s hands. He lifted it to his mouth, but stopped as a glimmer of crimson light caught his eye.

  A few yards away, Swarm was bent over, one pair of claws on his knees, the other pair pulling an antenna down between his mandibles. Along the vertical seam where his two wing cases met ran a crusted scab. His triangular face was battered and bruised, and one of his compound eyes bulged more than the other. Helwyr’s assault had done a fine job of disabling the only member of the Starseed’s crew who could have put up a fight.

  Then again, each of the Felonians wielded a makeshift knife, a handaxe, a vrill-stringed bow, and a dozen arrows. It would take ten healthy, able-bodied Swarms to even stand a chance against the bloodthirsty assholes.

  Charlie estimated their mission status as somewhere between ‘Grade-A Clusterfuck’ and ‘Lethal Shitshow’.

  And it’s my goddamn fault. All my fault. I put my crew in danger, risked their lives, and for what? A stupid flower?

  Charlie let the vrill wing slide off his shoulder and walked over to Swarm.

  “Here, man. Have some before it’s gone.”

  The wounded insectoid knocked the canteen aside and clacked his mandibles menacingly.

  “Give him space, yo.” A moist hand plopped onto Charlie’s shoulder and gently led him away. Axo took the canteen and said in a low voice, “Ol’ Bugbrain isn’t used to feeling helpless, ya know? He needs to feel strong and in control, and, well, that ain’t exactly happening right now. Besides—” he upturned the canteen, allowing a single drop to escape, “—we’re all out of water.”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant, and we’re still miles from the river at the base of the mountain,” said Helwyr. “Enough chit-chat. Stretch your legs. Catch your breath. Then pick up our dinner, because we move out in five.”

  Charlie glanced at Swarm, then turned to Axolotl. “Shouldn’t we give him a hand, man?”

  “Swarm’s a tough dude, Captain. He’ll be alright.”

  Charlie nodded. He wished there was something he could do, something he could offer, to help make their load a bit lighter.

  A dazzling green light bulb appeared over his dirty afro.

  How could something like a little violent mutiny get between me and my core values?

  Charlie slipped the waterproof case from the pocket of his cargo pants, flipped it open, and selected a handsome blunt. He popped it between his lips and thought of the ignition word to light it.

  Euphoria swelled in his chest. His shoulders relaxed. The dim light that trickled through the forest canopy brightened.

  He closed his eyes and exhaled every last air molecule from his lungs. He wanted them completely empty before inflating them with smoke from his gloriously unparalleled, magnificently potent, and magically delicious Golden Ticket strain.

  As he inhaled, he heard a soft crunch of leaves and felt a whoosh of air across his face. His lungs filled with cannabis-infused air, but no smoke. He opened his eyes to find his lips wrapped around an unlit stub. At his feet lay the rest of the blunt, sliced neatly into four even pieces, each spilling his precious magnum dopus onto the dirty forest floor.

  “Hey man! What the—”

  He was interrupted by a blue paw plucking the stub from his mouth. Helwyr scowled down at him.

  “No smoke.” Growl.

  “Dude, my legs ache. My back’s screaming. My blood sugar’s way low,” whined Charlie. “Weed gives me energy, man! I’m telling you, it’ll help me go faster.”

  “The only thing a trail of smoke will speed up is your demise. You may have some tonight, once we set up camp.”

  “Why wait? I have enough for everyone, man. Cannabis is related to catnip, I think, so maybe you and your boys will really get a kick—”

  “Shhh!” Helwyr lifted a single claw to his lips. His good eye sprung to life, darting back and forth through the trees. His ears swiveled in opposite directions like furry satellite dishes. He sniffed. “Change of plans. Time for another quick lesson before we move on.”

  Axo and Charlie flanked Swarm.

  “No way you’re using Swarm as bait, yo!”

  “Not again, man!” Charlie raised his staff between his crew and the Felonians.

  “Quiet! We’re not alone,” Helwyr whispered. “Over there, just beyond that wide scattering of leaves. Gather around, but don’t panic.”

  The Felonians loaded their bows and took aim, but Helwyr waved them away.

  “What luck! Brothers, this time no one risks their life, and we won’t even need to strike. We’ve passed many of these today, but now is a good opportunity to demonstrate how dangerous they can be. Pay close attention.”

  He stared into the empty forest. No one made a sound.

  Shmek finally broke the silence. “I don’t see anything, boss.”

  “Listen, you cur!” Helwyr snapped. “Ahead of us, about forty yards. It’s pretending to eat from that brambleberry bush. Ahhh yes! It’s watching us.”

  Charlie squinted. Axolotl’s eyes widened behind his large copper-rimmed goggles. They looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Basher!” Helwyr yelled between his cupped paws. “Stop pretending to eat that trash and come get your dinner!”

  Beyond the stretch of dead leaves in the clearing, a fragment of the landscape shifted.

  “Come on, you lazy dog!” Helwyr taunted. “We don’t have all day! Come and get us!”

  “Boss?” the tallest Felonian asked, swiveling his own ears toward clearing. “I’m not sure there’s anything there…”

  “Trust me, Rhys. I would not deceive you,” he whispered. He stood and raised his empty paws, then continued his loud taunt. “Come on, you fat brute! We promise we won’t harm you!”

  In the distance, a single bush shook. Beside it, for a fleeting second, the outline of a four-legged bullish creature appeared—seemingly carved out of the landscape itself. As suddenly as the blur appeared, it vanished.

  “There she is!” Helwyr cheered. “What are you waiting for? Come and get us!”

  A loud snort resounded across the clearing. The landscape next to the bush stirred again, but this time, instead of disappearing, it came rushing toward them.

  The ground shook as the blur grew closer. Because it was moving, Charlie could make out its shape: a bulky quadruped, camouflaged to perfection, running directly at them with its head lowered in a ramming position.

  He pulled Axo behind Helwyr and whispered, “Get ready. When that thing gets close, we grab Swarm and dive to the side, got it?”

  Axo bobbed his purple dreadlocks in agreement as they cautiously peeked around the fearless Felonian.

  When the basher made it halfway across the small clearing, the patch of dead leaves beneath it fell away, and the thing disappeared into a sprawling hole.

  The party breathed a collective sigh of relief. Helwyr cackled through his whiskers and motioned for them to join him. “Come on, you curs! You’ll want to see this.”

  He squatted and pointed into the hole. “The big brute is classified as a nosorog. They’re big bullish beasts with impenetrable hides and thick skulls. Masters of camouflage, as you all just witnessed. They’ll eat anything, but, like most of the fauna on Vos Praeda, they prefer meat. Hiding right out in the open, they wait patiently for prey to wander by. Then… BAM!” He pounded a fist into his palm. “They bash the unsuspecting creature into a tree or boulder, thus earning them their nickname among hunters—bashers. Once their prey has been knocked down, they waste no time stomping it into submission.”

  The party spread out on either side and carefully peered over the edge. It was a wide hole, easily three times as massive as the basher, and three times as deep.

  The panicked basher—who Charlie thought looked like a bullheaded armadillo with the color-changing scales of a chameleon—struggled to escape. Over and over again, it would charge and scamper halfway up the wall, then instantly slide back to the bottom. A glossy sheen on the dirt walls hinted a
t some kind of lubricant.

  “You laid that trap, boss?” Shmek asked. “How’d you dig such a big pit without us knowing?”

  Helwyr snarled and bared his teeth. “Is your intelligence limited by your height? Catching this dumb brute is not what this lesson is about. The creatures who dug that pit are a much more elusive and deadly foe than a basher.”

  Its skin still resembling the forest landscape, the basher stood out clearly against the soil walls of the pit. With each labored exhale, its breath mixed with the cool dampness to create a wisp of fog. After one final, half-hearted attempt to escape, and a pathetic glance up at the idle spectators, it lay down and resigned itself to fate.

  At precisely that moment, a galaxy of neon green specks appeared along the walls of the pit. As the tiny lights squirmed their way through the soil they revealed their three-dimensional nature.

  What the hell are these, glow-in-the-dark maggots?

  A grub dislodged itself and tumbled down the steeply curved wall to the pit floor. From the hole it left behind, another followed and joined it at the bottom. Behind that one, another.

  Helwyr addressed the party as he paced behind them. “The marama kutukutu, commonly called pitgrubs, are some of the most dangerous predators on Vos Praeda. Their strength comes from their cunning, their patience, and their numbers. You must watch every step you take if you wish to avoid their traps. This is why I’ve often led us close to trees, rocky patches, or other landmarks.”

  They watched as the mass of glowing grubs quickly piled up around the basher. The exhausted brute shifted its weight and snorted.

  The grubs didn’t seem very dangerous. They were soft and blind and defenseless—something kids back on Earth would collect in glass jars.

  Wonder how they’d taste with a little soy sauce? Deep-fried, man! Maybe with some pickled ginger on the side?

  The basher tried to stand, but its front legs buckled and it fell snout-first into the pile of grubs. It lurched and let loose a painful yelp.

  Panicking, it reared back, kicking weakly at the tiny attackers. Again the brute came crashing down on its face. For a split second, before its legs buckled a second time, Charlie saw why the thing looked so agonized. Its leathery flesh was missing from the knees down—devoured by hundreds of ravenous little mouths.

  The bulk of luminous grubs slowly crept up the side of the writhing basher. Wave after wave of miniature teeth snapped at everything they came into contact with: skin, muscle, even bone.

  The basher lurched upward again, and this time, when it lifted its head from the mass of grubs, the bottom half of its face was gone. A wet howl of pain escaped through its exposed windpipe as it collapsed for the final time.

  Charlie couldn’t believe his eyes. The dead creature was dissolving at the speed of ten thousand tiny bites per second. Within the neon green glow of the grubs, it looked as if the beast had fallen into a pool of acid. If his stomach hadn’t been empty already, Charlie would have emptied it right then and there.

  Holy fucking fucksticks. These things are like fun-sized versions of zombies from Night of the Living Dead. I’m gonna need some serious eyebleach when I get back to the Starseed.

  That is, assuming I make it back.

  There was a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye, and suddenly Axolotl was toppling over the rim of the pit. His eyes bulged in his goggles as his scrawny arms flailed through the open air.

  Charlie grabbed Axolotl’s tail and leaned away, acting as a counterweight. For a moment, Axolotl stopped falling and teetered at a forty-five degree angle over the pit. Then, inch by inch, he continued to slowly descend. His tail—smooth and wet like the rest of his amphibious skin—was slipping through Charlie’s hands.

  “Someone! Help!” Charlie cried, tightening his grip and digging his heels in.

  Another flash of blue, and Charlie flew back onto his ass. Helwyr was there, dangling Axolotl over the pit by his dreads.

  “Be careful, Lieutenant! If you fall in, you’re not coming out.”

  “What the hell!” Axo wrapped his webbed hands around Helwyr’s forearm. “Then pull me up, yo! Pull me up!”

  He held Axo suspended above the mass of engorged grubs as the last bits of the basher vanished. Then, with a flick of his bulging, corded arm, Helwyr flung Axolotl safely away from the hole.

  Once on his feet, Axolotl aligned his goggles, checked his dreads, and brushed himself off. Then he launched a rock at the back of Helwyr’s head. “Fuck you, yo!”

  The largest of the Felonians froze. His tail stopped its arrogant swaying, and his ears folded back against his head.

  His men looked up from the pit, took one look at their boss, and began creeping in the other direction. Even Swarm, who hadn’t bothered watching the basher die and instead sat propped up against a nearby tree, raised his antennae.

  Slowly, Helwyr turned around and locked his one good eye onto Axolotl.

  “What did you say, toad?”

  “I said,” Axo cupped his mouth in his webbed hands. “FUCK YOU!”

  In unison, ten razor-sharp claws slid from their sheaths.

  “Yo,” Charlie added. Everyone looked at him. “He said ‘Fuck you, yo’ the first time.”

  “What, ape?” spat Helwyr.

  “Uh, Axo ends just about every other sentence with ‘yo’. You’re telling me none of you noticed? But it’s fine, man. Verbal tics are fine by me, man.”

  Axolotl rolled his eyes and turned back to Helwyr. The Felonian—nearly twice his size, claws ready to strike—had already begun closing the distance between them.

  Dammit, Charlie! Think! What the hell would Picard do?

  Just then, a startlingly flatulent howl resounded through the trees—as if King Kong himself had climbed to the top of the highest mountain and cut the cheese.

  Helwyr froze for a second time, his blue snarl fading. He sniffed. His ears twitched and swiveled. His tail whipped through the air frantically. He lifted one paw to his eyepatch, growled deeply, and fell into a crouch.

  “We’re close!”

  He bounded toward Axolotl on all fours, leaping over him at the last second, and scrambled toward an outcropping of rocks. He sniffed one of the boulders, then a large mound of brown pebbles at its base. He selected one and popped it in his mouth. As he chewed, his bushy eyebrows climbed to the top of his forehead.

  “He’s eating scat,” Shmek said to the others. He tapped the tallest one on the shoulder and asked, “Hey Rhys, is he doin’ okay? Should we—?”

  “The Captain—the boss—is just fine. He knows what he’s doing,” barked Rhys, although the hint of concern on his face said otherwise.

  “He was here. We’re close!” Helwyr lifted a trembling claw toward the mountains. “Grab the weapons and food. We’re moving out.”

  Without waiting for anyone, not even his own men, he bolted into the trees. The party scrambled to gather everything together before they lost sight of him.

  Charlie slung a vrill wing over his back and slugged Axo in the shoulder.

  “What the hell, man?! You’ve got a wife and a whole bunch of those little aquatic spies to get back to, remember? If anyone’s gonna throw their life away, it’s me. I’ve been doing it for ages—by now I’ve gotta be some kind of expert.”

  Axo’s aggression melted away, and the grin that replaced it stretched from amphibious earhole to amphibious earhole.

  “Whaddya think made that humongous fart, yo?”

  11

  They followed the Felonian elder as he zigzagged toward the mountains. A magenta sunset smeared itself into the western sky and the air grew cooler. Charlie’s legs burned as he hauled the stupid wing through the forest.

  More than once, Swarm stumbled and fell. Each time, he’d shake off any helping hands and rattle off some angry excuse for the misstep. Each time, guilt wrapped itself around Charlie’s chest and squeezed.

  The four Felonians surrounded the crew of the Starseed as they all struggled to keep up with H
elwyr. Charlie knew that dehydration was probably blurring his judgment, but it seemed to him like they, too, wanted to keep a safe distance from their boss.

  He couldn’t blame them. Anytime anyone tried to speak, including his own men, Helwyr silenced them by raising a claw to his snarling lips. At other times, he would run ahead so fast and so far that it seemed like he was trying to lose them. If he hadn’t stopped periodically to lick a tree or sniff a depression in the ground, they wouldn’t have been able to keep up. He was tracking something—and whatever the hell it was was driving him mad.

  Underneath the starvation, the pain, the guilt—even the impending death that seemed more likely with every step—Charlie suffered from an agony that made all those other things feel like a stubbed toe. He was devastatingly, pathetically, tragically sober.

  He tried to distract his uninebriated mind by focusing on two things: scanning the ground for tiny, electric blue flowers, and examining Zylvya’s staff without being noticed. Before long, twilight made both impossible.

  Left alone with the sound of a half dozen blunts jostling around inside his pocket case, he killed time by imagining how delectable the first bite of chocolate moose steak would taste.

  Mooses are friggin' huge, man. I’ll have to ask Mother to morph a walk-in freezer in my room. And a grill—the most expensive one I can find on the Outernet—looking out across my fake beach. A manly apron. Some big tongs. A picnic table stacked high with all the fixins.

  He planned on inviting the whole crew—minus that snaky bitch Nadia, of course—over for an old-fashioned barbecue. Maybe the Glimwickets, too. They could bring some of those cheesy crisp things he loved so much.

  Everyone would puff on his glorious Golden Ticket, munch on chocolate mooseburgers, and laugh at how wonderful everything had turned out in the end.

  After everyone else left, Zylvya would stay behind to help tidy up. She and Charlie would reach for the same dirty dish, and their hands would accidentally touch. Her emerald eyes would ignite with uncontrollable passion. His heart would race. They’d toss the dishes aside and melt into each other’s arms.