“Miz, we might not get this chance again!” Cal said. “He’s the bad guy. We’re the good guys. You know, most of the time. We have to do this.”
Mizette stood her ground. “They’ll kill you. He’ll kill you.” She sighed. “You should, like, get back to work, or whatever, until we figure something out.”
She held up her tray. The glasses now all had around half an inch of liquid at the bottom. “Want a drink?”
“No, I don’t want a fonking drink!” Cal snapped. He retreated a few paces and hoisted his pickaxe above his head, his face knotted up in frustration and rage. “Fine, you want me to get back to work? I’ll get back to work. How’s this?”
He brought the pick down hard on the floor. The rattle of the impact shuddered his skeleton. “This working hard enough, Miz?”
He raised the pick, then brought it down again and again and again, throwing all his impotent anger into each blow.
Miz raised an eyebrow. “Are you, like, even supposed to be digging there?”
“I don’t know! You tell me!” said Cal.
“Well… like, how the fonk would I know?” Miz replied. “I just bring the drinks, or whatever.”
“Oh do you?” Cal sneered, chiseling away at the ground between them again.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I bet you do!”
Miz frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well!” Cal exhaled in outrage. “If you don’t know, then I’m not going to be the one to… to…”
He let the pick fall to his side and shrugged. “Actually, I have no idea what I was getting at, either, he admitted. He sighed and scraped together some semblance of an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Miz. None of this is your fault. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
“You took it out on the floor,” Miz said, nodding to the cracks in the rock at Cal’s feet.
Cal looked down. “Ha! Yeah, I guess I did. It’s just… I don’t know what to do, you know? We’re stuck here, and I don’t know what to—”
“Shh,” said Miz. “Did you hear that?”
“Well, yeah,” said Cal. “You did it pretty loud.”
“No, not me going, ‘Shh,’” Miz tutted. “The other noise.”
“What other noise?”
“Like, shut up, already. I’m trying to listen,” Miz hissed. Her ears twitched. “You seriously don’t hear that?”
Cal tried twitching his own ears, but managed only a slight waggling of the eyebrows. “No. What is it?”
“It’s like, I don’t know. Like a saw. Like a buzzing saw,” Miz said.
Cal strained to hear. “No. I just hear Orange Hat hammering shizz out of the wall.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Orange Hat! Can you shut the fonk up for two seconds?”
Orange Hat ignored him.
“Little shizznod,” Cal sighed. He turned to Miz and shrugged. “I don’t hear a buzzing.”
“There’s something else, too,” said Miz. “Like… a creaking.”
Cal closed his eyes and held his breath, in the hope of diverting the brainpower he saved on those, to his eardrums.
He still couldn’t hear any buzzing, but now that Miz mentioned it, he could detect the faintest suggestion of a creaking sound. It reminded him of a frozen lake in deepest winter, where each footstep across the surface brought groans of protest from the ice below. It was the type of creaking that suggested some cracking was sure to follow.
Wait.
Cal looked down.
“Oh, fonk,” he managed, and then the floor beneath him gave way, and he tumbled down into a hot, smelly darkness, with the sound of buzzing ringing in his ears.
Nineteen
Cal landed in something hot, wet, gloopy, and hot. He was aware that he’d thought the word hot twice, but it was such a pressing concern that he felt like this was entirely justified.
Steam rose and bubbles burbled in the shallow pool of mustard he’d landed in. The deep yellow gunge was tinged with green, thanks to the electric glow of the blue seams running like veins across the cavern walls.
Jumping up, he pulled himself free of the hot mustard and clambered onto the island of rocks that had fallen when the ceiling collapsed. They wobbled unsteadily under his feet, and he spent a few panicky seconds trying to find his balance, while simultaneously slapping the scalding condiment sludge off his crotch, ass, and thighs. His lower legs and feet, he reckoned, would just have to fend for themselves.
“Cal! You OK?” Miz called down.
The hole he’d fallen through was maybe six feet above his head. Miz knelt at the edge, her face a picture of uncharacteristic concern.
“I’m still alive,” Cal said. “So that’s a positive.”
He listened. “Wait. Is Orange Hat seriously still digging?”
“Who?” Miz glanced back over her shoulder. “You mean this guy?”
“He has an orange hat. You can’t miss him.”
“Yeah, he’s still digging.”
“That’s little shizznod,” Cal tutted. “I fall through the fonking floor, and he doesn’t even have the decency to…”
It was at this point that Cal became aware of the buzzing. Or rather, became aware of the buzzing again. He’d noted it during his fall, but the subsequent impact, testicle roasting, and immediate urge to escape said testicle roasting had pushed it down his list of priorities.
Now that he was upright, and his testes were merely being lightly steamed, the buzzing had reclaimed its rightful place in his list of pressing issues.
“What is that?” asked Miz.
Cal peered at the cavern around him. The mustard pool stretched out maybe twenty or thirty feet on all sides before reaching the rocky shore. Beyond that, despite the blue glow, much of the cave was curtained off by darkness.
The buzzing didn’t seem to come from any one particular direction, but almost from the air itself. That said, there was one particularly rich pool of shadow that was generating more than its fair share of the sound. Cal squinted into it, but the darkness was too thick for his eyes to penetrate.
Miz thrust a hand down toward him. “Jump and I’ll pull you up.”
“One minute,” said Cal. Holding his arms out for balance, he slowly bent over until he could reach a chunk of the broken rock. It wasn’t a particularly large piece, but it was almost cocooned in neon blue veins and gave off a powerful glow.
Cal straightened, spent a few panicky seconds trying to find his balance again, then managed to get his legs, feet, and the rocks he was balancing on under control.
The buzzing continued.
“Like, what are you doing?” Miz demanded. “Just jump up and I’ll pull you out.”
“Be right there,” said Cal. “I just want to see what’s making that fonking noise.”
He tossed the rock underarm. It sailed through the air toward where the loudest buzzing was coming from, bounced off the ridge of the shore, then plopped back into the mustard.
“Fonk,” he grunted, then he went through the whole process of getting another rock, took several more seconds to reclaim his balance, and threw that one, too.
This time, the chunk of stone flew farther. It clacked on the shore, then bounced on, replacing the darkness with a cool neon hue.
It took Cal a full three and a half seconds to figure out what he was seeing, and around one-eighth of that time to conclude that he shouldn’t have thrown that fonking stone.
There, accented in an eerie blue light, was a wasp.
No. That didn’t do it justice. It was, Cal reckoned, the wasp. The original wasp, from whence all other wasps had come. The Alpha Wasp.
No. More than that, even.
The Alpha Space Wasp.
It was hard to gauge quite how big the thing was. Bigger than him, certainly. Bigger than Mech? Probably. Its body was a fat, furry oval, elongated at the bottom end and finishing in a stinger the size of a broadsword.
Its markings, from what Cal could tell, were similar to Earth wasps
, albeit more green than yellow. That may have just been the blue neon light, though, and—frankly—he couldn’t really give a shizz, either way. Yellow, green, it didn’t really matter. The color wasn’t the big issue. The giant-waspiness of it, on the other hand, very much was.
It squatted in the corner, its furry belly undulating, its antennae probing the air around it. As Cal watched, a slimy, mucus-coated egg-sac was ejected from the wasp’s furry body. It hit the floor with a splat, then squirmed and wriggled as if already alive.
“Well, I did not need to see that,” Cal muttered.
The wasp’s translucent wings were folded flat against its back. Something about this concerned Cal, although he couldn’t quite work out why, at first.
And then, he did. Suddenly, it was obvious. If the Alpha Space Wasp’s wings weren’t moving, then…
“Where the fonk is the buzzing coming from?” Cal wondered aloud.
Just then, as if in answer to his question, something rat-sized and fast-moving came zipping out of the shadows and rocketed past his ear making a sound like an angry chainsaw. Cal spun to try to follow its flight, lost his balance on the rocks, and barely had time to cup his hands over his groin before he hit the hot mustard with a splash.
The buzzing intensified, becoming a roar as the air was suddenly alive with hundreds of enormous insects. They moved too quickly for Cal to get a close look at them, but from what he could gather they ranged in size from ‘large hornet’ to ‘small Labrador’ and their butts were all equipped with appropriately scaled stingers.
Cal hastily restacked the rocks that had tumbled out from beneath him, and was just clambering up out of the mustard when the first of the little bamstons stung him on the back of the neck. Fortunately, the pain of his skin being melted from the lower half of his body distracted him from the pain of the sting, but as Cal heaved himself up onto the rocks he was struck by a sudden wave of nausea that threatened to throw him off balance again.
And then, there was the swelling. He felt the back of his neck growing larger, Incredible Hulk style, but it wasn’t until he was safely up on the rocks that he risked reaching back to touch it.
Jesus Christ!
It felt like his neck was growing a second head at a right angle to his current head. It bulged outward in a near-perfect dome shape, and Cal half-expected to find ears developing on the sides of it.
He was prodding gingerly at the fast-growing bump when another of the wasps stuck him on the back of the thigh. Considering the area was still somewhat on the tender side from having all its skin flayed off by hot mustard, the pain this caused immediately took his mind off the bulbous growth on his neck.
Grabbing at his thigh with his right hand, he swung out with the left, trying to swat away the growing swarm of the stripey, stingy bamstons before they could do him any more damage.
“Fonk off!” he added for good measure, then he yelped as the back of his hand connected with the back of a particularly large wasp, and a full half-pint of venom was injected into him.
The cave spun. Cal shoved his hand under the opposite armpit, then heard a rip as his thigh grew so bloated it split the seam of his pants.
“Cal, give me your hand!” Miz barked at him from above. She was lying flat on the floor now, her long arm stretching down to him. He had maybe two feet to jump. That was it. Two feet.
Another stabbing pain caught him on the cheek, and he felt his face inflate. No time to lose.
Cal jumped, throwing up both hands and grabbing desperately for Mizette. She caught hold of his swollen left hand, which was now almost as large as hers, and Cal howled in pain as her grip tightened around it.
Something pointy plunged into his left buttock. He felt the now familiar rippling warmth as the wasp injected its poison, then one side of his ass doubled in size, fully eclipsing the other.
“Pull!” Cal said, his voice an Elephant Man-like slur.
Miz ground her teeth together as she heaved. From that angle, Cal could see the collar around her neck, and watched in horror as the three green lights became four. Miz’s face contorted in agony. Her muscles tightened. Including, to Cal’s dismay, those in the hand that was currently in the process of crushing his own.
“Ow! Fonk! Fonk!”
A Harvester appeared at the edge of the hole beside Mizette. “What are you doing?” he demanded, giving Miz a kick. She snarled, her eyes screwed tightly shut as she dragged Cal upward.
Five lights.
Miz’s snarl became a scream. It lasted only a half-second before the Harvester drove another boot into her ribs, knocking the wind from her.
“Leave him down there,” the Harvester commanded. “He’ll keep them busy until the retrieval team gets here.”
“Miz, do what he says,” Cal pleaded. He tried to wriggle his hand free, but her grip was too tight. “I’ll be OK. I’ll be OK.”
Mizette opened her eyes. Her pupils were fully dilated from the pain that raged through her. Her teeth were clamped together, and Cal could barely make out the words she somehow hissed through them.
“Getting. You. Out.”
Six lights.
Seven.
Another kick.
Another.
The Harvester was screaming now, but the droning of the insects around Cal’s head made it impossible for him to hear what was being said.
The fur on Mizette’s head was graying before Cal’s eyes. Her eyes looked sunken, like they’d been taken out for cleaning then set back too far in her skull. Her arm shook. He was killing her. This fonk was killing her.
“Mizette, please!” Cal begged. “Don’t!”
The Harvester drew a foot back again. He was mid-swing when a large, muddy figure shoulder-barged him in the stomach, and they both went tumbling away from the edge of the hole, out of sight.
Loren dropped onto her front beside Miz and thrust a hand down. “Swing him up,” she commanded.
“Easy… for… you to say,” Miz hissed.
Roaring, muscles straining from the effort, Miz managed to drag Cal a foot closer to the hole. Reaching down, Loren grabbed his outstretched hand, and together they pulled him up to the surface.
“Kroysh, what happened to you?” Loren gasped, as she took in Cal’s various swollen appendages, hunched back, and bloated cheek. The swelling had spread up into his eye, giving him the appearance of someone looking at the world through a powerful magnifying glass, and not particularly approving of what he saw.
“Don’t worry about me!” Cal said. He caught a glimpse of his leg, the thigh of which was now several times its natural size. “Fonk. OK, worry about me a little. But help Miz.”
“I’m fine,” Miz groaned. The lights on her collar had dropped back to three, but the way her eyes rolled and her chest heaved said she was still feeling the effects.
Cal heaved his deformed, bloated body up onto his feet and offered Mizette a giant hand. “Here. Let me help you,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”
“You can totally say that again,” Miz grimaced, allowing Cal to help her up.
She bent double for a few moments, her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. She looked up in time to see Garunk smothering the Harvester he’d been fighting to death by filling its mouth and nostrils with mud.
Behind him, Orange Hat maintained unwavering eye contact with the wall he was chiseling away at.
“A rescue!” exhaled Garunk, schlepping over to join the others. “An actual rescue! I did a rescue! How awesome is that?”
“Pretty awesome,” said Loren, with the tone of someone who’d spent the last few hours listening to all the terrible things Garunk thought were awesome.
“Me! I mean… me. An actual rescue! And it was so dramatic and last minute. Like, just in the nick of time!” He waved his fists in the air like an excited child. “Those are the best kind!”
“You’ve got to love his enthusiasm,” said Cal.
Loren gave a non-committal tilt of her head. “Well…”
“You’ve, like, killed that Harvester guy,” Miz pointed out.
Orange Hat gave a little cheep of panic and dug faster, like he could tunnel his way out of this entire situation.
“I know! Isn’t that amazing!” Garunk yelped. “Me! Fighting bad guys! Can you imagine?”
He mimed throwing a few lumbering jabs and a right hook, adding in some sound effects for good measure.
“Come on, we should stage a breakout right now!” Garunk said. “All of us together. We’ll fight our way out. It’ll be so cool!”
Loren bit her bottom lip. “Yeah, it’s not quite that simple.”
“Of course it is!” laughed Garunk.
“You know, I’m really starting to like this guy,” Cal said. He slapped his thigh, which only served to remind him how fonking painful it was. He ignored it. “Garunk, I’m officially making you an honorary member of Space Team.”
Garunk gasped so sharply his face bubbled inward.
“Wait, what?” said Loren. She smiled at Garunk as she side-eyed Cal. “Shouldn’t we discuss this first?”
“There’s nothing to discuss. He’s awesome. Did you see the way he took out that guard? That was textbook Space Team. He’ll fit right in.”
Loren shifted awkwardly, her smile still fixed in place. “I mean, yes, obviously, I’m very excited about the possibility of Garunk joining us. If it was up to me, I’d let him in for sure. But, you know, we have to think of the others. We should check with them.” She gestured to Mizette and shot her a meaningful look. “I’m not sure Miz would go for it.”
Miz shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“See? It’s not a problem,” Cal said. “We’re in favor, Miz is completely indifferent, Mech is a fonking traitor and has a lot of making up to do, and Splurt probably won’t even notice.”
“Well, yeah, but…” Loren squeaked, but she had no other arguments left to offer.
“So… I’m in?” asked Garunk. “I’m on the team?”
“Space Team,” Cal corrected. “And yes, you’re in. Welcome aboard, Garunk.”
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