“Ha! Just left? The guy freaks out!”
“Jason—” So much for not riling Dave with the rest.
“Accused us of trying to have a threesome! Says that’s gross, that he won’t stand for it unless—this was the cutest part—unless he was involved.”
“Threesome, eh?” Dave grumbled. “Do that a lot?”
“Well . . .” Jason teased.
“No!” Tracy stabbed another marshmallow. “I nearly told him he was welcome to go with Jason and his lady friend. Before I could, he starts going off on Jason—”
“Getting all up in my face, yelling that I should mind my own business and calling me . . . what was it?”
Tracy grinned. “Called you a ‘testosterized meatbag.’”
“Yeah, what’s that even mean?”
Tracy figured he could look it up and rushed toward the topic's end. “People were opening doors, looking out. Freaking nightmare, and at that point you’ve got the car-wreck thing going; I should’ve just closed the door on him, but I couldn’t look away, right? Finally Jason grabs him by the back of the shirt, hauls him to the elevator, and shoves him in.”
“Told him if he came back, I wouldn’t use the elevator to get him down next time.”
“Door closed,” she said. “End of story.”
“I still say you went out after I was gone and—”
Tracy glared. She didn’t mind the teasing so much as the risk of putting Dave into a mood. “Don’t push the temper of a woman with a hot poker in her hand.”
“Oh, is that what you went after him for? A hot—”
She put up a hand. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“She’s just trying to change the subject.”
“No,” Tracy insisted. “I’m not. Shh.” She really wasn’t but was grateful for the distraction all the same.
As everyone shut up to listen, a chorus of distant mewling became distinct. It carried toward the camp from a swarm of whitish-gray motes that glowed in the moonlight with the occasional flash of red or blue. Dave stood to peer with his one eye. Scores of tiny greenish eyes became discernable within the swarm, each gazing back at them.
With dawning recognition, Tracy abandoned her earlier welcoming attitude. “Razorwings!”
“Aw, hell!”
Jason clambered to his feet. “Are you sure?”
“Get to the SUV!”
Greek “mythology” is festooned with stories of fearsome creatures: the Erymanthian boar, the Lernaean hydra, the tickle-spider of western Achaea. All are creatures that strike fear in the hearts of listeners and posed a mortal danger to both the peoples they tormented and the heroes who fought them. These monsters’ formidability sprang from their terrible weapons and unique strengths. While in ancient times, the luckier mortals possessed bronze shields to protect themselves from such foes, as well as swords or cunning to wield against them, the monsters claimed massive, razor-sharp teeth, eyes that could turn a person to stone, or fiery breath. Even should a hero manage to avoid such dangers, he or she still had to contend with the beasts' thick hides, acidic blood, or powers of flight.
While many of the monsters that had appeared following the Return possessed such classic attributes, in the modern world, with its more abundant weapons and more organized humanity, mankind had other weaknesses at which a monster could strike. And so it came to be that the creatures eventually dubbed “razorwings” were among the most fearsome of all for one particular reason.
They were impossibly cute.
In fact, they were kittens—fuzzy, adorable kittens, each the color of fresh snow and no bigger than a cantaloupe. They were also feral; spat a paralyzing poison; and flew on colorful, batlike wings capable of slicing through a human arm. Yet once you attached all that to a kitten, it became the zoological equivalent of a death threat on pink stationery with hearts dotting the i’s. It was difficult to take them seriously, even in the swarms in which they generally traveled. Sharp claws? Check, but attached to a kitten. Piercing teeth? Yes, but, again, in the mouth of an adorable little kitten! One in ten able to chew through metal? Oh, you’d better believe it, but wookit da kitty!
Obviously this schmoopifying effect diminished after people actually encountered the playfully savage swarms of the things. Coos of adoration would swiftly turn to shrieks of dismay, which would then escalate into screams of terror when the abhorrent act of killing one adorable creature resulted in two more of them springing alive from its corpse. On the rare occasion this failed to happen, it was only because the creature’s death instead resulted in a fiery explosion and—in a characteristically laughable fashion—a shower of peppermint candy. (Some hypothesized that similar creatures in ancient times had inspired the modern piñata, but the idea fell out of favor due to lack of evidence and the fact that no one likes a piñata filled with death.) Those first few survivors who attempted to tell their tale of terror-by-kittens were ridiculed by their friends, dismissed by the mainstream news agencies, and finally laughed out of UFO conventions.
It would be inaccurate to say that the phenomenon was completely ignored, of course. The problem was that no one wished to mobilize the National Guard or allocate funds to counter a threat presented by kittens. The creatures’ “adorability armor” (a term coined in an NPR retrospective) allowed them to flourish under the radar of public concern.
A prodigious breeding rate coupled with the aforementioned death-bifurcation soon swelled their numbers. Further sightings were documented: The creatures destroyed farms. They terrorized small towns. They reduced countless yarn outlets to mind-scarring disarray. Reports of such incidents, given further life by the award-winning television exposé “An Inconvenient Kitten,” gradually moved the general populace to grasp the idea that such darling creatures actually posed a serious danger.
Even with the threat realized, campaigns to get people behind exterminating the “death-kitties” provoked only giggling. To overcome the masterful public relations coup that the creatures’ own nature had created, the Powers That Be rebranded the beasts as “razorwing sky terrors.” (Certain pundits suggested throwing the word socialist in somewhere for additional effect, but the idea was abandoned to reduce printing costs.) Even when colloquial usage swiftly shortened the name to “razorwings,” it was enough to imbue the little devils with the proper gravitas. The anti-razorwing campaign had begun.
Yet by then, the damage was already done. Razorwings now roamed the American heartland in such numbers that extermination was an epic task. Their bifurcation made it nearly impossible to simply kill them with bullets. No metropolitan area wished to risk the collateral damage sure to be caused by large-scale explosives or chemical poisons. Scientists were making a concerted effort to study the creatures to find a more feasible solution, yet capturing them was difficult and containing them was complicated by the fact that the blue-winged variety could chew through metal.
As scientists struggled to find an answer, civil leaders petitioned Athena for aid. The goddess rewarded their deference by providing defensive insights that led to a strategy of deterrence. Where budgets allowed, urban areas constructed devices designed to safely redirect the razorwings’ already chaotic impulses. Helicopters towing masses of dangle-balls on strings patrolled Las Vegas. Phoenix erected a network of laser pointers to fascinate any incoming razorwings and redirect them toward unpopulated areas. Kansas City simply used existing irrigation systems to spray them in the face.
Yet the razorwings’ coloring held another defense: the white kittens’ wings were either red or blue, and the red-white-blue combination led to a grassroots effort among some (located notably outside of razorwing territory) to declare them a manifest symbol of American strength. Some even lobbied for razorwings to replace the bald eagle as the national mascot. Their argument was clear: in light of the razorwings’ patriotic color scheme, the bald eagle and its utter lack of red or blue plumage was clearly phoning it in, and why did the bald eagle hate America?
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br /> It could be argued that if these fringe groups had not hampered efforts to speedily eradicate the beasts, then Tracy, Jason, and Dave would not now be forced to abandon their campfire in a mad rush to the illusionary safety of their vehicle.
The slam of the doors after the three piled into the SUV jolted Monster Slayer’s Doctor Ian Aaronson out of his catnap. “Gah! What is it?”
“Start the engine!” Tracy yelled.
“Bugger all, Tracy, are we late?”
The horrible meowing cacophony that overtook the campsite preempted her response. Diabolic kittens swarmed across the windshield and into their pitched tents. Nylon was torn and stakes were yanked from the ground as the razorwing swarm flung the tents into the air with feral curiosity. Supplies and clothing spilled to the ground, only to be snatched up again by tiny paws as the creatures began their playful vivisection of the area.
Ian gave a shout of comprehension and grabbed frantically to turn the key in the ignition.
“Drive!” Tracy shouted.
“Where?” Ian came back.
“Anywhere!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
“Who left the back door open?” Jason demanded.
They all turned to see the rear cargo door hanging wide open. Numerous white flashes of fur streaked past, threatening to get inside at any moment. Jason vaulted over the rear seat, crawled over video equipment, crushed a long and apparently empty cardboard box, and yanked the door shut.
“Furry bastards got my watch,” Dave grumbled, peering out.
Half a dozen razorwings perched on the hood, one of which began chewing its way through. Ian revved the engine. The razorwings leaped into the air as the SUV lurched forward, rolled up an embankment, and began to turn around.
Much of the swarm was now landed in the campsite and wreaking destruction. Sleeping bag stuffing floated like snow. Two razorwings had torn into the remaining hot dogs and were engaged in a tug-of-war that was simultaneously the cutest and most horrible thing Tracy had seen all month.
The doctor steered them right toward it all.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Back to the road!”
“Not that way! Get us out of here!”
“I said stop yelling! Let me drive!” He rolled them forward over a rock that sent the SUV bouncing upward, spilling Jason forward over the backseat as he tried to climb over. The big man cursed in pain.
“Next time sit in the back of the truck, Doc!”
“‘Drive anywhere,’ that’s what you told me!” He veered toward the left of the swarm. Dozens of eyes flared in the headlights, deadly interest piqued. “I’m merely attempting—”
“Watch out!”
A monumentally stupid man rushed out of the darkness ahead of them, madly waving his arms and planting himself directly in their path.
It was Leif.
Leif?
Before Tracy could pick the right profanity for the situation, Ian jerked the wheel to the right, throwing her against him. Narrowly missing Leif, the SUV plowed instead into a landed group of razorwings. Piteous cries of pain ended abruptly with a thundering bang and the sound of tearing metal. The SUV lifted up on its left wheels and nearly tipped completely before it crashed back down again.
The vehicle was righted, but the engine was dead. Tracy was too stunned to curse. Dave, always having her back, cursed enough for the both of them. Jason was the first one with anything coherent to say.
“Don’t just sit there, Doctor, start it up!”
Ian obliged, fruitlessly attempting to turn the engine over as Dave turned to look outside. “Who the hell’s that idiot?”
“My stalker.” She looked behind them, fully expecting Leif to come pounding on the door at any moment. “Anyone see him?”
“It won’t start!” Ian yelled quite needlessly from the front seat. A handful of razorwings clawed their way up the side of the damaged SUV to crawl across the windows.
“Keep trying!” Jason turned around with them, then pointed. “There, by the campfire. They spotted him.”
Tracy looked, spotting Leif herself as he waved his arms in an attempt to defend against the creatures that now swarmed him. Tiny claws tore at his shirt as they swooped in, half attacking, half playing like any regular kitten clawing its owner’s forehead as if to say, “Why in the world are you sleeping at 4 a.m.?” One of the beasts landed on the small backpack Leif wore and panicked him into discarding it entirely.
Stalker or not, they couldn’t just leave him out there.
“Did anyone unpack the laser pointers yet?” Tracy called.
“Still in the back, I think!” It was Dave’s turn to clamber over the backseat. “Stuff’s all shoved around! Where’s the green bag?!”
Tracy cursed. “Why’d you put them in there? I think it’s on the bottom!”
“Why’d you put it on the bottom?!”
By the campfire, a burst of spit flashed in the firelight and caught Leif in the face. He staggered, stumbled, righted himself, stumbled again, staggered a second time, failed to right himself, then finally went down.
(Thalia, watching from the tree above, gave him a 9.5.)
Dave tossed bags about in a mad search as Tracy wished she’d thought of the laser pointers earlier. Glancing between Dave and Leif threatened to give her eyes whiplash.
Jason, doing the same, finally bent down to reach under the driver’s seat. “You won’t find them in time!”
“Best I can do with one friggin’ eye!”
Outside, the razorwings settled on Leif’s fallen body and backpack, growing more and more frenzied as they found new toys to play with. Six of them tore the backpack open and dived inside in a squirming mass. Nearly a dozen more seemed poised to do the same to the paralyzed Leif at any moment.
In a flash, Jason pulled the official Monster Slayer sword (crafted by traditional American weaponsmiths, official replicas available for just $99.95 plus shipping) from under the seat. “Stay here!”
He jumped from the SUV, tore the sword from its scabbard, and plunged into the swarm before Tracy could think of stopping him. He knocked three razorwings from Leif’s back with the flat of his blade before they’d even noticed him, then batted away another two with the backswing. A chorus of enraged mewling rose from the rest as dozens of brilliant eyes all turned on the new violent man with the shiny object.
As the doctor continued his futile battle with the ignition, Tracy climbed into the backseat with Dave. “Hurry! Jason’s out there!”
“Yeah? Tell him to bring back my watch!”
Jason’s intervention was brilliantly heroic, but razorwings were even more vicious when defending themselves. Tracy shuddered to think of what the monsters would do to Jason if he couldn’t handle them.
She shuddered again to think that they wouldn’t even get it on camera. They’d have to do a clip show or something and find a new hero.
Jason whirled the blade around, not attacking the razorwings so much as trying to scare them off. They took to the air, whirling around him in a frenzy of soft fur and pointy bits. Within moments they were swooping in two or three at a time, wings wide in an effort to do some slicing of their own.
“Found ’em!” Dave gave a triumphant bellow and pulled two laser pointers from the bag so victoriously that they flew out of his hand, hit the ceiling (also victoriously), and clattered onto the floor under the passenger’s seat (perhaps less victoriously). “Ah, crap.”
In the moment between Tracy’s dive back to the front seat and slamming into the also-diving doctor, she had just enough time to spot Jason putting Leif over his shoulder while two razorwings clawed their way up his legs. (Her peripheral vision was excellent.) Tracy seized one of the pointers as Ian grabbed the other.
“Open the door!” Jason yelled. He ran for the SUV, Leif slung in one arm, sword in the other.
Dave swung the back door wide. “Gonna put an eye out if he keeps runnin’ with that thing,” he muttered. “
Behind you!”
While the majority of the swarm circled Jason, three razorwings went for a more direct approach. Bladed wings spread, they dived down from behind, eyes wide, teeth bared. Whether due to Dave’s warning or his own instincts, Jason spun about to backpedal toward the SUV, sword raised. The swooping razorwings spit as they neared. Jason sidestepped and sliced the blade through two. Both fell to the ground wailing as the third slashed its way past and caught Jason's arm with one wing. Two more spit and hit him straight in the face. Jason had just enough time to turn, lunge through the open door with Leif, and collapse in an affectedly heroic position.
Dave pulled him in completely and yanked the door shut. It slammed on the tail of a single razorwing who’d made it inside with them. The creature’s scream tore through them like nails on a chalkboard that also had just slammed a razorwing in the tail. The thing flapped about in a mad attempt to free itself as Dave tried to beat it unconscious with Leif’s leg.
Now robbed of their toys, the razorwings outside turned their full fury on the SUV. They tore off windshield wipers. Three gnawed the antenna into a knot. Metal tore as the blue-winged variety began carving the SUV’s roof open like a can of tuna. With a shout to Ian, Tracy switched on her pointer. She shined it out the window on the ground in the middle of the swarm and waved it about like an idiot. Ian followed suit.
Anyone who has never seen a kitten go after a laser pointer dot yet claims experience of true focused tenacity is a dirty liar who should rightly be punched in the mouth. At once the creatures dived for the two glowing dots, clambering over each other in a spastic attempt to capture the light. Tracy and Ian jumped the dots from place to place around the vehicle until every razorwing was enthralled. The ground outside became a mass of jumping, batting, and eerie feline screams. Gradually, Tracy and Ian directed the dots farther away from the campsite, each time backtracking a little to catch any stragglers before shining the lasers away again. The swarm moved farther and farther off until, finally, they were just an indistinct cloud of white in the moonlight.
Then, at Tracy’s signal, they turned off both pointers. The swarm’s momentum carried it away into the night.
Zeus is Dead Page 10