His eyes became glassy and distant, staring through Loren rather than at her.
“Cal,” said Floora. Her voice was near and far at the same time. He blinked and looked around, but couldn’t see her anywhere.
Then again, he couldn’t see much of anything. The darkness was circling, creeping around him in watchful circles, waiting for its chance to strike.
“Just shoot me,” Cal said. “It’s not fair to make you fight it. It’s not fair. And I’m done for, anyway. Just do it.”
The gun trembled in Loren’s grip. She gritted her teeth, her forehead furrowed in concentration.
Ignoring the pain, Cal raised himself up onto his knees. He swayed from side to side, finding his balance, then pressed his forehead against the end of the blaster.
“Just shoot me. Do it. It’s not your fault, OK?” he told her, staring deep into her eyes. “It’s not your fault.”
Loren’s finger tightened. She inhaled deeply through her nose, steadying her nerve.
“I mean, sure, would I have found a way to break it, if it was me? Yes. But it’s fine,” Cal said.
Loren’s eyelids fluttered.
“I’m not saying it’d be easy,” Cal continued. “Just, you know, if it was me, I’d have found a way to shrug it off. But it’s fine. It’s totally fine. Not your fault.”
The barrel of the gun dipped a fraction. Cal caught it and placed it back against his head.
“Seriously, just do it. Don’t feel bad about being hypno-brainwashed, or whatever,” Cal said. “We can’t all be as resilient as I am.”
He smiled at her. It was a smile he had carefully selected for its immensely patronizing qualities.
“I guess I’m just made of sterner stuff,” he concluded.
“What? Bullshizz you are!” Loren spat, lowering the gun. “I’m way more…”
Her voice trailed off. She looked around them, as if only just seeing the world for the first time.
“What the fonk?” she demanded. “What is this? Where am I? How did—”
She caught sight of Cal and all other questions ceased to be important. “Kroysh, what happened?” she asked, her voice softening.
“Miz, Mech. You,” Cal grunted. He exhaled with relief. That had been a long shot, and he was amazed it had actually worked. “But it’s worse than it looks.”
He replayed this in his head.
“No, that should be the other way around,” he said.
He looked down at the puddle of blood beneath him, then reconsidered again.
“Actually, no. I was right the first time.”
“Why aren’t you healing?” Loren asked, dropping the gun. “Here, let me see.”
Before she could move to help him, there was a flurry of movement at her back.
A pterodactyl-thing screeched. Leathery wings flapped. Clawed feet raked up Loren’s back, then the momentum of the creature sent her stumbling toward the cliff-edge.
“No!” Cal cried. He threw himself after her just as she dropped to the ground, lowering her center of gravity in an attempt to stay on the right side of the drop.
It was no use. The slippery shale carried her over the edge. Cal’s eyes met hers, and then she slid all the way out of sight.
“No, no, no,” Cal whimpered, dragging himself over to where the mountain fell away into nothing.
He had been bracing himself to find her gone. Instead, he found her clinging to a handhold just a couple of feet down.
“Hey,” she said.
Cal let out a strangled sob of relief. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I thought you’d fallen.”
“I did,” said Loren.
Cal tutted. “Further, I meant. I thought you’d fallen further.” He offered her a hand. “Need some help?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Loren, stretching for a chunk of stone that jutted out from the vertical rock wall. “Besides, you don’t look like you could carry a tune, let alone—”
The piece of rock came away as she put her weight on it. Loren dropped suddenly, her other hand losing its grip.
For a moment, she was weightless, hundreds of feet in the air. And then, Cal’s hand was around her wrist, his blood-soaked fingers gripping her with every ounce of strength he had. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
“You… were saying?”
“You’ll never let me hear the end of this,” Loren groaned.
“Damn straight,” Cal said through gritted teeth. “Floora? Get over here. I need your help.”
King Floomf of the Floomfles paced back and forth across the Emergency Situation Room, his little robe swishing against the carpet every time he turned. It was not a particularly large room, and the constant swishing was really starting to get on everyone else’s tits.
The everyone else in question was the Head of Floomfle Security, Floomton Jehooso, and his second-in-command, Floojus Pom. Their eyes tick-tocked, following the king in his relentless back and forth across the room.
“It’s preposterous. Simply preposterous,” King Floomf said.
“Yes, sire,” agreed Floomton Jehooso.
“Indeed,” confirmed Floojus Pom.
“How has it happened?” demanded the king. He reached the far end of the room, then wheeled around in a half-circle and began marching again. His eyes went to the television. “We sent those Floomfles in good faith. You saw them, they couldn’t wait to get up there and get themselves eaten! Some of them had been waiting all their lives for just this very opportunity.”
“Yes, sire,” agreed Floomton Jehooso.
“They had,” confirmed Floojus Pom.
“And now this!” cried the king, gesturing at the screen.
The shot cut from the battle between Hunter and Prey to a close-up of a worried-looking Floora.
“I mean, look. Look at that!” King Floomf hollered. “How has this happened? How can this be?”
“We don’t know, sire,” said Floomton Jehooso.
“We are investigating,” added Floojus Pom.
“Forget investigating! It’s too late for investigating! We need to take action,” King Floomf shrieked. “Get on the comm-link. Get in contact with Viaview. Tell them that we did our part, exactly as agreed. This is not our fault. It can’t be. It’s nothing to do with us!”
He jabbed a pudgy finger at the screen, and at the diminutive figure watching the battle. “Because, I don’t know who or what that thing is,” he said. “But it is not a Floomfle.”
Cal braced himself against the clifftop and tried to heave Loren up, but pain lit-up his right side and tore along the length of his arm.
“Jesus, and you had the nerve to say that I’m getting heavy?” he said, straining from the effort.
“Yeah, yeah,” Loren said. “Funny guy.”
“You think… maybe you should lose… the fonking bazooka?”
“How? It’s hooked across me. I’d have to take my arm off,” Loren pointed out.
“Great! That’d… make you… even lighter still,” Cal said in a series of pained grunts.
He’d been cold a moment ago, but now the sweat was pouring out of him. It formed on his forehead, trickled down his nose, then dropped past Loren and continued down toward the ground below.
It plinked on the testicle-head of one of the Sloorgs. Fonk. He’d forgotten about them. They were dangerously close now. He had to get Loren up, and fast.
“Floora? Give me a hand here,” Cal said.
Floora didn’t answer. Or she might have, but the sound of Cal’s blood whooshing through his veins made it hard to hear anything else.
His arm vibrated with the strain of holding Loren up. Blood ran in meandering rivers along it, filling the inside of his glove.
“Don’t let me go,” Loren pleaded.
Cal shook his head. “Never,” he said. “I promise. It’s a Cal Carver—"
Something sharp and metallic plunged into his shoulder from behind, burying deep into his flesh. The arm holding Loren went limp. He saw the panic in her eyes
, heard a high-pitched giggle at his back, and then his hand was empty, and Loren was tumbling down, down, down the mountainside.
She hit one of the climbing Sloorgs on the way past, dislodging it from its perch. They both tumbled end over end, facing each other like the participants of some deadly dance. And then, the clouds swallowed them both, and they were gone.
“Oh dear,” said Floora, her voice all child-like and innocent in Cal’s ear. “Looks like you broke your promise.”
Cal didn’t move. Not at first. He just lay there, his top half dangling over the cliff edge, his hand reaching out for someone who was no longer there.
He watched the swirl of the clouds where she had fallen, followed them as they resettled around the space where she now wasn’t.
Then, and only then, when all trace of her had vanished, Cal heaved himself up onto his knees and shuffled around to face the Floomfle.
Only to discover that she wasn’t there, either.
“What the fonk is this?” he demanded. Adrenaline and rage got him onto his feet. He spun, hunting for Floora, but finding no trace of her. He raged at one of the Hovercams. “What is this? What did you do? What did you do?”
“Aaaand she’s down,” boomed the voice of the Host. “Blaster-Mama is no more, dead at the hands of the dreaded Reduk Topa!”
“That’s not what happened!” Cal slurred. “That’s not… It’s not…”
He tangled both hands in his hair and pulled, the pain a welcome distraction from the emotional turmoil currently churning what was left of his guts into lumpy butter.
“That’s not what happened!” he sobbed.
From over by the cliff edge there came a rush of movement. Cal’s heart, which had stopped at the precise moment Loren had tumbled through the clouds, fluttered into life again.
Then, it crashed down to around his toes when a head like a testicle appeared over the top of the cliff, followed by a mess of teeth.
Another Sloorg cleared the top a few feet away on the right. Despite their lack of eyes, Cal could feel the creatures staring hungrily at him, sizing him up.
Even in perfect health, with his healing abilities working as they should, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against these things. Now, half-dead, with no means of recovering, any attempt to fight them would be a prolonged suicide bid. Or possibly a very rapid suicide bid, depending on how much they liked to play with their food.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to fight them. Not directly, at least.
He pulled off the blood-filled gloves. Then, grimacing with the pain and wooziness it brought, Cal bent and retrieved Loren’s gun. It kicked in his hands as he opened fire.
His aim was even worse than usual, which was really saying something, and none of the shots found their targets. They did, however, drive the Sloorgs back a few paces and, unfortunately for them, the cliff edge was slightly less than a few paces behind them.
The monsters howled as they fell, their paws scrambling for purchase on the stone. Cal couldn’t tell if they’d fallen all the way down the mountain, or were clinging on just a few feet below the drop, and he had no intention of hanging around to find out.
He set off limping, one hand clutching his side, the other holding the blaster. As he walked, an archway appeared ahead of him.
Sector Four.
He didn’t care what was through there. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. She was gone. Loren was gone. They had killed her.
They had killed her, and now he was going to kill them.
If it was the last thing he did.
Thirty-Eight
Had he been in a more receptive mood, Cal might have been impressed by the theming of the next sector. It was, from what he could gather, a hodge-podge of some of his worst memories and most vivid nightmares.
The scarecrow in the maze. The clowns in Funworld. The time Billy Minchin from High School had invited him to his fancy-dress birthday party, only for Cal to turn up at the venue dressed like Sloth from The Goonies and discover it had been booked for a televised Holocaust Memorial service.
The holographic images of all those horrified old people and Billy Minchin’s laughing face were eerily lifelike and accurate, but Cal didn’t care. He ignored them. He ignored everything.
He stopped for a moment when he saw his wife and daughter getting into a car. He almost called out to them, but what would be the point? This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It had already happened, and there was nothing he could do about it now.
He limped on. On through the creepy gas station bathroom he’d once got locked in. On across the frozen lake where, as a five-year-old, he’d found the body of a dog frozen below the ice, its eyes pleading for him to help it.
On through the nightmares. On through the memories. On through a whole load of shizz designed to freak him the fonk out.
But he wasn’t having it. He wasn’t having any of it. They’d killed her. They’d killed Loren, and no damn mind tricks were going to stop him.
He was striding through his uncle’s creepy basement, where he’d once been trapped in the dark for three hours with only a million imaginary spiders for company, when Splurt attacked. He came leaping from the shadows at the corner of the basement, a thrashing mass of gelatinous green limbs all forming forked blades at the ends, and all of them aiming for Cal’s head.
“They killed her, Splurt,” Cal said, not flinching.
Splurt collapsed into a ball, his limbs whipping back into his body. Cal didn’t miss a step.
“They killed Loren.”
Splurt shuddered, then trundled after Cal.
“Wait, what’s…” asked the voice of the Host, then it was cut off. There was a faint screech of feedback. The thudding of a microphone being moved.
Cal ignored it all and kept walking, with Splurt rolling along at his feet. The ground was undulating like the deck of a ship, but he felt that was more to do with his loss of blood than any fancy TV trickery.
Up ahead, a finish line appeared. Cal hurried for it, each step leaving a bloody footstep on the wooden floor of his uncle’s basement. Splurt rolled up Cal’s back and perched on his shoulder. He nuzzled against the side of his head, offering his sympathies in the only way he knew how.
“Thanks, buddy,” Cal said, his voice hoarse.
Behind them, a Sloorg howled. Then another. Then another.
Two of the creatures padded out from behind a stack of shelving and a rusted exercise bike ahead of them, blocking the route to the finish.
Cal kept walking. A Hovercam swooped in low to watch as the two Sloorgs up ahead pounced. Splurt exploded into a terrifying mass of whirring blades and pointy spikes. The dog-monsters yelped briefly, then both fell to the ground as a series of identical neatly-dissected pieces.
The Sloorgs behind them made their move, too. Cal didn’t see what happened to those when Splurt sprang into action again. He didn’t care. Whatever it was, the fonking things had it coming.
Cal continued to the finish line. It swam sickeningly, his vision fading in and out as what little blood was left in him continued to vacate the premises. He stumbled a few feet from the end, his legs finally giving up on him.
No.
Not now. Not when he was so close.
Splurt wrapped around his torso, becoming dozens of tiny feet beneath him. They crawled him onward to the finish, escorted him over the finish line, then deposited him unceremoniously on the floor.
Light flooded in. The basement floor had become a pulsing white glow beneath his fingertips. Cal’s face was pressed against it, one cheek shoved up into his eye.
“Splurt?” he said. He prodded at himself, and discovered that the little green blob was no longer wrapped around him. “Buddy?”
Cal pushed himself up onto his knees, then got shakily to his feet. Not as shakily as he’d been expecting. In fact, barely shakily at all.
He had stopped bleeding. Or rather, he hadn’t started bleeding. His hands and clothing were crimson-free, and the
myriad of agonies that had been scattered throughout his body were gone.
Cal prodded gingerly at his side where Miz had slashed him, but found no wounds. He checked his shoulder and his hips, but neither of those had sustained any damage, either.
After checking himself over again just in case he’d missed anything, Cal turned to look back in the direction he’d come. Where he’d expected to see the archway leading to his uncle’s basement, he instead saw nothing but white.
It stretched out around him in on all sides—around, above and below—an endless gulf of empty whiteness, with nothing noteworthy to be seen in any direction. No archway, no basement, no Splurt.
No nothing.
“Great. So, I’m dead,” Cal said.
“Yes. You are,” said a voice from behind him. Cal spun to find the Controller standing there, his silver frame reflecting the whiteness, his multiple hands tapping on his many devices.
“You!” Cal hissed, his fingers bunching into fists. He threw a punch at the Controller, but it was easily deflected. A quick shove sent Cal tumbling to the floor.
“Yes. Me. Of course, it’s me. It’s always me,” said the Controller. “Whether I look like this. Or like this.”
He changed shape before Cal’s eyes, becoming Floora. She giggled.
“Guess I did too good a job of keeping you alive!”
Her voice changed, becoming the Controller’s again. “Or this…”
He vanished completely. A moment later, Perko’s grinning face appeared in the air.
“Hey there, good pal! Long time, no see!”
Cal instinctively leaped up and swung a punch at the irritating animated bamston, but his fist found nothing but air.
“Or even this,” said a voice from behind him.
Cal turned to find the Host standing there, smiling in a way that showed off his perfect smile.
“Commiserations, Reduk Topa,” said the Controller in the Host’s voice. “You came so close, but nobody beats The Hunt!”
“I beat it,” said Cal. “I beat your stupid game!”
The Hunt for Reduk Topa Page 30