Last Playground

by Geoff North

  Brinn opened one eye and watched as the two struggled to hold each other. Pipes started to fly away from the building. She could see the tilt more clearly the farther they went. It was like a modern-day Pisa, leaning precariously to one side. Windows were shattering, sending showers of broken glass onto the burning wannasee below. Pipes took them up, through the black smoke, hundreds of feet above the wall of fire still spreading out away from the city. Brinn closed her eyes against the sting and wept into the super-hero’s neck as they sped away into the plains beyond.

  Lowe and Reginald slid into a leaning wall of the S.S.I.A building. The marshal braced his cowboy boots against its surface in an attempt to stop them from going over.

  “No use, Marshal,” Reginald said. “The wall may hold, but the entire building is going to take us down with it.” There was another thump and they dropped another twelve feet.

  Lowe looked back over his shoulder. The entire roof had an impossible bend to it. In seconds their side would split away, hastening their doom. The sun dipped beneath the far wall as the building leaned even further over.

  “What’s the matter, robot? You ain’t got no final song to sing?”

  “I fear my singing days may have come to an end, Marshal.”

  Lowe spotted the door they’d climbed up through off to one side. An arm reached out, looking for something to grab on to. The fingers dug into a crack in the concrete and seconds later a lone figure emerged through the opening.

  He saw Lowe and the robot braced against the far wall and grinned.

  “Do I have to save you guys everywhere I go?”

  Chapter 27

  The rat lost his balance and stumbled off his sharp claws. His whiskered face slammed into the slime of the sewer tunnel. He sputtered and spat, wiping the waste away from his nose and eyes with the sleeve of his orange sweater.

  Fredrick Pink leaned back on his haunches and studied the wool stretched across his chest and belly. The jack-o-lantern face was drenched with oily black goo. “We really should find some time to clean this place up a bit,” he said sadly. “Sweaters this size are hard to come by, and nothing will get this stain out.”

  His fellow rats gathered around him, squeaking and sniffing, black ears pressed back against greasy, coarse fur. Their whiskers whipped about, quivering in fear as the tunnels all around them shook and shuddered. Muddy water rushed from fresh cracks in the brickwork above, drenching them even further.

  It had become unbearably hot as well. Rats thrived in all environments, but the heat pumping through the tunnels was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, even for Fredrick and his followers.

  “What sort of mischief have those fools gotten themselves into up there?” Their leader sighed heavily. It produced a hacking cough, and an obscenely large ball of crud shot from his mouth and splattered against the wall. It dropped and landed on the tail of another worried-looking rat. “Forgive me, Claudine. It’s all this sudden heat and humidity, you know. The gunk on my chest has started to loosen.”

  There was a distant explosion—the cracks above spread, covering them in a downpour of putrid brown mud. Fredrick wheezed and landed back on all fours. He scrambled further down the tunnel, his orange sweater now completely soaked and stinking. His friends followed, squeezing up against his backside, scrambling beneath and around him.

  “We should’ve eaten them. We should’ve nibbled the meat from their bones and sucked the marrow clean... Forgive me.”

  They rounded a curve and ran into Yellow-Pail-Head-Skeleton-Thing. It lashed out at Fredrick with rusted razor-blade fingers, slicing through his pink nose and severing three whiskers in half. The other rats overwhelmed the creature, dragging it down to the mud in a rattle of bones and gnashing sharp teeth. There was no meat for them to gnaw at so they congregated around the plastic of its head and went to work on the smeared, upside down happy face. The blades flew, severing more whiskers, and tails, and sharp little paws.

  Fredrick wailed to be heard over the commotion. “No, my friends! It shouldn’t end this way!” The rats backed off. Pail Head rattled his way up against a wall. The dried-blood face had taken on an even more battered, evil leer. White scratches ran through the yellow plastic, like fresh scars. “We are all instruments of evil. We are the most haunted, disturbed visions a little boy could imagine. We offer a balance to all the good he ever thought up. If his world survives, we will be needed again some day. Let us not end it all here. We must retreat even further into the bowels of darkness and obscenity. We must bide our time and wait.”

  The tunnels continued to shake and rumble. Pail Head rose and backed away from them, further down the tunnel, around a curve and out of sight.

  “Yes,” Fredrick Pink said with a sniffle. He wiped the blood from his nose against his filthy sweater and smiled malevolently. His sharp yellow teeth gleamed in a light that only his sharp-eyed friends could see. “We shall live to frighten another day.”

  They started down the shuddering passage once again, disappearing into the murk and the mud. The screams and shrieks of a thousand other retreating monstrosities echoed throughout the tunnels—horrible, nameless creatures all sharing the same idea—nightmares burrowing deep under cover, waiting to be revisited at some future date.

  ***

  “Can’t you dig any faster?” the penguin asked, lifting a webbed foot and farting sawdust onto the ice. “With paws that big, we should be able to get through all that snow in a few minutes.”

  Buddy Black Bear paused in his efforts and shot the little bird a dirty look. “I don’t see you offering to help.”

  “Aack… These wings are only good for swimming and flapping.”

  Buddy resumed shoveling snow away from the collapsed tunnel, muttering under his breath. “Good at flapping your beak maybe.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing.”

  The ground shuddered again, and the two heard the collapse of more rock and ice somewhere behind them. “That’s just great,” Sawdust said. “Now we’re trapped. How much air does a bear need to survive?”

  “Don’t worry about me. They send birds into mine shafts to check air quality. You’ll asphyxiate long before me, I’m guessing.”

  “That’s a comforting thought.”

  SSPLLAARRTT

  “Would you please stop farting?” Buddy demanded. “It’s going to get stuffy enough in here without you having to smell the place up.”

  “Wood shavings don’t stink.”

  The ground shook harder. Buddy dug faster. After a few minutes of strained silence, he broke through. “Finally.”

  Sawdust squeezed into the opening first. “It’s clear as far as I can tell,” he called back in a muffled tone. “As long as there are no more cave-ins, we should be able to make it down all the way.”

  Buddy scooped away more snow until he was able to fit through. He flopped down beside the penguin and peered into the darkness. “You sure this is the right way?”

  Sawdust stepped forward tentatively. He slipped on the ice and spun his wings until he recovered his balance. He slipped again and started to slide down. Buddy scooped him back just in time. “Oh yeah, I’m sure. Once we start, there’ll be no getting back. We’ll slide down four or five thousand feet.”

  “All the way down below sea level,” Buddy finished for him. “When the big thaw hits, we should be plenty safe down there.”

  “Plenty trapped too.”

  “It’s what we have to do.”

  Sawdust scratched the top of his head with the tip of a wing. “Kinda like destiny, hey?”

  “Destiny… Duty… Whatever you want to call it. We have to protect this thing at all costs.” He shook the little plastic lunch box strung around his neck. Something rattled inside.

  The bird wiggled his beak and stared at the worn decal pasted to the lunch kit’s lid. A cartoon image of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stared back at him behind a black visor. Buzz Aldrin stood beside him, planting an American flag int
o the gray lunar surface next to the Moon Lander. The thing nestled inside the lunch box was far more powerful than anything NASA could ever dream up. It was even more powerful than the old spinning thing—far more powerful—and much more dangerous. “Yeah, I guess when the sawdust hits the fan, we’re gonna be glad we know where it is. We wouldn’t want anyone else getting hold of it.” The penguin crawled up onto Buddy and dug his wings into the bear’s fur. “Try and stay on your rear end, okay? I don’t wanna get squished halfway down.”

  “When the fire comes, you’ll be glad we went down there. I’m betting your wooden innards would go up pretty quick.”

  “How do you know a big fire’s coming?”

  “Bears know these things.”

  Buddy gripped Sawdust and nestled his chin tightly against the lunch box. He pushed away with his other arm and the two were off—bellowing, screaming, and farting all the way— four to five thousand feet and possibly more, beneath the soon to be unthawed tip of Artica Land.

  ***

  The smoke was like a distant mountain range, thrusting up across the horizon in great bursts of gray and black. As Sherman Sureshot watched its advance, he noticed the color changing. It was brightening in intensity from the bottom up.

  He nervously rubbed at the rope-burn scar encircling his neck. It was a habit he’d picked up shortly after surviving being hanged from a tree branch.

  If you can survive a good hanging, you can survive just about anything.

  At least that’s what he liked to tell himself in the years since then. Whatever this was growing on the horizon might have a different opinion. He looked up behind him at the tree, a solid oak, devoid of leaves even before the hanging. The stump was still jagged where the branch had snapped, dropping him to the ground thirteen feet below. Thanks heavens the lynch mob hadn’t stuck around long enough to ensure the job was done. Sloppy, crooked lawmen, he thought. If you can’t see a thing through, then it isn’t worth wasting the energy on in the first place.

  It was early morning now, but you would be hard-pressed to guess what time of day it was looking up over the oak into the cloudless sky. There it was a sickly mauve, the cancerous air had risen in temperature, and the eerie light painted the dead forest Sherman and his band of rebellious marauders had once frolicked in a depressing shade of gray. He recalled the days when young Neal rode with them. It was a time when the grass was deep green and the sky was robin-eggshell blue. And the trees were still there—hundreds of thousands of trees—thick enough in places for a man to become lost in if he didn’t stay close to his fellows. Sureshot didn’t believe it could get much worse. All that remained of his forest was stumps. Blackened shards petrified into grisly stone reminders of a better time.

  What happened to the boy? Why did he leave us…this?

  The wasted land became lighter still and Sherman turned back to face the oncoming storm. He shielded his eyes against the bright orange line consuming even further the already scorched earth. His fingers dropped down to the scar around his neck again.

  It can get worse, and it will get worse.

  Sherman removed the bow from his back and threw it to the ground at his feet. It was carved from the same piece of tree branch he’d hung from—the same piece of wood that had broken at just the right time.

  For all the good that did.

  ***

  Somewhere along the mighty Jang Geez River, deep within the jungle country of Shandukhar, a tiger was stalking its prey. This wasn’t the same lush, green jungle Neal Stauch had created and played in years before. It had withered up, the forests and vines dried into gray tangles and black, dead brush. And the river could hardly be called mighty any longer. It was barely more than a stream—a brown sludge of slow-moving waste few creatures waded into and even fewer lived in.

  The human walked on ahead, following the curve of the river along its dry, mud-cracked bank. He kicked at a loose formation of stones that had been used as a fire pit and decided the ring could serve its purpose once again. He gathered some grass and branches from the jungle’s edge and went to work with his flint and stone.

  The tiger narrowed its eyes and wrinkled its nose at the acrid smell of smoke the little fire stirred up. Everywhere humans went, they had to make a stink.

  The man sat cross-legged, placing the ancient musket rifle that was holstered to his back across his knees. “Come on out now. You know I don’t plan on using the thing.”

  The tiger stepped out of the bushes and padded over. He sat across from the man and tilted his head away in disgust as thin wisps of smoke traveled into his face.

  “Big ol’ cat like you scared of a little smoke?”

  “A little smoke in the jungle usually turns into a lot more,” the tiger answered. “I wish you wouldn’t light fires.”

  “And how would I prepare my meals?” the man asked, producing a metal skewer from the breast pocket of his khaki jacket. He fished around in an interior pocket and placed a raw chunk of meat onto the end of the metal. It began to sizzle and drip as he rotated it over the flames.

  “What is that?” the tiger asked with some concern.

  “Snake.”

  “Yuck.” The concern had vanished, but the disgust returned.

  “Guess I don’t have to worry about sharing?”

  “Snakes bite. I never bother with the damn things. Now if that were some juicy monkey or a nice piece of young water buffalo…”

  The ground shook beneath them. Man and tiger both noticed the water rippling and lapping along the bank.

  “It started doing that a few minutes ago,” the tiger said.

  The man nodded and returned to rotating his snake meat. “I know.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “The end of all things.”

  The big cat nodded and lay down on his stomach. His massive claws flexed out in front of him. “I had a feeling it might be something like that. The place started going to hell since the boy up and vanished.”

  “Nothing worthwhile to hunt since he left… Nothing but snakes and four-legged creatures with no faces.”

  The tiger growled a deep laugh. “You never killed anything so big with that gun when he was here. What were you to him anyway?”

  The man tossed his safari hat onto the sand and sighed. “Neal saw a movie once, an old black and white about big, fearless game hunters deep within the jungles of Africa.”

  “Africa?”

  “Like Shandukhar.”

  The tiger nodded.

  “But the kid couldn’t actually stomach the idea of killing giraffes and elephants and tigers. He just didn’t have that killer instinct.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  The ground shuddered and the water rippled.

  The man removed his skewer and picked off a piece of steaming meat. “Sure you won’t eat with me, Ed?”

  “Maybe I will, Harry.” The tiger made a smile that looked more like a murderous sneer. His fangs glistened and his white whiskers angled up to the sides of his face in resigned appreciation. “Yeah… Why not?”

  ***

  “I can’t believe you’re still alive!” Marshal Lowe shouted to the man half staggering, half crawling across the rooftop towards them.

  “Oh ye of little faith,” Commander Gunnarson said. He slid the remainder of the way on his side and stopped up against Reginald. “You didn’t think a disintegrating asteroid in another galaxy would keep me away, did you?”

  “I had my doubts,” Lowe answered.

  “Your timing is lousy however, Commander,” Reginald said as the building lurched further over.

  The movement didn’t stop. Gunnarson slid across the robot and toppled over the cement wall. Reginald wrapped a rubber arm around the man’s wrist and pulled. Lowe’s boots slid out from under him and he went over next. Reginald caught him as well.

  The two men swayed back and forth in midair. Reginald’s cube-formed body wedged against the inside of the wall and remained there.

  Lowe
watched as one of his boots succumbed to gravity and fell off below him. “Please tell me you’ve got some other scientific doo-hickey hidden up that sleeve of yers.”

  Gunnarson was still grinning, his face soaked with perspiration. “Now that you mention it…” He dug wildly into the pocket of his space suit and retrieved the same remote control detonator he’d used back in Canis Major.

  The building buckled in two. The roof split down the middle, and the wall crumbled into pieces. Reginald slid through and the three started to fall. A million tons of glass, concrete, and steel followed.

  Gunnarson’s fingers lost the detonator and it spun away from him in the air.

  Reginald’s wormy tendrils caught it.

  “The white button!” Gunnarson screamed.

  Reginald’s metal digit hesitated over the red button. “The one on the right?”

  The ground was coming up fast.

  “NO! Not right! WHITE! Hit the white button!”

  Marshal Lowe shut his eyes tight and recalled an old saying.

  It isn’t the fall that kills you—

  Chapter 28

  THUMP.

  —It’s the sudden landing.

  Lowe opened his eyes and saw the old farmhouse in front of him. It looked as if a stampede of cattle had charged through parts of it, but the building was still standing. He imagined it was in better condition than the building they’d just left. He was sitting in the dust on his rear end. Gunnarson was next to him, lying on his stomach, groaning and laughing at the same time. Reginald was ten feet away. He was on his side again—the rubber arms that had saved them were contracting back into his body.

  And he had found his singing voice again.

  “When the walls came down in New Hamden City, the creatures cried, the buildings fried, the rest found it a pity…”

  Lowe grumbled. “Shut up, Reginald… And thank you.” He set the robot back on his treads and turned to Gunnarson. “How’d you do it, Robert? How’d you get off that rock in space?”