by Aaron Crash
It was seven o’clock. They had five hours before the planet was blasted apart by the colliding stars.
Trina saw Blaze smoking his cigar. Not ten minutes before, they’d been joking, carefree, about sex, cigars, beer, and chorizo. Things had changed quick.
“Aren’t you worried about Granny’s germs?” she asked.
“Hey, Elle,” Blaze said. “How many sexually transmitted diseases do you think Granny has?”
“All of them,” his sister said. “Without a doubt. She has all of them.”
Blaze grinned. “Gotta die of something. Let’s go. I wanna kill the rest of the Gorebacks before I die of space herpes.”
Elle retrieved Granny’s purse, which was full of spell components she could use. Good, now she had aragonite crystals for her shield spell. But she’d been casting nonstop. What was that doing to her?
Ling ran to the crane truck and fired up the engines. Blaze and Trina collected up the starcycles, which still worked, barely. The crane had been blown to pieces, so they had to stow the bikes on top of the truck and latch them down with cables.
Trina rode shotgun while Ling drove, and of course, the calico cat was purring in there with them, out of the rain. Blaze and Elle rode in the operator cage, and though she complained, she let Blaze finish Granny’s Cohiba. The first zombies reached them, but they soon became mashed meat under the treads of the heavy piece of equipment as Ling drove it toward Know Return.
Blaze figured the name of the town was fitting. But he was going to beat the odds, get Granny back, and get off this haunted rock before the suns exploded.
Blaze’s display lit up. He saw Cali’s vital signs click on, and her VHI was at a thousand percent, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, until only an error message flashed underneath her icon. Her VHI went crazy when she was a werewolf.
As quickly as her VHI appeared, it vanished. But for a time, she’d been near enough on the planet for his display to sync with her implants.
“Cali’s on the planet,” Blaze muttered. “Did you see that?”
“I did,” Elle said. She then pointed. “But we’ve got bigger problems right now.”
The river in the ditch had risen high enough that the ectoplasm tentacles were able to reach for the crane truck.
“We have a river to fight,” Elle said, throwing open the door of the crane cage and rushing out with both of her katanas glowing.
Blaze followed with his ax and shotgun, though he was starting to run low on hydrogen shells and they still had a whole mess of evil to fight.
SIXTEEN_
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The living liquid tentacles grabbed hold of the shot-up crane housing and pulled the crane truck toward the ditch. The river and tentacles weren’t just liquid—trapped inside the viscous fluid were the internal organs of dead Humans, fingernails, hair, skin, and even some of the pieces of the dragon shattered into long trails of mucous-like membranes and bones the size of spears.
It was an awful stinking soup of liquid Onyx and the abattoir leftovers of the zombie horde.
The walking dead from behind clambered up onto the truck and crawled toward them. More of the undead were coming from all sides, all shambling across the landscape toward the crane truck.
It truly was a planet of death.
Chthonic would empty out every grave, the freshly dead would walk again, and those still alive would soon find themselves murdered to add to the archduke’s grisly army. Xerxes had been able to draw spaceships and junked technology across thousands of light-years of space to surround him in the middle of the Sargasso Expanse. If an archduke could do that, then Chthonic could pull corpses from every corner of Hutchinson Prime to throw at Blaze and his crew.
Trina was out of the cab, plasma minigun once again in her hands. The six barrels of the plasma weapon spun to life, and she first blasted away the tentacles and then turned the spinning barrels of devastation onto the zombies swamping the truck. Plasma bursts caved in chests, slashed through abdomens, exploded skulls, and eviscerated limbs.
A tentacle reached for Elle and she slashed it apart with her katanas. Blaze did the same thing with his ax, but more coils of the river lashed out. Know Return’s main street shops were about five hundred yards away, but the highway was flooded with ectoplasm. They were going to have to abandon the crane truck.
The ectoplasm tentacles reached up, pulled the treads to a stop, and the zombies overwhelmed them.
And of course, the yellow-dress ghost girl appeared in the operator cage. She lifted her hands, her dead eyes begging Blaze for something. For what? He had no idea, but he knew, before his adventures on the haunted planet were over, he was going to find out.
Two twin ghost girls, holding hands, stood knee-deep in the spectral goo covering the landscape, watching them. Only a matter of time before other ghosts joined them, and one touch would send Blaze or one of his crew frothing at the mouth, completely insane.
Blaze called through comms. “Ling, we’re taking the starcycles out. I’m hoping maybe Elle can give us a telekinetic lift, maybe up to the top of the antique store in town. It’s so close!”
“But as the cliché goes, Gunny, it is so close and yet so far away. But I’m coming.” Ling leapt from the truck’s cab.
Blaze whirled. A muscle-bound dead farmer in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt reached a meaty hand for him. The fingernails were a bright yellow from some fungus growing on his decaying fingers.
Blaze’s ax wasn’t heavy; the glowing fusion blades had no weight and the haft of the ax was made from a light titanium. Blaze had added some lead weights to the end by the fusion emitters just to give it more of the illusion of being an actual ax. It reminded him that the end of the weapon was exceedingly dangerous to Human tissue, especially his own.
The gunny chopped the ax blade effortlessly through the farmer’s skull, but he didn’t stop there. He kept cutting until the fusion blade drove through the zombie’s groin. The blade hit at an angle that didn’t cauterize the wound, so the rotted internal organs slopped out onto the top of the crane truck. Both halves of the zombie then tumbled off.
Blaze cut off an arm reaching for him. The flesh sizzled like chicken on a grill. He brought the ax around and sliced through a dead woman’s head, removing her scalp and half her brain. She tumbled backward.
A tentacle overflowing with leg bones caught in the jelly of the ectoplasm brushed against his armor then curled around his leg. Blaze snatched his shotgun off his back and blew the tentacle into steam. The leg bones disintegrated in the star fire. The flash of the bright light in the dark rainy day left spots, blurring Blaze’s vision. He blinked and felt small hands scratching at his armor. It was a kid zombie, gross. He slammed the shaft of his ax through the dead thing’s skull and into the corrupted brain inside.
“Trina,” Blaze said into comms, “can you cut that crane off at the top? Then, Elle, if you cast a TK spell, you can grab the starcycles before they crash down.”
“On it,” Trina responded.
“You pitch, I’ll catch,” Elle said in an evil tone.
“A double entendre involving either procreation or excretion, I’m sure,” Ling popped in. His dual nunchakus flashed in circles and arcs, clearing away the zombies from the top of the crane truck. Ectoplasmic tentacles were pulling the vehicle apart, tearing off the treads, ripping through the metal. Zombies were a thousand thick around the truck and more were clambering on top of the mess. Big male corpses crushed dead women and kid zombies under their bulk to get to the Humans on the crane truck. Some of the zombies had turned on the fresher of the dead to bite through skulls or to suck putrefying brains out of eye sockets.
It was a horde of awfulness, and Blaze and his crew were about to become dinner. The twilight had turned to darkness as night fell. Their fusion weapons glowed with hope, but Blaze had to keep feeding fresh hydrogen shells into his ax. Elle would pause to eject shells from her katanas and replace them with fresh energy. Ling did the same with
his nunchakus.
Trina’s plasma minigun had an internal nuclear power source, which meant it pretty much could run indefinitely, though the six barrels were glowing red. If it overheated, the barrels would melt, and they’d have to toss it.
“Trina, the bikes!” Blaze yelled.
“Working on it, Gunny. But these undead dickheads won’t stop coming.”
The vampire used the minigun to reduce another dozen zombies into sizzling meat before they clambered onto the crane truck.
Of course, in all the fighting, the calico cat had pulled another disappearing act, but she’d come back for a scratch under the chin or to warn them about another monster coming to attack them. After the cigar trick, Blaze had to like that cat as much as he had liked any dog.
“Ready when you are, Trina,” Elle said. Both of her katanas worked on splitting skulls and stopping the walking dead from getting to them. She slashed through brains and cut zombies in half with her glowing curved blades. Gore spattered her armor and flecked her face, but she fought on. Her bandolier of hydrogen shells and spell component pouches hung empty or slack. Granny’s full purse, though, hung crossways off her back, dangling at her side. Occasionally, she’d use a katana to cut off a jawbone and she’d stuff the bloody decayed piece of anatomy into her purse. She was collecting teeth for her consume spell. And she still had one last Onyx syringe for a power-up if she needed it.
When the undead got too close, she’d turn off her katanas and pull out cedar slivers and use her Onyx missiles to pierce brains. Or she’d throw a fireball spell. The explosions would lift the undead off the ground, bash them off the truck, and blow them apart. The rainfall stopped the fire from spreading across the weeds and dry corn, but the corpses smoked and stank from the magical flames.
Ling was fearless. He’d sprint across the crane truck to the back of the vehicle, whirling his nunchakus and concentrating on either severing heads or lobotomizing the zombies. The gnashing undead were soon silenced by his spinning fury. Dead hands would reach for him, but the Shaolin sloth would flip past them, dodge, duck, and then spin a glowing length of fusion on a nunchaku chain into their skulls.
The Meelah went back and forth along the edge of the crane truck, cutting through zombies like he was a gardener and they were weeds.
But in the end, there were too many of the walking dead to fight.
Trina finally turned her minigun on the crane and blasted through the thick metal arm near where the starcycles were tied.
Elle tossed out a magnet, casting a telekinesis spell to catch the dropping bikes. The starcycles floated only a few inches above the crane truck, ready for them.
Blaze and Ling hurried to get to the bikes.
Elle and Trina had been drawn back into the zombie battle.
The gunny flung himself onto a starcycle. Glass shattered as the ectoplasm tentacles reached into the cab and tore out the front seats and the steering column. Ling straddled the other bike.
“Elle, we need to go!” Blaze growled.
“Working on it,” his sister replied, keeping her TK spell going even as she lopped off a zombie head. She then floated above the mob. Her hands and eyes glowed red.
The undead had swamped the crane truck, and tentacles were ripping the metal to pieces. More tentacles threatened from all around.
Blaze saw that getting past them on the starcycles would be an iffy proposition.
Trina saw the danger as well.
“You guys go,” Trina said. “I’ll clear a path.”
Blaze’s heart fell. “But the zombies, the tentacles... You won’t make it.”
She sped over and gave him a cold kiss on the cheek. “I’ll make it, don’t worry. That ectoplasm might be a problem, but the zombies don’t care much for me since I’m dead…cute, mind you, but totally dead.”
The gunny hated it when one of his team played the self-sacrifice card. But he wasn’t about to try and argue with her. They didn’t have time. Dead hands reached for them. Ectoplasm tentacles flailed around them.
“Be careful, stay alive, and stay on comms,” he said. “And if you get thirsty, just think about slurping down those Goreback assholes.”
Trina nodded, then tore past them. She raised the minigun, cutting through tentacles and making them a path.
“That girl is tough,” Elle said. “And away we go!”
The starcycles were lifted off the truck. The gunny and the Shaolin sloth hit the throttles, and the blue-fire engines screamed. Aided by Elle’s telekinesis spell, Blaze and Ling raced through the opening in the tentacles that Trina had cut for them.
Elle floated behind them, using her magic to keep the starcycles aloft.
All three moved through the air until Blaze and Ling, on their bikes, came crashing down on the roof of the antique store on Know Return’s main street. They’d made it. And they wouldn’t have to climb down. An open doorway, led to steps that disappeared into darkness.
Blaze dropped his bike and ran back to the edge of the building to look for Trina.
The crane truck lay in pieces, torn apart by the ectoplasm tentacles. Zombies covered every inch of ground, every piece of metal. It was a sea of shambling corpses, some feeding on each other, others eating their own flesh. One fat beast of a woman was chewing on a hand, slurping down the decayed meat. A male zombie was eating his own foot. He’d twisted it off and was chewing off his toes one by one.
The frenzy of trying to get to the living flesh must’ve triggered their diabolical hunger and now they had to eat, if not others, then themselves.
Those zombies that they’d killed were liquifying, adding to the awful streams and lakes surrounding the town. Blaze shook his head. If this kept up, all of Hutchinson Prime would become one huge ocean of ectoplasm, the cities and towns and trees and mountains lost under miles of liquid Onyx.
Some of the zombies had wandered too far into the depths of the ectoplasm and hung there in eddies of the widening river like insects caught in amber. Others had their asses up and their faces buried in the liquid Onyx, drinking it down until their stomachs erupted and still they drank more from the viscous river.
Trina was down there, somewhere, but Blaze couldn’t find her in the mess of bodies and the flowing currents of ectoplasm. Had one of the tentacles grabbed her? Had the zombies realized she wasn’t wholly dead and torn her apart? He didn’t know.
And where was Elle? She’d been right behind them, but she had disappeared. Now that scared him.
And Cali was around, somewhere. He checked his display, trying to get their location, but nothing was registered. Onyx interference, no doubt. Had both comms and their combat displays gone down for good?
The gunny took a quick inventory of the businesses on Main Street. They were on the east end of town, on top of a four-story antique store. Next door was a grocery store and farther down was what looked like a big feed/farming supply building. An ice cream parlor and a bar ended that part of the street. Across the way was a movie theatre, a bank, and a drugstore. Blaze wasn’t sure how they were going to get around since the streets themselves had become rivers, strewn with body parts and entrails. If they got close, the ectoplasm would turn into tentacles and try and pull them in to drown them. One more zombie for Chthonic’s horde.
Ling joined Blaze at the side of the building. “I think Pattie Cakes Goreback was telling us the truth. I think her family is at the air force base north of the town. That is where we should go.”
“You always believe what psychopaths tell you?” Blaze asked.
The Shaolin sloth shrugged. “A good lie is shrouded in truth. There is an air force base north of town, and there would be interstellar spacecraft there. If I were wanting off this planet, that’s where I would go.”
“If you wanted off this planet?” Blaze chuckled.
“I’m fine here,” Ling said. “I’m alive, this place is very interesting, and I’m enjoying the minutes I have here. I am unsettled at the idea of being touched by a ghost again, b
ut then I was pondering my experience before. I did become unhinged, but my mind is always trying to unhinge me. It is always trying to trick me into one motion or another. Perhaps my previous insanity isn’t so different from your own insanity, Gunny.”
“I’m not crazy,” Blaze protested.
“What did Pattie Cakes say? Oh yes, titties and tears.” Ling laughed lightly. “If insanity is the inability to think clearly, Humans are crazy most of the time.”
Blaze had to agree. “You do have a point, Ling. But it’s a good kind of crazy most of the time. Gotta live life or what’s the point?”
A spectral woman in a flowing gown but with only darkness for a face floated up from the street. No, from under the ground and from under the running rivers of entrails and spectral fluid.
Her ghostly voice whispered through Blaze’s mind. Kiss me, marine. Show me you love me, soldier boy. Come and show me you love me.
More of the phantom women followed. Dammit, they’d gotten away from the zombies, but now they had ghosts to deal with. A dozen women in old-timey dresses but with only midnight for features all drifted around the top of the building.
And Blaze had no weapon to fight them.
“Elle!” the gunny shouted through comms. “Where in the hell are you?” Yeah, that was going to be useless. Comms were down.
From above them, a silk bag struck the top of the roof. A blast of black Onyx energy blew the fancy ghosts away into nothing.
Ling stayed at the edge of the building, looking down.
Elle floated down and onto the roof. “Comms aren’t working, and I didn’t want to use a telepathy spell. I took a little time to recon. Sorry. North of town there’s a church, and north of that there is an air force base. Lights are on in both places. I’m thinking we check out the church and then get to the military base. It’s definitely a star port, and that’s where I’m betting the Gorebacks are. And Granny.”
“A church,” Blaze mused. “There’s a ghost around, in a yellow dress, and she’s playing this game with her hands.”