by Aaron Crash
Calhoun smashed the rear chain breakage guard into the gunny’s face and then brought the guide bar around. Those spinning fusion teeth would easily cut his head completely off his shoulders. Then these bastards would get a little Astral Marine steak, and Pattie Cakes could check out his impressive unit. Nope, not happening today.
Blaze spun and spun hard. Mama Mayhem was thrown into the thirty-six inches of spinning fusion chainsaw madness. She was cut in half from her left shoulder to her right hip. The meat inside her sizzled, cauterized by the star-fire power of the chainsaw, leaving scorched black skin. Her left hand with the long fingernails spasmed as her nerves threw a final party for the creepy old woman.
Calhoun screeched, “Mama!!!”
Blaze raised both his saws to cut Calhoun apart in his moment of grief and shock, but the mime-faced psycho came to his senses, caught both of Blaze’s saws on his own, and they were locked in a death match of strength and will.
Calhoun grunted, eyes wild, pushing against Blaze while the gunny pushed back. The saws screamed in protest as their spinning fusion blades clashed and popped and crackled and sputtered.
Then the mime laughed. “Ha, Mama Mayhem bit you but good. Hope she liked the taste of your meat. Hope I like it. Y’all are causing us a bunch of fuss.”
Dilly Donny was thrown through the main bridge door and into the stuffed Borzor clown. The entrails inside the onesie came slopping out.
Trina did the throwing. She’d finished with her Auntie Lips smoothie, tossed Dilly Donny back into the ship, and followed him inside. Uncle Upchuck grabbed a chainsaw, this one a more normal twenty-inch affair, and stopped Trina in her tracks. The spinning fusion teeth could easily kill her. Even the star-fire light from the saw made her wince.
Dilly Donny rose, covered in rotted guts, and fired up the last of the chainsaws off the altar. He sped over to get at Trina from her back. But Pattie Cakes tripped him, and the huge overalls-wearing bruiser hit the ground and dropped his chainsaw. “No, Dilly, silly, Donny, duck. This nice girl is gonna join us. All I have to do is give her a little suck. All she wants is a little suck.”
Trina’s vampiric telepathy was working wonders on the Gorebacks’ chica.
Calhoun laughed at that. “Now that there is something I wanna see. My little Pattie Cakes gettin’ it on with a girl vampire. Yummy!” With a grunt, Calhoun threw Blaze back away from him, ending the deadlock.
The insane mime’s saw licked left, licked right, and Blaze blocked every blow with his own smaller saws.
“Get us on out of here, Speeder Bob,” Calhoun said, blood dripping from his nose from Blaze’s first blow against him. The flecks of gore spotting his chest were probably from when he’d accidentally cut Mama Mayhem in half. Oops.
The dreadlocked clown threw the blue-fire engines into gear and the ship lurched forward.
Auntie Lips clambered inside. Her throat had been torn out, but she was still moving, walking, and Blaze saw why. Her skin had gone translucent. It was like greasepaint on glass. Through the white makeup, he could see her arteries and veins full of black Onyx blood. Trina had turned her. Was that a good thing?
A chill went through Blaze at the thought: vampiric hillbilly clown-worshipping cannibals.
Uncle Upchuck lowered his saw. “Why, Lips, what’re you doin’ back alive? Mr. C didn’t give you the touch to get yer engines back goin’, did he?”
Auntie Lips smiled to reveal a mouthful of black glass fangs. “Why, yes, Unc, he did. Why don’t I come over there and give you a big ol’ kiss?”
She never had the chance. The freighter was off the ground, heading for the hangar doors, when it collided against a wall. Lights flickered, and they were all thrown off their feet, Humans, clowns, and vampires alike.
“Dammit, Speeder, fly her straight, will ya?” Calhoun demanded.
“Trying, Cal,” the pilot replied, “but she’s heavy and something hit us outside. Not sure what. But it was big and powerful, powerful.”
Blaze knew. Granny’s eyes were wide and rolling in her skull. Damn, but they had tied her down good.
Blaze got to his feet. He wasn’t the only one.
Borzor, the hideous clown full of Human guts, lurched up, and its fanged mouth opened. It wasn’t just an inflatable clown. Not anymore. A familiar voice emerged. “Going so soon, my friends? Death, she loves you, death, she does. Life is a whore. Life, she was.” It was Chthonic, animating the clown. The thing dropped a hand down on Mama Mayhem. Ectoplasm shot out from the two halves of her body and the tentacles joined midway and drew both halves together. In seconds, the old woman was whole again. A second later, her eyes blinked open. “Why, here I am, and so fuckin’ hungry. Thanks, Mr. C, and give our best to Borzor when you see him. I’m alive again and ready to party!” The old woman cackled.
Blaze went at Chthonic’s clown body with his chainsaw, but before he could rip into the onesie or shred the clown’s head, Calhoun knocked his saws away.
The gunny was tired of taking this mime’s nonsense. He feinted left, and, ha, the cannibalistic bastard went for it. Blaze brought a saw down and cut through the douchebag’s elbow. Blood spattered him, but the fusion weapon soon sealed the wound.
Calhoun tried to wield the saw with one hand, but it was too heavy. He dropped it, then put his hand up to block Blaze’s next attack, but that was stupid. Blaze cut off that arm and then sawed through one knee and then the other. Calhoun laughed and laughed. “Gotta change my name to Matt! Put me in front of the door! Or call me Art and hang me on the wall! You wanna go waterskiing? Call me skip! I’ll hold that fucking rope with my fucking teeth!” The mime continued to caterwaul laughter.
The clown doll drove a puffy glove into Blaze, knocking him backwards. Before he went down, he got a quick view of the bridge.
Pattie Cakes was on Dilly Donny, holding him down, or trying to, as Trina bent low to suck the life out of the bruiser in overalls. Uncle Upchuck had shed his own overalls and stood there in his filthy underwear. He was offering the vampiric Auntie Lips his own throat. Why had he stripped? Yeah, not sure, but the sight was as damaging as anything Blaze had seen on the haunted planet.
Come to think of it, why was Pattie Cakes walking around in her underwear as well? Maybe it was a crazy Goreback thing.
Blaze jumped over Calhoun, who was still laughing, grabbed Granny and the chair and sped toward the hatch, which was still open. The ship tipped to one side, then the other, but they were close enough to ground, the gunny could jump down.
“Trina!” Blaze called out. “We are leaving!”
But the Chthonic-possessed Borzor clown blocked his way out. The clown touched Auntie Lips and brought her back to life. Her throat closed, color returned to her skin, and her mouth lost the black glass fangs. Her old yellow rotting teeth were restored. Instead of biting into Uncle Upchuck’s neck, she threw her arms around him and kissed him.
Trina sped away from her prey, drove her hands into the Borzor thing, and shoved him back.
The way was clear. The floor of the hangar lay ten feet below. It would be an easy jump. Blaze had been in some close scrapes before, but this time he’d pretty much assumed he’d become a little appetizer for the Gorebacks’ grand escape from the Planet Ghost.
Electricity once again zapped through Blaze. No. He dropped Granny and she landed on her side, squealing in pain and undoubtedly cursing him through the gag.
Calhoun laughed and laughed. He gripped the remote control with his teeth. Tears of laughter streamed down through his makeup, smearing the plus and minus signs into meaningless black dots. He clicked his teeth down on it again.
The ship went sideways. Granny, tied to the chair, slid out. She seemed to hang, suspended in midair, for an instant until a flashing streak of fur seized her by the head and bit down, severing the witch’s throat. Bright blood splashed out across Cali’s fur.
It was the werewolf that had been pummeling the freezer freighter, disrupting Speeder Bob’s piloting skills.
Granny was dead. Cali had killed her. Now they would never learn the location of the Onyx Gate. Everything they’d come for was gone. All their endless battles now meant absolutely nothing.
Cali turned her red glowing eyes on Blaze, still on the bridge of the freezer freighter, near the door. Damn, but he could’ve sworn the werewolf smiled at him before she ignited the blue-fire engines strapped to her feet and raced toward him, claws extended.
TWENTY-TWO_
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Trina scooped up Blaze, who was convulsing from the zapper in his chest. She launched herself out of the freighter, drove two feet down onto Cali’s back, and then hopped onto the ground. The werewolf was sent skittering into the darkness and blood of the hangar.
The ship, free from the werewolf’s mischief, straightened out, and Speeder Bob hit it hard. The ship zoomed from the hangar and started upward toward the night sky. The storm had cleared, the moons were dim, and the stars were bright. No, those weren’t stars—long streaks of meteors crisscrossed the sky. It was quite a light show and Blaze knew what it meant. The yellow sun had given in to the neutron star’s merciless gravity earlier than anticipated. The stars had collided, and now the star stuff was raining down on them. It would only be a matter of minutes before the planet was destroyed.
Once Calhoun’s remote control was out of range, Blaze stopped shaking. He pulled himself up to his feet.
He watched as the freezer freighter rose higher into the night, dodging the reverse waterfalls of ectoplasm gushing up into the sky. Then those different streams of liquid Onyx came together to form one super river. That gushing torrent of nastiness followed the ship up and out of sight. But still the supernatural fluid continued to rise unceasingly. What would the ectoplasm do in the vacuum of space? Blaze had no idea. But even from a distance, he saw the zombies caught in the ectoplasm being sucked off the planet’s surface—billions of corpses—a whole planet full of dead walking meat.
Trina pulled him close and Blaze snapped back to the moment.
Cali, in full werewolf mode, snarled and stalked them. Her fusion claws weren’t working, thank goodness, since the hydrogen shells had long ago lost their charge. She circled them, round and round. The bracelets containing the lunar stones remained damaged from the acid dragon’s destructive breath. No way to close them. And it was the radiation from the Terran moon stones that gave Cali all her power.
“I’ll deal with Miss Fuzzybutt here,” Trina said. “You run for it.”
Cali snarled and then howled as if to say that wasn’t gonna happen. Or maybe she was pissed about the fuzzybutt comment. Either way…
“Run where?” Blaze asked. “The whole reason why we’re on this planet is gone. Granny is dead. And, uh, the sky is falling down.”
“Find a ship,” Trina said. “And hurry. As we’ve seen, I’m no match for Cali.”
Cali leapt to crush Blaze’s head between her frothing fangs. Trina sprang forward and punched the werewolf away. Her blow was good one. Cali spun away, dazed for a minute.
Blaze took off. The hangar was empty, but he ran outside even as Cali snarled and Trina cursed. “Come on, Cali, don’t be such a fucking bitch!”
More growls and then one of them was thrown against the side of the hangar with a crunch and a clang. The outline of the body being thrown into the metal was visible. Neither could really hurt the other, though Cali could rend the vampire until she couldn’t function. Trina would survive and heal once she got more blood. However, without silver, there was literally nothing the vampire could do against the werewolf.
“I’m carrying a silver dagger with me from here on out,” Blaze promised himself. Once again, he was without weapons.
He ran toward a Union combat carrier. It was a bit bashed in, but it would have some good guns on it. He raced inside and hit the primary ignition to get the engines running, but the thing sat dead and gone. No time for troubleshooting. Blaze sped out of the ruined spacecraft. An IPC attack ship lay next to it, a big round thing, but a number of large holes marked the destruction of the engine. She might have had guns, but she couldn’t fly.
Taking a quick survey, it was clear all the ships were junked-up pieces of crap. Nothing on the airfield was going to work, which probably wasn’t an accident. Either the Gorebacks or Chthonic had made sure they’d be stranded.
A steaming fiery boulder struck a ship next to him, exploding, hitting him with a handful of heat. Another meteorite smashed through the hangar. The entire night sky was a flaming crossroads of the atmosphere taking a beating from the detritus of complete solar destruction. The meteors were as beautiful as they were desperate. At least Blaze and his crew would die seeing something pretty.
Trina sailed past him and skidded to a stop on the asphalt. She’d been clawed and scratched and bit near to pieces.
She lay, bleeding black Onyx, but then she pulled herself up. The Human blood she’d guzzled had done the trick. Her wounds healed before Blaze’s eyes, a gash on her forehead sealing up and a huge bite on her arm closing.
Cali bounded up and Trina caught her by the throat. With a grunt, the vampire threw the werewolf into a Meelah exploratory vessel. Cali went smashing through an observation window, but then came hurling out. Trina used all her vampiric speed and strength and landed a haymaker that knocked the werewolf senseless for a minute.
“Uh, not sure how we’re going to get out of this one,” Trina said. “No silver, and I’m going to run out of juice soon. Any ideas?”
Before Blaze could respond, Cali jerked up and seized Trina with her huge jaws. She flung the vampire into the distance, and then the werewolf turned on Blaze.
Cali snarled, eyes slits of fury. She smelled like a junkyard dog in heat, a powerful bestial odor that choked Blaze.
He put up his hands as if to surrender. As if. “Okay, Cali, you have me. It’s game over. I can’t imagine I’ll be able to talk you down. Never worked in the past.”
Trina was running toward them, but she wasn’t going to make it on time.
Blaze laughed suddenly. “Damn, but it’s been a good ride. I know you’ll feel bad when you go back to being Human, Cali, but you shouldn’t. We knew the risks.”
The wind shifted away from the werewolf, and he inhaled the wet smell of the doomed planet’s final night. He figured it would be the last thing he’d ever smell. Damn, but he wished he had a cigar, one final smoke, before the long sleep. Another meteorite smashed half a mile of fences, scattering the salt and inviting any ghosts around. None came. Not that it mattered.
Blaze checked his display. Again, nothing showed up, not the Lizzie Borden nor any of her crew. The gunny chuckled. “Probably should’ve slept with Trina when I had the chance, huh?”
Cali was eyeing him, not snarling, but watching in wonder as he laughed in his final moments.
“Whoops. I definitely shouldn’t talk about the current girlfriend in front of the ex. Sorry about that, Cali.” Blaze stretched, and his terrible chest wound hurt for a second as did his many other cuts, scratches, and burns.
He put up his gauntleted fists. “Okay, come on, girl. Come and get some.”
Cali leapt forward and a starcycle careened into her, knocking her back. Ling, the Meelah Shaolin kung fu master, leapt from the bike and struck the werewolf twice with his fusion nunchakus. Elle was right behind him. Both had survived their encounters at the church.
Ling’s attack was savage and drove Cali back. The fur on her face smoked and the pink skin underneath blistered for a second before her flesh healed.
Elle spun her starcycle around and floated off it, casting a spell. She had her TK magic going, but she added on a stasis spell. She tossed out a pair of handcuffs and barked out some Onyx speak.
Cali froze in place, all eight feet of her.
She was caught by
Elle’s magic. The starcycle rumbled next to Blaze even as his sister cast a consume spell, tossing about more teeth. There was endless supply of both teeth and Onyx energy on the planet, that was for sure. Or was there?
Elle reached up to the heavens to pull the Onyx down into her. She then leaned over, panting.
Blaze was happy to see his ax and Ugly Betty attached to the side of the starcycle. He stuck his shotgun on his back and slammed his ax to his hip. He approached his sister. “You okay, Elle?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it’s just…I’ve been a conduit for the Onyx, collecting it up, spewing it out…I’m pretty much toast. Nombre de Dios, I’ve never been so tired. And the planet, all the Onyx, it’s going up in those ectoplasm geysers, right out of the atmosphere. I’m not sure what kind of game Chthonic is playing, but he’s escaping this shithole.”
Another meteorite, this one the size of a city block, smacked into the farmlands east of them, rolling across the landscape in a fiery blaze. A second meteorite splashed through the ectoplasmic reverse waterfall, stopping the flow for a minute before smashing into a cornfield west of them in clouds of mist and mud.
A plan tickled at the back of Blaze’s head, but it wasn’t taking shape, not yet. There were too many variables at play.
Trina ran up, but she didn’t stop to say hello. She sprinted into the hangar just as part of the roof came falling in. What was she doing?
Ling padded up with his nunchakus back in their sheaths. “Hello, Gunny! Isn’t the sky beautiful? I find it interesting that your language has terms for these things—meteors, meteoroids, and meteorites.”
Elle was still bent over, breathing hard, and sweating. Her face was terribly pale. In other words, she looked like hell.
“Ling, it’s good to see you, buddy, but we ain’t got time…”
The Shaolin sloth leapt and caught a smoking bit of rock in his paw. It was too hot to hold for long, and he tossed it up around himself, playing the ancient game of hacky sack with the space rock. “A meteor is the flash in the sky. The meteoroid is the debris outside the atmosphere. And if the meteoroid breaks through the atmosphere without burning up? It becomes a meteorite. Like this.” Ling batted the rock to Blaze, who caught it and then dropped it.