by RW Krpoun
“Shit.” Shad laboriously climbed to his feet and shrugged out of his pack. “Dump your packs on top of Fred to protect him, and then cover me: I’m going to try going over or at least getting on top of the sculpture.”
Racing to the structure Shad threw himself into climbing as Jeff and Derek blazed away. The crystal material was smooth, but there were enough horizontal pieces so he was able to make determined, albeit not very fast, progress, the nature of his climb sending him to the right, towards the middle of the sculpture.
Sweating freely and feeling the blood-loss keenly, Shad threw a leg over a foot-thick curving bar of peach-colored crystal and whooped. “I see them! One is right there,” he pointed down and to his left. “And the other is right…there.”
He twisted awkwardly and fired his shotgun down and somewhat behind him. At the second shot the palace boomed as if it was hit by a giant invisible tuning fork. Caught off-balance, Shad struggled to regain his seat for an eternal second before tumbling down the sculpture to crash limply onto the stone floor.
“Cover me.” Derek was moving before Jeff could respond. To his right he saw that the red smudge in mid-air was smaller and paler but still active. Kneeling by the unconscious Shad he checked for vital signs and broken bones. Bracing Shad’s head against his own neck so as to stabilize the spine as best he could, he dragged the downed Talon back to the others.
“How is he?” Jeff asked, shoving shells into his weapon.
“Out cold, probably broke his left arm. Now what the hell are we going to do?”
“Punt.” Jeff wrestled two full drums in their carriers free of Fred’s vest and attached them to his own. Laying his shotgun by Derek, he slung the assault shotgun across his torso.
“They’ll be expecting you,” Derrek warned.
“They never met a Ranger before.” Jeff checked that the drum in the weapon was full. “You stay and protect them. I’ll be back in a second.”
Leaping up, he raced around the end of the sculpture; three dusters were waiting just out of sight of the Talon position, blades ready. Sliding to a stop Jeff opened fire, blasting them out of existence with short controlled bursts. More were coming at him and he sidestepped along the sculpture, trying to engage multiple targets while looking for blue crystal.
Dropping an empty drum, he wrestled another into place, amazed how Fred had made it look so easy. As the drum snapped into place he risked a glance to his right and saw multi-colored sparks arcing up from midway up the flank of the sculpture near the far end.
That was the fuse that Shad had wrecked, he realized as he opened fire: the Death Lords had set it up so the fuse wasn’t visible at ground level. Blasting dusters into their component shards, mindful that he needed at least half a drum to shoot his way back to the others, he hopped up onto a curving protrusion near the bottom of the sculpture and his next quick glance was rewarded with the sight of cool blue crystal nestled amongst the twisting mass of the sculpture.
Dropping another duster he lifted the assault shotgun awkwardly and fired a burst of four into the fuse, which dissolved like sugar cubes hit by a water hose. He was ready for the ‘tuning fork’ effect, and although it knocked him from his perch he made a clean parachute landing fall and rolled to his feet, dumping the empty drum and wrestling his last drum into place.
The shock of the destruction of the fuse seemed to have stunned the dusters for a second, buying him time to reload. Blasting the nearest foe he began double-timing towards the end of the sculpture.
He was just about to round the end when branding-iron pain slammed into his left wrist and spread fire through his torso, melting his spine and setting the thin bone of his skull aflame. It was the final tattoo-wards, he realized as he collapsed to his knees; both wards must have activated at the same time. In the heat of the moment he had completely forgotten about them.
Jeff’s left arm was twisting back upon itself like a deformed claw and his right gripped the front of his filthy, torn tactical vest as the pain raged through his body. He sensed movement behind him, and then he felt the ballistic plate under his right hand lurch as it was struck from behind.
Chapter Twenty-One
Derek slowly opened his eyes and tried to work out where he was. The last thing he could remember was writhing in agony on the floor of the crystal palace as the tattoo-wards burned off, and now he was face-down on something soft that smelled of dust and old farts. The sofa in Fred’s man-cave, it slowly dawned upon him. Sitting up slowly, stiff and sore, he saw Shad curled on the floor near the door.
Rubbing his lower back, which hurt, Derek stumbled over on legs that felt like rubber and shook the Constable’s shoulder. “Hey. Shad.”
Shad snorted and opened his eyes to blink owlishly at Derek. “What the hell?”
“You fell off the sculpture, out cold. We’re back home: Jeff got the other fuse.”
“What? Damn…yeah.” Shad slowly sat up as Fred crawled around the behind the couch on all fours. “Fred, what is your problem?”
“My pants don’t fit and I feel like crap,” the big Texan explained. “I’m dizzy, too. Light-headed.”
“You got hit in the neck and nearly bled out,” Derek explained, sitting on the floor. “That was before Shad got concussed.”
“So we did it,” Shad frowned, sorting through jumbled memories. “The Rift died.”
“Yeah. That killed at least two Death Lords, because here we are.”
“Home,” Fred said wonderingly.
“Yeah.”
“Man, I can’t believe I missed the end. Did you see the sky?” Shad rubbed his face.
“Nope. First I was too busy trying to protect you two, and then I was on fire, so to speak. You think one ward burning off hurt, well, it’s nothing compared to two at the same time. I don’t think anyone could survive three at once.”
“Well, the Death Lords will regret having dragged us into it,” Shad noted somberly.
“I regret not killing Cecil,” Fred mumbled, carefully standing up, holding his long-legged shorts up with one hand. Walking around the sofa he put his hand on Jeff’s shoulder; the Shop teacher was still in the office chair in front of the computer, head pillowed in his arms. “Hey man…” Fred stood for a long moment before gently reaching up and feeling for a pulse on his friend’s throat.
“Damn,” Derek whispered as Fred, looking much older than he had a moment before, stepped back from Jeff’s body.
After the funeral the three friends gathered around the open grave as the rest of the mourners trudged back to their cars. There had been a honor guard from the VFW firing volleys from M-1s and folding the flag into a tight triangle to present to Jeff’s mother, and a minister who had spoken well of a man who had guided children and served his country, but knew nothing of the lives Jeff had saved on improbable worlds.
“That was about as nice as you could expect,” Shad observed, pulling off his clip-on tie and unbuttoning the collar of his shirt.
“A lot of his students came, past and present,” Derek nodded, loosening his tie and undoing his top shirt button. “People knew he was a good guy.”
“The best,” Shad agreed. “He always stepped up.”
Fred stood motionless, hands gripping the little memorial pamphlet the funeral home had printed out the way a man in deep water clutches a lifeline. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. Derek patted the big man’s shoulder.
“There it is,” Shad jerked his chin towards a fork lift chugging up the walkway with a headstone on its tines. “I arranged it so it would be delivered today.”
“That seems right,” Derek nodded. “I’ll kick in for it.”
“No need. The guy owed me a favor. I figured we should be here when they put it in place.”
The fork lift carefully maneuvered to the head of the grave, guided by the two cemetery employees, and lowered the stone into place.
“That was a good speech you gave,” Derek noted as the fork lift rumbled off and the two empl
oyees unwrapped the moving blankets that had protected the stone in its travels. “Except for telling the story about Gen-Con. That was a dick move.”
“Jeff specifically wanted that story told,” Shad shrugged. “Last wishes, and all that.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“Actually, he mentioned it to Fred after the Prison.”
“You still suck.”
“When it’s my turn feel free to express yourself to your heart’s content.”
“I will.”
The polished face of the gray stone was finally exposed. Surmounted by a cross, the face of the stone was etched with Jeff’s name, dates, and his military rank and branch. Below that was carved:
He fought for his country, his world, and the worlds of others. He couldn’t do more and he wouldn’t do less.
Fred’s face was like stone, save for the tears on his cheeks.
“That is pretty good,” Derek conceded. “We ought to come out here when the grass has grown up and play some board games. Dead of Winter, or Settlers. You know, in his honor.”
“Good idea.” Shad took four cold beers from a small cooler he had stashed behind a tree before the funeral and distributed them. They twisted the tops and held the bottles in a silent salute to their friend, Fred pouring the fourth bottle over the casket as he drank. Shad took a swig for the toast and then poured the rest of his bottle into the grave as well.
“He was the best of us,” Derek said mournfully.
“We’ll join him in due course,” Shad noted. “He died saving a world, stopping the Death Lords. None of us are going to top that.”
“He saved us too,” Fred sighed. “No way Derek could have pulled us out of the fire.”
“Hey!” The Radio Shack manager protested.
“It’s true,” Shad retrieved the cooler. “You only really get aggressive if there’s a goat involved.”
“Both of you can bite me. Who kept you two alive while Jeff saved the day? Me, that’s who. We could all have died there.”
“That might have been the right way to go,” Fred said mournfully.
“No, the goat-boy is right,” Shad conceded wearily. He dumped the empty bottles into the cooler, passing a second beer to Fred. “C’mon. Jeff wouldn’t have wanted us to mope around. He would want us to get back to our real lives.”
The three turned and walked across the grass towards Shad’s truck. “Hey, I got the job as executive assistant manager at Home Depot,” Derek snapped his fingers. “I forget to tell you guys.”
“Why the change?” Shad asked without much interest.
“Word from Corporate is that the bottom line isn’t doing well. I figure one more poor year and they’ll be closing stores.”
“Good time to bail.”
“That’s what I thought. I wasn’t ever going to be a Regional Manager in any case.” Derek covertly wiped away a tear, proud that he had kept his voice normal. He could care less about his new job, but he felt the need to talk.
The three paused at Shad’s quad-cab F-150 and looked back as the workers began filling in the grave.
“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” Derek sighed.
“He is in a better place,” Shad said thoughtfully, digging his truck keys from his pocket. “And he made a bunch of other places better. It’s kind of a win, if you think about it.”
In a place whose location was not measured precisely in terms of distance or time a dead world populated by trapped spirits, now shorn of its lifeline to living worlds, began to fade from its tenuous place in reality.
Across another unlikely world, this one rich with life, stepped pyramids began to crumble, their structures no longer held upright by stolen energy.
In a world called a Prison by its occupants a valley that had stepped out of time drifted back into sync with its world as its guardians vanished. Once-powerful artifacts scattered across its fields suffered centuries of neglect in mere minutes, as time claimed both the powerful and the mundane.
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About the Author
Born and raised in the icy wastelands of North Dakota, RW Krpoun joined the US Army, serving two enlistments before being honorably discharged at Fort Hood, Texas. Delighted to discover a land where snow was a novelty, he settled in Texas and took up a career in law enforcement, serving thirty years to date and counting. His service includes a Sheriff's Office and two Municipal police agencies, as well as two enlistments in the Texas National Guard as a Criminal Investigator.
RW lives on lakeside acreage with his lovely and amazingly tolerant wife Ann, and a band of ill-mannered animals who are all highly photogenic. His hobbies include reading, history, various forms of shooting, collecting battle-ready examples of medieval weaponry, and learning to use such weapons.
Dream III is his fourteenth published work.