by Ian Woodhead
She knew they were running out of time. The other lizardman had also called for help, it was obvious. Alan sat up. He managed to swing his feet over the edge of the slab. The big man got to his feet. He wobbled for a second before steadying himself. The lizardman then pointed at his groaning companion. It wanted her to let it go, to complete the bargain. Sandy pulled it a little closer to the doorway and ran her fingers down the side of the wall. The depression was a still there, but she saw how it reacted. Perhaps some emotions translated between species. It leaned forward a couple of inches. “Wait on, Alan.”
Sandy pushed the lizardman’s finger into the door release device, shaking her head in annoyance when the gel around its digit solidified. “Oh, you sneaky fucker.” She grabbed the injured creature’s head and slammed it as hard as she could against the wall, jumping back at the sound of bone cracking.
“That’s even worse than having a glass jaw.” She stormed up to the remaining lizardman and grabbed its arm, feeling so good when it cringed away. “You’re like a weak old man.” She grinned at Alan. “If you had smacked this one, I bet your fist would have punched right through its ugly face.” The creature let out a quiet gasp. “Oh my! You can understand our language. Tilt your head forward if this is true.” She tightened her grip on its arm, as it did as she ordered.
“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” murmured Alan. He grabbed its other arm and placed it on the wall. “Get us out of here, Mr. Salamander, or I will crush your head.” He looked over to the dead creature leaning against the wall. “You see, I don’t think you really care what happened to that guy, but I think you do care about your fate. Now do as you’re told.”
The lizardman chirruped something that Sandy decided was an insult before its claws danced across the wall again. The dead lizardman’s finger fell out of the cavity, and the curtains folded back. She hurried out of the room, followed by Alan and his captive. “Bring it over to this doorway, Alan. We might as well make use of it. Saves me from getting gunk on my fingers.” Sandy tapped the doorway. “Come on, you know what we want you to do. Open it.”
The lizardman chirruped again before pushing its finger into the cavity. Sandy grinned as the curtains folded back. “Alan, you’d better keep hold of both its hands. We don’t want it finding another hidden wall panel.”
“Got it,” he replied.
They found themselves in another identical passageway. She moved over to the wall panel and activated the window, wondering how many others were held captive in this awful place. Sandy choked back a scream when a huge scaly head slammed into the window. Its dagger-sized teeth scraped against the material. She heard a shout of surprise and spun around to find the lizardman had broken free of Alan’s grip.
“Stop it!” she yelled.
He tried to grab its arm, but the creature was too fast. She jumped over her friend at exactly the same time when the lizardman’s claws danced across a hidden wall panel. A torrent of squeals, growls, and chirps burst from its mouth. Sandy didn’t need to know its language to realise that it had locked them in here, and the bastard was laughing at them. To make matters worse, she saw the curtain protecting them and that ferocious dinosaur had begun to fold back.
Sandy wrapped her fingers around the creature’s thin wrist. “Laugh this off, pal,” she growled. Sandy forced the lizardman’s longest finger straight into the solidifying gel, holding it in there while listening to its panicking squawking.
The monster’s huge head was already through the widening curtains, the dinosaur’s jaw opened and snapped shut, missing the squealing lizardman. It jumped into Sandy. She pushed it away. “At least it will eat you first. Unless you know how to open these doors.”
“How’s it going to do that now?” screamed Alan. “You’ve trapped it in the door mechanism! Oh God. I don’t want to die!”
Sandy pulled Alan onto the floor. “We wait until it grabs the lizard then we run into the other room. I bet the others will have the doors open before it finishes eating this guy. Don’t worry, Alan! Its pals will be too busy with the dinosaur to bother about us.”
The overpowering stench of rotten meat filled the small chamber as the dinosaur roared. She guessed it was getting frustrated at not been able to get to its meal.
Sandy squeezed Alan’s hand. She didn’t want to die either and certainly didn’t want to end up in the guts of some monster that shouldn’t even exist anymore. Oh God, it was almost through the door as well! Only its hips were stopping it from charging in here.
Alan shouted something, but the dinosaur’s roaring and the lizardman’s squeals drowned out his words. It was only when Sandy felt another body fall onto her head when she saw that her plan wasn’t going to work. The lizardman had freed itself from the hard gel. She wasn’t going anywhere, not with it pinning her to the floor.
Alan hadn’t stopped shouting at her. Some of his words had now filtered through the din. He wanted her to turn her head. Sandy arched her back to dislodge the creature and managed to twist her neck a fraction of an inch. It was enough to see the other curtain unfolding, revealing the familiar interior of the home and garden section in the department store.
She took hold of the lizardman’s ankle and violently twisted it to the side. The cracking of its bones echoed through the corridor. Sandy fell back and positioned her arms directly under its chest and pushed as hard as she could. It twisted its head back and forth, still screaming. Those screams turned into howls of agony as the dinosaur finally freed its whole body from the doorway and dug its claws into the lizardman’s back and pulled it up towards its open mouth.
She gritted her teeth and groaned as the lizardman raked its sharp claws along Sandy’s upper arm in a desperate attempt to stay on the ground. She did her best to ignore the throbbing pain coming from the three deep furrows in her flesh. Sandy kept hold of Alan’s hand while she scrambled out of the hellish craft.
“It’s not following us!” gasped Alan. She could only nod while clutching her wounded arm. Sandy ran past the kettles, pans, and bedding. Screams and shouting came from other parts of the store. None of that was her immediate concern. All she cared about was stopping this bleeding.
Chapter Twelve
It felt so undignified to be cowering behind the counter in the poncy paper and card store, especially after his incredible escape from the jaws of death, literally. Desmond pushed his thin frame tighter against the wood, trying to ignore the metal handle digging into his back, when he glimpsed the armoured bodies passing the shop.
Once the feathered fuckwits had passed, Desmond scurried out from his hiding place and ran to the back of the store to pick up the sausage roll that he’d dropped in fright when he heard the sound of weapons fire.
He pulled off the plastic wrapper, scrunched it into a tight ball, and pressed the wrapper between the gap between two black fixtures, each displaying neon-coloured card of stupidly expensive prices. Desmond took a big bite of his stolen food while gazing at all the pointless rubbish this place used to flog to the idiots with more money than sense. This was the first time he’d been in here, and it would be the last as well. All the bright colours were giving poor Desmond a right headache. He took another bite and peered around the edge of the fixture, needing to make sure that those terrifying creatures were well and truly gone.
Zinik-Tow hadn’t been joking about how scary those bastards looked. The big dinosaurs, the ones with sharp teeth and claws which could slice you into flesh confetti, were bad enough, but at least they had to catch you first. They couldn’t dissolve the muscle from your bones from the other side of the frigging mall!
He pushed the last of the sausage roll into his mouth, while contemplating exactly how he was supposed to get back to the safety of the chamber without one of Zinik-Tow’s soldier boys turning poor Desmond into a puddle of red treacle. His feathered pal told him the Quantum capsule only stored a dozen of the warrior caste in their stasis tubes, and the squad operated as a single unit commanded by their sergeant
. The feathered fuckwit had given the units another name which he couldn’t pronounce, but it amounted to pretty much the same thing. Basically, they’d brought along their own version of an assault squad.
“We’re all so fucked,” he muttered.
He was more annoyed with himself than anyone else. He allowed his self-confidence to get in the way of his natural ability to stay under the radar. His cocky attitude had almost gotten him killed a few minutes ago, all because he fancied a sausage roll. Desmond believed that just because he’d successfully escaped from that time machine, as well as taking out two of their technicians, Old Desmond was practically invulnerable. The king of the mall, the one man who’d be left alive after Zinik-Tow had eliminated every other male on the planet. Oh yeah, he sure did think he was already planet Earth’s most valuable human while he strolled down the middle of the concourse, heading straight for Farmdale’s Food store. Even the few dinosaurs he saw were avoiding him. Granted, they were too busy munching on the leaves on the Japanese trees to worry about Desmond, but he didn’t let that spoil the illusion.
“I really should have listened to that feathered fuckwit a little more closely.” He looked down at the bottom of his overalls and rubbed the scorched fabric between his finger and thumb. Desmond had been so close to death. In reality, it was him who’d been the fuckwit.
His new pal had explained their caste system twice to him. He said that for millions of years of strict skill-based segregation, their species had split into five different sub-species, each one bred for their one purpose. Zinik-Tow’s sub-species were the only ones able to construct abstract thoughts, who still retained any semblance of free will. His caste ruled over their huge empire.
Sitting there in this stupid shop with sausage roll crumbs down the front of his overalls, Desmond had no problem in reciting his pal’s words as well as the hidden meaning. Yet back then, just after he’d snapped the neck of that yellow flamingo, Desmond thought he was fucking superman. All he’d done was to kill one of their technicians, some poor guy who was about as scary as a five-year-old kiddie.
The sound of them firing those scary guns reached him. Desmond moaned quietly as the delayed shock hit him like an express train. He rolled into a tight ball and closed his eyes, listening to the shouts, screams, and hoarse shrieks coming from his fellow humans as those monsters, clad in that iridescent armour plating, melted them. Those two-legged tanks were unstoppable. His pal’s dream was in ruins. Not even he would be able to withstand that devastating firepower. Desmond opened one eye.
Zinik-Tow might already be dead for all he knew. It’s not like poor Desmond had any way of knowing. It meant that he had a very important decision to make. There was no way he’d be able to get down to the level under this one without bumping into either another dino, eager to feast on his bones or those soldiers, currently turning every other human into scotch broth. It wouldn’t take him any longer than ten minutes to make it to the mall’s carpark, though, and as the soldiers have just come from that direction, as long as the pool of scarlet goop wasn’t acidic, he should be able to be home and dry without anything else nasty happening to him. Hell, there wasn’t anything stopping him from popping into Farmdale’s again to grab that other sausage roll. It’s not like anybody else was going to eat it.
It’s not like he was running away or betraying his new pal. It was just survival, plain and simple. Anyway, it’s only what Zinik-Tow did to him in that timeship. He abandoned Desmond, not giving a shit what happened to him. He slowly got to his feet and slowly made his way over to the counter, keeping his eyes fixed on the glass front. Then again, if Zinik-Tow had taken poor Desmond with him, he might be as dead as the feathered fuckwit as well.
He made doubly sure that nothing moved on the concourse before venturing from the safety of the store. There would be no strutting about like some proud peacock for this downtrodden janitor anymore.
Something metallic clattered onto the tiles. Desmond jumped back into the shop and hid behind the counter. It was a full minute of silence before he dared to move again. Desmond found a shaky grin spreading over his face at the sight of a very expensive wristwatch lying close to the glass front.
The tattered and burnt fabric in front of the photobooth gave Desmond a pretty good indication as to what must have happened. He walked over to the booth, wincing at the acrid smell drifting out from the interior. Steeling himself, Desmond pulled the curtain back. Under a pile of smouldering clothing, he saw a few blackened bones swimming in a thick, red lumpy soup. He placed the palm of his hand against the glass plate in front of the red plastic stool, trying to comprehend the God-challenging power which those creatures possessed.
He knew that none of those moving nightmares had passed by his shop, meaning they had just pointed their gun at the back of this booth and fired. Its magic ray gun beam had passed straight through metal, plastic, and glass before reducing this clown into goop and bone.
Desmond would have loved to have a play with one of those gizmos. Zinik-Tow had told him about the magnificent Saurion Empire, about how they had conquered dozens of planets, about every species they encountered who fell beneath their feet within days. Desmond thought the feathered fuckwit was just blowing his own trumpet, having a bit of a pissing contest with this poor janitor. After seeing the power of one of those weapons though, Desmond now understood exactly how fucked the humans were going to be once these monsters left this mall.
The sound of weapons’ fire grew distant. Desmond figured they’d be running out of people to melt pretty soon. Not that he cared, his future lay in the opposite direction, towards the carpark and freedom. Also, another sausage roll. He looked down the middle of the concourse, seeing the devastation left by those reptilian soldiers. If he did make a break for it, then it’s likely that sometime in the future, there was a good chance that he’d be meeting a similar fate as Mr. Melty in the photobooth. Zinik-Tow had also told him that the current thinking in the higher ranks of the Sauron high command was that the only way to ensure total dominance would be to eliminate all traces of the conquered species, to literally melt them off the planet.
Desmond didn’t want to be melted. He wanted to live. He wanted to prove to everybody that he wasn’t some piece of dirt, only fit for menial tasks to be talked down to and bossed about. He wanted all of that, but more than anything, he wanted that hot chick from the beauty parlour. Desmond wanted to make her his queen.
None of his dreams would be happening if he did run away like a frightened mouse. There really was no other choice. He couldn’t leave the mall until he was sure that his new pal really was dead. It was that simple. There was also the small matter of rescuing Sandy. Oh sure, she had brushed him off the first time. By now, after seeing the danger out here, she was bound to be a little more compliant; especially when she learns that he’s going to be risking his life to save her sorry arse.
With his goal now clear, Desmond waved goodbye to that sausage roll and slowly walked along the concourse, staying close to the shops. He knew the glass and concrete wouldn’t save him if the fuckwits saw him, but he counted on them being too busy with all the fun stuff to murder in front of them to be bothered about their back. After all, who’d be stupid enough to follow those killing machines?
He grinned to himself. No, not stupid, just sneaky. “As cunning as a fox,” he whispered, finally seeing their shadows as the soldiers left a console game shop at the other end of the mall. It looked like they were heading back towards that timeship. This put him in an awkward position. If the hot chick was still locked up in there, she wouldn’t stand a chance against those things. Yet Desmond’s route took him past in the other direction, towards the stairs leading down to the lower level.
He leaned against a jeweller’s shop, gazing at the display of expensive necklaces. His hot chick would look fantastic in the gold number right at the back, the one that would take him almost a year’s worth of salary to buy.
The soldiers were now close to a herd of
four-legged dinosaurs, similar to the ones he passed earlier. Did these guys have an infinite supply of these buggers? More to the point, how the bloody hell had they escaped? He’d been inside that freaky place and everything was locked as tight as a drum.
It didn’t look like the soldiers were going to be doing anything else apart from standing about, so he decided to have a look inside the shop. Desmond remembered how he felt in their timeship and how distance felt completely different. That ship of theirs wasn’t much bigger than a couple of articulated trucks side by side. Yet, Desmond knew that even if all the dinosaurs that he’d seen so far were squashed up like sardines, only about half of them would fit inside.
Desmond reached into the shop display, snagged the necklace, and stuffed it into his pocket. Thinking about physics and all that time-travelling nonsense made his head hurt, so he let it slide and went with the flow instead. It sounded like a better deal than thinking about the impossible.
He left the shop and gazed across at the soldiers, seeing that there had been a reason for their break in the marching after all. Two of them had caught one of the dinosaurs. They each had a hind leg and were pulling in the opposite direction. The others seemed to find this hilarious. The trapped animal couldn’t cry out because another soldier had its huge paws clamped around the animal’s mouth.
Incredibly, the other animals in the herd carried on chomping on the foliage. Desmond thought they would have galloped away at least. Then again, why should they? It’s not like there was that much growing plant-life in the shopping centre. The bits of greenery must be like an oasis for the buggers. As long as the soldiers only killed one of their kind, the others would be safe.