“What now?”
“We get hold of Grunt and Gonzales, then we find a way to rescue the girls!”
I remembered the way the farm girls clamored against the glass. Their shouts were soundless, due to the thickness of the pane. Their expressions were desperate. Somehow they’d been able to write on the white apron: HELP US!
I saw the light burning in Mott’s eyes. He had a new mission. Save the inhabitants of the Girl Farm!
Right now we had another problem. Survival.
The Factory Floor was a strange place at the best of times. At the worst of times it was hell. We ran between lines of huge machines. Wheels still turned, turbines still spun, air still hissed from vents, cogs still rumbled. Now there was an extra element. White projectiles screeched through the air just above our heads. When they struck an object they made a huge crack!
Mott yelled: “Keep your head down! Just keep running!”
On this section of Factory Floor trees grew through the concrete. A thick moss covered the flanks of the machines. Mott took a firm grip on the Nitro Lance with both hands. His head snapped from left to right as he ran. The kid was looking for trouble.
Usually, I asked questions. Heck, I was the king of questions. Emperor of the quizzical statement. At that moment, though, I kept my mouth shut. From Mott’s expression I knew our lives were in danger.
We sprinted back toward where we’d left Gonzalez and Grunt. As we ran, a misty whirlwind formed in front of us. A spinning vortex of white. Red veins of fire flickered inside that nebulous body.
“Fluke!” Mott lunged at the spinning core of fog. He thrust the tip of the lance into the center, pulled a trigger.
Liquid nitrogen jetted into the Fluke. The threads of fire died as the freezing gas engulfed it. A second later the Fluke fell apart. A pitter-patter of white ice particles hit the concrete.
Mott kept running. I followed, though by this time my throat felt like it had shrunk down to the width of a drinking straw. I could hardly breathe. My heart smacked the inside of my ribs.
A nitro shell, fired from one of the howitzers in a cupola, struck the engine next to me. Again: Crack! White gas squirted out over the entire area.
“Try not to let the gas hit you,” Mott shouted. “It’ll give you frostbite!”
I remembered the blowout freezing my face, and knew probably better than him what it felt like to be doused with subzero gas.
We barreled around a corner. Gonzales lay on the floor. The lance was by his side.
“Where the fuck were you?” screamed Grunt.
“We got held up. What happened to Gonzales?”
“He got sideswiped by a shell case. Shit, look at the blood! See that stuff leaking out of his skull?”
For some reason Gonzales clutched a deck of playing cards in his hand. The kid lay there dying, and he was still holding on to the cards he loved so much. The cards started to spill from his fingers.
Mott pointed at the lance. “John. Pick that up. You’ll need it.”
“We’ll never get back,” Grunt screamed. “This is a full-blown attack. They’ll be in lockdown!”
“We’re not going back there, Soldier,” Mott told him. “Change of plan. We’re going on a rescue mission.”
I knelt down beside Gonzalez. “How are we going to get him out of here?”
“We’re not.”
“You can’t leave him!”
“Haven’t you ever seen a dead man before, Soldier?”
From Bastion Wars:
Casualties in Bastion were inevitable. There was genuine grief. Losing a friend hurt the boys bad. Yet forgetfulness came quickly. Memories of the dead soon faded. Later, the question was often asked, why didn’t the boy combatants forget how to operate weapons or operate machinery that was necessary to domestic comfort? The answer is: routine. Bastion Boys used weapons almost every day; the same applied to kitchen equipment, and so on. Routine embedded those memories. The death of a friend is another matter entirely. Such a loss is an isolated event. A specific individual dies only once.
* * *
—
Have you ever moved so fast that you no longer see? Did you ever focus so much on getting from A to B ultraquickly that you don’t hear anything? Nor do you think. Nor do you feel if you bang an elbow or graze a knee.
You move at such a speed you are in a tunnel of blurred lights.
Has that happened to you?
Well, that happened to me as we ran back toward the tunnel that led to the Girl Farm. We left Gonzalez’s body. Artillery shells no doubt smacked against those behemoth engines of industry. Nitro Musket shots must have been threading liquid ice through the air above my head. I didn’t see, hear, or feel any of it.
I just fucking ran.
At the three-story-high engine that accessed the tunnel, Mott grabbed my arm. “What did you pick up the shears for? We don’t need them!”
I sucked air into a pair of lungs that felt like clumps of molten plastic in my chest. “We need to cross the pit. Otherwise, we can’t reach the glass.”
“What you got in mind, Soldier?”
Grunt yelled in panic. “Don’t stand out there talking! The shells are falling closer.”
He was right. One burst against the upper housing of the machine right next to us. Liquid nitrogen turned water vapor in the air into ice particles. Suddenly we were in a blizzard. Snow covered the floor in ten seconds flat.
Mott shouted to Grunt, “Climb in through the hatch. Wait for us there.”
Grunt obeyed. Mott nodded at the long-handled shears that I held in one hand. “Don’t keep secrets from me, John.”
“We need to be able to cross the pit, don’t we?”
“I planned shinning along the pipes that are fixed to the wall.”
“You’ve tried that before, you said. But the pipes are too slippery and too hot.”
“So what’s the idea?”
“Help me gather as much viper ivy as we can carry, I’ll show you then.”
“Viper ivy?”
“You’ve asked me to trust your judgment, Mott. Now I’m asking you to trust mine.”
Grunt stuck his shaven head out from the hatch. “Don’t you dare leave me inside this thing.”
“We won’t,” Mott said; he turned to me. “I trust you.” He nodded. “Viper ivy, you say?”
* * *
—
Twenty minutes later we’d been transformed into beasts of burden. All three of us carried Nitro Lances. We also struggled to bear huge armfuls of viper ivy. Sap trickled down our clothes. All that pungent-smelling greenery proved a heavy lift, too. We were sweating as we hurried toward the pit.
I was also mindful that the Gator-Raptor might be lurking nearby, too. That beast had identified us as a nourishing snack. Even something with a tiny reptile brain would realize it was its lucky day if the warm-blooded bipeds blundered foolishly back into its lair again.
Oh, thank our lucky stars. The animal was nowhere in sight. So we quickly reached the pit. Mott and Grunt switched on their flashlights. The river that was as yellow and as viscous as egg yolk still flowed at the bottom of the shaft.
“What the hell are we doing down here?” Grunt sounded scared. “What’s with the ivy? It’s making my arms ache.”
“In Bastion, everything we do has a purpose,” Mott told him. “We’re here to set the girls free.”
“Girls?” Grunt sounded astonished. “What girls?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
Grunt took a long, hard stare at what lay beyond the window. The bundle of viper ivy slipped from his arms to the floor. “Girls.” He couldn’t believe his eyes. “There really are girls!”
Across the pit was the window, set int
o the end of the tunnel. On the other side of the glass dozens of girls had crowded around to catch a glimpse of what lay on our side. When they saw us they started waving. The girls we’d seen before once again spread the white apron across the pane, with its stark plea:
HELP US!
“Where did they come from?” Grunt couldn’t have been any more surprised if he’d seen freak-faced aliens pouring out of a spaceship. “Where is that place? Are those fields of corn?”
I glanced down at Egg-Yolk River. The liquid swirled. I caught glimpses of a dark blue back.
“We’ll find out all kinds of things when we talk to the girls,” I said. “First, we’ve got to solve the problem of reaching the other side of the pit, then breaking the glass.”
“So what are we going to do with the ivy?” Mott asked.
“Tie it. So it forms loops around the two sets of pipes. Keep tying more of them, until we can cross the pit by going from one to the other. You know, like an assault-course kind of thing.”
Mott grinned. “Something told me that you were going to be useful to us.”
“Like this?” Grunt held out a length of looped vine.
I tested it with my hands. The knot parted easily. “You’ve got to tie it so it’ll support our weight. Use those green shoots that come out of the side to reinforce the knot. Like this.” I showed him how to tie the five-foot-long piece of ivy into a loop around the pipe that was fixed to the wall.
Mott tested it by putting his foot in the bottom of the loop, then raising his other foot. Now all his weight was borne by the plant.
“It works.” Mott laughed. “John, you’re a genius!”
We got down to work. We tied loops of ivy around the lower of the two pipes that were fixed to the wall. After that, we tied ivy around the upper pipe.
Lower pipe loops: foot supports. Upper pipe loops: something for our hands to grab hold of, so we wouldn’t toast our fingers on the hot metal. Soon we had a dozen loops. Think of curtain rings on a pole. The effect was something like that. Only these “curtain rings” were, of course, flexible and bright green, and dripped sap.
Mott glanced at me. “These will get us across. Brilliant planning, John.”
Grunt made a noise, which made me appreciate how he’d come by his nickname. “As long as they bear our weight,” he said. “Because if they don’t…” He made a stabbing motion with his finger at the pit. “Down we go.”
In the bottom of the pit, the creatures were assembling. At least five Gator-Raptors rolled and splashed. Maybe they were waiting for us to go to them this time? Grunt was right. One slip. Or if a loop parted. Then we’d face a long tumble down the shaft before smacking down into that yellow stuff where the hungry reptiles gathered for the feast.
* * *
—
Mott revealed the qualities that made him a leader. Whereas I was gripped by the urge to dash across the shaft using the loops, he deliberately slowed the pace. Carefully, he stepped on the first loop in the sequence. After that, he pushed the other loops forward. With thoughtful diligence he spaced them out along the pipes as he went. In ten minutes, he’d formed a walkway. Now it should be possible to cross that death pit by stepping from one loop to the other, while gripping those rings of vine on the uppermost pipe.
Simple.
In theory, that is.
Meanwhile, the Gator-Raptors were thrashing about: impatiently waiting for us to tumble down. I glimpsed clawed feet, jaws filled with sharp teeth. Then there were those unnervingly humanlike eyes.
Mott carefully worked his way across to the far side. Moments later, he stood with his back to that huge pane of glass. The girls waved and pounded at the other side. Their silence hinted that the glass was very thick indeed.
Mott held up his hand. “Stay there.” He retied one of the loops. “The knot was slipping on this one. The others are fine. Now come across one at a time. Bring your lances. Grunt, bring the backpack, too. There are spare bottles of gas in there.”
So we crossed the pit where the reptiles thrashed hungrily. I didn’t look down. Grunt did.
“Jesus…please, Jesus. Oh, Jesus…” If Grunt grunted Jesus once, he grunted the Son of God’s name a hundred times. “Jesus, don’t let me fall.”
Grunt made it across. Although who knows whether he had divine help or not. In any event, all three of us now stood on the ledge that ran between the window and the pit. On the far side of the barrier the girls still beat at the glass. They shouted. Panic blazed from their faces. Their eyes were huge with terror.
“What are they so scared of?” I stared through the glass at dozens of faces. Expressions of such fear were concentrated there.
“We break the glass, we find out,” Mott spoke with a brisk simplicity.
Grunt hit the glass with his lance. There was a dull thwukk. The blow didn’t even inflict so much as a faint mark on that transparent barrier. “We’ll never get through that stuff,” the thirteen-year-old shouted. “It’s rocket-proof.”
“Glass expands when it gets hot.” A thoughtful expression came over Mott’s face.
“Sure,” I said. “Pour boiling water into a glass, and—bang!”
“So if you cool glass fast it will contract.” Mott made a decision. “Okay, troopers. Lances at the ready.” He pointed into a bottom corner of the pane. “When I say fire, everyone fire on this point.”
Skitter.
I’d heard the sound before.
“Mott,” I said. “Shine the flashlight into the pit.”
“One thing at a time, Soldier.”
“Mott. Please do it. I think we’ve got a visitor.”
Quickly, he pointed the flashlight into the shaft.
Sure enough, there it was. A Gator-Raptor had begun to climb. Sharp claws hooked deep into solid concrete. Powerful forelimbs twitched as it hauled its bodyweight upward.
Grunt shrieked when he saw the monster. “Jesus!”
“Gator-Raptor,” I said. “That look in their eye says: man-eater.”
“Gator-Raptor?” Mott echoed.
“That’s seems the perfect name to me.”
Mott gave a nod. “Good choice, Soldier.”
Grunt made funny-peculiar grunting sounds in his throat. “Uhh…we’ve gotta get outta here!”
“Plenty of time.” Mott dismissed the danger with a flourish of his hand.
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “Last time, that thing climbed fast.”
“You will obey a superior officer’s commands.” He spoke in a surprisingly calm voice. “Breaking through there is our priority.” He tapped the pane.
Grunt’s eyes bulged as he stared at the creature with the dark blue skin, long snout, and human eyes.
“Grunt.” Mott lightly rested his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Time to do your duty, Soldier. Lives depend on you now.”
“Yes, sir.” Grunt immediately focused on the task at hand.
“Fire on my word.”
We couldn’t stand back much farther, because we were close to the edge of the shaft. All we could do was position our feet so we had the best possible balance.
The three of us aimed the lances in the bottom right-hand corner of the window.
“Fire!”
Three lances discharged liquid nitrogen. Fluid that was minus three hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit struck the pane. After the loud hiss as the lances discharged their shot there was a crack. Following that, a series of snapping sounds.
Mott shouted, “Again. This time in the center!”
Once again we fired. A flurry of white lines appeared on the window.
“Again!”
Another blast of liquid nitrogen. White vapor filled the tunnel. Chunks of glass began to spall away from the pane. Mott raised hi
s foot and kicked.
The pane turned absolutely white. A second later the entire sheet cascaded down to the floor in glittering crystals. Warm air flooded the tunnel. I caught the distinctive aroma of ripe cornfields on a summer’s day. Entwined with that scent was the tang of wild herbs.
Sound hit us with such a volume that it took my breath away. I could hear the girls yelling. There were dozens and dozens, and they were all shouting at once. I glimpsed pretty faces, bright eyes. Long hair fluttered in the breeze.
The sound mixed together joy and panic.
“Let us through,” Mott shouted. “Keep back. There’s a sudden drop behind us.”
The girls pushed forward with such determination that we found ourselves being shoved back to the edge of the pit.
I glanced down. The Gator-Raptor was now maybe halfway up. Another minute or two and he’d be climbing out to get busy among us.
Mott shouted again. “Move back. Let us through.”
A tall girl of around sixteen pushed her way to the front. “My name’s Athena.”
“Move back, so we can get through.”
The intensity of her expression caused my heart to lurch so powerfully it stung. “No. You move back. We’re getting out of here.”
“You can’t,” Grunt yelled.
“Oh, yes, we can,” Athena stated. “Because we’re under attack. The Flukes are coming across the fields. And if we don’t get out of here now we’re all going to die. And that includes you.”
* * *
—
Mott is a great leader. He had all the right qualities. Once more he impressed me with his quick thinking. He assessed the situation. Once he’d done that he made a decision. Once that decision was made he issued clear and precise orders.
“Athena,” he said to the tall girl. “Your people must do exactly as I tell them.”
“Go on,” she said.
“We need to get them across the shaft there. They must use the loops of vine in order to do that. Understand?”
“Yes.”
Volume Ten Page 7