by Eddie Patin
"Word is," Rush continued, "the minotaurs aren’t natives of Maze World. Apparently, the sky people brought them here ages ago from another world in mass numbers, turning them loose on the surface while they lived up in the clouds. The minotaurs are ... a food source for them, and they survive down here preying on one another. The beasts just kept breeding over the years, populating the whole planet’s surface eventually, and eventually turned feral—except for the alphas."
"Alphas?" Jason repeated. "As in ... the alphas aren’t feral?"
Rush shared glances with Tommy for a moment then looked back. "The alphas are bigger, stronger, and smarter. We’ve been trying to bag an alpha ourselves—there’s a big black minotaur around here that—"
Jason grinned. "Hey, we saw a big, black one!" The moment he said it, earning a quick glance and slight frown from Riley, Jason knew he shouldn’t have blurted that out. Rush was Riley’s friend, sure, but they were competitors. Maybe alphas were worth more...?
Rush smiled and nodded. "Yeah, we’ve seen one around here too. We’ve been glassing him from camp here and there all day. We’re pretty sure he passed through here recently, too."
"He did," Riley said. "We’ve been following the path we last saw him on. He was carrying a big chunk of meat."
"That could be him," Rush replied, then looked back at Tommy and the huge dead body. He crossed his arms again and sighed, then smiled. "Well, it’s great seeing you, Riley—and Gliath, and new Jason—but we should get back to work. You know how it is..."
"Good to see you too, Rush," Riley replied. The two shook hands again.
Jason, suddenly inspired by a quick idea, pulled up his OCS and bookmarked where they were standing. These guys were Riley’s friends. It might be a good idea to keep the coordinates of a friendly camp. You never know, he thought. Then, Jason looked at Riley, waiting to see where the soldier wanted to head next.
They all said goodbye then the Reality Rifters continued walking the same way they were heading before, after the big, black minotaur; apparently an alpha.
"Careful that way," Rush called after them. "The next turn to the right will lead you to the Nothrix camp. You don’t want to go there..."
"Thanks!" Riley called back.
"We’re not going there I take it?" Jason replied.
Riley shrugged.
Then, when they were fifty yards or so ahead of Rush and Tommy, Jason suddenly heard some shots up ahead and to the right, followed by a loud, deep bellow that carried through the yellow air.
Jason exchanged surprised glances with Riley. He waited to see what the soldier wanted to do...
"Come on!" Riley exclaimed, shouldering his rifle and running toward the sound.
"Hey!" Rush shouted from behind them. "If it’s the alpha, leave it for us, okay?" Rush Watson and Tommy Whisper laughed...
Riley laughed back then shouted, "Yeah, right!"
Jason followed Riley’s lead. They ran to the noise of battle, boots crunching and rifles ready...
Chapter 14
Jason followed Riley around the bend into another canyon with straight, sandstone walls leading far into the distance.
Why were they running toward the gunfire? he wondered. Wasn’t that exactly what the Nothrix did when they tried to steal Jason’s kill before? Maybe Riley figured that the bugs might drive a minotaur away from them?
"Where are we going?!" Jason asked, panting for breath. His knee was fully healed from his regenerative time in the Wilderlands, but he still wasn’t in very good shape for running.
"If the Reapers are fruking up and driving minotaurs away," Riley replied coolly as they jogged along the sandy ground, "we’ll want to be ready to intercept one or two of them."
"But won’t that piss off the Nothrix even more?"
"Quiet!" Riley hissed, stopping suddenly and holding one hand behind him to halt Jason and Gliath.
Jason stopped. His heart was pounding. He tried to breathe quietly but he was panting and heaving. Back when he had run from the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Wilderlands, Jason had run farther than they just did. That said, back then, the man didn’t care about how hard it was to run—he didn’t want to be eaten! Now, his lungs burned. Jason tried to listen, but all he heard was the hissing of his breaths and the beating of—
There was a soft, low grunt from up ahead, reminding Jason of the sound of a deer or an elk.
He held his breath.
A tall minotaur stepped out from a copse of trees into the middle of the corridor, scanning around with dark eyes. This one had shorter fur than the first two Jason had seen killed; more like the tawny-spotted one that Rush and Tommy had killed. Its muscles seemed more refined with the lack of shaggy, matted hair. Its horns were long and more slender than the thick horns of the first two dead beasts as well and ... were those ... breasts?!
Jason realized with surprise that the minotaur was a female, and had a pair of heavy, fur-covered breasts where the males he’d seen had exhibited massive, shaggy pectoral muscles.
"A girl?!" he whispered, raising his rifle. "Is that a girl? Should we kill the females too?"
"Shut up!" Riley snapped, carefully aiming his Gauss rifle. "Gliath, stand by..."
Jason heard the shift of movement behind him and knew that Gliath was aiming his railgun. The man looked back to make sure that he wasn’t standing in front of the leopardwere’s barrel. Gliath had silently padded off to the side without Jason noticing.
The female minotaur suddenly looked straight at the three of them and let out a bellowing roar, lowering her head for a charge.
Jason felt a quick rush of cold fear run through his system and raised his rifle. He flicked off the safety.
Just as suddenly as the beast charged, Riley fired off a quick three-round burst from his Gauss rifle—the gun quickly repeating its ca-chunk ca-chunk of the mechanism as it spat metal bolts. When the rounds left the barrel, they immediately split the air with a trio of cracks and left a barely-visible quake in their path.
"No shot!" Gliath shouted. "Separate!"
What the fuck did that mean?! Jason thought, putting his sights on the skull of the quickly approaching monster. Her horns looked sharp as hell and she was charging Jason’s way, hooves thundering against the ground. He aimed a little to the side of her head, hoping that he could pierce her hide in between the shoulder and the hidden neck...
Jason fired and his Rigby boomed, clapping his ears roughly and rocking him backwards.
"Get out of the way, Jason!" Riley shouted.
Jason heard the whining ping of his .416 round deflecting from the minotaur’s thick skull and he realized that she was almost on him...
"Shit!" he cried, stumbling madly to his right, desperately scrambling to get out of the way.
As Jason took several frantic and clumsy steps toward the side wall, he felt the rush of the monster thunder pass him—he felt like he’d just avoided being hit by a speeding car—and tripped and fell, landing in something soft.
The minotaur roared past them then slowed to a stop and turned, growling deeply with a fury that shook Jason’s bones. He realized that he’d fell into something weird and tried to get up, but it felt like he had dropped his ass into a really soft and deep old couch. Rocking back and forth, he tried to find his feet under him, but couldn’t.
As the monster spun on the Reality Rifters, Jason realized that she was bleeding down her chest—he saw the red as a bright, shiny orange color in the yellow light—and Riley shot her again several times from fifteen yards away.
Jason suddenly felt Gliath’s big hand grab the nape of his armor and haul him up to his feet. The man stumbled, watching in shock as the she-beast fell to her knees, grasping at her throat, then fell with an animalistic bellow, bleeding to death into the sand as she kicked randomly with one powerful hind leg...
"What the hell...?!" Jason exclaimed, looking down at whatever he’d fallen in. With a flush of horror, he saw a huge, clear mound of jelly up against the canyon wall showin
g a quickly-filling dent in it the size of his backside.
A slime?! He’d fallen into a slime?
Looking down, Jason searched his armor for any of its bio-stuff that had managed to come off onto him.
"Do not touch it," Gliath said with a rumble. Jason looked up, expecting to see the cat smiling down at him, but the Krulax's black, feline face and pale eyes were as impassive and unemotional as always.
"Thanks, Gliath," Jason said.
Gliath nodded and headed off to the beast, keeping the muzzle of his railgun casually low but ready to pull up at a moment's notice.
The she-minotaur made a constant gurgling, bellowing sound, making Jason think of a suffering, dying cow. She writhed around in the sand, her muscles pulsing as her lifeblood poured out onto the canyon floor.
Riley strode up to the monster's dying form, aimed, and shot a single round into her temple with a loud crack. The minotaur shuddered then slowly seemed to deflate until still.
"Holy shet!" Riley laughed. "That never gets old. What happened, Jason?" He smirked, his eyes full of fire. "Did you fall into a slime?!"
"Apparently," Jason said, walking up and cycling the bolt of his gun. The spent brass cartridge zipped off into the sand. Did I really hear the round ricochet off of her head? he wondered.
The soldier laughed. "Good thing you didn’t land your head in that thing! Don’t touch the stuff on your armor. It’ll lose its acidity in a few minutes."
"That’s a female!" Jason exclaimed, pointing at the dead minotaur. "It has boobs!"
"What’d you expect?" Riley asked. "Udders?"
They laughed.
"The females are just as good for bounties as the males, then?" Jason asked.
"Yep. They’re all good," Riley replied. "We’ll have to look into the alpha thing though. I wonder if Athelos is paying more for those..."
"You think they’re tougher?"
"Most likely," the soldier said, changing magazines. Jason saw that Riley's mag still had rounds in it—those odd, solid bolt rounds that looked like short, steel pencils. Riley must like to stay topped off. "Hurry up and get this body back home before the Nothrix get here."
"Okay."
Jason hurried over, slinging his Rigby around his back and turning on the OCS’s screen as he pulled it up. Opening the bookmark for home, he checked the sliders and made sure that everything was the same. He started focusing on the coordinates, trying to visualize a portal opening up in the ground under the dead minotaur instead of vertically in the air like normal. He really needed to figure that out—it would make it so much easier to transport the bodies if he could just make them fall into his world instead of requiring Riley and Gliath to carry them through. Jason visualized a big, flat rift opening up under the dead she-beast like a manhole in the canyon floor with swirling, sparking edges, leading back to universe 934...
He felt the flex, then the connection, but instead of what he wanted, the rift opened up in the air instead, snapping and unfurling into yet another roaring, vertical portal. Orange fire whirled and spat sparks all over. The rift's surface rippled and stretched until revealing the concrete floor of Jason’s garage. The man felt a crushing blow of disappointment, which was quickly followed up by a flash of fear when he thought—for an instant—that the garage floor was empty...
Did I lose the last minotaur too?! Jason thought, wild with anger and frustration.
Then he saw the massive, lumpy form of blood and fur sprawled on the concrete and felt amazing relief. Looking up at Riley across the roaring opening of the rift, Jason saw the soldier frowning at him.
"You need to make a rift under the bodies, Jason!" Riley shouted over the noise. "Underneath, so we can do it fast and not carry those frukers!"
"I know!" Jason shouted back. "I’m trying!"
Riley shook his head angrily, looked up to Gliath with a shrug, then the two of them lifted the dead female minotaur and hauled her through the rift into the garage.
Jason felt a stab of helplessness and a simmering rage—anger at himself. Riley was upset with him. For a moment, Jason was afraid that he simply couldn’t do it, but then a stronger part of himself argued. Of course I can! he thought. I just need more time!
Once Riley and Gliath were back in the canyon, Jason released the rift, and it closed with a flutter and a pop, leaving the three of them in relative silence.
"Jason," Riley said sardonically, "You need to learn how to make a rift underneath. Some of the monsters we kill will be too big for us to move." He spoke with the slow sarcasm of patiently explaining something to a child while angry, but Jason knew that Riley wasn’t feeling patient. He’d already made himself clear. Maybe it was more like someone stuck with a bad employee that they couldn’t fire just yet, determined to make a change once this was all over...
"I’ll figure it out," Jason replied. "Really, I will. I just need more practice. You can’t expect me to just be an expert at this right away!"
Riley scoffed and shook his head. He muttered something about Jason 113.
Jason looked down, feeling his face grow hot. He distracted himself by flipping his rifle’s safety back on. He took a deep breath.
"Well we have two now," Jason said. "Shall we move on and get another?"
Riley looked down the corridor and scratched his beard. Jason saw him clench his jaw.
It would have been three, he was probably thinking, if it wasn’t for you...
"Let’s go back and continue away from the Nothrix camp," Riley finally said.
Jason sighed as the three of them set off.
"Do you see it?" Riley asked, crouched low in the trees next to Jason.
Jason peered ahead and saw the huge form moving around in the distant shadows near the connection to another sandstone corridor. Even though he couldn’t directly see the sun through the thick, weird cloud cover, Jason was aware that the sun was getting low in the sky. The strange, greyish-purple canyon walls were started to gather shadows.
He thought he saw the sharp tip of a horn...
"Yes," Jason replied, raising his rifle. "What’s that—two hundred yards?"
"I can see it fine," Riley said, "but I can’t tell if it’s an alpha or not. There's a lot of cover. I don’t know if—"
There was a sudden shot from up ahead; the sharp crack of the sound barrier being broken. Then two more similar shots followed it. The monster up ahead—Jason didn’t know if it had been hiding, or hunting, or what—suddenly bellowed in surprise and spooked, fleeing to the left down a side corridor on thundering hooves.
"What the hell?!" Jason asked.
As the beast escaped into a side-canyon, Jason watched the silhouettes of three Nothrix lazily drifting through the air after it. They carried long, skinny rifles and flew in pursuit of the minotaur downward from up on the walls.
"Damned bugs..." Riley muttered. "Come on."
Jason heard three more sporadic shots as Riley led them forward. As the Reality Rifters approached the minotaur’s previous hiding place, the three of them looked up at the clicking sounds of more Nothrix laughing at them from up on the ridge. Four bugs sat up there, silhouetted against the yellow sky.
"Stupid humans!" one of them croaked.
Riley ignored the nearby Nothrix and scanned the area. Jason looked down the leftward corridor where the minotaur had fled and saw nothing. Wherever the beast and the three pursuing Nothrix had gone, they weren’t here anymore.
"Go away, ugly!" another bug-man spat from above, clicking and flapping its throat in laughter. "Nothrix Reapers turn in ack ack ack all mino-taur hides! None for you, stupid, soft human scum!"
Riley took a few steps toward the ridge wall and bent down to pick up what looked like a shell casing, subtly holding it out for Jason to see before palming it. The spent shell disappeared into the soldier's pocket.
"Railguns," Riley said quietly.
Jason looked down at the ground and saw what looked like another of the same shells in the shadow of a sandstone crevic
e. Holding his rifle in the crook of his right arm, he bent down to snatch up the spent casing with his free hand. When Jason felt his left hand plunge into something warm and wet, he gasped as he closed his fingers around the shell. For an instant, his hand was cold, then it started to burn as if Jason had thrust it into a fire!
The man cried out in shock and pain then pulled his hand back. Several wet, translucent tendrils shot out and grasped Jason’s forearm like sticky pseudopods.
"Shit! Help!" he cried.
"Jason, look out!" Riley exclaimed, then the soldier was there, pulling him backwards away from whatever horror was sucking up his arm. Pulling together, Jason felt the pseudopods snap one by one like thick rubber-bands as his hand was wrenched free from the slime. His skin was burning! Jason dropped his rifle onto the sandy ground, immediately grabbing desperately for his CamelBak’s bite valve on his shoulder.
"Oh God—it burns! It’s like fire!" Jason exclaimed, his hand alive with raw, fiery pain. He paused before frantically spraying his hand with water. "Can I—oh shit!—can I put water on it? Will that help?!"
"It’s acid," Riley replied, pulling out a towel from somewhere in his coat or on his belt. "Go ahead—it’s worth a try. Let me get to it, come on!"
Jason breathed in hissing gasps, trying to tough out the red burning of his left hand as he dribbled water from his pack’s bladder all over his blazing skin. Riley immediately started blotting his hand with the small towel, pulling off bits of jelly and slime that were left over.
"Holy shit it burns!"
"Hang in there," Riley said. "It’ll neutralize in a few. Just keep doing that. Get away from the wall; it’s coming!"
The soldier suddenly pushed the towel at Jason and gave the man a bodily shove toward the middle of the canyon. Jason pulled at his burning hand with the towel—trying to get all of the slime off of his skin—as Riley drew his blaster and fired twice toward the crevice. The laser pistol made two quiet reports, immediately followed up with the hiss of what must have been its cooling system, and Jason was dimly aware of Riley picking up his father's Rigby rifle from the ground. He heard sizzling and looked back to see splattered, molten jelly scattered in the sand. Parts of the slime smoldered and smoked.