“Just the two of us now, hunchback,” said Czarina.
From behind, Rex heard the buzzing of her last pet, the flying scorpion, diving at his head. He ducked and the creature missed him, and it came around for another pass. It flew straight at him and Rex punched it out of the air with his fist, knocking it senseless to the ground.
“Now it’s just the two of us,” said Rex.
Without taking her eye off the man, Czarina pulled the empty sack out of her gun belt and held it up.
“I have another sack here just for you.”
Rex looked at the bloody canvas bag on the ground next to her, knowing damn well what was inside of it. He looked back at her with barely contained rage.
“Thanks, Countess, but I won’t need it.”
She raised the crossbow and aimed.
“Better hope I don’t catch your arrow,” said Rex. “Because I’m gonna make you eat it.”
She smiled wryly, and then tossed the crossbow aside.
“You’re right. Arrows are too slow,” she said, and reached behind her back to pull out her Makarov pistol. “How are you at catching bullets?”
Rex was rattled. He was out in the open and couldn’t possibly rush her at this distance. Reflexively, he turned sideways, making himself a slightly smaller target.
She aimed the gun at Rex and was about to shoot, when Fugly bounced through a gap in the fire and plowed into Czarina, spoiling her shot.
“You disgusting freak!” she screamed, angrily shooting at Fugly as he quickly bounced into the trees on the other side of the clearing.
Czarina turned the pistol back at Rex, but before she could fire another shot something smacked her very hard between the eyes. It was Rex’s little pen knife, thrown with such force it had buried itself in her forehead midway up the handle.
Her mouth gaped open as she looked at Rex in complete shock for a moment, and then dropped face forward into the mud. The bitch was dead.
Rex walked up to Czarina and took the gun out of her hand. He looked at the bloody bag containing Goldfarb’s head, and next to that was the flying scorpion, flapping helplessly on the ground.
Fugly bounced back into the clearing and rolled up to Rex.
“Good work, Fugly. Your daddy would have been proud of you.”
Fugly looked at the canvas bag on the ground and made a weird little cry, sensing correctly that its master would not be returning.
“I’m sorry, Fugly. I couldn’t save him.”
Fugly looked up at Rex, trembling and heartsick. Rex patted the creature on one of its many elbows.
“Come on, little guy. We’re not finished yet.”
Twenty-four minutes later, outside the fortress tower, there was a sudden loud bang at the heavy iron door.
“Who hell am that?” said the monster guard sitting inside the fortress’s security station. “Am too early for Countess come back. She am likes take time torturing the tough ones.”
It checked the video console and saw Fugly outside, rolling back and forth and ramming the door with its body. The monster guard waved over its boss, Bongo, to look at the screen.
“Am Fugly. How him get outside?” said the guard.
“Not know,” said Bongo, putting down the bowl of worms and rice it was eating. “Better get him, before we be into trouble.”
The monster guard grabbed its machine gun and walked down the corridor. It turned the rusty wheel to open the door and looked outside. Fugly was on the doorstep, shivering and hopping in place.
“How am you get outside, ugly little ball?”
A powerful hand reached around the doorway and yanked the guard outside, punching the creature into unconsciousness. A moment later, Rex stuck his head inside the doorway, and saw that the coast was clear.
He entered the fortress, carrying a canvas bag and Czarina’s crossbow. Fugly rolled along behind him, still making little farting noises.
They moved quickly down the corridor until they reached the guard station. There, Rex found Bongo sitting on a stool, calmly scooping rice and worms into its mouth.
Rex pulled Bongo to its feet and was about to bash its brains in, when the monster guard held up its robotic claws in surrender.
“Whoa, hunchback! Am friend, remember?” said Bongo.
Meanwhile, in his office, the Count looked out at the forest through one the huge penthouse windows, almost melancholy as he spoke of his dear friend, Dr. Goldfarb.
“Too bad about Dr. Goldfarb. Frankly, I was hoping that insufferable Klaw Fang would be Dancing with the Devil tonight.”
Montgomery was at the conference table, putting papers back into his briefcase. He saw Thomp standing by the door.
“We all know the rules, Excellency,” said Montgomery. “He was a doddering old fool who should have been expelled years ago.”
Thomp quietly locked the door and gave a nod to the doctor. Montgomery pulled the syringe out of his pocket and walked toward the Count.
“Still, it is a sad end to such a great career,” said the Count. “Perhaps we can erect a statue to him somewhere on the island. The commissary would seem fitting. He loved the food there.”
The back of the hover chair was to Montgomery as he approached. In a moment he would plunge the needle directly into the Count’s gigantic cranium, injecting the man before he even knew what happened to him.
Montgomery quickly reached around the chair with the syringe, but he wasn’t quick enough. The Count grabbed his wrist in a giant lobster claw. The doctor grimaced in pain as the Count squeezed his wrist like a bench vise. The syringe fell out of his hand.
“Dr. Montgomery, you disappoint me,” said the Count, turning his chair around to face him. “Did you think I was not aware of what you and that hunchback were planning? My spies are everywhere.”
Thomp hobbled across the room to help Montgomery. The Count saw this and squeezed the doctor’s wrist harder. Montgomery waved the creature back.
“I could have killed you days ago,” said the Count, “but I was curious to see if you actually had the balls to go through with it.”
He toggled the hover chair to the center of the room, pulling Montgomery along by the wrist, and stopped.
“Apparently, your balls are enormous,” the Count continued, “and that makes you much too dangerous to live.”
With that, the Count snipped off the doctor’s hand. Montgomery screamed and stumbled back a few paces, grasping his bloody stump.
Enraged, Thomp attacked the Count, raising its spiked tail to impale him. The Count quickly spun around, catching the lethal blow on the back of his chair. Thomp ripped its tail out of the chair and jerked the chair around, and then grabbed the Count by the throat.
“Release me, you fucking animal,” the Count said through his mechanical vocalizer.
With only the power of his mind, the Count sent a powerful burst of electricity through Thomp’s collar, knocking the huge creature off its feet. The four-armed creature lay motionless on the penthouse floor.
Turning back to Montgomery, the Count delivered a crippling electric shock to his collar as well, causing the doctor to collapse to the floor in violent pain.
The Count guided his hover chair closer to Montgomery.
“No quick death for you, my traitorous friend. I will increase the voltage in your collar ever so slowly, until your brain is literally poached inside your skull.”
Just then, there was pandemonium and machine gun fire in the hallway outside the penthouse. The Count turned toward the noise just as one of his monster guards came crashing backward through the doors, falling unconscious to the floor.
Rex Havoc walked through the doorway, scarred, burned and bloodied. He carried Czarina’s crossbow in one hand, and a canvas bag in the other. Behind him, the remaining three guards lay senseless outside the door.
The Count rubbed his antennae gleefully.
“Hunchback! How wonderful. Now I can kill you myself.”
Another monster guard ran up behin
d Rex, and he smashed the creature in the face. The guard dropped like a poleaxed steer.
Rex looked at the floor and saw Montgomery and Thomp lying motionless on the floor. The doctor’s hand had been cut off, and he was bleeding out quickly. Thomp was unconscious, possibly dead.
He took a step toward the Count. As he did, twin Gatling guns extended from the sides of his hover chair.
“Stay where you are, hunchback. I don’t need a collar to kill you.”
Rex stopped. The Count toggled the chair backward a bit, putting distance between Rex and himself.
“I see you’ve survived your Dance with the Devil,” said the Count, “which can only mean…”
Rex tossed Czarina’s crossbow into his lap. The Count looked at the weapon, utterly unmoved.
“Tsk. She was always very headstrong. It was only a matter of time before she met her match. And how is Dr. Goldfarb?”
Rex said nothing, seething with anger.
“Oh dear. Such a lovely man. He was one of our charter members, did you know?”
The Count swept the crossbow aside and touched a button on the chair’s control arm. Behind him, a large wall slid open, revealing an immense room filled with rows of fantastic super-computers unlike anything Rex had ever seen before, even on Metaluna.
“If you think you’ve accomplished anything with my daughter’s death, you’re grievously mistaken,” said the Count. “Her DNA is on file and her core memories are stored in this bank of quantum computers. I can resurrect her in a matter of days.”
A life-size hologram appeared next to the Count, showing Czarina’s reconstruction from a strand of DNA to an adult woman in a matter of seconds.
“Perhaps I’ll make some revisions to her this time around. Maybe I’ll bring her back as a chimpanzee. Chimps are much less trouble than girls.”
He touched another button on the chair’s control pad. The hologram of Czarina morphed into a chimpanzee.
“Or maybe I’ll give her four arms, like her brother Thomp here.”
He gestured to Thomp, moving now, struggling to get to his feet. The Count saw this and blasted the huge creature with another jolt of electricity, causing it to black out again.
Rex was appalled.
“Count, I’ve met a lot of psycho fucks in my day, but experimenting on your own kids takes a special breed of madman. Dr. Mengele and you will have much to chat about in hell.”
“Bah, Mengele was a pussy. He would never have dared to experiment on himself,” the Count said, holding up his lobster claws.
The count toggled his chair closer to Rex.
“An imbecile like you could never understand this, but nothing matters but the science. Not wives, not children, not even me. Soon Brainiac Island will become the new capital of the world, and the world shall tremble.”
Behind Rex, more monster guards rushed into the room. They stood at a distance, holding their machine guns on him.
“So you see, you’ve still lost, hunchback,” said the Count. “There is no death on this island unless I order it.”
“Just one more death necessary,” said Rex.
The Count rubbed his antennae together slowly, pondering this.
“Don’t be ridiculous. If you kill me, this whole island blows up. Certainly Montgomery told you about the Doomsday Weapon. So you know you cannot win.”
Rex smiled at the Count, holding up the canvas bag, giving it a couple of rough shakes.
The Count stared at the bag.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s in the bag? You’re not lugging around my daughter’s head, are you? I’m all for dramatic flourishes, but that’s just tacky.”
“No, it’s not a head. It’s something Dr. Goldfarb created in your lab a few years ago. Maybe you’ve heard of it… Rocky the Flying Scorpion.”
Rex opened the bag and released the creature. The enraged flying scorpion flew immediately toward the first thing it saw, which was the Count, and stung him on his giant bumblebee head.
The Count screamed and reflexively fired the twin Gatling guns on his chair. Rex dropped to the floor and the guards behind him were mowed down by the automatic gunfire.
The shooting did not stop until the Gatling guns ran out of bullets. Rex looked up and saw that the Count was completely paralyzed, his claw frozen on the button that now spun only empty machine gun barrels.
Rex rushed over to Montgomery, who was stirring but had lost a great deal of blood. But as Rex bent down to help, more monster guards swarmed into the room and began pummeling him with their gun butts.
Someone shouted then, in a voice that was part screech and part clacking noise.
“Stobp! No mahg killung!”
It was Thomp, shrieking at the guards. It was standing now, waving its four arms frantically. The guards were so shocked by its desperate attempt to speak that they backed away.
Moments later, some of the scientists from the lab, including Dr. Rossum and the Frankensteins, came running into the office. They helped Montgomery get to his feet.
“Stand down, everyone,” said Montgomery, pale and holding his bloody stump of a wrist.
“It’s over. No one else dies today.”
Chapter 14
“Are Those Sirens I Hear?”
The next day, Rex Havoc prepared to board a schooner that would shuttle him to the Lady Vain and away from the madhouse of death and despair called Horror Island.
Many of the scientists and even some of the island’s monsters had gathered at the dock to bid farewell to the man who had saved them from the mad Count and his homicidal daughter.
In the end, all the scientists chose to remain on the island. It wasn’t a hard decision to make: they had everything they needed on the island to continue their work; and back in their native countries there was only prison waiting for most of them, or in some cases, the guillotine.
As for the wretched creatures that also inhabited the island, this was the only home they’d ever known. They too would remain on the island forever.
Montgomery walked up to Rex to say goodbye. His injured wrist was bandaged and there was no longer a collar on his neck. In fact, there were no collars on anybody.
“Safe journey, my friend. Everyone on the island is deeply indebted to you.”
Montgomery limply held out his left hand to shake Rex’s hand, and noticed Rex staring at his severed wrist. The doctor held it up and laughed.
“Oh, don’t worry about this. Dr. Laszlo is in the lab making me a new mechanical hand as we speak. I asked him to install a lighter in one of the fingers, so I can light my pipe.”
Rex smiled and shook the man’s uninjured hand warmly.
“Good luck to you, Doc. You’re gonna need a buttload of it to keep these crazy doctors under control.”
“Don’t worry, Rex. From now on, all the research on this island will be used only to benefit mankind. I’ll see to that personally.”
“No more experimenting on human beings?”
“Never again.”
Rex noticed some of the fruit and vegetable creatures loading cargo onto the schooner.
“Or fruits and vegetables?”
“Or fruits and vegetables. It’s all computer trials from here on in,” Montgomery assured him.
“Okay. I guess I’ll have to trust you, Doc.”
Bongo the monster guard came forward with a parting gift for Rex. It was a necklace made from dozens of weird green ears and he proudly draped it around his neck. Rex knew at once where the ears came from and he looked at Montgomery, who only shrugged, feigning ignorance.
Rex looked at the crowd of monsters on the pier, and saw that one in particular was missing.
“Hey, what happened to Thomp? I’m actually going to miss that ridiculous four-armed monstrosity.”
“Don’t underestimate my boy Thomp,” said Montgomery. “He’s quite the ladies’ man here on the island.”
The doctor pointed to an area onshore under a large shade tree, where Thomp was playing a love
song on two ukuleles at once to the delight of the beautiful apple girl, Apollonia.
“I’ll be damned,” said Rex. “I guess there really is someone for everyone.”
Something bumped Rex in the leg. He looked down to see Fugly and laughed.
“Ah, little Fugly. I think I’ll miss you most of all.”
Rex gave the creature a little bump right back. Fugly farted happily in response.
“You take care of yourself, little fella. And stay away from dairy.”
As Rex stepped aboard the schooner, Montgomery waved over a man with a giant bumblebee head. He was wearing a hunchback uniform and carrying a couple of suitcases in his huge lobster claws.
“Hurry up with that luggage, Fritz,” said Montgomery. “Mr. Havoc is anxious to get home.”
“Yes, Master,” said the man, who Rex immediately recognized as Count Kalashnikov. The man obediently hopped aboard the schooner with the luggage, and Rex looked quizzically at Montgomery, who gave him a broad smile.
“We couldn’t stop the Count’s heart, so we fiddled with his brain,” said Montgomery. “He has no memory of Count Kalashnikov. As far as he knows, he has always been our loyal hunchback, Fritz.”
“What about his hover chair?”
“Bastard never needed one. He was just goddamn lazy.”
“Okay, I better get out of here before the irony gets any deeper,” said Rex.
“Thanks for everything, Rex,” said Montgomery. “I hope we meet again, under better circumstances.”
“No offense, Doc, but I hope we never meet again, under any circumstances.”
“Fair enough,” said Montgomery with a laugh.
Soon afterward, Rex was aboard the tramp steamer Lady Vain, headed back to America. He was pleased how things had worked out on the island, and he felt confident that Montgomery and Thomp would keep an eye on all the batshit crazy scientists, and make sure they didn’t blast the Earth to smithereens.
And if things didn’t work out, well, Rex could always come back to the island and beat everybody to a pulp, which is what he really wanted to do in the first place.
That night, in the dark and dingy cargo hold of the ship, Rex walked past crates of breadfruits, strawberries and potted palms, making his way up to the main deck.
Horror Island Page 10