by Mark Crilley
“Do what?” Ana put her hands on her hips. “What is it that you knew I was going to do?”
Get it out in the open. You might as well.
“I knew you were going to take over my creatch op and then start treating me like your little assistant boy. And you are. You’re making all the decisions. You’re not even listening to any of my ideas.”
“Your creatch op,” said Ana. “Your creatch op.”
“Okay, our creatch op. But you’re not treating it like that. You’re calling all the shots, and I’m supposed to just nod and say ‘As you wish.’ ”
Ana took a deep breath. “Billy. You are an Affy-in-training. I am an Affy. When there is a disagreement over procedure, I win. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Billy said nothing. He turned his face to the ground.
“Look, Billy. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.” Ana leaned her head down, forcing him to meet her gaze. “So you better just learn to get along with me.”
A few silent seconds passed.
“I will listen to your ideas. When they make sense.” She turned and continued hiking through the woods. “Now, come on. We’ll go a little farther, and if we don’t see anything we’ll turn back.”
They kept going. Billy was angrier than ever but was now determined to keep his mouth clamped shut.
She’s, like, the bossiest girl on earth. When we get back to AFMECopolis I’m going to tell them never to send me on a creatch op with her again. Ever.
Several minutes later, in a hollow formed by some mammoth black boulders, they came across the carcass of a deer. It had been reduced to a mere skeleton, the meat neatly removed from its bones. A few flies buzzed about, competing for what little flesh remained. Ana and Billy set their weapons on the ground and crouched down to get a closer look.
“Here’s a test for you, Billy. How many days ago was this deer killed?” She was acting as if the little spat they’d just had was already a distant memory. Billy was not so quick to forget, but he knew he had to make an effort to stay on good terms with Ana. They were here to battle creatches, not one another.
“Give or take a day,” Ana said.
Billy had done poorly on the section of his Affy exams that related to this very subject, Remains of Creatch Prey: Recovery and Analysis. He was simply more interested in battling a monster than calculating the age of its last lunch. He knew it was something he’d have to work on, though, if he was going to become a well-rounded Affy.
Billy swatted the flies away to get a better look at the tendons and cartilage. The degree to which it had decayed was one of the key clues to dating a carcass.
“Hard to say,” he said, poking at the rib cage with a stick. “A day? Two days?”
“You’ve got a long way to go, Billy.” Ana held up the deer’s skull and began talking to it like an old friend. “You poor little guy. He gobbled you up five days ago, didn’t he?”
“Here, give me that,” Billy said. He held the skull up and adopted a high-pitched voice to create a snarky deer’s answer to Ana’s question: “No, lady. You’ve got it all wrong. It was three days ago, and he didn’t gobble me. He chewed very carefully before swallowing.”
Ana laughed in spite of herself. “Oh really? I hope he brushed his teeth afterward.”
“Well, yes,” said Billy, “as a matter of fact he di—”
GYYOOOOOOAAARRRR
A rogmasher. It was right there in front of them.
CHAPTER 11
The rogmasher had been hiding behind the rocks the whole time, waiting. Now it was rising from a crouching position, rising … rising … over thirty feet tall … over forty. When it was finally upright it stood nearly fifty feet tall. Its reptile skin was shiny and wet with condensation. Its massive scaly arms glowed green in the eerie light of the AFMEC jackets. Its horrific face—compact, slimy, twisting in on itself like a Halloween mask turned inside out—was all eyes and teeth and quivering green-gray flesh.
Billy and Ana jumped back and took defensive positions. They had both made the mistake of leaving their weapons more than an arm’s length away and now had to waste frantic seconds scrambling to reclaim them.
GYYOOOOOAAAARRRRR
The rogmasher roared again, throwing its head backward, hurling its guttural howl into the pines. Raising one of its fists into the air, it snorted and brought it down to the earth in a slow, unstoppable arc.
FFWHAAAM
Pine needles and shards of stone shot into the air. The ground shook with the intensity of an earthquake. Taking two or three thunderous stomps forward, the rogmasher bared its teeth for a prolonged growl, sending spittle spattering onto Billy’s face and blasting his nose with the stench of half-digested animals.
Ana was the first to get her paragglian crossbow out, raised, and properly aimed. By the time Billy had his glaff rifle out and into position, Ana had taken her first shot.
Fwissssshhh
BOAM!
A purple-blue fireball lit the trees as the rogmasher staggered back from Ana’s blow. The pulsating paragglian bolt protruded from the beast’s chest about a foot below its collarbone: tantalizingly close to its weak spot, but not close enough.
Now it was Billy’s turn.
BRAM
BRAM
BRAM
The shots of the glaff rifle echoed across the mountainside as orange firebolts struck the rogmasher three times in the abdomen. The chamber holding the glaffurious oxide would now require five seconds to reheat, so there was little Billy could do but watch and wait as the rogmasher stumbled back and opened its mouth for the loudest roar yet.
I can’t kill it with this rifle. The best I can hope for is to keep it distracted while Ana takes another shot.
Something was wrong. Ana was taking far too long preparing for her second shot.
“Hey, Ana. Any day now, all right?”
“It’s my paragglian crossbow,” said Ana, keeping an eye on the rogmasher as she struggled to reload. “It’s jammed! Just give me another half minute.… ”
“Half minutes are in very short supply right now!”
GYOOOOAAARRR
The rogmasher had now taken hold of a massive boulder some twenty feet away. Billy watched as it lifted the rock into the air, sending a spray of dirt and pine needles tumbling to the ground.
“It’s gonna crush us with that thing!” Billy raised his glaff rifle and prepared to fire. The glaffurious oxide chamber had not yet reheated, but it would only be another second now, two at the most.
The rogmasher took two huge stomps toward Ana and Billy …
DROOM
DROOM
… then lifted the boulder all the way above its head.
“Aim for the elbows!” said Ana.
“The elbows? But—”
“Just do it!”
GYYYOOOOOOAAARR
The rogmasher sent one more roar echoing through the trees as it prepared to drop the Dumpster-sized boulder—easily big enough to crush several people at once—right on top of its cornered foes.
Billy gritted his teeth and …
BRAM
BRAM
… fired shots into both of the rogmasher’s elbows in rapid succession. He watched in amazement as the rogmasher’s arms shot out involuntarily, sending the boulder crashing into the upper reaches of a nearby pine tree.
The rogmasher howled in dismay.
“Great shots, Billy,” said Ana as she finally crammed a fresh paragglian bolt into her crossbow. “Now let’s see if I can hold up my end of the bargain.” Ana aimed and fired.
Fwissssshhhhh
BOOOOOOAM!
Had Ana managed a direct hit on the underside of the rogmasher’s chin? It certainly looked that way. Blue sparks shot out from the creature’s neck as it dropped to its knees and let out a bloodcurdling screech. But when it rose to its feet again, the second paragglian bolt was lodged just inches away from the base of the neck: painful but not lethal.
Still, the r
ogmasher had had enough. It bared its teeth at Ana and Billy for one last angry (and extremely foul-smelling) growl, then limped off into the fog, moaning all the way.
Moments later they were alone again, with nothing around them but fog, pine trees, and the silence of an empty forest.
“You okay?” asked Ana. A stone shard had struck Billy on the cheek, leaving a long, bleeding scratch.
“I’ll be all right. What about you?”
“I’m fine.” Ana peered into the fog where the rogmasher had just vanished. “A little spooked, but fine.”
“Thanks for that tip about firing into the elbows.”
“It’s a trick I heard about from my mother. Never tried it myself, actually.”
“Oh, great. Now I owe both you and your mother.”
Ana grinned. “You better believe you do. I’ll have to come up with a nice long list of ways for you to make it up to us.”
Billy looked off in the direction the rogmasher had headed. “Do you think it’s gone for good?”
“That bolt should keep it out of action for a good day or two.” Ana turned to Billy. “It really took us by surprise, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Billy rose to his feet. “Too much of a surprise if you ask me. This whole thing feels like a trap. Think about it. The trail: way too direct, way too easy to follow. The deer carcass left in a spot where we had no easy escape route. It’s a lot more sophisticated than a rogmasher could manage on its own.”
“Billy, you’re getting paranoid. Mountain creatches move in straight lines all the time. It’s nothing unusual. And finding a protected spot to feed is common behavior among all creatches, you know that.”
“But it was waiting for us, Ana. Hiding. Rogmashers don’t hunt like that.”
Ana shrugged. “Who says it was hiding? It may have been resting there when we happened to come along.”
“Oh, come on, Ana. You think this was all a coincidence?”
“And you think it was all … what, part of some big conspiracy?”
Billy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I don’t know, Ana. It’s just a hunch, but something tells me we’re up against more than rogmashers here.”
Ana nodded. Billy could see she was trying to be sympathetic, though she didn’t agree with his take on things. “So what do you want me to do? Call in reinforcements?”
Billy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Can’t take other Affys off their jobs based on a hunch.”
“It’s getting late,” said Ana. “Let’s get back to Huaqing. With that rogmasher out there, we can’t afford to leave the village unguarded for even a minute.”
CHAPTER 12
On the way back to the village Ana tried to put a call through to AFMEC to report on their progress but found the signal blocked. “The mountains,” she explained. “They can really cause trouble with communications sometimes. I’ll try again tomorrow.”
By the time they got back to Huaqing, bandaged Billy’s wound, and got something to eat, it was nearly midnight. They agreed to park the van at the bridge leading into town and keep watch during the night, splitting the time into three-hour shifts. Ana went first. At three in the morning she woke Billy up and they switched places.
It was a long, unpleasant three hours: windy and cold. Billy was already itching for another rogmasher encounter, but the only beast to cross his path was nothing more frightening than a scrawny stray dog with a nasty skin problem. So Billy spent most of the night firing imaginary blasts of glaffurious oxide at imaginary creatches, all the while racking his brain for new theories about what the rogmashers were up to.
I’ll have to talk to those kids who saw that rogmasher the other day. They ought to be able to provide some clues.
When the sun broke over the eastern mountains around six, Billy was only too happy to switch places with Ana and get a couple more hours’ sleep. But after only thirty minutes he was being shaken awake again, this time by Mei Jun.
“Come on, Billy,” she said, looking thoroughly refreshed from a good night’s rest. “We need to get you some dou jiang. Let’s go.”
“Mmm,” said Ana, who was already enjoying a bowl of the soy milk. “This is good. Go get some, Billy. And take some time off while you’re at it. We’ll go in six-hour shifts until nightfall.”
Billy forced himself up and out of the back of the van.
Six hours. Great. I should be able to dig up a lot of info in six hours.
Mei Jun led Billy through a narrow alleyway to the marketplace in the center of the village. “What happened last night?” she asked. “I hear you saw some action.”
“Yeah,” said Billy, “we had a little run-in with a rogmasher. Sent it packing without too much trouble, though.” Billy was trying to sound casual, but his voice wasn’t very convincing.
“Really?” Mei Jun turned to him with raised eyebrows. “Looks like trouble to me.” She pointed at the cut on his cheek.
Billy chuckled nervously and found himself with nothing smooth to say in response.
Mei Jun led Billy to a couple of rusty steel stools next to a wooden table in the middle of the marketplace. They were surrounded by villagers, most of them wrinkled old men mumbling gruffly to one another in Mandarin. “Dou jiang,” Mei Jun called out to a heavyset woman stirring steaming soy milk in a giant black wok. “Liang ge.”
“Look, Mei Jun,” Billy said after the woman brought two bowls of the yellow-white liquid and plunked them down on the table, “I need your help.”
“You got it,” said Mei Jun before taking a big slurp of dou jiang. “What do you need?”
“You know how you said some kids saw a rogmasher out in the woods south of the village?”
“Two days ago, yeah. What about it?”
“I need to talk to those kids.” He blew on his soy milk to cool it down. “I want to ask them some questions.”
“And you need me to translate,” said Mei Jun, nodding. “No problem. I can set that up for later this morning. So what’s going on?” She leaned forward. “You figure out what these rogmashers are up to?”
“No.” Billy took a sip of the soy milk. It was piping hot and very sweet, a bit like melted ice cream that had been warmed on a stove. “But with a little more information I could at least come up with some theories.”
“You leave it to me,” said Mei Jun. “I’ll help you with the interviews.” She raised a finger. “I can help you with the theories, too.”
“Yeah?”
“You bet I can. I’ve seen a lot of creatch ops come and go. I’ve seen Affys fight amphibious chran-g’tanns on the Yangtze River. I’ve seen Affys up to their ears in purple goo in the sewers underneath Shanghai. I’ve seen …” Mei Jun paused for another gulp from her bowl. “… I’ve seen a lot.”
“Sounds like you have,” said Billy. “Ever consider becoming an Affy?”
Mei Jun frowned and shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Too much slime,” said Mei Jun before slurping the last of her dou jiang. “Come on,” she added, motioning for Billy to drink faster. “I want to go see those kids. You’ve got me curious now.”
Within an hour Mei Jun had arranged a meeting between Billy and three of the children who had seen the rogmasher. They sat together, two boys and a girl, on a heavy stone bench outside the local elementary school, a crumbling concrete building that looked like it hadn’t had a fresh coat of paint since the days of Mao Tse-tung. They each wore simple navy blue and white uniforms. The boys had near identical bowl haircuts and the girl had her hair woven into two long braids. They were strangely motionless for seven-year-olds.
Billy began by asking them about the rogmasher. “Was it very tall?”
“Hen gao ma?” was Mei Jun’s translation.
None of the children answered right away. The schoolyard was quiet, apart from the whines of a nearby stray dog.
Then all at once the girl spoke: “Hen gao,” she said, which Mei Jun translated a
s “very tall.”
“Hen gao, hen gao,” said the two boys. Billy couldn’t help thinking they were agreeing because of some prearranged pact rather than out of shared experience.
Weird. It’s as if seeing a rogmasher wasn’t such a big deal to these kids.
“Were you frightened? Was the monster scary?”
Mei Jun translated the questions. There was another long pause. The stray dog barked at something.
Again, the girl answered first. “Hen kong bu,” which Mei Jun translated as “very scary.”
“Hen kong bu,” said the boys, repeating the words like trained parrots.
Scary? Could have fooled me. Something’s up with these kids. Did someone prep them for this interview?
Billy remembered something he’d been told during his training at AFMECopolis. One of his teachers, Dr. Kasparov, was coaching him on investigative techniques. “Here’s something to try, Billy,” he’d said, “when you sense that a witness is giving you incomplete information—memorized answers rather than spontaneous responses. Try throwing in an entirely random request, something they couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Ask them what their favorite flavor of breakfast cereal is. Make them crow like a rooster. If it embarrasses them, so much the better. They will reveal something of what they are trying to hide. They always do.”
“Tell them to sing me a song,” said Billy, trying his best to make it sound like this was the next logical step when interviewing kids who’d seen a creatch.
Mei Jun gave Billy a confused look. “A song?”
“Yeah, a song.”
“What kind of song?”
“A children’s song. Pick one that’s really popular in China.”
Mei Jun shrugged and asked them to sing “Liang Zhi Lao Hu,” which she translated as “The Two Tigers.”
This time there was an even longer pause. The children’s mouths hung open. Not in embarrassment, but in simple ignorance. They clearly didn’t know the song.
“Ni bu zhidao ma?” asked Mei Jun. Billy didn’t need a translation to know that this was something along the lines of “Don’t you know it?” Mei Jun began to hum the tune for them, but Billy immediately motioned for her to stop.