by Mark Crilley
“The rogmashers are dangerous, all right,” said Billy. “That’s why we can’t afford to leave any more of them under Glurrik’s control than we have to. If we’re lucky, Ana and I will be able to cut their number by half.”
Not with only three paragglian bolts between us, but Mei Jun doesn’t need to know that. The main thing is to get her out of here. Ana and I will be able to save our own skins when the going gets rough.
Ana put a hand on Mei Jun’s shoulder. “Billy’s right. We can’t let Glurrik get away from this with his rogmasher army intact.” She gave Mei Jun a farewell hug. “Don’t worry about us. We’ve got enough ammo to defend ourselves. More than enough.”
“I can’t do this,” said Mei Jun. “You’re going to get yourselves killed if you stay here.”
“Ten minutes more,” said Billy. “Then we’re out of here. We can outrun any rogmashers that come after us. They may be strong, but they’re slowpokes when it comes to a footrace.”
Mei Jun sighed and nodded. “Okay. Ten minutes,” she said. “Then you two get your little Affy butts on that trail!”
“Mine is an Affy butt-in-training,” said Billy with a grin. “But it appreciates the promotion, I’m sure.”
Mei Jun rolled her eyes and turned to Ana. “Be careful, Ana. No more heroics for you two. You’ve done more than enough for one creatch op.”
“No more heroics,” said Ana. “I promise.”
“All right, then. Zai jian, my friends. I’ll see you both on the trail.” She turned and faced them one more time before climbing across the roof and out of sight. “Ten minutes.”
CHAPTER 21
As soon as Mei Jun was gone, the final assault of the rogmashers began in earnest. Within seconds all twenty of the beasts were less than five hundred yards from the gate of the temple, closing the gaps between one another, forming a terrifying wall of heads, chests, and massive leathery arms.
“No more heroics, eh?” said Billy as he unleashed several blasts of glaffurious oxide.
“I was crossing my fingers when I said that.”
“You must have been crossing your fingers and toes when you said we had plenty of ammo,” said Billy. “Man oh man. We must be insane.”
“We’re Affys, Billy. Being insane is right there in the job description.” Ana had one paragglian bolt loaded and the other two at her side. To even have a chance of hitting one of the beasts on the underside of the chin, she’d have to wait until the whole battalion was nearly on top of them. In the meantime, she joined Billy in keeping up a constant barrage of fire with the glaff rifles.
The rogmashers were soon within a hundred yards of the gates. They smashed buildings and uprooted utility poles as they went, clearing the battlefield in advance of the final attack. Several of them hurled boulders, tearing holes through the roof of the temple and shaking the pillars.
Billy tossed hortch grenade after hortch grenade, knocking one or two of the rogmashers back on its heels for a moment, only to find others stepping in to take their place.
“They’re almost in range,” said Ana, dropping her glaff rifle and picking up the loaded paragglian crossbow. “I should be able to take one of them down before we go. Maybe two.”
“I don’t know how much longer this balcony will hold, Ana,” said Billy as he threw a hortch grenade into the crowd of rogmashers that now stood at the very gates of the temple. “You peg even one of those suckers and I say it’s time to roll.”
“Deal,” said Ana as she took aim at the rogmasher nearest the gate.
“Let’s see if I can’t get that guy to expose his weak spot.”
BRAM BRAM BRAM
Billy’s glaff blasts struck the rogmasher three times: once in each shoulder and once in the chest.
GGYYOOOOOAARRRR
As it roared, the furious beast tilted its head back for a fraction of a second. Ana didn’t waste the opportunity.
Ffffffsssssshhhhhh
POOOOAAMM!
Red-orange fire erupted from the rogmasher’s chin. Its knees gave out and it crashed to the ground in a cloud of dust and flying concrete.
There was little to celebrate. The remaining rogmashers had broken through the temple walls and were now within striking distance of the temple itself. Several of them were already beginning to tear the roof to pieces. One was battering the balcony’s support beams with its fists, shattering them like candy canes. Another raised both hands in the air and, with a single blow, obliterated the stairway leading up to the balcony.
“That’s it, Ana,” Billy cried. “We’ve gotta bail!”
Clutching their weapons, the two of them climbed from the balcony to the roof, then scrambled up to the top.
“See the trail?” asked Billy as he took a few parting blasts at a rogmasher with his glaff rifle. “If we can just get down there and—”
“Billy,” said Ana. “We’re in trouble.”
Billy turned to point out the gap in the wall but found himself pointing instead at a collapsed section of the cliff. One of the boulders thrown by a rogmasher had destroyed the upper portions of the trail not long after Mei Jun left, creating a sheer drop-off where the trail used to be. There would be no escaping on foot for Billy and Ana. They were trapped. End of story.
The roof began to shake. Rogmashers had now encircled the temple completely and were battering away at it, bit by bit. Their horrid, twisted blue-gray faces were now so close Billy could see the saliva dripping from their lips. Ana and Billy huddled together at the very crest of the roof, their zone of safety growing smaller by the second.
That’s it. We’re trapped. We’re completely trapped.
Billy fired desperately at any rogmasher he could hit. Ana shot off one of the two remaining paragglian bolts, but it failed to reach its target. What did it matter, anyway? At this point, they were just postponing the inevitable. The end was coming. It would all be over in a matter of minutes.
Billy racked his brain for a solution. There had to be a way out. They couldn’t just sit here until the rogmashers killed them. He stared longingly at the valley below, wishing they could somehow jump off the cliff and magically fly away to safety.
What am I, nuts? We jump off that cliff and we’ll break every last bone in our bodies.
Unless …
“The parachute!” Billy spun around. There it was, half out of its case, tucked into the corner of the balcony, or what little of the balcony remained. Billy thrust his glaff rifle into Ana’s hands. “I’ve got to get that parachute. It’s our only way out of this.”
Billy slid down the roof and leaped down to the balcony. He was now well within arm’s length of at least three rogmashers. They roared and raised their fists to smash him into oblivion.
Billy rolled across the balcony.
HHHWWWAAAMMM
One of the rogmasher’s ten-foot-wide fists crashed down just inches from Billy’s head, sending wood and iron flying. Billy somersaulted, grabbed one of the parachute’s straps, threw it over his shoulder, and bolted back across the balcony to the roof.
THHHAAAAAMMMMM
A second fist blew away the balcony altogether just as Billy leaped and hurled himself to the edge of the roof with every ounce of strength he had. The enraged roars of rogmashers blended into a deafening, furious chorus. Rogmasher fists rained down on all sides as Billy dodged one, then another, then another.
Have to get back to Ana.
FFWWUUUMMP
All went black. One of the rogmashers had cupped its enormous hands and closed them around Billy like a child catching a grasshopper.
No!
Billy felt himself rising, heard the air whistling through the rogmasher’s fingers. Then the huge, leathery palms of the rogmasher began to close in on him.
It’s gonna crush me!
Billy thrust out his arms and legs, trying to keep the two enormous palms apart, but it was hopeless. He was caught inside a massive, flesh-and-blood vise, and nothing could stop it from clamping shut.
Billy’s arms and legs gave out. Within seconds there was no space left between him and the palms of the rogmasher. He could do nothing but lie there, arms at his sides, and wait as the breath got squeezed out of him.
Then, somewhere beyond the rogmasher’s hands …
Ffffffffsssssssshhhhh
POOOOOOOAAAAAAAAMMMMMM!
Orange-yellow light poured between the rogmasher’s fingers as its hands opened and dropped Billy to the rooftop. Billy turned just in time to see the towering beast—a glowing paragglian bolt protruding from the underside of its chin—reel backward and collapse into the south wing of the temple.
Billy scrambled up the rooftop to where Ana stood, her paragglian crossbow still clutched firmly in her hands.
“Ana, you rock,” he said as he strapped the parachute on with trembling hands, “you really do.”
“I couldn’t let that guy flatten you, Billy,” said Ana, smiling. “You’re thin enough as it is.”
The eighteen remaining rogmashers pounded forward, plowing into the temple on all sides, tearing it to pieces as if it were a house of cards. Roof tiles whirled into the air. Pieces of concrete shot in all directions. Billy and Ana were soon standing on an island of intact roof tiles less than forty feet in diameter.
“We’ve got to jump!” cried Ana. “Now!”
“No,” said Billy as he raised his glaff rifle. “One last shot.”
“It’s a waste of time,” said Ana. “Let’s just jump and get it over with.”
“Trust me, Ana,” said Billy as he aimed the glaff rifle, not at any of the rogmashers, but at the vast cliff overlooking what little remained of the village of Huaqing. “This will not be a waste of time.”
BRAM BRAM BRAM
The blasts of glaffurious oxide struck the overhang of stone in three separate spots along the fault line Billy had noticed the night before.
bbbrrrrrrruuuuummmmMMMMMMMMM
The rogmashers raised their heads in horror as the vast ceiling of stone above them began to crack, crumble, and fall to pieces right on top of them.
“Now we jump,” said Billy. Ana grabbed on to Billy and the two of them dove from the temple. All was a blur as they cleared the edge of the cliff and—for a terrifying few seconds—went into a free fall that threatened to send them plunging to their deaths in a forest of pine trees hundreds of yards below.
Here’s hoping AFMEC keeps its parachutes in good repair, thought Billy as he pulled the cord.
FFFFWWWHHHHHOOOOOOOSSSHHhhhh
The parachute rocketed Billy and Ana upward as it opened, shooting them into the sky as if they’d been fired out of a cannon. All at once they were treated to a dazzling aerial view of the valley on one side and the collapsing cliff on the other. The rogmashers roared in dismay as an avalanche of stone thundered down on top of them. Within minutes the disintegrating cliff turned Huaqing into a vast graveyard for Glurrik’s rogmasher army, burying them under tons and tons of stone and sand.
“Nice, Billy,” said Ana as they floated down and away to safety. “Messy. But nice.”
CHAPTER 22
“So let me get this straight, Clikk. You intended to save the village of Huaqing by completely destroying it?”
It was a day later. Billy and Ana were in a small fluorescent-lit office in AFMECopolis, going through the first of what promised to be many debriefing sessions following the completed creatch op in China. They were being interviewed by a balding, bespectacled man who strongly disapproved of Billy’s parting shot at the cliff. It was against the rules. This guy liked rules.
“No, see, Huaqing was pretty much toast already at that point.” Billy had already explained the sequence of events a half-dozen times and it somehow sounded worse with every fresh attempt. “The rogmashers had totally leveled the place.”
“Oh, well, I’d better make a note of that,” said Balding Guy. “Agent García and Agent-in-Training Clikk …” He said the words aloud as he scribbled them in a notebook. “… employed tactics that encouraged the rogmashers to completely level the village of Huaqing.”
“No,” said Ana. “No, it wasn’t like that at all. We had no choice but to fight them in the middle of the village. There was no other—”
“That takes care of that,” said Balding Guy, clicking his pen several times for no apparent reason. “Now tell me again how it was that you failed to capture Jarrid Glurrik at the end of the mission.”
Billy sighed. Letting Glurrik escape unpunished was the one part of the creatch op that really nagged at him. The parachute had brought Billy and Ana down in a grassy clearing in the valley. After using their viddy-fones to call AFMEC for reinforcements—having finally escaped Glurrik’s zone of communications jamming—they made their way through the woods until they found Mei Jun on the trail leading down from Huaqing. The three of them camped out on the trail until an AFMEC vehicle arrived and flew them back into the mountains to begin cleanup operations.
A subsequent search party discovered the location of the true citizens of Huaqing deep in the woods north of the village. They had been shelterless for days, trapped behind a massive barbed-wire fence, but were relatively unharmed. Glurrik was by then long gone, having returned to his own secret headquarters, presumably to begin work on his next effort to bring AFMEC to its knees.
“Glurrik was never within our reach,” said Billy. “We were restrained by the jallavirms until he was out of town.”
Balding Guy raised his eyebrows. He didn’t seem to buy this part of the story. Or any part of the story, really. “Well, I can tell you one thing, kids,” he said. “Mr. Vriffnee is not going to like what he sees in my report: shoddy preparatory work, forgotten equipment, failure to recognize creatch imposters, and …” He trained his eyes on Billy. “… gross misuse of weaponry resulting in the destruction of an entire village.”
Ana was furious. “You can’t put it like that.”
“I already have put it like that, my dear.”
TUNK TUNK TUNK
A knock on the door.
“That will be Agent Prachett,” said Balding Guy as he rose to get the door. “You two had better brace yourselves. He’s not as easygoing as I am.”
Ana and Billy sank into their chairs.
But when the door opened:
“Mr. Vriffnee!”
Ana and Billy turned their heads to see none other than the prime magistrate of AFMEC standing at the door. He was wearing a tweedy brown suit and his usual thick spectacles. Billy had never seen the man smile, but today he looked particularly grim.
“What an honor, sir,” said Balding Guy.
“I’ll take it from here,” said Mr. Vriffnee.
“M-my report, sir,” said Balding Guy, offering the forms onto which he’d scribbled his notes.
“Thank you. That will be all, Agent.”
“Thank you, sir.”
K’CHAK
Mr. Vriffnee strode across the room and sat in the same chair where Balding Guy had been. He stroked his mustache and stared silently at Billy and Ana for a moment, his squinting gray-blue eyes betraying no emotion.
When he finally spoke, it was after a brief sigh. “So he got away, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ana. “He did.”
Mr. Vriffnee nodded. “Jarrid Glurrik. Still trying to break the spine of AFMEC after all these years. Such is the determination of the creatch supremacists.”
“I’m … sorry, sir,” said Billy.
“Are you, now? Well, maybe you’d better tell me exactly what it is you’re sorry for.”
“I’m sorry I let Glurrik get away. Sorry I didn’t recognize the forest creatches sooner. Sorry I …” Billy paused and lowered his gaze. “… I destroyed what was left of Huaqing.”
Mr. Vriffnee frowned. “Well, yes, you did quite a number on that place, didn’t you? Must be something in the Clikk family blood. Your father once did the very same thing to a small mining town in Montana. Did he ever tell you about that?”
“No, sir.”
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Mr. Vriffnee chuckled. “Ask him about it sometime. If you want to see him really squirm.” Billy smiled. When it came to making people squirm, no one knew how better than Mr. Vriffnee.
“Look, it comes down to this.” Mr. Vriffnee leaned forward in his chair. “You two were faced with a creatch op far more challenging than anything either of you has ever faced before. You made some missteps. Some miscalculations. And your exit from Huaqing was, shall we say, rather more dramatic than I would have liked.”
Billy and Ana grew red in the face.
“But you defeated the foe placed before you, and you uncovered a potentially devastating plot to deceive AFMEC. Thanks to you, we will be far less likely to fall for such a scheme in the future. Taking into account the various pluses and minuses of your conduct, my final verdict on the creatch op is this.”
He paused for a long time, long enough to make Billy and Ana do some squirming of their own.
“Good job.” Vriffnee smiled an almost imperceptible smile. “That’s it. I’ve canceled the other three debriefing sessions that were on the schedule.”
Mr. Vriffnee scooted his chair back and rose to his feet. “You two have had enough for one day.”
Ana was confused. “What should we do in place of those sessions, Mr. Vriffnee?”
Mr. Vriffnee held Balding Guy’s report at arm’s length to read the title page. “It’s Saturday.” He cleared his throat. “Get outside. Have some fun.”
Mr. Vriffnee threw the report into a trash can and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER 23
On Monday morning when Billy arrived back at Piffling Elementary, he was more than ready for a quiet day at school. As a sign of appreciation for the work in China, Mr. Vriffnee had granted both Billy and Ana three days off duty, and Billy had to admit he needed the break. His arms, legs, and torso were covered with scrapes and bruises, and every muscle in his body ached from overexertion. Even after spending most of Sunday vegging out in front of the tube, an extra day or two of downtime at school was much appreciated.