Millennium Zero G

by Jack Vantage

  The smaller star-fighters zipped about it in a dance of dog fighting. Ships exploded everywhere with mini-bangs, and the white, stealth-like crafts hit the galactic ship with bouts of attack in neat arrow formations. They scratched at its surface with futile power.

  The coaster dipped and fell towards the battle.

  In formation, a squadron of x-fighters zoomed at Dylan and Lecodia with a lightning pace. The four fighters darted for them head-on. Suddenly they opened fire. Red laser beams whizzed by Lecodia’s face before the fighters peeled left and right of the coaster disks like the pages of an opening book. Their Doppler Effect mesmerized the senses as they whizzed inches by blasting their lasers.

  The coaster continued its descent towards the technological leviathan of a galactic ship, which scaled Lecodia’s view. It was hundreds of meters in girth, a mile in length, and a grey miracle of exploration.

  The coaster levelled along the galactic surface, where a dozen automated cannons welcomed it with a blitz of red lasers. Each shot jack-hammered at her path. It was a visual onslaught as the galactic ship’s surface sped past beneath her.

  An x-fighter spun in from the right, aiming for the coaster she and Dylan rode, and it smoked with damage. Lecodia could see into its glass cockpit at the centre of the craft’s x shape. Hands were frantically clutching at the glass attempting to escape.

  It was a touch of frightening realism from the ride’s engineers. Lecodia thought it a visceral terror.

  The craft smashed into the galactic ship’s surface, twenty metres ahead of them, and the impact gouged a hole. Personnel from the galactic ship were sucked out into space through the damaged smoking impact. They neared the coaster like tossed trash, spinning and twisting with limp joints, as the coaster pulled right to dodge the surface explosion and the spray of bodies.

  The coaster turned right and lowered them into an imprinted canyon that ran along the galactic surface. They levelled and sped forward within the thirty-metre-wide gorge. It was fifty feet deep.

  Windows flew by and Lecodia glimpsed fake bodies peering out from them. She was marvelled by the detail that the engineers had designed the ride with. Its realism was spectacular. Had there not been four track bars reaching ahead of them she would have thought it a real space war.

  The walls and floor of the canyon were laden with thick wire, pipes, and ducting. Its length reached into infinity.

  An x-fighter dropped in front of them and sped along the canyon. It slipped along with them, matching their speed, until a laser blast struck its upper right wing. It lost control and clipped the canyon walls. A shower of dusty debris sprinkled Lecodia’s face and body. It rebounded from the right wall, then crashed with explosive impact into the left.

  The coaster tugged hard on Lecodia’s body, dropping vertically downward into a hole in the galactic ship’s canyon floor. A maze of claustrophobic tunnels swallowed them, which were structured by beams, wires, frames, thick pipes, and components. Her senses were assaulted with bone-crunching turns as the coaster manoeuvred hard through the ship’s belly. Left, right, twist, roll, and spiral it went.

  Suddenly it began to slow, and the tunnel stopped blurring. The intricate surrounding tangle of pipe and coiling wire was clear to see. It was the most complex entanglement that Lecodia had ever seen. A finite spaghetti of wire engulfed the coaster’s path.

  The coaster crawled into a massive reactor, the ship’s core. The room was a gargantuan sphere, its walls a smooth-panelled grey. It spanned a hundred metre bubble in all directions. Centre of the sphere’s ground, at fifty metres below, a circular barrier positioned low like a crater impact, where a thick beam of hazy white and yellow light shot upward from within. It was like a stream of gas particles floating towards the surface of a fizzy drink. The hazy particles vanished into the ceiling that mirrored the ground. It fluctuated with power and hummed with energy.

  The coaster stopped ten metres away and floated the air.

  No coaster tracks continued forward in Lecodia’s view, and her stomach turned over like a snake laid home inside.

  Lecodia sighed with life-threatening relief. She thought it was over. “Thank God! Thank God! Where do we get off?”

  “Last blast. Hold on.” Dylan said. He chuckled like an early teen in Intake.

  A pair of the stealth star-fighters zoomed into the room above. They opened fire on the light reactor.

  The reactor flickered with power from the loud laser shots, and suddenly everything extinguished into darkness.

  “Hold on!” Dylan said, seriously.

  Lecodia daren’t think about what would happen.

  Bang! went an aggressively fierce explosion. It engulfed the room in a combustion flame that shot towards the coaster and lit the sphere with immense light.

  Lecodia screamed.

  The coaster pulled backward with G-inducing acceleration, running from the chasing flames that reached for her like it had arms.

  The coaster entered a tunnel, a smooth-walled grey tube that wormed left, right, up, and down. Lecodia’s body corkscrewed with G’s that verged too much.

  All the time the chasing flames chased, hounded her like a predator, and splashed the tube like a surge of water.

  One day Lecodia would love to shake the hand of the ride’s inventor, then slap him as hard as her thin arms would allow.

  She screamed, staring at the chasing, gushing, fiery flames.

  The flames were catching up. They surged forward like an untamed river, splashing and swashing the tube. Then the coaster pulled from the thick side of the galactic ship’s body and sped into the void of space. Licking flames blew from the tube hole they exited.

  The coaster continued its backward motion and zipped away from the galactic ship. Small eruptions began exploding over the ship’s surface.

  The smaller star-fighters scattered from the dying floating city, like a swarm of disturbed wasps. Suddenly a violent shock vibrated and rattled the coaster as the galactic ship exploded with deafening force.

  An impulse ring of lush blue aftershock reached outward from the immense atomic blast. The giant ship vaporised, blew apart in an explosion, then fell back in on itself and imploded harder. Three crunching, body thumping blasts, pulsed the void like it was under water. The coaster shook from the generated power.

  The final explosion forced outward like a fierce firework. The ship was obliterated into a billion pieces. Chunks of it hurtled towards the coaster. The flaming boulders passed left and right by a scraping millimetre.

  All fell silent, and the void returned to a peaceful state of nothing. The coaster turned and began slowing.

  The coaster slowed to a crawl. Then in the darkness of space two doors folded open, letting in sunlight.

  “Please be the end,” Lecodia begged. She was past all fear lines.

  They passed through and entered Quazar’s air. The light was strong enough to wince the eyes, and they moved forward to where a platform waited on the right side. A safety officer stood ready to catch them. She was a small, nerdy looking girl with the ride’s emblem printed on her shirt. The young lady had a slight facial twitch. She lifted her right upper lip now and again, which lifted her right nostril.

  Lecodia shook with whimpering fright. She looked to Dylan beside her, who was beaming with satisfaction.

  “You bastard.”

  “Give it a few days. You’ll want to get back on.”

  “Welcome to World of Pain,” said the officer as she tried helping Lecodia.

  “Hands off. Don’t you touch me after what you’ve put me through?”

  The ride officer stepped back.

  Dylan freed himself from the chest and foot locks then stepped onto the platform. He offered Lecodia his hand, which she took begrudgingly.

  He said, “Are you okay?”

  “Prick,” she said.

  She stormed ahead and could feel Dylan eying her body, which was firmer and sexier when fired up.

  “That was awesome, just awesome
,” she heard Dylan tell the ride officer.

  Lecodia exited the ride’s automatic tinted glass doors and entered World of Pain.

  It was darker here, even though it was daytime, like ghouls had veiled the light. It cast a nightmarish atmosphere and was unexplainable how the park’s engineers accomplished it.

  Dylan moved up beside her as they exited the rides exit.

  Facing them, as she looked at the new world of darkness, was a large pumpkin-shaped game stall that oozed internal orange light.

  A skull-masked attendant, with glowing red eyes and a distant other-worldly voice, stood inside the pumpkin’s mouth beckoning the public in for a game. His clothes mimicked the skeleton structure of a human, with black fabric and a white bone print. His head was covered in a skeletal mask, and his lower jaw moved with a horrible clapper as he talked. “Come kill, come torture, come be dark. Two credits a murder.”

  The game involved a collection of furry black critter creatures that laughed with evil hysteria as they popped up randomly from a green, and glop covered game surface. The public had to stab a spear, as quickly as possible, into their soft squidgy heads as they popped up through the mucous-like goo. If you successfully spiked twenty critters within the allotted time you won a cuddly toy, if a small, frightening monster was your idea of cuddly.

  A bone-crafted cart passed in front of the stall, pulled along by four ghostly horses. Their flesh hung from their diseased, exposed bones. They were rotting, walking corpses.

  Inside the cart sat an ugly woman, whose teeth were a collection of mistreated and askew calcium, and she waved a bloody white handkerchief. Warts and boils blessed her face, and skulls and bones decorated the cart with a morbid design. The skull’s eye sockets cast a freaky red and green glow, like a hundred dead souls were trapped in limbo and forced to watch the world from their hellish torment.

  The public held their kids close. There was mild terror in their little eyes, all frightened to step away from their parents in fear of death.

  Frankenstein’s, Dracula’s, mummies, zombies, and a wobbly, blobby green alien neared, slimming the floor. Creatures wandered like it was the underworld. Some reared and threw out scares in passing, while others played with the children posing for a memory snap. The night above swarmed with bats and gargoyles that screeched an ominous sound from the shadowed sky.

  Lecodia felt as scared as the kids and grabbed Dylan’s hand. She couldn’t move without his guidance.

  “We’re going to have to leave through the main exit,” he said. “There are no chip readers there. But we need to get across this area.”

  Lecodia was briskly pulled on. They entered an open area at the foot of the dark tower. The ground was a blood-red tarmac, and the building of evil stood high before them. Its menacing presence created a dark landmark that dictated the land with a green hue that cast an eerie atmosphere over the scared souls that walked beneath. Its spikey fliers stabbed the heavens with evil, and its devilishly smooth stone ran up and into the night.

  Around the open area, and the dark tower’s base, blood spat from water-wormed jets and fountains. Lecodia watched a kid jumping in avoidance, as worms of water leapt from the ground. Like a relay the worm jets synchronised and continued with another leap, hopping from each other. One landed on the zealous child and drenched him in fake blood.

  Minions of public sat around the red glowing fountains, chatting, eating and appreciating the evil elegance of the designs. A ring of gargoyles stared at them from its centre where the fountain’s blood spewed from their innate mouths and flourished the night.

  Then Lecodia’s heart sank. “Dylan, wait.”

  “We can’t. Come on.”

  “No, Dylan. Look.”

  Regan, Nexus, and Timmy were wandering around looking for them. They quizzed a group of short goblins, whose heads were large, green, and grotesque. Snot ran from the goblins’ noses. Their teeth were blunt brown pincers, their skin a green slime, and their ears pointy leaves.

  Dylan pulled Lecodia close and led her behind a family that were photographing their kids with a bony glossy-red demon.

  The demon’s head horns poked sharp and evil, and his tail coiled behind. Stan the demon was a big hit on the children’s cartoon network where he constantly got himself into trouble with mischievous antics. The entire cartoon was a morality play for children, cleverly delivered and placed in their little minds.

  The three drug barons were still dressed in their Authoritarian costumes. Nexus spotted her, and he smiled with sleaze and smarm. He caught Lecodia’s eyes and un-holstered his blaster.

  Stan the demon turned and looked at Lecodia, who stood behind the family, inadvertently photobombing the picture.

  “Excuse me, ma’am and sir, but please we’re trying to have a little moment. Could you stop cramping my style?” he asked politely. His glossy red body was awesomely painted with rubbery texture.

  Lecodia didn’t know what to do, so she said, “Blaster! Blaster, look!”

  Stan turned alarmed, as the three fake Authoritarians approached with blasters in hand.

  “Kids, with your parents, step away,” he said, doing his job. He approached the armed men. “Hey guys, what’s the problem? Where’s the trouble? Who you after?”

  Lecodia felt her arm tugged. She was pulled away from the drug lords and towards the house of horror that hid behind the dark tower. She held tight to Dylan and swiftly followed.

  She looked behind.

  Stan didn’t know what hit him. Just the pain of the laser burn singeing through his head. Real screams sounded The World of Pain.

  Lecodia heard the public’s panic start over again. This time they had every right to be scared.

  Lecodia cornered the dark tower and in front of her stood the old crooked mansion. It was built from dirty planks of white wood, with dozens of sash windows lining the four floors of Hell. She looked at the building and noticed red velvet curtains opening and closing, which revealed hanging corpses and shadows of murders, both stabbings and strangling’s. One shadow was a murderer wringing someone’s neck as if it were a rag doll.

  Fork lightning crackled thunderously above the slate-roofed house, lighting the sky, while thick, dark clouds rushed forward like a pyroclastic flow. Lecodia understood how the amazing illusion was done—a massive projection screen above the house.

  The mansion’s large doors were open beyond the graveyard that served as a front garden. Weeds and nature grew over the domino of grave stones, and a small white picket fence surrounded. The fence’s tips were laden with grisly heads, where tongues hung limp and eyes were wide open. Blood dripped from the severed necks that were a decoration for the night souls who dared to enter. The odd scraggly crow pecked at the heads, eating the eyes that dangled from their sockets.

  “I’m not going in there,” Lecodia said, spooked.

  They entered the graveyard, where the floor moved around, and the earth bulged up in front of the grave stones. Rotting hands appeared and moans of death began disturbing the ears.

  “It’s either this or them. Come on.”

  “Have you been in here before?”

  “It’s one of the only rides I have never been on.”

  He pulled her through the front doors, which slammed shut behind them. Inside was spectacular. Lecodia stopped and looked around the large hall.

  Grand steps mirrored each side, which curved upward to a higher balcony. Their spindles, a collection of tormented, twisted souls that were entwined together, curved the crescent stairs. A massive mirror, which was framed with moving souls that writhed in pain, dominated the wall above where the stairs rose. A blood-red carpet led the way to where a group of people stood. They turned and looked at Dylan and Lecodia, who were out of breath.

  “And we have the final unlucky participants,” came a voice from behind the group. The voice was distant, like he was speaking from the afterlife.

  Lecodia looked to Dylan. Her eyes sank with fear. She viewed large portra
iture framed paintings of creepy old ancestors dressing the grand halls walls. Each painting stared into her soul with eager evilness. Large standing candle holders, fanning six candles each, lit the room with dim dread, and their light cast a flickering ambience around the room.

  An enormous coal-black chandelier held dozens of thin white candles centre hallway. Beyond the group, who were still eyeing their activities, two grand red doors were engraved and trimmed with Victorian architecture. The doors were positioned under the wide, tall balcony above. Antiques dressed the room’s edges.

  “Well, well… come here, then. Let’s take a look at you,” said the mysterious voice again.

  Lecodia and Dylan stepped forward slowly, carefully. The silent group of tourists parted to reveal the mysterious figure. He stared at the pair with his spine bent over. His body was supported by a cane like a decrepit old man. His flaky-skinned head was bald, and his skull eyes were dressed in a dark rim of makeup. His nose was curved and pointed, his smile sinister and devious, and his velvet robe was an ugly collage of browns and reds. Lecodia had never felt so uninvited.

  “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the old man said. His smile reshaped, but his stiff body remained unmoved.

  They bravely moved forward, nearing the group of silent tourists, and joined them.

  “I am the Crypt Keeper, and I will be your guide for the journey into the night,” he said. Suddenly he darted around, startling everyone. “You!” He raised his cane and pointed it at a young girl, no older than ten, who was already close to tears. “You have to stay with you mum. What is your name?”

  “J, J, Julie,” the child said.

  Her mum placed a hand around her shoulder with a smile that masked her worry. The girl’s cute, platted, thick black hair did not take the edge off the situation. Neither did the housewife look of her mum, who smiled playfully through her short, bobbed, black curtains with a meek smile.

  “I had a sister named Julie once, a long time ago,” the Crypt Keeper said, shuffling his feet. He moved like he was in the last years of his life. “And do you know what happened?”