by Tim Wellman
But she stuck her head through the door of the building and waved them over.
"Dammit, you had me scared there," Carlisle said. "I'm not above putting you over my knee, young lady."
"Shhh!" she said, as they got to the door and she pulled them both outside by their wrists. And then she pointed up.
"Holy shit," Stevenson whispered.
The sky above them was full of flying lizards circling around the city. There were hundreds of them.
"Where did they come from?" Carlisle said quietly. "I've got eight shells left in the shotgun."
"I heard them when I was getting the gas," Kato whispered. "But, this many..." She shuddered.
Stevenson put his arms around the women and pulled them close. "We need to make it to one of the houses over there," he said. "This building has no roof, remember."
They all looked up and all knew they needed to do something quickly. As soon as the creatures discovered them, there would be no way to fight them all.
"Our stuff is in that house," Kato said, and pointed across the street. "So, we know the door is unlocked."
The others nodded. Even though it was a little further away than some other buildings, they would be chancing it with a closer one, and completely unprotected if the door was locked.
"Run on the count of three?" he said. "I figure those things are around two hundred feet up. That gives us less than 10 seconds to get across the street and into the house.
"I can run faster than you two," Kato said. "So, when I get there I'll open the door; so don't slow down. It will be open by the time you get there."
"Okay, then," Carlisle said. "Three. Two. One!"
They took off, Kato sprinting ahead, but Carlisle took one step, tripped, and fell. They all stopped and Stevenson, ran back to help her up. Kato looked back. "Go! Keep going!" he yelled.
"They're coming!" Carlisle said, as she got to her feet and Stevenson grabbed her hand and started running again.
"Come on!" Kato yelled, as she jumped up the small stone porch and pushed the door open. "You're Okay!"
They both looked back. It didn't look like they were okay. At least fifty of the creatures were headed directly at them.
"Shit!" Carlisle yelled, yanked her hand from Stevenson's, and pointed the gun over her shoulder and fired.
It helped. The large pattern of buckshot caused the lizards in the lead to swerve which seemed to confuse the others and as they got to the porch, Stevenson grabbed her ass and literally threw her toward the door and followed right behind her. As Kato slammed it closed, several of the lizards smashed into the house, dying instantly. And oddly, the others swooped down and grabbed the dead bodies in their claws and flew off. Whether they were taking care of their dead, or gathering dinner, wasn't clear.
Carlisle was crying and collapsed on the floor. "God damn it!" She was bawling like a child. Stevenson stroked her hair and Kato knelt down and rubbed her arms and smiled.
"It's okay," she said. "We're all safe."
"Shit!" Carlisle said. "Now you guys know I'm not perfect." She tried to smile.
"We knew that all along," Stevenson said.
Kato nodded. "Barely able to take care of yourself most of the time."
"Thanks," she said. "Very comforting. You two should get jobs in a concentration camp."
"We should be safe here for a while," Stevenson said. He held his hands out. "Come on, lets at least get into some dry clothes."
"Or a dry bed?"
"Sounds like a great plan!" the shop teacher said.
Kato narrowed her eyes and stood up.
"We have to wait for those things out there to settle down, right?" she said.
"See, a perfectly sane and reasonable argument for why we should spend some time fucking each others' brains out," he said.
"Is she going for it?" Carlisle said.
"Hard to tell," he said. "Speaking of hard..."
The little witch nodded. "I'm going for it."
Stevenson held out his hands, grabbed the professor's, and pulled her up to her feet. "Does danger make people horny?" she said.
"Maybe Kato just put a spell on us," he said.
Kato puffed her pipe and pointed toward the back wall of the room. "Bedroom?"
"Heaven!" Carlisle said.
-19-
Love - Let's Get Back To Danger
"I think I could get used to wearing these tanktops," Carlisle said. She was still panting after the hour or so of playtime. Being scared nearly to death was not easy to take, even for her with her experience in the wastelands, but it didn't take her long to regain her focus with hot bodies pressed against her. "If I could avoid being burned at the stake by the fashion police."
"I like how the thin material of these shorts tickles my legs," Kato said. "But, I don't think it's something a witch should wear. My clients expect a certain look, you know."
"Not much more revealing than how you were dressed when we first met," Carlisle said. "I wanted to jump you right then!"
"Slutty is fine, but no witch would be caught dead wearing plaid," the little woman said. She chuckled. "I wasn't expecting guests when we first met."
"Well, you both look great," Stevenson said, especially since your nipples stick out of the sleeve holes when you move."
"There's no stopping him, is there?" Carlisle said. "All that fucking and he's still horny."
"Is that a bad thing?" Kato said.
"No," the professor said. "Just saying..."
Stevenson was looking out the narrow openings of the house's windows, built more like medieval castle arrow slits than windows. He, too, was wearing boxers and a tanktop. "They're still up there, but seem to be thinning out a bit."
"Where did they come from, anyway?" Carlisle said. "They weren't here before and they didn't come from the tunnel." She stepped behind the shop teacher and put her arms around his waist.
"Could have been in one of the caves up on the ceiling," Stevenson said. "But, we should have roused them earlier, especially when you shot two of them." He twisted out of her grip and plopped down on the sofa beside her.
"We haven't looked around the far side of town," Kato said. "The tunnel might go on, deeper into the earth."
Everyone was silent. That made sense, and explained the connection between the lizards and gargoyles Kato had theorized about earlier. But they all realized they had discovered a lot more than they wanted to find, at least without a small army to protect them.
"I wonder how the people who lived here dealt with them?" Carlisle said. "They must have had a way to live their lives without being constantly attacked."
"Ah!" Kato said. "Magic!" She smacked her hands together as if suddenly enlightened, and started to chuckle. "It all falls together!"
"Okay, you gonna have ta 'splain it to me," Stevenson said.
"You dumb-ass, it's..." Carlisle paused. "Okay, yeah, explain it to me, too."
"Well," Kato said, "so, this is the thing." She walked around the room and picked up a small vase from a table, as if she were nervously revealing a secret. "The thing I'm after here is a magic stone. It concentrates the energy of all the breaths I told you about, well, the spirits behind the breaths; so, whoever has the stone can move them with their thoughts; they don't need potions or objects to focus the power. The legend says the stone has all of the breaths distilled into it someway."
"Like an alchemist's stone or something?" Carlisle said.
Kato put the vase down and smiled. "Part of that was explained in the founding fathers' papers, but the stone is ancient, must have been a museum piece for hundreds of years. I have a book from the eighteenth century that describes it. I recognized they were both talking about the same thing a few years ago."
"You're sure it's the same thing?" Stevenson said. "Magic stones sound more like fairy tale stuff."
"I'm certain," she said. She laughed. "Problem is it's up there. But, with it, I'm sure the lizards could be controlled. It's how everything here was controlled...
the torches could be adjusted for temperature, for example. It's how ancient kings with small armies controlled masses of people."
"So, this stone could make you a very powerful witch, right?" Stevenson said. "That's what you were after?"
Kato nodded. "I guess I figured if I had real powers I could really impress people, and then they'd accept me. I've been an outsider my entire life, I just... want to belong."
"Sweetie, you don't have to worry about that, now," Carlisle said. "You've got me and the boy, here. We're a team."
"I realized that a bit ago," the witch said. "If you want, we can just try to get back up to the tunnel and leave. I guess I already found what I really wanted."
"No," Carlisle and Stevenson spoke at the same time. He smiled and continued. "We'll get that stone, first."
Carlisle smiled. "Besides, I want to see you in your powerful witch mode!" she said. "Will you be able to fly on a broom?"
"Will you still scream 'do me in the butt'?"
"That was me," Carlisle said.
"Me too," Kato said.
"Oh," she said. "I lost count after a while."
Kato smiled. She was the most sincere and humble they had ever seen. "Well, I can muster enough of a spell now to slow the creatures down," she said. "I think I can confuse them long enough for us to get to the hangar and close the roof since they've settled down a bit."
"We can get the prop engine going," Stevenson said.
"But, we still have to fly up there," Carlisle said. "Even though the cockpit is enclosed, won't they crash into the balloon and burst it? Or crash through the glass carriage?"
Everyone shrugged. No one knew. They were all in unfamiliar territory.
"It might be tough enough to withstand attack," Stevenson said. "It must be pretty thick material to have kept in the helium all these years." He walked to the window and looked out again. "The people here must have designed it with the lizards in mind."
"Still out there?" Carlisle said.
He nodded. "Higher up than they were, though." He scratched his butt. "I don't think they're as smart as we figured, otherwise they'd be trying to get in here, right?"
"Makes sense," Kato said. "If so, my magic should work fine." She looked at the other two. "I can't do the spell and run at the same time."
"I understand," Stevenson said. "I'll get to the hangar and close the roof, then you two can run over quickly before the bastards regain their senses."
"You need to go with him," she said to Carlisle. "You need to protect him with the shotgun until he can get the roof closed."
"But..."
"I'll be safe," she said. "I'll be in here." She took a long puff on her pipe and filled the room with cherry smoke.
"But, you'll eventually have to get to the hangar," Stevenson said. He nodded. "But, I trust you know what you're doing." He paused. "I can trust that you know what you're doing, right?"
She smiled. "I have everything I need in my cape," she said. "But I have to do the ceremony in private."
"OK, the next room, then?" Carlisle said.
"We should change into our own clothes though so we don't have to come back here," she said. "Unless you want to go back to town wearing a see-thru shirt and men's shorts." She picked up her cape from a chair and folded it over her arm. "It won't take long, but I have to be in a trance so I can't tell you when to run. But watch the creatures; if the spell works, they should start acting weird." She waved, paused for a moment and started to say something, but walked out of the room in silence.
"See, told you we'd need a witch," he said. He pulled on his pants and sat down to put on his boots.
"Oh yeah, you were spot on there," Carlisle said, as she buttoned up her shirt. "Do you think she can do a real magic spell?"
"Sure," he said. "Why not? After all the shit we've seen down here, I don't dis-believe anything anymore."
She smiled at him and ran her fingers through her hair. "Do you think we'll get out of here?"
"As soon as we see the lizards acting weird, we run," he said.
"No, I mean out of this city," she said. "Are we going to die here?" She picked up her shotgun and readied herself.
He didn't answer. He looked out the window and stared up in the sky. "Nothing yet," he said. "No, wait!"
Carlisle joined him at the window and they watched as the lizards started acting oddly. A few actually bumped into other lizards, a couple seemed to plummet to the ground. "She did it!"
"Come on, let's go!" he said, and grabbed her hand. He smiled and looked down at her. "We're not going to die here. How would that be fair?" He pulled the door open and practically dragged her outside and across the street.
She didn't stumble this time and they made it safely across and Stevenson quickly got to the engine and pulled the starter rope. It didn't start. "Shit!" He pulled it again and this time the engine came to life and he switched the generator on. "Will take a second!" There was a loud explosion behind him and as he looked back, Carlisle had the shotgun on her shoulder. A dead lizard landed right in front of him in a bloody heap. He switched the motor on in reverse and the huge doors began to close. There was another shot. And then another. "Come on you son of a bitch! Close!" A lizard crashed into the doors just as the gap disappeared. "Done!"
"Woohoo!" Carlisle said. "That's four shots left, right?"
"I think so," he said. "Haven't you been counting? You can cycle the shells out and count them."
"No, I'm sure there are four shots left," she said. "I've got two in my derringer, too and you've got six in your revolver. We're good. Let's get Kato over here, now, and we can rest easy again."
"Do we yell for her?" he said.
"Oh, I guess so," the professor said. They hadn't really thought about how they would make contact with her.
They both walked to the closest wall and a window that was facing the house and yelled. "Kato!" There was no sign that she heard them so they yelled again. "Kato!"
"What?" she said, as she walked up behind them.
"Shit!" Carlisle said. "Scared the hell out of me!" She enveloped the little witch in her arms and kissed her firmly on the lips.
"How?" Stevenson said. "How did you get here? Magic?"
"There are tunnels," she said. "I found the door over there and realized there was an underground system of walkways."
"Oh, well, that's a safe way to get around, then, if we need to," he said.
"I think that was the plan. If the city was invaded, they could just unleash the lizards and still use the underground tunnels till the enemy was destroyed. I saw some of them little demons down there, though," she said. "So, not completely safe." She shrugged. "Better than getting eaten by flying lizards, though."
"Let's get back to work on the prop engine," he said, as he pumped some gas into a quart jar. "It should start, now. The climate in here seems to be dry enough so that water doesn't condensate as much as it does outside."
"I got a question?" Carlisle said. "We can release the tethers and throw out the ballast to go up, but how do we come down?"
"Oh, uh," he said. "Kato?"
"Well, we'd need to vent off a lot of the helium," she said. "It's not the best way to do it, is usually only for emergencies, but since there's no one on the ground to catch our tethers, we'll do it that way. I can do that from the control panel. But, I think I can pilot this over to the tunnel so we won't need to come back down."
They all walked back up the balloon's ladder and into the cockpit and Stevenson made his way back to the engine through a small window flap. "It might take a while, so when I say try it, keep holding the button down," he said, as he filled the gas tank.
Kato saluted, her pipe between her grinning teeth.
"And when we get to the cave, then what?" Carlisle said. "I know the side door opens, but..."
"There's a plank that cranks out," Kato said. "I noticed it before. This ship was made just to visit the caves."
"ah, okay," she said. "I need to start paying more att
ention instead of looking at your butt so much."
"Okay, give it a try!" he yelled.
Kato pushed the start button and the engine turned over but didn't hit. Stevenson had the air filter off the carburetor and dribbled a little gas directly into the throat and that did the trick. It hit and started, but sputtered and nearly stopped until he dribbled in a bit more gas. It smoothed out again and this time continued to run on its own. He looked back at the women and gave a thumb's up. "Just needed primed to get the diaphragms wet. It will idle without engaging the centrifugal clutch. We can rev it up once we're in the air and you should be able to steer it okay."
"We're set, then!" Carlisle said.
"Okay, I need to go down and start the doors open," he said. "Should be easy to get back in here before any lizards can get in."
"Be careful," she said.
He smiled and headed down the ladder. "Oh, gotta bring the flamethrower up, too, since we're not coming back down."
"There are latches along the edge of the floor that hold the tethers," Kato said. "You can undo the middle ones now."
"You sure you can fly this thing?" the professor said. "It looks very complicated." She bent done and pointed. "This one?"
Kato nodded. "Yep, unlatch that one, then there's one right behind you."
Carlisle flipped the metal latch and the ship lurched a bit sideways, causing her to fall on her butt. "Shit!"
"Crawl over to the other one," Kato said with a snicker.
They could hear the doors above them opening and both looked toward the stairs. "Come on, shop teacher."
He poked the flamethrower up through the floor and followed quickly and slammed the trapdoor. "One is already in the building," he said. "I could see a few more coming through the doors." He pointed out the side window as one of the lizards darted past.
Carlisle took a picture. "Ugly shits, ain't they?" she said. She remembered Kato saying they were probably the inspiration for gargoyles. She had to be right. They must have lived for millennia underground, occasionally finding a way out. The people who built the city must have accidentally broken open one of the deep passageways they populated.