Crypto-Punk

by George Traikovich

  Drew awoke on the island’s lonely shore, hacking water out of his lungs.

  “Wake up!” Clementine repeated.

  “What happened?” Drew asked.

  “We hit a rock,” Newton said. “The barge sunk. Guess you musta hit your head or something.”

  Drew had never been happier to see their faces than at that moment. He tried to get up but couldn’t, and he fell back down again, sinking into the wet sand. “Where’s the little girl?”

  Newton looked at Clementine, who had the same worried look on her face that he did. “What’s he talkin’ about?” she asked.

  “Dunno,” Newton said. “But he cracked his head wide open. Maybe he’s got a concussion.”

  Mr. Birdsong took Old Man Hoyt aside for a word in private. “There’s a dock on the other side of the island,” Birdsong said. “They keep a motorboat moored there for emergencies. I’ll make my way along the shore and try to make it back here by midnight.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” Hoyt said.

  “This might not be the best time for this,” Birdsong said, reaching into his robe, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d fill out this customer satisfaction survey for me.” He handed Hoyt the soggy card and started for the boathouse.

  They watched Birdsong walk along the coast until he disappeared into the mist, leaving them alone beneath the pale moon.

  Newton took inventory of the remaining equipment while the others salvaged as much gear as they could from the wreckage. “We lost the potato gun, and the bottle rockets got soaked. Anybody got a phone that still works?”

  With no working phones, they were stranded—at least until Birdsong came back from the other side of the island with help.

  “Ouch!” Drew winced. “Not so tight!’

  The Old Man finished tying the bandana around Drew’s head and helped him to his feet. “The bleeding’s stopped, but we gotta get you to a doctor as soon as possible.”

  “Naw, I’m good,” Drew insisted, pushing his hands away.

  “Don’t be a hero,” Hoyt said.

  “I been hurt worse than this on the playground during recess,” Drew bragged.

  Lightning flashed against the horizon, followed by a deep bass chord of thunder. Behind them, a formation of ominous black clouds rolled in from the west

  “The storm looks like it’s headed our way,” Hoyt said, “better get moving.”

  “Yeah, but which way do we go?” Clementine asked.

  Newton surveyed the somber landscape, searching for landmarks and checking them against the map.

  “Well?” Clementine asked. “Which way?”

  “We go that way,” Newton decided.

  * * *

  They trudged silently toward the interior of the island, around dead and dying trees, across gargantuan craters, and over bleached soil, as if crossing the surface of some haunted moon. Dreadful moans and howls echoed all around them, and the eerie eyes of unknown predators watched their every move from beyond the foreboding tree line.

  “Place sure is spooky,” Spider said.

  “Yeah,” Grady agreed. “Feels like we’re being watched.”

  They’d walked for some distance in silence when Drew decided there was something he had to say. “Principal Hoyt…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sorry about the water tower.”

  Hoyt didn’t respond for a while, and Drew thought that maybe he hadn’t heard what he said. But just as he was about to repeat it, the Old Man spoke up. “The Boy Scouts used to give a merit badge for missilery. But they don’t anymore, and I’m the reason why.”

  “Missilery? What’s that?” Newton asked.

  “Guess you’d call it model rocketry today,” Hoyt said.

  “What happened?” Clementine asked.

  “When I was a kid—about your age, I guess—I was eager to get my merit badge,” he said. “Built myself a model rocket from a kit I saved up for. Sent away for it from the back of a comic book. Do kids still read comic books?”

  “Sure we do,” Clementine said.

  “Yeah…Anyway…Like I said, I was eager, so I packed my rocket with fuel, more than the directions said to use—a lot more,” Hoyt continued.

  “Hey. Hey, like the M-Eight-Hundred we put in the Groovejet,” Spider said.

  “Yeah…maybe,” Hoyt admitted. “Anyway, the rocket launched like it was supposed to…but went sideways instead of up. Flew across the pasture to the next farm over. Burned down their barn.”

  “Wow!” Grady exclaimed. “Dude, you were like us—exactly like us.”

  Hoyt shrugged off the comparison. “Yeah—maybe…except that I was cool.”

  His confession was as close as he’d ever get to accepting their apology, matching their screw-up with one of his own and somehow evening the score.

  Drew smiled and took comfort in the thought that being a kid hadn’t changed much from when the Old Man was a boy. Of course, Hoyt was much younger then and much older now, but the principle was the same, even if the Principal was not.

  Clementine skipped to a stop in front of him. “Whoa! Did ya see that?”

  The pinpoint light streaked across the horizon before flaring briefly and then fading away to nothing.

  “A shooting star,” Grady said.

  “That’s a good sign, ain’t it?” Spider wondered.

  “Not if it’s a plane that’s crashing,” Newton said.

  “Always follow your shooting star,” Hoyt hummed.

  His off-key crooning caught them by surprise, and they had to listen for a second before they realized it was coming from him.

  “You been drinkin’, Mr. Hoyt?” Newton asked.

  “What? No. Just a song I remember,” Hoyt said.

  “Wait. Anybody else hear music?” Drew asked.

  Newton made his duh face. “Yeah, Old Man—I mean, Principal Hoyt was just…”

  “No,” Drew insisted. “Listen.”

  Spider listened for a moment. “I don’t hear nothin’—nothin’ at all.”

  “Me neither,” Clementine said.

  But Drew ran toward the sound, getting farther and farther away from them until the fog swallowed him and he disappeared from sight.

  “Where’d he go?” Grady asked.

  The others listened for a while longer. The notes were faint and muffled, but Drew was right, it was music.

  Spider pointed to the spot where Drew had disappeared. “It’s coming from over here.”

  “Stay close,” Hoyt warned. “We don’t wanna get lost in the fog!” But they ignored him, just like they did in school, and ran off anyway.

  The music grew louder and louder until the bass boomed like thunder. Multicolored points of light faded into view one at a time, like stars falling from the sky, getting brighter with each step forward. Emerging from the fog one by one, they found Drew waiting for them.

  “We’re here,” Drew said.

  The wind shifted and the mist dissipated, and they found themselves standing in front of the Transylvania Island Theme Park gates.

  * * *

  The Cryptos appeared at the edge of the plaza, using the abandoned concession stands as cover. They slipped past the rusted-out dumpsters headed for the crowded midway, sloshing through reflective black puddles that rippled out in concentric circles with each giant step they took.

  Soldiers and civilians milled about the old midway amid the neon lights that dangled like jewelry from the antique rides, oblivious to what was stalking them.

  Tusk chuffed, signaling the rest of the carnivorous pack to pause. He sniffed the air, his senses triggered by a shift in the wind, ravenous eyes glowing red in the dark.

  The crowd meandered, unconcerned and unaware.

  Fangs bared—sinews tightened—pupils dilated. The Cryptos charged out of the shadows, swarming across the midway in force.

  Screams—confusion—and then panic. The crowd scattered, running for their lives.

  Tusk’s spiny tail uncoi
led, whiplashing General Hyde across the midway. By the time the grizzled soldier hit the pavement, he knew that any prayers uttered in his last terrified moments would go unanswered.

  But then, everything stopped, and the stuntman pulled off his mask. “Damn it. I can’t see a thing in this thing!”

  A tuxedo-clad Frost pushed his way through the stuntmen to help Hyde to his feet. “Sorry about that, General. We’re still rehearsing some of the shots.”

  “Nice tux,” Hyde said, dusting his uniform off. “What the hell is going on?”

  “The cover story,” Frost reminded him. “The low-budget movie. These stuntmen are doubling for the Cryptos in some of the shots.”

  “You mean you’re really shooting the movie?” Hyde asked.

  “Why waste the opportunity? This way we’ll have something to show the VIPs who couldn’t be here tonight. A kind of a coming attractions reel.”

  The stuntman cleared his throat, trying to get Frost’s attention. “The mask rides up when I’m walking,” he complained, his doughy face dripping with sweat. “The eyeholes are up around my forehead, and I can’t see.”

  Frost took the mask and put it on to see for himself. “The makeup guy really did a crackerjack job on these.” He handed the mask back to the disgruntled stuntman. “You’ll just have to make do. This is a low-budget picture after all.”

  The stuntman mumbled something under his breath and staggered back toward the others.

  “And tell the director I wanna see him!” Frost yelled. “He has to make sure he stays out of the way of our test!”

  General Hyde gave the crowd the once-over, surprised to see such an eclectic mix of personalities. “You sure ya didn’t go a little overboard with the showbiz…business?”

  “We invited as many VIPs to the party as we could,” Frost said. “Defense contractors, a handful of senators and congressmen—you know, the usual suspects.”

  “How many of them know what’s really going on tonight?” Hyde asked.

  “Only a select handful,” Frost said. “The rest think we’re here really filming a movie.”

  Hyde followed Frost through the midway toward the crater rim. He’d been briefed as each project milestone was achieved, but he hadn’t visited the site since their flyover.

  Frost stopped at the crater’s rim, spinning on his heel to unveil the site like a circus ringmaster addressing the audience at center ring. “Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to Cryptoville.”

  “My God,” Hyde muttered. “It looks like the devil’s own snow globe.”

  Bolted together with scrap metal scavenged from the park’s derelict rides and attractions, the maze erupted from the concrete base at impossible angles, the labyrinth’s hyperbolic geometry protected by a translucent dome covering the majority of the crater.

  “Cryptoville is a self-contained training environment,” Frost said. “Because this is the prototype, we cannibalized the park’s existing infrastructure to save time and money. It’s not done yet, but you get the idea.”

  Frost began to leave, but soon realized Hyde wasn’t following him anymore. The General lingered behind, suddenly reticent.

  Frost didn’t panic; he’d been expecting this. Despite his bluster, Hyde was more bureaucrat than soldier, and bold decisions didn’t come easy for him.

  He gave the General time to hash things out for himself before approaching him. Frost put his arm around Hyde’s shoulder like they were old school chums. “General, we’re on the brink of ensuring American military superiority for decades.”

  “Decades,” Hyde repeated, as if trying to convince himself.

  Frost looked from side to side to make sure no one else was listening and then went in for the kill. “And a project like this will look good on a man’s resume—perhaps an ambitious man who might have political aspirations one day.”

  An awkward silence followed, and Frost considered whether he’d gone too far. Then General Hyde smiled and started to laugh, and all was forgiven.

  * * *

  They lay across the ground hidden in the tall grass, the earthy sweetness of the wildflowers almost overpowering them. Spotlights swept the sky, and K-9 units prowled the barbed wire perimeter, so they timed their movements accordingly, crawl—stop—crawl—stop, until they were as close to the action as they dared to get.

  Drew looked through the binoculars but didn’t really need to. Even from this distance, Cryptoville dominated their view. “That’s our project. Frost took our design and built it!”

  “Makes sense,” Newton said. “Remember how he trained the mice? Betcha he’s been trainin’ the Cryptos the same way—using the traps we came up with—with reward and punishment, just like he did with Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Look at the size of it,” Hoyt muttered. “They musta spent millions on that monstrosity alone.”

  “Anybody hear what they’re sayin’?” Drew asked.

  “No. We gotta get closer,” Clementine said.

  They started crawling forward when Newton threw out his arms and stopped them.

  “Wait,” Newton said. “I can read lips.”

  They all groaned at once, and let him have it, pummeling him without mercy.

  “Well, I can,” Newton insisted.

  “Break it up. Break it up,” Hoyt whispered. “Remember why we’re here.”

  “He’s right,” Drew said. “Let’s stick to the plan.”

  At that moment, lying in the grass, they realized they didn’t have a plan. Their whole focus had been getting in, and now that they were in, they weren’t quite sure what to do next.

  “Okay, okay…I know just what to do,” Newton said. “I saw some driftwood along the path we came. We’ll get as much of that as we can carry. We’ll build a giant horse out of the wood and hide inside it. When the guards—”

  Clementine clamped her hand over his mouth. “Just shut up.”

  “This is big—too big for us,” Hoyt said. “We need to get help.”

  Grady couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Dude, come on, you were in the Army…”

  “Marines, actually,” Hoyt said, a queasy smile coming over his face.

  “Right, Marines. You were even wounded in action. That’s hardcore, bro,” Grady said.

  The Old Man’s sudden reluctance took them by surprise. Though he’d had the limp as long as they’d known him, nobody could remember hearing a single story of how he’d been injured, which now seemed strange in retrospect.

  “How’d you hurt your leg, anyway?” Newton asked.

  Hoyt swallowed hard. “Yeah…Actually…there’s a funny story about that.”

  Newton pressed him. “What happened?”

  “The USO…”

  “USO? What’s that?” Spider asked.

  “The USO provides entertainment for the troops, puts on shows, stuff like that,” Hoyt said. “Anyway, there was this dance contest—”

  “A dance contest?” Clementine said, her voice growing shrill. “You got hurt during a dance contest?”

  “Listen, missy,” Hoyt said, tapping his leg. “I gotta wear corrective shoes to this very day!”

  Clementine’s eyes rolled back into her head. “Oh boy! Maybe we should get help.”

  “From who?” Drew asked. “We got no proof.”

  The Old Man hated to admit it, but Drew was right. If the test was successful, Frost might decide to move his operation somewhere out of reach. They had to strike now. “OK, OK…I’ll create a diversion,” Hoyt said. “You guys try to find Harley and the others.”

  “What kind of diversion?” Newton asked.

  Hoyt shook his head. “Not sure yet, but you’ll know it when it happens. You go that way, I’ll go this way. We meet at midnight back where we washed ashore—regardless of what happens. That should be enough time for that idiot Birdsong to make it back with the speedboat.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Frost led Hyde through Mission Control’s mobile computer stations, b
uilt into flatbed trucks parked around the crater’s perimeter. Fiber-optic cables networked the terminals, which glowed by the light of their multicolor screens and might have been festive under other circumstances.

  “Every squad is controlled by a five-man tactical team,” Frost said. “Using these mobile stations, data is streamed in real-time, allowing the teams to control and adjust performance as needed through reward-punishment conditioning.”

  Frost signaled one of the soldiers. He could never remember her name, but she reminded him of Coach Hula, so he called her Captain Hula. This confused her at first, though eventually she caught on.

  The Captain punched up a holographic display on her screen. “As you can see, each Crypto is identified by a unique code name and is differentiated from the others by its unique biological adaptations,” Frost said.

  General Hyde studied their fearsome anatomies, nodding in approval. “What’s the mission profile?”

  “Standard search and destroy,” Frost said. “Mission profiles are embedded at a subconscious level by post-hypnotic suggestion using the chair. Data is implanted deep into the subconscious and recalled as needed.”

  Frost turned to leave, but the General dawdled behind him, preoccupied with one of the spare training harnesses. “This how ya keep ’em in line?” Hyde asked.

  Frost grabbed the remote and sent a quick charge through the electrodes. The sudden jolt forced the harness from the General’s palsied grip.

  “Smart ass,” Hyde mumbled, still buzzing from the shock.

  Frost smiled apologetically. “Sorry, General, but I wanted you to have a firsthand understanding of how we keep the Cryptos under control.”

  Hyde managed a smile of his own. “Mission accomplished. Anyway, you’ve done a thorough job, Frost. Looks like you’ve got everything covered.”

  “Well, not quite everything,” Frost said with a smile. He gave a signal, and a trio of tiara-adorned beauties appeared from the crowd like genies from a bottle, pageant sashes slung over their cocktail dresses.

  “General, I’d like you to meet three of our best and brightest from research and development,” Frost said. “They’ll be our hostesses for the evening.”

  “Research and development?” Hyde repeated, “Of what? The homecoming float?”

  “Don’t be fooled by their looks. These beauties have brains,” Frost said with a wink.

  Hyde’s face cracked into a Cheshire cat smile. “Yeah, I can see that. Nice brains.”

  * * *

  The med-unit’s hatch swung open, and a hawk-nosed soldier with a bushy mustache stepped into the antiseptic room. Outfitted with the scarlet beret and matching neckerchief of the Special Cryptozoological Unit, he carried a cattle prod at his side like a spear, angled toward the ground in close quarters.