Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Mech made a lunge for Splurt, but the little guy tucked himself into a ball and forward-rolled under Mech’s outstretched hand. He sprang upright, rippled happily, then shot through the hole in the wall.

  “One thing,” Cal tutted. “I asked you to do one thing.”

  “Fonk you, man, he’s quicker than he looks,” Mech retorted.

  “Ah, God damn it,” Cal muttered. He rocked on his heels a few times, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “Last one to the other side is a giant shizzworm,” he announced, then he ran to the hole and, without bothering to check what was on the other side, hurled himself through it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cal’s foot found something wet and rubbery. At first, he was afraid he’d landed on Splurt, but the wet, rubbery thing he’d landed in was red. Purple in places, too, but mostly red.

  Wet, rubbery, red, purple, and smelly. Very smelly.

  It had been less smelly before Cal’s foot had burst it open, spilling a sulfurous yellow-green fluid out onto the ruined and overgrown paving slabs. The odor forced its way up Cal’s nostrils, violating his airways and making his overactive gag reflex kick in with a vengeance.

  He stumbled away, tripping over a ribcage with too many ribs. Off-balance, he threw out a foot to steady himself. Rather than reach solid ground, though, his foot found the top of a skull, which skittered sideways beneath his weight, sending him stumbling in the opposite direction.

  He realized, to his dismay, that he was now falling, face-first, towards the wet, rubbery, red, purple, yellow-green smelly stuff.

  He was already gagging, too, which meant his mouth would likely be open when he landed.

  Marvelous.

  Just fonking marvelous.

  Cal jerked to a stop three inches from the slimy puddle of innards and body fluids. “Totally should have just let you drop,” Mech said, but then Cal, to his relief, was hoisted back upright.

  He exhaled sharply through his nose, not wanting to breathe in any more of that smell than he had to. He tapped a finger to his forehead in salute. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t want you walking around covered in that stuff, stinking the whole damn place up.”

  Cal turned and quickly found Splurt. He was holding part of what could have been a foot, studying it like it was a rare archaeological find.

  “You put that down, mister,” Cal ordered. “You don’t know where that’s been.”

  Splurt met Cal’s gaze, looked at the foot, then dropped it. It landed with a sploosh in a soup of brain matter and eyes.

  “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you running off,” Cal said. “We’ll talk about that later.”

  Splurt’s shoulders slumped. He kicked a pebble. Or possibly a kidney stone, Cal was too far away to tell.

  “What is this thing?” Loren asked, nudging a pelvis with the toe of her boot.

  “A dead body,” said Cal. “A really dead body.”

  Loren tutted. “Yes, I know. I meant… What was it?”

  Cal shrugged. “Funnily enough, I didn’t think to ask it for its ID. One of those clown-things, I guess.”

  “Don’t they turn, like, all yellow and mushy?” said Miz.

  “Yeah. Actually… maybe,” Cal said. “Let’s ask Dave.”

  “Yeah! Let’s ask Dave!” said Mech, with a frankly terrifying amount of enthusiasm. “Dave will know! Dave knows everything!”

  “Uh, OK,” said Cal. He turned to the hole in the wall. “Dave, it’s clear, you can come through.”

  Mech leaned down. “You want to know something about Dave? Cause I worked it out, see?” He tapped himself on the side of the head. “I figured out that Dave ain’t what—”

  Dave’s clumsy clambering over the debris stopped Mech saying any more.

  “Hey, Loren, give him a hand, will you?” Cal asked. Loren took Dave by the arm and helped guide him over the rubble, then steered him past the pile of mushy remains.

  “Oh my God. What is that?” Dave asked.

  Mech rocked on his heels. “Oh, looks like Dave don’t know, after all.”

  But Dave wasn’t finished. “It looks like an Antarosh. The skull, I mean. And… yep. The ribs, that confirms it. Antarosh. Got to be.”

  “You were saying?” said Cal, shooting Mech a sideways glance. He stepped past the cyborg, covering his mouth and nose with one hand to block out the smell. Miz had backed away a good ten or more feet, the stench proving too much for her heightened nose to cope with.

  “So, it’s not a clown-thing?” Loren asked.

  “Hmm? What, this? No. The bio-bots don’t have a bone structure. Not in the way we understand it, anyway. They also bleed yellow, not red.”

  “There was some yellow in there somewhere,” said Cal. “I got a pretty good look at it.”

  “Bile, or some sort of intestinal fluid,” said Dave.

  Cal dry-heaved. “Right. Gotcha.”

  “Maybe a pustule, or some mucus.”

  “Jesus, OK. Message received and understood. It’s not a clown-thing.”

  Dave shook his head. “But that doesn’t make sense. It’s been dead for… I don’t know. Not long. It shouldn’t be here. There shouldn’t be anything here, except the bio-bots.”

  “Well, it’s here,” said Cal. “And over there. And there’s something wet and spongy over there. What the Hell could make it explode like this?”

  Dave shrugged. “I… I don’t know. Something big must have hit it.”

  “Or it hit something big,” Loren suggested. She pointed upwards. There, embedded in the wall fifty feet up, were two axe-like implements. A trail of chiseled handholds ran upwards towards them.

  “It was trying to climb out,” Cal said. “It must have fallen.”

  “Must’ve taken it weeks to carve out those holes,” Mech said. “Months, maybe.”

  “But… But it’s not possible,” Dave insisted. “There’s nothing here but the bio-bots. That’s what the park operators have always said. Everyone who was in here who wasn’t a bot, they’ve been dead for years.”

  “Maybe they lied,” said Loren.

  “Or maybe someone else is,” Mech added, glaring very deliberately in Dave’s direction.

  “Either way, it’s not why we’re here,” said Cal. “We’re here for the buried treasure.”

  He gasped with such force it almost blew him backwards off his feet. “Oh shizz. Oh shizz, I just realized something!”

  “What?” asked Loren, suddenly on high-alert. “What is it?”

  “Creepy funfair. Buried treasure. Mysterious goings-on.” Cal’s face lit up like Fourth of July fireworks. “We’re Scooby-Doo!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mech. “What’s Scooby-Doo?”

  Cal began pointing around the group. “Scoob, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma,” he said, indicating Splurt, himself, Miz and Loren in turn. His finger swayed between Dave and Mech. “Fred,” he decided, pointing to Dave. “And Mech, you’re Scrappy-Doo.”

  “I’m what?”

  “The good news is, you’re brave and fearless, and always ready for a fight. The bad news is, everyone hates you and wishes you were dead,” Cal explained. “So, you know, swings and roundabouts.”

  “I’m Fred?” asked Dave. He smiled. It was a shaky, terrified smile, but it was a smile all the same. “Do I get a cravat?”

  “As soon as we find one, it’s yours,” said Cal. It was stupid – a tiny thing – but just having someone around who didn’t only know what Scooby-Doo was, but knew the wardrobe choices of the main cast made Cal’s heart soar. Despite everything, he laughed.

  Before the others could ask too many questions and completely suck all the joy out of the moment, Cal turned on his heels and took in their surroundings for the first time. He’d vaguely looked around a few times in the past couple of minutes, but largely just to check nothing huge or horrifying was racing towards them with murder in its eyes. This was the first time he’d really paid attention to the pl
ace itself.

  “Like, zoinks!” he exclaimed, fully aware than no-one else would get the reference but him and Dave. Maybe Splurt, in his own strange little way, but definitely none of the others. “This place is worse than I thought.”

  And it was. It had been something not unlike a city at one point, Cal reckoned, although it was so crumbling and overgrown that it was hard to be sure.

  Where they were standing was a long plaza area that ran the length of the wall. It was dotted with fountains (none of them working) and statues (few of them standing), and the weeds and grass that pushed through the paving stones were jungle-thick. A few of the twisted stems stood taller than Mech. Several had Venus Fly Trap-like heads that Cal made a mental note to stay the fonk away from, just in case they tried to bite his face off.

  Who was he kidding? Of course they’d try to bite his face off.

  Beyond the plaza, the buildings of the city stretched upwards towards the sky. Unfortunately, they didn’t get anywhere close. Most of them were burned out shells. Those that weren’t were crumbling, their wooden facades rotting.

  Layout-wise, it looked like most Earth cities – long streets with buildings (or the remains of them) lining each side, all interconnected to form a grid-like road network. The weeds had claimed the streets, too, turning them into rivers of green.

  Signposts were placed regularly along the plaza. Some were missing, others toppled. A few stood nobly upright despite the weight of the dozen or more arrow-shaped signs affixed to their posts. Cal presumed they were pointing the way to different attractions, but the signs were thick with lichen and moss, and he didn’t really feel the need to get in there and give them a scrub.

  “It doesn’t look like a theme park,” Cal said.

  “It wasn’t supposed to,” Dave replied. “It was supposed to simulate an urban environment. If people wanted a roller-coaster, they stayed in the Hub. If they wanted something more… edgy, they came here.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Loren. “They paid money to come here and, what? Fight?”

  “Pretty much,” said Dave.

  “They should have just, like, hung out with us,” said Miz. “We get into fights all the time.”

  “She’s right,” said Cal. “One guy tried to make me eat my own arm.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s fine. I cut his butler’s head open with an axe, and we eventually blew him to pieces.”

  Dave blinked. “The butler?”

  “No, the guy. Karnock.”

  “Kornack,” Mech corrected.

  “Yeah, him,” Cal said. “And that’s only, like, the sixteenth most violent thing that’s happened to us this month.”

  “This month?” Dave yelped. He glanced back towards the hole in the wall, clearly wondering if it was too late to turn back. “How are you still alive?”

  “Sheer will and determination,” said Cal.

  “And luck,” said Loren.

  “Yes, and luck.”

  “And that witch-doctor guy magicked you his life-force, or whatever,” Miz added.

  “And that. Yes,” said Cal. “Although might I remind you that that now seems to have worn off? So, if everyone could make keeping me alive their number one priority, I’d appreciate it.”

  Mech conducted a scan of the buildings. As his scanners weren’t working, he had to conduct the scan visually, which basically just involved him looking at the buildings one at a time, and wasn’t nearly as impressive as it might have sounded.

  “So much for ringing the dinner bell,” he said, sneering vaguely in Dave’s direction. “Thought you said the bots were going to come running?”

  “I… Yeah. I thought they would,” Dave admitted.

  “Well, I don’t see any,” said Mech. “In fact, I don’t see much of anything.”

  “Well don’t sound so disappointed about it,” said Cal. “The fact that nothing has come running at us is – at least from where I’m standing – a good thing. Dave was just warning us of potential danger, that’s all.”

  He gave his fellow Earthman a pat on the shoulder. “Thanks for looking out for us, Dave.”

  “Hey. Yeah. Any time,” Dave replied.

  “Yeah, Dave,” Mech spat. “Thanks for getting us all worried about noth—”

  The clown that leapt from the undergrowth was small and wiry, with a mane of green hair that circled its face and ran the length of its curved spine. It was also naked, screaming, and ridiculously fast.

  It latched onto Mech’s face and began gnawing at his metal skull, its eyes bulging like they might fire out of its head at any given moment.

  “Fonk!” Mech grunted. He grabbed for the thing, but it wrapped itself around his wrist, then scurried up his arm and onto his shoulder. It was roughly the size of a small chimpanzee, but faster and more agile. Its elongated, chalk-white fingers dug into the gap between the plates in Mech’s neck, trying to tug at the colorful wires concealed inside.

  “Get off me, you little shizznod,” Mech barked. He spun, but no matter which direction he turned, the monkey-clown was one step, jump or frantic scamper ahead of him.

  “You know you’re all just standing there watching, right?” Mech said. “Someone help me catch this slippery motherfonker.”

  “I don’t think he means any harm,” said Cal. He reached for the thing, which was currently upside-down and clinging to Mech’s back. “It’s probably more scared of you than you are of—”

  He jumped back as the thing flashed its pointed teeth and hissed, its eyes becoming two narrow slits of rage.

  “Oh Christ, no. It’s a monster,” Cal said. “It will not stop until we’re all dead.”

  He gestured to the thing. “Miz? Would you mind?”

  “On it,” Miz said. She slashed at the monkey-clown, but it flipped straight upwards, hooking its legs over Mech’s face so its naked crotch was grinding against his face. Sparks flew as Miz’s claws slashed across Mech’s back. He began to protest, before realizing that doing so would leave him with a mouth full of clown-butt.

  “C’mere, you,” said Loren, grabbing for the fast-moving critter. It leaned over and spat a wad of something black and sticky into her face. She stumbled back, blinded, clawing the gunk away.

  And then, there was a faint beam of light, and the clown exploded. It burst like a balloon filled with yellow paint, covering Mech’s face, head, shoulders, chest, upper torso, lower torso, thighs, shins, and feet in the gelatinous sunshine gloop that made up the bio-bots.

  When he had finished scooping the thing’s remains away, Mech saw Dave standing with his toy-sized blaster pistol, his hand shaking, his eyes wide.

  “G-got it,” Dave said. “I got it.”

  “Way to go, Dave!” cheered Cal. “Fred and his tiny gun for the win!”

  He held up his hand for a high-five. Still shaken, Dave stared at it blankly for a while, then slapped his hand against Cal’s. “Th-thanks,” Dave said, exhaling slowly. “It was actually pretty fun.”

  “Not from where I was standing,” Mech grunted, his face still caked in goo. “How come your gun works, anyway?”

  Dave appeared momentarily puzzled, then he looked down at the weapon in his hand. “Oh, this? This is from the park. This section, before it closed, guests were armed with these. The bio-bots are programmed to be affected by the light it emits. You know, on the molecular level?”

  “What other level is there?” Cal asked, for no other reason than it sounded like quite a clever thing to say. He got ready to fake a nosebleed, in case anyone asked him to explain what he meant by the statement.

  “So… wait,” said Loren. “You’re saying that gun kills these things?”

  “Uh, yeah. In the Hub and this area, at least. Further east, as things get bigger? I’m not so sure.”

  “Can we all get one?” Cal asked. “Is there, like, a store or something we can pick them up?”

  Dave shook his head. “No, I don’t… No. Guests were given them at the gate, and were suppos
ed to hand them back in when they left. I didn’t return it.”

  Cal grinned. “You sly dog,” he said. “I knew there was a space adventurer in there somewhere.”

  “What? Oh. No, I forgot, that’s all,” said Dave. “I put it in the bag with my packed lunch by mistake.”

  “Oh,” said Cal. “Right.”

  “Couldn’t sleep for weeks afterwards. Kept thinking I was going to get in trouble.”

  “Well… still. Handy you’ve got it now,” Cal said. He turned back in the direction of the city. “So, based on what we know, how far is it to where we need to go?”

  “Well, if Dave ain’t filling us full of shizz and actually knows what he’s talking about, and based on what I was able to calculate from the map…” Mech began.

  “Yeah, yeah, we don’t need you to show us your working,” Cal told him. “Just how far? Roughly?”

  “A little under three thousand miles,” Mech said. “If we go in a straight line. If we have to deviate from that and start zig-zagging all over the place? I don’t know.”

  “Longer?” Cal guessed.

  “Of course longer,” said Mech. “How would it not be longer?”

  “Well I don’t know, I’m not a scientist or a… a…” He reached for an appropriate job title, but drew a blank, “a miles counting guy.”

  “What the fonk is a miles counting guy?” asked Mech. “Is that a thing where you come from? A miles counting guy?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is,” said Cal, quickly adding: “But don’t ask Dave about them, because they were only introduced recently, and so he won’t have heard of them. Right, Dave?”

  “Uh, yeah. OK,” Dave said, not quite sure what he was agreeing with.

  “See?” said Cal. He basked in some imagined victory for a moment, then puffed out his cheeks. “Three thousand miles. Isn’t there a shortcut?”

  “A shortcut? I just told you, I’m taking you in a straight line. How could there be a shortcut?”

  “I don’t know,” Cal admitted. “Maybe, like, a shorter straight line? Again, not a miles counting guy. Although, if I ever become a Blues singer, ‘Miles Counting Guy’ is absolutely going to be my stage name. But for now, I’m only the Shaggy in this situation. I think it’d serve us all well to remember that.”