Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Loren looked to Dave for help. “What does that mean?”

  Dave shrugged. “I don’t… I’m not really sure.” He smiled, although it was more of an anxious grimace. “It’s Scooby-Doo,” he said, which didn’t really help make it clearer for anyone. Despite that, he said it again. “It’s Scooby-Doo.”

  Cal set off across the plaza, heading for one of the streets. “We’re not going to get anywhere standing here yacking all day,” he said. “Let’s hit the road.”

  “That’s the wrong way,” Mech pointed out.

  Cal deviated right, heading for another road. “Also the wrong way,” Mech told him.

  “Jesus. Well, can you point?”

  Mech pointed.

  “Thank you,” said Cal, setting off in that direction. “Everyone follow me, stay close, and protect me with your life.”

  He’d walked for almost a minute before he realized the others were all following Mech in a completely different direction.

  “Son of a…” he muttered, then he scampered across the overgrown plaza and joined the rest of the group, unaware of the cold, soulless eyes watching his every move.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Later, when they discussed the following few hours, they’d forget the eighty or more minutes of uneventful, disaster-free walking.

  They’d fail to recall the time spent striding through the deserted streets, their initial caution soon replaced by a growing confidence that nothing was waiting to jump out and kill them. They’d neglect to recollect the conversations, the time Cal spent getting to know Dave better, and the stories they swapped of their respective times on Earth and in space.

  Cal wouldn’t even remember the moment when he’d almost cried for no other reason than that he’d found someone who could hum the Pink Panther theme, and knew what Kool-Aid was.

  No, looking back, they’d remember very little of the stuff that happened between when they set off, and when the arrows started to fly.

  They rained from the windows on either side of a narrow street, cascading down like two crashing waterfalls, only with pointy bits made of metal at the ends. Had Miz not heard the arrows being notched and barked out a warning, everyone in the group who wasn’t a massive armored cyborg would have been pin-cushioned.

  Thanks to Miz’s ears, they managed to take cover behind a food cart just before the projectiles rained down. Half of the arrows thudded and thunked against the shuttered front of the dilapidated cart, while Mech did his best to shield the rest of the group from the hail of them coming the other way. The angle of the cart helped block most of those, too, but still the chinking of arrowheads on cyborg torso rang out like dozens of tiny bells.

  And then, the arrows stopped, and the only sound was the collective heaving of deep breaths, and a faint whimpering from Dave.

  “They’re reloading,” Miz said.

  “In there,” said Loren, dodging past Mech and racing for a door. She flew at it, shoulder-first, and it crashed wide. “Clear!”

  Grabbing both Splurt and Dave by their wrists, Cal powered into the building. Miz bounded in behind them, with Mech clanking through last. He closed the door, and Loren and Miz shoved a vending machine in front of it to help keep it shut.

  “Arrows! They were shooting arrows,” Cal pointed out.

  “Yeah, we noticed,” said Mech. One of the projectiles had become wedged between two of his metal plates – a million to one shot. He pulled it free and studied the tip. It was metal, but inexpertly shaped, as if someone had beat a piece of a tin can into something a bit like a triangle.

  “At us,” Cal said. “They were shooting arrows at us.”

  “We know!” said Loren.

  “I’ve been shot with an arrow before. It hurts,” Cal said. “It’s not something I’d like to repeat.”

  An arrow crashed through the window and boinged into the floor. Cal cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, “I said it’s not something I’d like to repeat.”

  Loren sidled up to Mech. “Bio-bots?”

  “Beats me,” said Mech. “Maybe. I guess so.”

  “What do you think, Dave?” Cal asked.

  Mech tutted. “Yeah, Dave. What do you think?”

  Dave became flustered as he found himself the center of attention. “I… I mean, I guess it could be the bio-bots, although all the reports when they went rogue said they became brutally violent.”

  “Well, they did just try to kill us by firing pointy bits of metal in our direction,” Cal said.

  “No, I mean… animalistic. They regressed to a less intellectually capable state. Like cavemen, I suppose. Like we saw with the little one earlier.”

  Two more arrows came through the now-broken window. One stuck in the floor just a few inches from Cal’s feet, and he retreated towards the back of the musty, dust-covered convenience store, beckoning for Dave and Splurt to follow.

  “The way I see it, we have two options,” Cal said. “One, we go out there, and they shoot us with arrows until we die. Or two – which is my preferred option – we don’t do that.”

  “You mean just wait in here?” Loren asked.

  “Exactly. I mean, whoever they are, they’re bound to run out of arrows sooner or later. It’s not like they’re going to have an unlimited supply.”

  Another arrow hit the floor. Cal acknowledged it with a glance, opened his mouth to speak again, the did a double-take.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he groaned, watching the flames that clung to the arrow’s end take hold of the wooden floor.

  Another blazing projectile followed. Then another. Then another.

  “Fire,” said Dave, jabbing a trembling finger towards the now very much ablaze floor. “F-fire!”

  Cal drew in a deep breath and blew as hard as he could on the growing carpet of foot-high flames. It had zero effect whatsoever. “Shizz, thought that’d work,” he muttered, then he gestured to Mizette. “Miz. Blow that out.”

  “What? I can’t blow it out.”

  “Seriously? That’s what you wolf-people do, isn’t it? Huff and puff and… No?”

  “I have, like, no clue what you’re talking about right now.”

  “Damn it. Worth a try,” Cal said.

  Behind him, Loren kicked open a door. The way it flew open without any resistance suggested it hadn’t been properly closed, but Loren was clearly in full flow, so Cal thought it best not to point it out.

  A staircase was revealed, leading up into the building above them. Loren started towards it, but Cal called her back.

  “Uh, is that wise? Aren’t you supposed to get out of a burning building, not go further into them?”

  Mech side-stepped closer to the window. A hail of arrows immediately hammered against his back.

  “OK, good point, well made,” said Cal, plumes of black smoke now tangling around his legs. “Up the stairs we go!”

  Bending, Cal helped Splurt onto his back, then pulled Dave behind him as he followed Loren towards the staircase. She moved quickly but quietly, her back sliding along the wall, her hands poised as if clutching something in front of her. Cal watched her, trying to figure out what she was doing. It was only when she raised both hands in front of her at the corner that it clicked.

  “Are you holding an imaginary gun?” he whispered.

  Loren glanced back at him, frowned, then looked down at her hands. She dropped them to her sides immediately. “What? No!” she said, snorting out a half-laugh. “That would be…”

  “Adorable?” Cal said.

  “Stupid. That would be stupid,” Loren said, her pale blue skin purpling just a little around the cheeks.

  “And adorable,” Cal assured her. “I mean… You’re creeping up the stairs with an imaginary gun. What’s not to love?” Her eyes darted to his again, and her look of shock almost choked him. “Like, I mean. What’s not to like? Also, you have your real gun in your holster.”

  “It doesn’t work,” Loren reminded him.

  “Pretty sure i
t works better than the imaginary one.”

  They arrived on the second floor, with the smoke hot on their heels. It coated the back of Cal’s throat, filling his mouth with a bitter, acrid taste, and making his tongue feel like someone had used it as an ashtray.

  The staircase continued upwards. This floor looked as if it had once been some sort of store room, but the crates had all been prized open or smashed to pieces, their contents now long-gone.

  “Keep going,” Mech instructed. “I got an idea.”

  “Does it involve us waking up and realizing this was all just a crazy dream?” Cal asked. “Because, if so, I’m in favor.”

  “Not exactly,” said Mech. “Or, you know, even vaguely. Just wait and see.”

  “Are you going to punch a hole in an upstairs wall so we can all escape to the next building?” Dave asked.

  Mech hesitated. “What?” he said. “Ha. No. That ain’t it at all.”

  “It’s a good plan, though,” said Loren, bounding up another few steps.

  “Sounds pretty foolproof to me,” Miz agreed.

  “Let’s hear Mech out first,” said Cal. “What’s your plan, big guy?”

  Silence fell, punctuated only by the thudding of feet on the stairs as they pressed on upwards.

  “OK, fine. That was the plan,” Mech admitted.

  “Seriously?” said Cal. He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. I think you realized Dave’s plan was better, and are now trying to take credit for it.”

  “What? No, I ain’t! Punching through to next door was my plan the whole time.”

  “Sorry, I just find that hard to believe,” Cal said. “I mean, why wouldn’t you just say, if that’s what it was?”

  “You know why? Because ‘fonk you’, that’s why,” Mech grumbled. He stopped when they reached the next floor, spun towards the closest wall, and drew back his fist.

  “Wait!” Cal yelped.

  Mech’s lowered his arm. “What now? You want to ask Dave to do it?” He stepped aside and glowered in Dave’s direction. “Please. Be my guest.”

  “I, uh, I can’t punch through walls,” Dave said.

  “Oh really? You don’t say.”

  “Mech, get your arm back up, quit messing around,” Cal said. “But first – Miz, can you hear anything? I don’t want us stumbling through into a trap.”

  “Makes sense,” said Loren.

  Mech tutted. It did make sense, of course, but there was no way he was about to admit it.

  Miz cocked her head. Her ears swiveled as they angled towards the wall. “No, I think we’re clear,” she said.

  Mech’s fist swung immediately, powering through the wall like a jackhammer. He let the rest of his weight follow behind it, creating an unevenly-shaped doorway in the brick and plaster.

  When he stopped stumbling, Mech found himself surrounded by dozens of white-faced figures. Crying out in surprise, he swung and punched one. Its plastic head snapped off its artificial shoulders, then thunked against the floor.

  Mannequins. They were fonking mannequins.

  “Well, you sure taught that guy a lesson,” Cal said, giving the partially-collapsed head a kick and sending it skidding across the floor.

  “It’s dark,” said Mech, indicating the shuttered windows which only let the barest slivers of light through. “I was taking precautions, that’s all.”

  “Is that why you screamed?” Cal asked.

  “Fonk you, I didn’t scream,” Mech said, although there was a glimmer of doubt in his eyes. “If I made a noise, it was a warning cry, that’s all.”

  “‘Aaah, get away from me, get away!’ was a warning cry?”

  Mech scowled and jabbed a thumb towards the next wall over. “Miz?”

  Miz listened. “Nothing.”

  Mech nodded, then lowered his head into a charge. He reached close to top speed just as he hit the wall, and exploded through it as if it were made of paper. The others watched as his momentum carried him across the next room, then they listened to the crash as he charged through yet another wall.

  “He seems quite angry,” said Dave.

  “Mech? Angry?” said Cal. “God yes. All the time. It’s like his default programming.”

  He began to turn away, then quickly turned back. “But he’s not a robot. Sweet Jesus, don’t make that mistake, or you will never hear the end of it. Seriously, it’s a whole can of worms.”

  They ducked through the wall in single file, Splurt still clinging to Cal’s back. Cal gave the gooey green arms around his neck a pat. “Look at you. Like a little green Yoda,” he said.

  “Yoda was little and green,” Dave pointed out.

  Cal grinned and nudged Loren. “He’s right. God, I love this guy!”

  “Wouldn’t have been able to guess,” said Loren. She gave Dave a subtle up-down look, trying to figure out if Mech was right. He seemed real, and if he was a theme park creation, why would he have paid their entry fee? That made no sense.

  But then, as Mech had pointed out, Cal randomly chancing upon one of his old friends from Earth out here in the unending abyss of space? Also pretty unlikely, and probably more so.

  Before she could think about it any further, there was another crash of breaking wood. At first, she thought it was a wall getting the ‘running Mech’ treatment, but then she heard Mech’s cry of surprise, which rapidly got further away until another, much fainter crash echoed through the empty building. It was followed, a couple of seconds later by the thunderous boom of something heavy landing hard.

  “Did you guys hear that?” Miz asked.

  “Kind of hard not to,” said Cal, breaking into a jog. Not a run – he didn’t feel it necessarily warranted a full-on run - but a jog? Definitely. “Pretty sure Kevin would have heard that out in space.”

  They soon arrived at a hole in the floor. And the floor below that. The fall through two stories had churned up clouds of pale gray dust, and Cal had to peer through a swirling fog to make out the shape of Mech below.

  From what Cal could tell, Mech was standing upright, either unhurt or putting a brave face on it. The room he had landed in was dark, which was bad, but not currently on fire, which was good. Nothing seemed to be jumping onto Mech, or firing spiky things at him. Similarly, no-one was attempting to drag him into a hole in the ground, and all high-pitched giggling was only notable by its absence.

  “You OK?” Cal called down.

  “Shh,” Loren urged. “Someone might hear you.”

  Cal met her eye. “I don’t know if you noticed, but a heavily built mechanical gentlemen just fell through two ceilings,” he pointed out. “If they didn’t hear that, they’re not going to hear me.”

  “Well… Maybe,” Loren said. She pulled a face Cal had seen more and more of lately. It was a face that suggested she knew she was right, but was humoring him.

  At least, that’s what she wanted it to suggest, but Cal knew better. In reality, it was a face that suggested she knew she was wrong, but wanted Cal to think that she thought she was right, and was humoring him, probably to make him doubt himself so he thought she was right, and would be grateful for her humoring him.

  Or, you know, something like that.

  Unfortunately, he was yet to figure out the correct response, so he just shrugged and shouted into the hole again.

  “Is it safe? Down there, I mean. Clearly, up here is an accident waiting to happen. These floors are dangerously flimsy.”

  “Yeah. Ain’t nothing down here but…” His voice tailed off into silence. “Wait a minute.”

  “Oh Jesus, what is it now?” Cal fretted. “Monster-clowns? Is it monster-clowns?”

  “No. You might want to get down here to see for yourself.”

  “To be honest, I’d prefer you to describe it from a distance,” Cal replied. “Paint me a picture with your words.”

  “Just get the fonk down here,” Mech barked.

  Cal sighed. “OK. But we’re taking the stairs. We can’t all just drop two stories.”
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  Miz stepped off the floor’s broken edge and dropped two stories.

  “OK, so Miz can, but the rest of us… And Splurt can, too. Apparently also Splurt. Thanks a lot, buddy. Way to have my back.”

  He raised his eyes to Loren. “You going to jump, too?”

  Loren shook her head. “No. I can’t jump that far.”

  “Good,” said Cal. “At least someone—”

  Loren sat on the edge, dropped, caught a broken floorboard, swung, tucked, grabbed, then did the whole thing again a second time.

  “I can swing, though,” she called up to him, and through the dust-cloud, he thought he saw her grin.

  Cal exhaled slowly, shaking his head. He spotted Dave watching him, his face a picture of angst.

  “You’re not going to jump down, are you?” Dave asked.

  “Down there? No. I mean, I could,” Cal said. “I definitely could jump down, it’s just I’d probably shatter my pelvis and never walk again. So, I’m thinking… stairs?”

  Dave nodded and smiled with relief. “Stairs,” he agreed, and they both set off to find them.

  It took them less than a minute to make it down to the first floor, and a couple more to figure out which of the several rooms Mech and the others were in.

  When they finally found them, the excitement in the room was palpable. Loren called to Cal the moment he opened the door. “Check this out!”

  If Cal were being generous, he’d say there was a vehicle in the room with them. If he was being less generous, he’d say there was a vehicle in need of repair in the room with them.

  If he were being honest, he’d say, “Seriously, you got excited about that thing?”

  Mech had landed in a garage, or maybe some kind of workshop. Tools and scrap metal lay strewn across the floor, as if the room had been hit by a localized earthquake, and everything in it had jumped into the air in fright.

  In the center, just a few feet from where Mech had landed, was a… truck, maybe? It stood on four short, stocky legs, had a sort of double-decker driver’s cab up front, and a flatbed area at the back. There was no covering over the flatbed part, aside from three curved supports that stuck up like dinosaur bones around it.