The top of Splurt’s head appeared at the bottom of the hole Mech had made. Cal leaned through, and the little blobby guy held his arms up, like a child who was fed up of walking and now wanted to be carried.
With some effort, Cal managed to heave Splurt into the front and sit him on his knee. Splurt immediately looked at and touched every single thing in the cab, then grabbed an imaginary steering wheel and pretended to drive.
“How long until we’re at the next wall?” Cal asked.
“Maybe an hour,” Mech estimated. “This thing moves pretty fast.”
“OK, so once we get there, can I assume you have a plan to get through said wall?”
“What? No,” said Mech.
“Aw, seriously?” Cal groaned. “You knew it was coming. Why don’t you have a plan?”
“Why don’t you have a plan?”
“I had the plan to take this thing,” Cal said, indicating the barge.
“What?! No, you didn’t. That was my idea,” Mech argued.
“Suuuure it was,” said Cal. He winked theatrically.
“It was! I said, ‘I think we just solved our transportation problem,’ and you were like, ‘What? This thing? No way!’”
“Riiiight. That’s exactly how it happened,” Cal said. He winked again, then tapped the side of his nose.
“I hate you, sometimes,” Mech grunted. “I want you to know that.”
“Suuuure you do.”
Cal rocked forwards as the barge decelerated and came to a stop. “Uh, guys?” Loren said. “We’ve got a problem. There’s something blocking the road.”
“Can’t you just go over it?” Cal asked. He leaned towards the armored window and peered through the slot. A wall of flaming debris was strewn from one side of the street to the other, too perfectly-placed to have got there by accident. This wasn’t just something blocking the road, this was a roadblock.
“Back up, slowly,” Cal whispered. “We’ll try another—”
THUNK.
The head of a spear pierced the cab wall and came to a stop between the back of Splurt’s head and the front of Cal’s face. Splurt’s eyes flipped over inside his semi-transparent head, and they both started at the weapon for a good few seconds before Cal reacted.
“Loren, get us out of here!” he yelped, raising his voice to be heard over the sudden drum solo of thuds and thumps that indicated dozens of spears and arrows were hammering into the barge from the left and right.
“We’re under attack!” Loren announced.
“Oh, you think so?” Miz spat, diving towards the middle of the truck just as a couple of spear heads pierced the metal behind her.
“Mech, fire the weapons!” Cal ordered.
“What weapons? We ain’t got any.”
“We don’t have weapons?!” Cal howled. “I told you to fit a melon launcher or power hose or big catapult, or something. Something clever, but non-lethal, like the A-Team used to do!”
“And I told you,” Mech retorted, staggering slightly as the barge shot backwards. “We didn’t have any of those things.”
“Then you build them! Jesus, do I have to think of everything?”
“I don’t even know what a melon is,” Mech pointed out.
The barge spun into a one-eighty turn, and Cal’s voice came out as a panicky shout. “It’s a huge fruit.”
The barge screeched to a stop, and for a moment there was no sound but the rasping of their panicky breathing.
“Right, Dave?” Cal wheezed.
Dave, who currently had his head between his knees and his arms wrapped protectively over it, glanced up. “W-what?”
“Melons. They’re big fruit.”
“Uh… Uh… Yes.”
“See?” said Cal, shooting Mech an accusing look. “You could have just asked Dave, if you weren’t being such a shizznod towards him.”
There was a thunk as something dropped onto the roof, then a scream as it found Miz’s spikes. Her face lit up with glee as they listened to whatever was up there hopping around in agony, each movement almost certainly forcing yet more of the rusty nails through its flesh.
With a final howl, it fell off the roof, then hit the ground with a sound that was both solid and damp, like a large boulder being dropped into wet concrete. They heard it whimpering, then a scuffing as it dragged itself away.
“High time we were gone,” Cal urged. He peered through his viewing slot, then drew back as a wall of flame burst into life ahead of them, blocking their retreat.
Figures emerged from the ruined buildings on either side, spears and axes and clubs raised above their heads, bare feet pounding the weed-littered paving slabs. They were a mix of species – some humanoid, but most not – and while many of them were naked, a few covered their modesty with dirty rags that were tied on like loincloths.
“These guys don’t look like bio-bots,” Cal said.
“They also don’t look friendly,” Loren pointed out. “Floor it?”
Cal nodded. “Floor it.”
Loren floored it. Technically, she pushed it, as no pedals were involved in the operation of the truck, but that didn’t sound as dramatic.
The barge’s back end shimmied from side to side a little as it powered forwards. Rather than scatter, as she’d thought they would, or just stand around and allow themselves to be flattened, like she’d hoped they would, the approaching horde all hurled their spears and axes, or fired their arrows at the fast-approaching vehicle.
The armor didn’t stand a chance. Cal, Loren and Splurt all drew back as projectile after projectile pierced the corrugated space-iron and stabbed deep into both cabs. Instinctively, Loren spun the wheel. The steering suddenly became too light. The barge shuddered all the way from the front to the back. Everyone – although mostly Dave and Cal – screamed as the vehicle passed some unknown tipping point, and tumbled into a sideways roll, its thrusters drastically accelerating the rate at which it flipped, tumbled and smashed against the ground.
“Engines!” Mech spat, his magnetic feet holding him in position while Miz and Dave tumbled around him like clothes in a washing machine. “Cut the fonking engines.”
Loren flailed out at the controls, adrenaline making it difficult to recall precisely where the ‘off’ switch was. She hit the lights and the horn, then found the engine control. The thrusters shut down with a disappointed whine, and the barge rolled another twice before coming to a rest on its roof.
For a few seconds, no-one did anything but groan. It was Cal who finally spoke.
“You know, on second thoughts, who cares about some old treasure, anyway?”
“Everyone OK?” Loren cried.
“Yeah,” Miz announced. “Except my faith in your ability to pilot a vehicle, which has totally died. I mean, it was basically on life support, anyway...”
“Dave?” Cal called. “In one piece?”
“I shouldn’t have come,” Dave whimpered. “It’s… I’m only here for my anniversary. I sh-shouldn’t have come.”
Cal turned (it hurt), smiled (it also hurt) and did his best to console his new friend. “Hey, it’s OK, Dave. This is nothing. We’ve been in way worse situations than this,” Cal said.
“I haven’t!” Dave yelped, shambling onto his feet. “This might be normal for you, but I’m not used to any of—”
Four hands, all identical, tore through the wall at Dave’s back. He began to turn, his brow creasing, his whole body shaking in fear, but then the hands had him. Cal watched, open-mouthed, as Dave was pulled through the remains of the wall with such sudden, shocking force that he didn’t even have time to scream.
“Dave?” Cal called. “Dave!”
But Dave was gone.
“Shizz! Splurt, stay here and stay down,” Cal instructed, lowering the little guy into the foot well of the cab.
“What? Where are you going?” Miz asked.
Cal grabbed the shaft of the spear that was sticking through the door and pulled it all the way inside. “I’m going
to get Dave back,” he said, shouldering the door open.
“What?!” Mech spat. “You can’t be serious!”
“Cal, don’t!” Loren warned.
“Have to. My fault he got into this,” Cal said. He took a deep breath, then jumped down from the cab and slammed the door before anyone could try to stop him. Brandishing the spear in both hands, he faced down the approaching horde.
“Scooby-Dooby-Doo, motherfonkers,” he growled, then he raised the weapon in front of him, lowered his head, and charged.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cal was halfway to the approaching crowd when it occurred to him that this might have been a mistake. There were fifty or more of them, all armed, all dressed and acting like savages. And all racing towards him, the group narrowing to a point as every one of its members made Cal the subject of their focus.
The four-armed thing that had taken Dave had raced off with the squirming Earthman over his shoulder. He’d powered through the approaching crowd, and Cal was sure he’d seen him vanish inside one of the ruined, crumbling buildings, holding Dave aloft like a trophy.
Cal wondered if his healing ability had returned. That would be nice. He hadn’t checked the bruise on his ass in a while, so it could be gone for all he knew. He touched his head, trying to find the dent that Miz had caused when she’d hurled her Monopoly token at him, but he couldn’t feel it.
So maybe. Maybe he’d recover from an axe through the skull, or a spear through the intestines. Maybe he wouldn’t die writhing on the ground trillions of miles from home.
Maybe.
But ‘maybe’ wasn’t good enough.
“I just won’t let any of that stuff happen,” he said. “Simple as that.”
The mob was closing fast. Fortunately, Cal had an ace up his sleeve.
“Holy shizz, look over there!” he shouted, pointing behind the crowd and to the left. They didn’t turn, didn’t slow, just kept racing towards him, loincloths, weapons and exposed body parts all flapping around wildly. “Seriously, it’s awesome. Just look!” he said, then he sighed. “Fine. Forget it.”
Cal raced ahead, his hands gripping the spear until his fingers went white. He could hear Miz’s claws on the ground behind him, closing in. The sound of her approaching boosted his confidence enough for him to open his mouth and roar at the closing horde.
He could see the whites of their eyes now. Not all of them – some of them didn’t have whites of their eyes. Some of them didn’t have eyes, for that matter. But he saw the whites of some of their eyes, wide and staring and bloodshot.
Shifting his grip on the spear, Cal aimed for the third largest member of the crowd. Taking out the third largest would send a strong message to the rest of the horde, he reckoned. Taking down the first or second largest would have sent a stronger message, obviously, but they were both enormous, and so the only message he’d send if he attempted to challenge them would be how easily his limbs could be plucked from his body.
He’d have to rely on Miz to take care of the first and second largest. And then – ideally – everyone from the fourth largest downwards.
But the third largest? The third largest, with its wild hair, piggy nose and butt-crack chin – the third largest was all his.
He had it squarely in his sights and was getting ready to put his back into the charge when the entire mob changed direction, swinging to their right in a panicky stampede. At first, Cal didn’t realize why, until a shout from Loren filled in the blanks.
“Bio-bots!” she bellowed. “Incoming!”
Cal stole a glance along the street, and panic jabbed him like a hot poker up the shizzpipe. Dozens – hundreds – of clowns were shambling, limping, lurching, crawling, bouncing, running and, in one instance, cartwheeling, towards the horde of savages, their oversized shoes thwapping the street, their faces a twisted mess of greasepaint and rage.
There were fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, short ones. There were clowns with insect-like legs, clowns with one huge arm and one withered one, clowns with painted mandibles, clawed fingers, and dark, soulless eyes.
Cal was sure he’d been more afraid in the past. When he’d been lost in the void between universes, maybe. Or that time he’d died and thought he was stuck forever with the ghost of Tobey Maguire. Those things must have been more terrifying than this, he thought.
And yet, his body was telling him otherwise. Cold sweat stuck his shirt to his back. Hot panic flushed his cheeks. Everything from his buttocks to midway up his chest was taut with terror, like a harp string spun from raw, primal fear.
His legs powered him on, cutting directly across in front of the bio-bots at a right angle. He kept watching them, waiting for them to rush towards him, but they continued straight ahead like they hadn’t noticed him.
Cal was watching a rotund but remarkably agile clown-thing come bounding along the street when an arrow sunk into its eye socket and buried deep in its brain. It collapsed, mid-run, yellow goo oozing from the wound.
The clowns behind it tripped and fell, and then Cal heard the savages approaching from his other side, all shouts and roars and swishing pointy things.
He realized, somewhat to his dismay, that both factions were racing towards each other, and that he was in the middle.
His lungs got together and ejected a sound from his throat, all by themselves. It was a high-pitched warbling sort of sound, like the mating call of a rare bird, or the death throes of an exotic monkey.
Whatever the sound was, it seemed to send a message to his legs, and they took it upon themselves to start moving faster.
The ground flew by beneath Cal’s feet, little more than a blur of rock and weeds. The clowns closed in on one side, the roaring savages on the other. Up ahead stood the door Cal was sure Dave had been dragged through. Fifty feet away. Less, even. He was close.
But would ‘close’ be close enough?
* * *
Dave’s feet slipped and slid as he tried in vain to find purchase on the rotten linoleum floor. The four-armed thing dragged him along by the hair, one of its oversized fists tangled in his increasingly unkempt locks. It hurt. A lot. He was making no attempt to hide this fact.
“Yeow! Ow! P-please, no. No. Don’t do this, don’t do this!” he pleaded. “I have money. I can get you money.”
He spun suddenly, the world lurching into a high-speed flip. He didn’t notice the door until he smashed backwards through it. He hit the ground next, then rolled to a clumsy and largely undignified stop in a dimly lit room that reeked of damp and dust and death.
There was a skeleton beside him. It wasn’t an intact skeleton by any stretch of the imagination, but with a bit of work and a sufficient amount of glue, the mound of individual bones could probably be arranged back into one. Maybe two.
Three, at a push.
The walls were a mess of dried yellow and red-brown smears. Some of it had been splashed or sprayed on, but other areas looked like the finger paintings of a madman. A madman with big, powerful fingers. Twenty of them.
Dave shuffled backwards, scrabbling and kicking through the remains of the carcass, his head whipping left and right as he searched frantically for some other way out. The only exit was through the door he’d entered by, but it was currently blocked by the hulking four-armed figure.
It wasn’t a bio-bot. That much was clear. Its face was a lattice-work of red scars, some hot and vibrant, others muted and dull. Several of its knuckles were ragged and torn from punching through the metal, and a series of scrapes ran up the inside of each forearm. Blood seeped from some of the wounds. Red blood. Real blood.
Dave looked from the thing’s injuries to its face. It took all his willpower not to look away again, and similar amounts of determination not to throw up. The eyes were dark pools, half-hidden beneath thick eyebrows that were flecked with gray. Its teeth were sharp, but something about them suggested it wasn’t natural, and that each tooth had instead been filed to a point.
It was a Kodaped, he thought, al
though that species was renowned for its kindness and good grace. This thing didn’t look gracious at all, and there was no kindness to be found anywhere behind those eyes.
The Kodaped clenched all four fists and hissed to itself as it padded into the room, its bare feet slapping against the ruined floor.
“Look, just… Don’t hurt me,” Dave begged, continuing his backwards slide across the floor.
He backed up against a stack of something he thought were boxes, and yelped in fear as the topmost one fell. It sprung open, spilling its contents across the floor.
Dirty clothes. A broken toothbrush. A park map, badly torn and smeared with something unpleasant.
He looked at the box itself. No, not a box. A suitcase.
In that moment, as it drew closer, Dave realized what the Kodaped was. Not a monster. Not a bio-bot.
A guest. A park guest, walled in here with the clown-things when everything had gone tits-up.
A survivor. A survivor, at any cost.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “You’ve been here this whole time?” He held both hands up in front of him. “Look, I can help. I can get you out of here. Just please, don’t hurt me.”
The Kodaped raised all four hands above its head as its face twisted into a dark, murderous rage. “Huuuungry,” it said, in a clumsy fat-lipped voice. “Huuuungry!”
“No, please, don’t!” Dave wailed, scrunching himself into a ball and covering his head with his arms.
SHHHCK.
The spear erupted through the Kodaped’s stomach, right below where gut met chest. Two of its arms reached down and grabbed the shaft, but made no attempt to pull it out. The other two arms remained raised, but the fists became slack as the fingers uncurled in confusion.
“Huuungry?” it said, cocking its head to one side. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of its mouth.
It fell like a majestic oak, its lower half creaking as its top half led the descent. The spear hit the ground first, folding the Kodaped over so its forehead clonked against the floor.
“Huuungry,” it grunted, its mouth gnashing uselessly against the linoleum.
Space Team: Planet of the Japes Page 17