Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  And then it stopped, its eyes wide and staring at Dave, as its life drained slowly out of it.

  “You OK?” Cal asked.

  Dave’s mouth was dry and his throat was tight. It took him three attempts to force a sound out, and two more to convert that sound into words.

  “Like, zoinks,” he whispered.

  Cal held out a hand. Dave stared blankly at it for a moment, then took it and allowed himself to be hoisted onto his feet.

  “So that thing’s going to go all yellow and mushy any second now, right?” said Cal. “Any second… now. No, wait… Nnnnnnow. Now. Any second…”

  “It’s not a bio-bot,” Dave explained. “It’s… It’s a Kodaped.”

  “A Kodaped? Seriously?” said Cal. He peered down at it for a moment, then back at Dave. “What the fonk’s a Kodaped?”

  Dave shrugged. He didn’t have the energy to explain. “One of them,” he said, gesturing to the thing. “They’re usually peaceful, but something h-happened to this one. I think he was a guest. I think he’s been stuck here since the wall went up.”

  Cal looked down again, and quietly whistled through his teeth. “Wow. That is unfortunate.”

  He grabbed his spear and tore it free with a schlop.

  Dave’s jaw tightened as the shock of the last few minutes began to hit home. “It was going to kill me,” he whispered. “I n-nearly died.”

  Cal put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “It’s OK, Dave. You’re safe now. Everything’s going to be OK.”

  He smiled warmly, then began to turn.

  “Oh,” he said, stopping. “There’s just one tiny little thing…”

  * * *

  Cal and Dave crouched in the doorway, gazing out at the chaos raging in the street. The army of bio-bots and the horde of guests-turned-savages were locked in battle. Arrows whistled. Clowns giggled. Axes swung, and necks snapped.

  The weeds were littered with the dead and dying, and glistening with mounds of yellow gunge. The trash barge was still upside-down, but now a column of black smoke rose from within it. Neither Miz, nor the rest of the crew were anywhere to be seen.

  “Oh God,” Dave wheezed. “How is this ‘safe’? Look at them all! We can’t go out there.”

  “We have to. The others are… somewhere. We have to find them,” Cal said. “Besides, these guys are too distracted to even notice us. Watch.”

  He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey! You all fight like a bunch of pimsies!” he hollered.

  Immediately, half a dozen bio-bots snapped their heads towards him. Three big clown-things broke ranks and lurched towards them, teeth glinting behind their rictus grins.

  “No, wait. I think they have noticed us,” Cal admitted. “That totally backfired.”

  “C-come on,” Dave urged, stumbling backwards. “There must be another way out.”

  Cal looked down at the spear in his hands, then up at the three approaching clown-monsters. They were all bigger than average, and one nightmarish specimen in particular looked nigh-on unstoppable. At least, not without the help of three more people, several more spears, and extensive air support.

  “OK, right behind you,” Cal groaned, closing the door and following Dave back into the building.

  From what Cal could gather, the place was some sort of call center with several smaller meeting rooms and one large main area filled with desks and something he identified as ‘space phones’. Quite why a theme park – even one as fonked up as this one – would have a call center was something of a mystery.

  “Is this, like, the customer service department?” he whispered, jogging between the desks behind Dave, one eye keeping watch on the door leading out to the foyer they’d just come from.

  Dave shook his head. “No. This whole area of the planet was built for guests to act out their violent fantasies, remember?”

  “Right,” said Cal, nodding slowly, even though that didn’t really explain anything. “So?”

  Taking a right down an aisle of little cubicle stations, Dave made for another door. “So, three per cent of the galaxy works in places like these. Of those, something like ninety per cent dream of murdering their boss or co-workers. Here, they get to. Or got to.”

  “Three per cent of the galaxy works in call centers?” Cal asked.

  Dave nodded. “And yet, it still takes you two hours to get through to anywhere,” he said. “Even then, they never really answer your question.”

  They reached an exit door. It was unlike the other doors they’d come across before now, in that it was made of thick, dense metal, with no handle that either of them could see. Cal waited for Dave to do some clever space thing that would make the door swoosh open like in Star Trek. Instead, Dave slapped the flats of his hands against it, grunting and groaning as he tried to slide it aside.

  Across the other side of the room, the door to the foyer creaked open. A high, shrill giggle followed, then the unmistakable thwap of clown shoes on vinyl flooring.

  “Shizz,” Cal hissed. Resting the spear against the wall, he pressed his hands on the door above and below Dave’s. “OK, on three. One. Two. Three.”

  They both pushed in opposite directions.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Cal said. “We’re going different ways. Try again. One, two, three.”

  They pushed in different opposite directions. The giggling and thwapping drew closer. Heavy desks rumbled on the floor as they were nudged aside by the bio-bots’ bulk.

  “Jesus, we’re still doing it,” Cal realized. “Try towards me. One, two…”

  Dave pushed and Cal pulled together, finally working in harmony like a well-oiled machine. The door, however, didn’t budge.

  “Maybe towards you?” Cal suggested. “One…”

  Dave pulled. Cal pushed. The door did nothing whatsoever.

  “God damn it,” Cal spat, grabbing for his spear. “Dave, tell me you’ve got your little gun.”

  Dave blinked, then his eyes widened. The little gun! He thrust a hand into his pocket and rummaged around in there.

  Then he thrust a different hand into a different pocket, and rummaged around in that one.

  Then he patted both pockets with both hands.

  Then, because it was just the done thing, he patted the rest of his torso with both hands, too, like he might find it taped to his chest somewhere. His movements became increasingly frantic as he was struck by a terrible truth.

  “I’ve lost it,” he croaked. “It must’ve fallen out when the barge flipped. Oh, God.”

  “Shizz,” Cal said, unable to hide his dismay. He pulled himself together and plastered on a grin. “Still, we’ve got a pointy stick. And you know what they say about us Earthmen?”

  Dave swallowed. “That we taste good in sandwiches?”

  Cal laughed. “Ha! No… Wait, they don’t say that, do they?”

  Dave nodded. “A surprising number of species do, yeah.”

  “Jesus. OK, but that’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking about that other thing they say.” Cal twirled the spear inexpertly. In his head, it made him look like Bruce Lee. In reality, it made him look like a cheerleader on the first day of baton practice. “We’re the best at killing space clowns!”

  “I don’t think anyone does ever say that,” Dave pointed out.

  “Maybe not,” Cal admitted. “But they will after today. YAH!”

  He hurled the spear with all his might at the closest clown. It was the biggest and ugliest of them all, with six arms that were varyingly gnarled and withered, and a mouth that resembled an explosion in a dental implant lab.

  The spear flew past it and made a clonk as the shaft hit the side of a desk. Cal sighed as they watched it drop to the floor.

  “Damn. That totally worked better in my head.”

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Dave whimpered, bouncing anxiously from foot to foot like a child desperate to use the bathroom.

  “First, we don’t panic,” Cal said.

  The nightmarish clown
– although, to be fair, Cal was sure all three of them would haunt his dreams from now on, should he survive – unfurled its pointed tongue and waddled closer, sniggering through its triangular red-painted nose.

  “Second, we panic a little bit,” Cal continued, fear tightening his chest. The bio-bots didn’t exactly scream ‘intellectually gifted’ at him, but whether it was by accident or design, they had spread out to cover all possible routes back to the foyer door.

  Cal lunged for the closest desk and pulled open a drawer. “Find a weapon,” he urged. “Anything.”

  He pulled out something a bit like an iPad and tossed it at the closest clown. It missed.

  “Damn it! I so need to practice throwing stuff.”

  Rummaging around, he found something not unlike a stapler. He tossed that, and this time it found its target, clipping the bio-bot on the side of its white daubed forehead. It bounced off, and the monster’s only reaction was another shrill giggle.

  Dave hurled a handful of paper clips at another of the clowns, then a ring-binder, a dirty mug, and a soft toy holding a sign that said, ‘On a Bathroom Break – Back in 5’. None of them slowed its approach, although that didn’t really come as much of a surprise.

  There was a low whumming as Cal swung a space phone-headset around by its elasticated cord. It twirled in the air above him like a lasso, then the assembly of thin metal and foam thacked against the side of the nightmare clown’s head, with precisely zero effect whatsoever.

  “Jesus, will nothing stop these guys?” Cal yelped.

  He and Dave quickly ran out of things to throw and bunched together, shoulder to shoulder, fists shaking, but defiantly raised. The clown-things were almost on them now. Cal could smell the acrid stench of their breath, and the stale stink of synthetic sweat.

  “I just want you to know,” Cal said. “I’m glad I met you. I was… well, I was kind of in a bad place. Or getting there, at least. I thought I was the last one, you know? The last Earth guy. And then I bump into you and… You changed everything.” He gave Dave an affectionate nudge with his shoulder. “So… Yeah. I’m glad I met you.”

  “I’m not!” Dave sobbed. “This was supposed to be a vacation! It’s my anniversary!”

  “Today? Huh. Well, congratulations, I guess,” said Cal.

  Dave’s eyes widened and his voice became hoarse. “My anniversary. God, I’m going to die on my anniversary.”

  “Still, try to look on the bright side.”

  “What bright side?” Dave yelped. “I’m going to be murdered by clowns on my anniversary!”

  “Space clowns,” Cal corrected. “And, well, I mean… It looks grim right now, yes, but we’re not dead yet.” He looked around them, then up. “A vent!” he said, pointing to the ceiling. “There’s an air duct up there! You ever seen Die Hard? Or Die Hard Two? Or, like, literally any other action movie set in a building?”

  Dave followed his finger. Hope surged through him, then spluttered away as quickly as it had appeared. “It’s twenty feet in the air,” he pointed out.

  “We could make a human pyramid,” Cal suggested.

  “With two people? How would that be a pyramid?” asked Dave, unable to mask the irritation in his voice. “Also, it’s about six inches across. Even if we could reach it – which we can’t – we’d barely get an arm in.”

  “You know what the Japanese word for ‘problem’ is, Dave? Problemtunity. Or opperproblemity. Or something. I don’t remember the exact details. But the point is…” He frowned. “Actually, I don’t know what the point is. ‘Hope finds a way,’ maybe? ‘Stay the fonk away from space clowns?’ Probably one of those, anyway.”

  Dave said nothing. If Cal’s pep talk had inspired him and lifted his spirits, he wasn’t letting on.

  The clowns closed in.

  Cal sucked on his bottom lip. “OK, OK, so what if…?”

  And then there was no time for ‘what ifs’. The nightmare clown shoved aside the final desk, the furniture’s metal feet shrieking in protest across the vinyl flooring. All three of the bio-bots giggled and hissed, their eyes blazing with hunger and hatred and every other shade in between. The big one would reach them first, but the other two would be right behind.

  Not for the first time in the past few weeks, Cal saw his life flash before his eyes. It rattled past like a high-speed train, each blurred carriage jarring him with some new emotional impact. His wife. His daughter. Their wrecked car at the side of the highway. Cheap booze. Cheap women. An extended chase sequence featuring Ozzy Osbourne.

  Then onwards. Prison. Bugs. Space. Tobey Maguire. The Shatner. The Symmorium. Loren, Mech, Miz and Splurt. Kornack. Soonsho. Nana Joan and the Space Teens (He wondered, just briefly, what they were up to). Dan Deadman. Old Man Carver. The Currently Untitled. President Sinclair.

  Tobey Maguire again.

  From there, it became a cavalcade of imagery, most of it flitting past too quickly for him to identify. A shapeless swirl of nebulas and vomit and banoffee pie and genital discomfort. Tastes and sensations more than actual thoughts.

  And Loren again. He saw her as if they were back on the Untitled, her back to him, her hands working the controls. He felt himself exhale, wishing he could just sit here a moment. Just sit here, watching her work.

  He couldn’t see them, but he could sense the others there, too. Miz, slouched in her chair. Mech standing by the screen. Splurt… somewhere. Probably doing weird shizz.

  And then, it hit him. He’d been thinking about Earth so much of late – how he’d never go home again - that he hadn’t realized what was staring him in the face. This. There. Them. That was home. A different one, granted, but home, all the same.

  “God damn,” he whispered, then the urgency of the present overrode the dreams of the past. The flashback tore apart like a broken film reel, revealing a big fonking space clown standing right in front of Cal. It giggled and snorted as its twisted fingers grabbed for his face. The top half of its head flopped backwards like the lid of a pedal bin, as if its mouth was one big tooth-filled hinge.

  THLURP!

  The bio-bot exploded, painting Cal and Dave with gallons of yellow goo. The force of the blast slammed them backwards against the door, which had become similarly plastered in the lemon-colored gunk.

  Frantically scooping the stuff from his eyes, Cal saw Splurt standing a few feet away, Dave’s little pistol wedged awkwardly between his stubby hands. He had managed to grow a single stump of a finger with which to pull the trigger, and he waved the gun above his head excitedly when Cal spotted him.

  Cal wanted to tell them about his revelation. Wanted to throw his arms around them, and tell them what they meant to him – what they all meant to him.

  But he didn’t, obviously.

  “Great work, Scoob!” was all he said in the end, but in its own way, that was enough.

  The other clown-things, which had been flanking the first, spun on their heels and locked onto the little green guy. Cal would’ve been concerned by this, was Splurt himself not flanked by Miz and Loren, with Mech looming behind, watching the foyer door.

  The clown closest to Miz made its move first. It was a move that ultimately concluded with its gungy yellow innards on the floor, and Miz picking blobs of it out of her fur.

  The other bio-bot didn’t have enough sense to take the hint. It made its own lunge for Splurt, only for Loren’s spinning heel to twist its head a full two-hundred or so degrees around on its neck.

  While the clown-bot tried to figure out why everything in the room was now facing a different direction, Loren hooked Cal’s spear with her foot, flipped it into the air, then ran it straight through the back of the thing’s skull. Another mound of goo oozed across the floor like melting butter.

  “Oh, man, am I glad to see you guys!” Cal said. “I totally thought we were done for.”

  He shot Dave a sideways glance. “By which I mean, I absolutely had that under control, and there was nothing for anyone to worry about.”

 
Cal turned and met Loren’s eye. Something passed between them. Some relief they shared at Cal’s continued state of being alive. He smiled at her, but quizzically, like there was something he’d forgotten to tell her.

  “What?” she said.

  Cal shook his head, just once. “Nothing.”

  Loren blushed, just a little, and brushed a strand of hair back over her ear. As she did, she caught the expression on Miz’s face, and quickly pulled herself together.

  “Is he OK?” she asked, gesturing to Dave.

  Dave still looked shell-shocked. He stood relatively motionless, his back against the sliding door, a good seventy per cent of his face and body plastered in yellow clown gunge. Only a slight bubbling of the goo around one nostril revealed that he was breathing, and were it not for the fact he was standing upright and sobbing ever so quietly, you’d be forgiven for assuming he was dead.

  “How’s it looking out there?” Cal asked, gesturing to the door.

  “Like we ain’t getting through it alive,” Mech said. “Both sides just got reinforcements, and neither one looks like they’re going to be surrendering any time soon.”

  “How’s the truck?”

  “In pieces,” Mech said.

  Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Well, that was four hours well spent.”

  “Maybe we should turn back,” said Loren.

  Everyone - except Dave, who was still staring blankly and wide-eyed into thin air – turned to look at her. “Like, hello?” said Miz. “A hundred million credits?”

  “What good will it do us if we’re all dead?” Loren asked.

  “Loren raises an interesting point,” said Cal.

  “Thank you,” said Loren, shooting Miz a smug look.

  “But obviously we’re totally going to ignore it,” Cal added. “Miz is right. Think of the money. Right now, we have zero credits. None. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Bupkis.”

  “We get the idea,” said Loren.

  “If we dig up the treasure, we’ll have a hundred million credits,” Cal continued. “That’s way more credits than we have right now. That’s like…” He calculated, then his jaw dropped. “That’s infinity times more money than we have now.”