“Dust?” Lukeson scoffed. “Nothing like blood, bones or organs?”
“Exactly.” Then Kathy explained how she thought that someone was creating these creatures as this was not nature. She went on to say that she was confused about how sphinxes died and bled whenever she fired a bullet at them, but they were turned into nothing but dust when they went through the lasers.
This was puzzling to Lukeson as well. He was beginning to think these sphinxes were all creations by magic and needed to find the source to stop it, but there still wasn’t enough evidence and he couldn’t even think where to begin. Then screaming made him turn to face Adofo crying in pain. He charged. “Meng, what the hell is going on?” Then he got blocked off by Rachael. “Out of my way, Rhodes! Now!”
“Mengy’s in the middle of an important operation and cannot be interrupted, sir,” the crocodile said.
Worrying that interrupting Mengy’s experiment on Adofo would only make things worse, Lukeson retreated and worried as he saw the boy’s head going pink as Kathy’s mane which lasted for only ten seconds. When Mengy removed her trunk from him, Adofo stood still for a while.
“Mengy, you haven’t frozen him, have you?” asked Stu Pot.
Then Adofo let out a deep breath and stretched his arms above his head.
Stu Pot sighed. Oh, that’s good.
“Quick, Meng. Teleport him to the airport before he sees us again,” Lukeson ordered.
Mengy lifted her arms up. The sand rumbled beneath Adofo’s feet and then he vanished like a ghost.
Lukeson got out his small wooden telescope and tried to find Adofo at the airport, but he couldn’t see him. He angrily turned to Mengy. “What have you done to the boy?” he demanded.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” Rachael said.
The sergeant looked at where he was told to look at. Adofo was standing on the left-hand wing of an aeroplane on the runway. He was trembling as he was very high up, but luckily the airport firemen noticed him and rushed to rescue him.
Mengy felt guilty that she couldn’t use her powers to do a simple task like send a boy to the passenger crowd instead of an aeroplane’s wing. She didn’t need to be confronted by an even angrier-looking Lukeson to make her feel guiltier, but he did anyway.
“You placed an eleven-year-old in great danger!” her sergeant roared. “You put him on a wing of an aeroplane! Imagine if he slipped into the fucking turbine! I don’t care whether you knew what you were doing or not! If you weren’t powerful enough to heal or protect yourself, I would have you executed without hesitation!” He sighed and started to walk away from her. He took a massive deep breath to calm himself. Could this night get any worse?
“Hello, Sergeant!”
Lukeson jumped, drew out his solar panelled pistol and aimed it at a massive pothole in the road. He saw in the pothole was a young emperor penguin. He was wearing a red cap, blue jeans and a sleeveless white shirt that fitted his size. His right wing was holding a wooden device with a large screen in the middle. It was resembled an iPad, only made out of oak wood.
“Pedro, what the hell are you doing in there?” asked Lukeson.
“Proving the world wrong,” Pedro said. “That emperor penguins can survive in hot countries.”
Lukeson was pleased that G.C.A.’s arctic creatures could adapt into warm countries, but he knew that didn’t meant global warming was not serious. He didn’t know whether to thank or curse the Great Mutation Storm for those creatures’ adaption to warm countries.
It was that storm twenty years ago that granted most of the animals the ability to walk, talk and act like humans. No one knew how or why it happened. All they knew was that it had no effect on human beings, buildings, nature, food, water or rocks. Just living animals. Lukeson knew along with Lieutenant Skipton and Captain Tugson, the senior officers of the whole of Global Creature Alliance all around the planet, was that innocent creatures were at risk at the hands of the rest of the human race if not found and nurtured. Everyone could tell the difference by the shapes and sizes of anthropomorphic animals and monsters, but not by whether they were friendly or antagonistic. Especially creatures that appeared to be anthropomorphic centuries before that storm occurred such as Huian Meng the magical elephant demon. That was why Lukeson, Skipton and Tugson created Global Creature Alliance in the first place to tell which creature had been mutated or not, to tell which were good or bad, to protect the good from the bad and to provide them shelter, food, education, employment and a future for all.
“I could have shot you, Pedro!” Lukeson snapped. “And how did you even get here?”
“Pedro!” a female Chile accent cried.
A fully-grown emperor penguin in a UK combat uniform wearing octagonal glasses above her beak and a purple hair ribbon on her head popped up from the pothole next to Pedro like a prairie dog.
“What have I told you about messing with my equipment, young penguin?”
“Sorry, Aunt Paula,” said Pedro.
“Is that all you can say, ‘Sorry’?” asked Paula. “After three years, you can’t think of anything new to say or even learn anything?”
On the pothole on Pedro’s left, another young emperor penguin wearing a white and violet rose dress and a yellow hair ribbon on her head popped out. She was coughing and spitting out dust. “Pedro!” she snapped. “I’ve been following you under the ground for another one of your crap jokes! It’s my time to be funny now!”
“And you’ve come prepared with what, sis?” Pedro lifted the device up, intending to whack her with it.
Paula snatched the device from Pedro before his sister dived into his hole and started to fight him. She turned to Lukeson. “Sorry, Sergeant Lukeson,” she said. “I guess my sonic device didn’t work on them as well as I hoped and I had to hide to avoid –”
“Cut the boring crap story, Guzman,” Lukeson interrupted. “Do you know that this is the thirty-second time your nephew and niece have been stowaways on our missions for the last three years? I thought you were finally keeping them under order.”
“I’m doing my best, sir,” said Paula. “But the tasks you give me are so –”
“Give me one more lecture about multitasking and I’ll pluck you myself. Now, tell me you have brought a good invention that can get rid of these sphinxes once and for all.”
“To tell you the truth, Sergeant,” Paula said, as she turned her device on, “Pedro’s handled this Spy Pad most of the time.”
Lukeson snatched it off her and looked at the screen. He saw a picture on the screen and was disgusted. “Pedro!” he called.
But the little penguins were still fighting.
“Pedro! Larissa! Stop fighting!” their aunt ordered. “Sergeant Lukeson wants to talk to you.”
They finally stopped fighting, moved away from each other and walked over to Lukeson.
The Welsh sergeant turned to Paula and gave Kathy’s dust jar to her. “See what you make out of this dust, Guzman.” Then he approached Pedro and held up the screen on the Spy Pad in front of him. “Pedro, what is this picture meant to be?”
Pedro looked on the screen. “It’s a sandcastle,” he replied. “I thought there was plenty of time to make one. And, speaking for myself, I’m pleased with the results.”
Lukeson looked at it. It was a very big sandcastle, even though it looked like it had been attacked by its invaders. He pressed his finger on the Spy Pad and flicked it to slide to the next photo. “And what is this picture for?”
Pedro looked at the photo. He remembered seeing an old woman wearing ragged clothes under a large tent cutting her toenails. He took it so he could learn how to cut his.
“Penguins don’t have toe or finger nails, moron,” Larissa snapped at him. “We don’t have any nails at all.”
“Then how do you explain this one?” Pedro showed everyone a loose rusty nail he was holding in his wing. He couldn’t help laughing.
Lukeson just ignored that. He had gotten used to Pedro’s fun-loving and mischievous
attitude. It wasn’t so bad when they were back at their base in Blackpool, but when he was on a mission, especially a serious one like this sphinx mission, he just couldn’t tolerate it. He kept scrolling through the photos on the Spy Pad. “Wait a minute.” One photo caught his attention. “Pedro, who is this?”
He showed the little penguin a picture of a bald man wearing a robe. Its shape was made by like a royal robe that looked like it had been melted into a rainbow puddle. It was very shiny. In fact, it was the shiniest robe Lukeson had ever seen. To him, that meant trouble. Not to mention there were sphinxes with cobra heads in the skies above him.
“Oh, yeah,” said Pedro. “I saw him and there were all of those sphinxes flying around him. I thought it would be great photography.”
“It could be him!” cried Kathy.
“Could be what, Toronto?” asked Lukeson.
“The connection to everything going on with the sphinxes, sir.”
“If I were in your boots, Sergeant,” said Stu Pot, “I’d take a look into this.”
Lukeson thought that going after the man would be very helpful in this mystery until he got a text on his phone. He annoyingly grunted. “Skipton wants us to report back to him now.”
“But if this guy is the ring leader of the sphinxes and we capture him, sir,” said Rachael, “we could deliver him to base and interrogate him.”
“And what if he’s not?” asked Lukeson.
“No time like the present to find out, sir.” Kathy pointed to the sky.
Everyone saw through the moonlight a whole flock of sphinxes flying down but not directly towards them.
“They must be heading to the airport,” Rachael said. And she was right.
“Sir,” Paula called. “I’ve scanned this dust and Kathy is right. It is connected to this breed of sphinxes otherwise known as cobra sphinxes according to my Spy Pad, but any connections to the man in the rainbow robe I do not know.”
“Sir, if we assume that he is connected to the cobra sphinxes,” said Stu Pot, “he can nee be too far away. As the sphinxes are here.”
The Spy Pad beeped and Lukeson gave it back to Paula. “What is it, Guzman?”
After meddling with it, she smiled. “According to this, sir, our wanted man is at the airport. He’s disguised as a maintenance checker.”
Lukeson looked at the cobra sphinxes flying towards the airport. He had to work out a way to save all the people from the deadly creatures without showing their faces. After half a minute of thinking, he could think of only one solution but he didn’t know how practical it would be. “All right, listen up. Meng, take Guzman with you, teleport to the airport and bring the man to me. And, whatever you do, do not screw this up! Move!”
Mengy put her arm around Paula and they vanished like a mirage.
“Sergeant, three o’clock,” Larissa cried.
“It’s not even midnight,” said Pedro, looking at his digital wooden watch.
“Look at where I’m pointing!”
Pedro saw where her sister was pointing and a whole battalion of cobra sphinxes were getting closer to the airport. Then both young penguins were surprised as they were given solar panelled shotguns by Lukeson.
“You keep stowing away on missions,” he said, “you must at least come prepared, no matter how young.”
The young penguins had never been given training for handling a gun, but the previous thirty-one missions they stowed away on since they with their aunt Paula joined G.C.A. three years ago helped them develop more experience than most privates had in their first three years of training.
Hoping the young penguins’ shooting would pay off on this mission, Lukeson returned his attention to the cobra sphinxes. “Soldiers! Fire at will! And remember to let them come closer enough to you so your bullets won’t miss their foreheads or their throats! That’s the trick I learnt when I got separated from the Cairo Army!”
Squad J fired at the cobra sphinxes. They were still far away so they weren’t getting hit, but the firing was enough to lure them away from the airport and fly towards them.
The soldiers were sweating as they worried about the cobra sphinxes approaching closer to them. When she thought the one rushing to her was close enough, Kathy aimed at the head and fired. She was pleased when she saw it lying on the road. Everyone else saw the action and tried it themselves. They were glad when it started to pay off.
* * *
The enormous civilian crowd standing outside in the open airport airfield was stressing over when they would be able to finally board the aeroplanes. There were only ten of them left and everyone was desperate to board them. The Egyptian soldiers tried to keep them in order but were struggling to keep it up every time an aeroplane got filled up.
Some even started to scream when someone in a big hooded cloak fell over in the middle.
“Do not rush!” the federal air marshal ordered in Egyptian. “Pushing through this crowd will only send you to the very back!”
Paula was under the hood and was standing on the head of Mengy who was wearing the cloak. She was the one who tripped over it with her feet.
“Be more careful, Mengy,” Paula snapped in English. As Mengy stood back up, she said to the crowd in Egyptian, “Sorry. I just tripped over my cloak. I’m not rushing or anything.”
Then she got out her Spy Pad to a special screening. She called it ‘Scanning for Enemies’. She used it to scan everyone to tell her who was one of G.C.A’s allies or enemies. Red creatures indicated the enemy and it proved to be working when she scanned the cobra sphinxes in the air making them red on the screen. The rest were green, indicating either ally or friend like Squad J who were firing at the winged monsters.
After checking the civilian crowd who was all green, Paula checked the federal air marshal ahead and he was green as well. Then she checked the airport guards; they were all green. Her screen zoomed in onto the nearest plane and she scanned the crew. The captain and the co-pilot were green. The air hostess was green. But when she moved her Spy Pad to the driver of the tank truck aircraft refueler, he became red.
“The driver of the aircraft refueler, Mengy!” cried Paula. “Do something, like freeze these people or something.”
After Mengy closed her eyes and clapped her hands three times, Paula heard people screaming. She quickly removed the hood and was shocked to see all the humans, both passengers, airport staff and soldiers, was under very thick ice. In fact, the whole of Cairo International Airport was covered in one inch of snow.
“Mengy!” Paula jumped off Mengy’s head and angrily faced her. “When I said freeze people, I meant freeze time to make them stand still, not cover them in bloody ice!”
“Girls!” the voice of Lukeson snapped on the penguin’s radio. “Stop pratting around and grab the suspect! We don’t have all night and neither does the world!”
“Yes, sir,” Paula replied back on her radio. “Come on, Snow Queen.”
Not letting that insult get to her, Mengy just took her cloak off and followed the penguin. They sneaked past the frozen queue of passengers and past the frozen federal air marshal and guards. They ran past the plane and they ran to the fuel truck which was now icy all over.
Mengy lifted her arms up and the driver’s door of the truck flew off. She and Paula aimed their solar panelled pistols.
“G.C.A.!” shouted the penguin. “Put your hands up!”
But no one was in the driver seat or even in the passenger seat.
“Where could he be?”
Mengy thought this man they were after must be magical if he could escape her powers. She looked around and made an alarming trumpet noise. Paula saw where her trunk was pointing. She saw a bald man who had dumped his airport crew jacket and was showing his colourful robe that matched exactly the one on the photo Pedro took. He ran on the icy runway as fast as a pronghorn antelope and he didn’t slip at all!
Got you now! Smiling confidently, Paula grabbed her radio. “Boss, the man is running on the runway.”
“Come on, Mengy,” said Paula. She and the elephant started to run after him. Then they could see a large fire engine speeding in front of the man. The man waved his arms to the right and the fire engine flipped over on its right and skidded away. Paula betted it was his magical powers that made it happen.
Then something jumped out of the window on the left-hand door and it charged towards the man’s… trousers? Then he fell down.
Mengy and Paula saw that standing on the legs of the fallen man was…
“Pedro!” cried Paula. “How did you knock the man out?”
“Simple,” said Pedro, as he held up a stun teaser. “I struck this right into the hairy hose pipe between his legs.” It was snatched from him by Rachael.
“Pedro, you’re too young to hold this kind of equipment,” she told him sternly. “You could have had a heart attack.”
“Not to mention,” Paula added, “that you don’t even have a licence to drive anything, let alone a fire engine.”
“It wasn’t me who drove the fire engine,” said Pedro. “It was my diva sister, who I still cannot believe I hatched out of the same egg with.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” said Larissa. “It was the idea of my twit brother, who I also cannot believe I hatched out of the same egg with.”
“Everyone, can it,” said Lukeson. “Let’s just take this guy into custody and head back to camp before Skipton blows a fuse.”
“Or the entire fuse board,” Kathy added.
Mengy waved her arms to the frozen people and they were thawed in two seconds. Then she clicked her fingers and she and her friends with their captive vanished.
The airport crew, passengers and soldiers were well, but very confused about why they were cold, wet and surrounded by snow and ice when there were no clouds in the warm night sky. They spotted Mengy’s cloak, but couldn’t find anyone or anything underneath it.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WHAT THE HELL!”
The Cult of Kishpu Page 4