“Shut up!” yelled the captain of the guards. Then he addressed his wingmen. “Until the sky is free from these monsters, the sentence for the prisoners is postponed. Lock them in the tower and prepare the defences.” Then he turned to the guards flying with Louise. “Put Princess Louise in with them. She’ll go to the Mental Cloud when this battle is over. Move!”
“No! No!” Louise shouted again, but that did not stop her joining her friends as the guards pushed them towards the tall stony tower.
“Very impressive tower,” Pedro said to his guards. “Can I have some vegan pancakes and a banana and kale smoothie for breakfast in the morning? Then, for lunch –”
“Pedro!” shouted his friends.
“What?”
“This is a tower for prisoners, not a hotel for guests,” Lukeson told him.
Pedro started to think. “All the same – ”
“Pedro!” they all roared again.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Kathy woke up to find her head not being hit by a drummer’s wooden drumsticks, though that was how bad her headache felt. She picked herself up and reached the top of the locker. Then she realised that it wasn’t the top she was touching; it was the base. The locker was upside down.
She was hesitant to open the doors due to the outside air supposedly being toxic from those missiles that had probably exploded while the shuttle crashed. Then she noticed air holes the size of golf balls on the doors in front of her. She started to panic in case she and Larissa breathed in the bad air if there was any and what was worse was that she had nothing to check it with.
Then she found something by her feet that looked like a toxic air detector. Wondering what it would be doing in a shuttle locker but glad it was there, she picked it up, pressed the On/Off button and the screen came on. She waved it around the locker. She wasn’t a massive technology expert like Paula, but from what she could make out from it, the air inside the locker was breathable so the outside air must be fine. “I think the air is okay, Larissa.” Then she found the little penguin still appeared to be unconscious. “Larissa, can you hear me?”
When she got no reply, Kathy put her right ear on Larissa’s tummy. It was moving. After using her stripy fingers to block Larissa’s nostrils on her beak, the zebra saw her little friend starting to wriggle like a worm trying to escape a fishing hook.
As Kathy let go, she saw Larissa jumping up and gasping for air. She was given a mean look. “Well, it was either that or the kiss of life again.”
“Well, the kiss of life is less painful,” Larissa said. “And it doesn’t rub my beak very tightly.”
Kathy ignored her and kicked the door open. She and Larissa thought they arrived in hell when they faced devastation. They jumped out of the metal locker and landed on the dusty road. The zebra saw how lucky they were to be in a metal locker that was strong enough to survive rust and a few holes.
They couldn’t find the crashed shuttle they were on, not a single piece of it. As they walked around, all they could see was nothing but giant flames, burnt cars, burnt human skeletons and collapsed buildings standing up to no higher than two floors. The rubble mixture also contained broken pieces from theme and water parks, including broken pieces of rollercoaster tracks and water pouring out of broken water slides. Hanging above all of the devastation was a dark red sky filled with dark clouds.
“Did we do this by crashing the shuttle of bombs?” asked Larissa.
“Not us. It was whoever set the shuttle off in the first place.”
Then Kathy noticed among the few things still standing up in the mess were bright green grass, flowers, bushes and very tall palm trees. Everything to do with nature was also in perfect health. “I don’t think those bombs were even nuclear.”
“Call me Little Miss Thick,” said Larissa, “but what’s your point?”
“My point, Little Miss Thick, is that whoever wanted these bombs to explode is trying to kill humans and other creatures without making the air unfit to live in.”
“So are you saying the ringleaders behind this war are environmentalists?”
Kathy hadn’t even considered that, but Larissa could have a point.
“Well, what I’m trying to work out now is where the hell we are,” the little penguin said.
“Still in Orlando. Or what remains of it.” Kathy showed Larissa the ‘Welcome to Orlando’ sign on the floor. It was bent and burnt.
Then Larissa remembered something while she and Kathy were on the shuttle before it crashed. “Kathy, I noticed the crates that contained the missiles had some green stuff above their locks. The same green as Petunia’s emerald earrings and they made me wonder about –”
“You two, shut up!” cried an American male voice.
“Yeah, like, he says,” said Larissa. “They made me wonder about us two shutting up!” Then she realised what she said and looked for the voice who told her to shut up.
“Hands and wings up!” the American voice said. “Turn around!”
The G.C.A. soldiers turned around to see two US marine trucks and a squad of US Marines aiming their rifles at them. They unwillingly put their hands and wings up.
Then a muscular US soldier wearing a colonel’s uniform, hat and badge approached them. “You two shall be spared.”
A relieved Larissa sighed, but Kathy did not.
“For tonight’s dinner!”
The zebra knew there would be a catch. “Colonel, it wasn’t us who bombed Orlando!” she protested.
“Cut the bullshit, Stripes!” roared the colonel. “I know you animals hate us humans for climate change and taking the lands for our needs, but that’s no reason to kill us and take over the world.”
The fear of dying for something she and Larissa didn’t do was causing Kathy to lose her temper. “Listen to me! We didn’t do it!”
“Shut the fuck up!” the colonel yelled. “We were in Georgia and we saw the shuttle crashing and destroying the entire state of Florida yesterday. It destroyed our state too! After waiting sixteen hours of taking shelter from your destruction, we were finally able to search the whole destroyed states of Georgia and Florida to find no survivors except you two.”
Just when things couldn’t get any worse, Kathy and Larissa was shocked to hear that the shuttle they had been riding had wiped out another state.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough,” the colonel went on, “twenty more shuttles from the same complex you launched from crashed landed in a lot of states and each of them wiped out its closest states with its bombs inside it. One of them have even bombed Hawaii and another the West Indies.”
This was making no sense to Kathy at all. If those shuttles back at Florida took off and crashed while Larissa and I were in the air, where were Petunia and Rachael? Then she remembered when Larissa was telling trying to tell her about Petunia’s emerald earrings and the emerald locks on the metal bomb cases. If this was all her doing, why would she do this, especially to one who she loved like she was her own daughter?
“You will be taken back to our base to be questioned, then plucked and stuffed,” the Colonel said.
“What kind of stuffing?” Larissa asked, as her wings were cuffed by one soldier.
“We are not in league with whoever is attacking the human race,” Kathy protested, as she got handcuffed. “We are trying to find clues to this mystery and solve it. We are not your enemies!”
“Well, where’s your proof of you being our allies?” asked the colonel.
When they couldn’t answer because they didn’t have any proof, Kathy and Larissa were pushed to the marine trucks.
“Colonel, can you hear that?” a soldier called.
“Hear what, Captain?”
“Listen.” The captain put his hand behind his ear.
“Everyone, shut up and listen!” the colonel snapped.
Everyone froze and remained silent as they tried to hear something. But they couldn’t. Kathy hoped it wasn’t another monster because she was stru
ggling enough with being handcuffed by humans after surviving a space shuttle crash.
“Maybe it was a bird or something,” said another soldier.
“Not this bird,” said Larissa.
“Never underestimate anything,” the colonel said to his men. “Anything could sneak up on you and just –”
Then everyone gasped in horror as they saw the colonel fall to the ground with blood leaking out of his head. The blood was coming out of a big hole at the front of his neck. Soon the colonel went unconscious and still.
“Everyone, stick together!” ordered the captain, taking over from the dead colonel. “And keep alert!”
But one by one the soldiers were getting scratched to death before they could be warned, let alone fire their armed weapons. Even the trucks were getting scratched and tore apart.
Kathy tried to work out what it was that was attacking the soldiers, but it was so fast she couldn’t work it out. All she could see was a small green light every time it passed. Then she had an idea. “Give me and my friend a weapon,” she said to the soldier holding her.
“No way,” said the soldier.
“We’re your only chance, mate,” said Kathy. “And if you don’t let us go –”
“What are you going to do, kick me in the shin?”
That was exactly what Kathy did. Then she jumped and kicked the face of the soldier who held Larissa and the handcuff keys. He dropped them both.
The young penguin caught the falling keys in her beak. “Bend down, Kathy, and I’ll get your handcuffs off.”
Kathy bent down and Larissa used her beak to turn the key in the keyhole. She was free. Then she took the key and returned the favour to her little penguin friend. Then she went to pick up two AK-47s and as much ammo as she could. After she gave one of the guns to Larissa, she quickly noticed one of the green lights heading passing them and fired at it. It got hit and the speeding figure came to a halt.
Kathy and Larissa were shocked when they took a good look at the figure. It looked like a muscular reindeer on its two legs, but it had more dangerous looking teeth and eyes. It looked at its black belt on the top of its brown trousers like it lost something on it. Then it roared behind and soon Kathy and Larissa saw there were more of the muscular reindeer monsters staring at them.
“I take it they’re not Santa Claus’s reindeers?” said Larissa.
Kathy frowned as she tried to make out what the creatures were.
“They’re wendigos, Larissa.” She remembered reading a section about them in a book about Algonquian myths and legends. The ones she was encountering at the moment matched how it described them, but aside from that it gave her no more information.
Larissa noticed that the rest of the wendigos had emerald belt buckles over the trousers. They were bright green like the locks on the shuttle bomb cases. She was getting suspicious about all this thinking. A lady with emerald earrings sent her and Kathy to check out a shuttle full of emerald-decorated bomb casings. Then the shuttle lifted off and crash-landed in Florida, wiping it out. Then they woke up to get chased by wendigos wearing emerald belt buckles over their trousers. The penguin wondered if that was what made them go super fast. She and Kathy fired at them all.
That deeply angered the wendigos. They snarled at the G.C.A. soldiers as they charged for them.
Despite the soldiers’ progress stopping of the wendigos running at supersonic speed being a success, they were still moving very quickly.
Kathy quickly turned to see if the remaining marines were seeing this and was very sad to see why they weren’t. They were all dead, showing nothing but their wide opened eyes among their bloody heads. The trucks themselves had become jigsaw pieces so the G.C.A. soldiers couldn’t use them to escape.
The wendigos’ roaring made Kathy turn around. “Let’s move, Larissa!” she ordered. She and Larissa ran like cheetahs, but the wendigos were catching up to them as fast as a fired arrow heading to the middle of an archery target. Kathy hadn’t had time to count how many ammo she and Larissa had between them, so she didn’t want to risk wasting bullets until they knew more about what they were up against.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“Help! Get us out of here! Help! HELP!”
“Pedro, put a wing in it!” Rustom snapped. “Your pleas for help are going to be as useful as someone covering themselves up in ice cream as a sun cream substitute.”
“Put a wing in what?” asked Pedro.
“Your beak, of course!”
“Oh.” His wings were cuffed up, but that didn’t stop him putting the middle of his wing in his beak.
Everyone just groaned. As if the room wasn’t dark and cold enough and smelt as it had never been cleaned in centuries, they had to put up with Pedro’s well-meaning but irritating attitude as well as hearing the panicked cries of the wing-people getting slaughtered by the mothmen outside their window. It had been going on non-stop for the last ten hours.
Lukeson turned around to face the still-depressed Louise. He went over to her and, though the handcuffs around his hands gave him so little room to move, he managed to hold her hand to comfort her. She looked at him and smiled back.
“I’m sorry about everything, Lou,” said Lukeson. “After rescuing you from that fallen tree, I should have left you alone. I should never have gotten involved in your life after that.”
“No, Rhys,” sobbed Louise. “It’s my fault for being who I am and not for being what everyone wants me to be.”
Rustom cleared his throat. “Well, at least, you always knew your sister was a complete…”
“Rustom!” Lukeson gave him a stern warning look.
“…pain in the clouds,” the rhino finished. “My point is that you never had to look up to her or anyone else for that matter.”
“Especially since my mother died when I was eight years old,” said Louise. “While my father was busy ruling the skies and teaching Rachael how to be the new Queen of the Skies, my mother would do everything with me. She helped me dress up right for certain occasions like a dinner or something. She was the one who taught me how to read and write before playing chase through the clouds with me. Those reasons are why I chose my mother as my best friend, my mentor and my role model.
“Then, when I was eight, she died from terminal cancer and Rachael promised her that she would be like a mother to me, but she was so focusing on being the new queen that she ignored me. That didn’t matter to me so much as we never got on. But then everyone started to ignore me. Even the maids who would clean my room and dress me wouldn’t pay me much attention.
“So I had to find a new hobby. I read some books about skills for life and taught myself how to fight and defend myself. I’ve been training myself whenever I can, especially if I ever get into a situation like… well… like this.”
Rustom chuckled. “Very inspiring story, Louise. But all those years of training don’t seem to have paid off.”
“Keep laughing, Horn Head,” said Louise. She took her right brown shoe off and the ring toe of her foot produced a small single metal key. The boys showed delighted faces. She wondered whether they were impressed because she had a key or if she showed them how clever she was or if it was because her toes were beautiful. Probably the third one, she guessed. Then she flicked it off her toe and it landed in her mouth. She reached for her left hand where the lock for her handcuffs were and started to unlock it.
Rustom soon began to lose track of time and patience waiting for Louise. “How long are you going to be, Princess?” he demanded.
“Rustom, that was no way to speak to a Princess of the Skies!” Lukeson yelled. “You speak to her like that again and I will make you wish you could die! If you’re so impatient, why couldn’t you use any of your weapons to free us yourself?”
“I have a very good reason for waiting, Sergeant,” Rustom said. “I was just waiting for you guys to talk to each other and help get Louise’s depression out of her system.”
“His weapons can’t get h
im out of his special handcuffs,” Stu Pot said. “Not even free his extra metal arms in his back.”
Rustom scoffed. “How do you know that?”
“Because you’re a very impatient rhino and you would have got out in a flash if you could. You haven’t got so much a metal saw cut on your cuffs.”
Rustom tried to speak, but looking at his allies’ unconvinced faces, he sighed and gave up.
Louise was finally free from her handcuffs. She went to free Lukeson.
“How did you get the key?” asked Pedro.
“Before your trial,” said Louise, “I took it from my father’s study and hid it on my toe. I always made sure it was facing up right under my shoe the whole time so no one, especially my father or sister, could hear and recognise it.”
Then she flew over to Stu Pot and freed him from his cuffs, then Rustom’s cuffs, including the ones for his metal stealth arms, and finally freed Pedro from his handcuffs and chain ball.
“What’s the plan, Sergeant?” asked Stu Pot.
“Well, first of all, we must find out where those mothmen are coming from,” said Lukeson. “Rustom, got any weapons to spare?”
Rustom opened his back and chucked them each a CheyTac Intervention sniper gun. Then he got out something different for himself.
“What are you going to do with that rocket-propelled grenade launcher?” Lukeson demanded.
“I can use it to blow the source of where these moth buggers are coming from to smithereens,” the rhino explained.
“Well, don’t do anything until I give the order,” warned Lukeson. “Understand?”
“Yeah, whatever.” Rustom strapped the R.P.G. on his back.
Not that he was taking a leaf out of the rhino’s book, but Lukeson thought that if Rustom kept on disobeying him, he could always stab him in the neck as punishment as a way to show that he couldn’t get away with his rude attitude just because he could never die.
Louise unlocked the prison door and the boys followed her out.
The Cult of Kishpu Page 22