Jennings' Folly

by Thomas C. Stone

I patted his hand and told him not to worry. “We’ll get it done and kill some lizards in the process.”

  “You just be careful,” he said. “Don’t stick out your neck. While you’re at it, you might want to remove that bauble you’re wearing.”

  “It’s my good luck piece.”

  “You don’t see me wearing jewelry, do you?”

  “You’re not married.”

  “You don’t have to be married to wear jewelry.”

  “So why can’t I wear mine?”

  “It’s not part of what you need to do this job.”

  “Oh, but it is. I feel more secure with my good luck charm. When I’m secure, I’m calm.”

  “Amanda?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Put the necklace away.”

  “Yes sir.” I removed Glaucus’ gift from my neck and pushed it into a zippered pocket.

  There were six in our group, counting the driver, and with the weapons and the gear, the van was tight. The entrances to the walled town were blocked, so Genoa pulled up to a graveled area outside the main gate. One door was blown off its lower hinge and hung at an odd angle. Detritus littered the dark, triangular entrance.

  I looked up to the wall above me as I stepped from the van. Nothing moved along the palisade. I was assigned to be the point scout and wouldn’t have trusted either Alonzo or Riki for the job in any case.

  Under Grandpaw’s watchful eye, I scampered to the place where the gate leaned awkwardly and stood with my back to the vertical wooden beams. Papaw nodded and I faced the darkness, Vimbacher in hand, and flicked on my gun light. The beam shot through the dark and landed on the open jaws of a sizeable lizard. It hissed at me, spraying poisonous spittle and I pulled the trigger on the sucker.

  The Vimbacher kicked as I fired an exploding projectile at point blank range. I was too close to miss. The lizard’s elongated skull exploded into a red mist and I marveled at the power of my weapon.

  The skirmish took, at most, a second and a half. I shined the light around a bit to have a look-see but there were no other lizards in sight. Papaw sent Kaliis in behind me and when he got inside the “tunnel,” I could hear him wheezing. I told him so. “If I can hear it, they can hear it.”

  The little alien reached into a pocket and withdrew an inhaler. He sucked a big breath from it and stuck it away again.

  Stepping over the dead lizard, I ducked under a hanging steel support and squeezed past a tractor that someone had used to ram the gate from the inside. Smoke hung in the air and flames licked rooftops in at least three areas. A fire could get out of control quickly in these conditions. The sound of small arms fire echoed through the streets and I realized others were here. I assumed they were fighting the lizards.

  We gathered in the courtyard just inside the main gate. The entrance acted as a nexus for the town’s layout with eight foot walkways between buildings. There were plenty of signs that a losing battle had been fought, but still no bodies were in sight. I was grateful for that.

  Riki tapped Grandpaw on the shoulder and pointed up a walkway to our left. “Go that way,” he said.

  “How far?” asked Papaw.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “How far?” Papaw asked again, more forcibly the second time.

  Riki shrugged. “Two blocks down. We’ll take a right. The building we want will be in sight.”

  Papaw looked at me and I nodded before walking past Alonzo and up the walk according to Riki’s directions. Kaliis stayed back with Papaw and Alonzo fell in behind me. Riki was back and forth, making too much noise. Every time he opened his mouth, I wanted to stuff a rag into it. He spoke English but it was some rapid-fire dialect that was hard to keep up with.

  When I got to the corner, I waited for the group to catch up. Alonzo was the first with Riki coming up only after asking if it was safe.

  I pointed to the building at the end of the “block.” “Is that it?” I whispered to Riki. He leaned to me and said, “Yeah. Say, what are you doing later?” Alonzo grinned, showing crooked teeth. I ignored them both and turned to watch Papaw and Kaliis just in time to see three lizards drop from the roof between my position and Papaw’s.

  Riki saw them too. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, staggering backwards and letting off a burst of shots that missed all three creatures but peppered the building and narrowly missed Grandpaw and Kaliis. They had knelt as soon as the lizards landed so they could fire up at their targets at an angle without hitting any of us and also so they wouldn’t be hit from our shots. That is, Riki’s shots.

  Kaliis took down the creature on the right with a laser burst that halved the monster. Papaw fired his over/under so the charging lizard got a dose of both flechettes and double aught buckshot. The lizard’s head was blown from its body but it continued its charge and rolled out of the way. The third paused for a half second before following the one that had charged Papaw. After dodging the headless charge, Papaw looked up in time to see both Alonzo and I pumping rounds into the monster’s rounded back. It made it to within a foot of my grandfather who delivered the coup de grace with a well-placed shot between the lizard’s slitted eyes.

  “That was a close one,” Riki said.

  I shook my head and wondered if Riki would survive long enough to furnish the codes for the locked doors ahead. Alonzo finally said something: “That was a rush.” I agreed.

  Grandpaw sort of got into Riki’s face at that point and suggested he focus on the task at hand. Riki made a surprised expression suggesting he didn’t understand what Pap was talking about. I think if we had been back on the range somewhere around our neighborhood, Papaw might have killed that young man in cold blood. But he didn’t. It was a customer’s son and in the long run, it would be bad for business.

  Up the street, a window smashed out from the inside, glass falling to the sidewalk. Everyone looked to see a large lizard with a human forearm in its jaw climbing out of the window and onto the street.

  If you’ve ever noticed, lizards move a lot like birds and that’s what this one was doing. The hand attached to the forearm was tossed each time the animal moved with a net effect of hello and goodbye and I giggled to myself wondering if I should tell the others that this one doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. I decided my gallows humor was likely in poor taste and resisted the urge to share. Instead, I drilled the poor wretch with three high caliber shots to its ugly skull. It dropped to the sidewalk, quivering, and the hand waved no more.

  “Nice shot,” said a patronizing Riki. Without waiting, Riki started walking towards the dead lizard. Alonzo followed, so we did too, watching the roofs and the windows as we stepped forward.

  Kaliis stood beside me and commented on our companion. “He’s not very careful, is he?”

  “No, he’s not,” I said. “If we had a dog, we could send him in to flush them out.” I looked at Papaw. “Why don’t we have a dog?”

  Papaw looked back down the street and up the new street to the building identified as our destination. “Thought about using dogs once when you were a little girl; remember?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. “We didn’t have them for long.”

  “That’s cause the lizards kill ‘em. Some hunters use ‘em, but they’re too expensive to replace. Besides, you get to picking your favorites and giving them names and such and before you know it they’re all tore up and dead, so why bother?”

  Up the street, Riki waved us forward. When we caught up, he had the audacity to tell us he wasn’t paying us to stand around chatting about the weather.

  At this, Papaw practically choked. The smoke in the air was thicker. Over the rooftops could be seen dark billows. Fires were burning. I wondered if the mayor had given up on everything but the gold.

  “This way,” said Riki and we walked across a wide, circular courtyard to double doors set into a pre-fab, single story structure. Glass shattered somewhere as Riki bent to the touchpad and jabbed short, stubby fingers at the numbers. Riki leaned back and hit ENTER
but nothing happened.

  “Try the door,” he ordered Alonzo. The bodyguard went to the thick glass doors and stood before the sensors. Nothing happened. The doors remained shut. “I don’t get it,” said Riki.

  Papaw pushed past him. “Don’t worry about it, son.” Papaw leveled his Vimbacher and told Alonzo to step out of the way. I had to hand it to Alonzo. He didn’t have to be told twice.

  The Vimbacher didn’t bark, or hum, or sing; rather, it roared to life in utter contempt for the so-called bulletproof glass of the bank’s double sliding doors. As expected, the doors shattered completely in the deafening blast, not even leaving shards behind. When the smoke cleared, the way stood open. An alarm rang but Riki stepped inside and killed it via a switch at the security desk.

  It looked as though the bank had been spared thus far from the chaos outside. With the glass in the doors busted out, however, the lizards had a new place to play.

  Riki must have thought so too because he urged us forward, saying, “Let’s move. They’ll be here soon. Why’d you have to blow the door?”

  I heard the whine from Kaliis’ servos behind me and turned to see him following Grandpaw to a vending machine. Papaw stopped short and shot it with his spare Mossberg. The front popped open to reveal a treasure in Sugar-Daddies and BeHo’s, neither of which I had a clue about but Papaw was anxious to try. He reached in and took a bag of BeHo’s, ripped it open and selected a bite-sized concoction of stale flour, sugar, and chemicals. Papaw nodded. “Not bad, but I’ll take Liza’s cooking over it any day.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Riki, “just wait here. Cover the door and we’ll be back.”

  “What about the gold? Don’t you need help?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Riki over his shoulder as he and Alonzo moved up the corridor. “Wait here,” he said again before opening, then disappearing through an office door.

  A minute passed before Kaliis went and peeked after them, returning to say they were looking at diamonds.

  “What do diamonds have to do with gold?”

  For the second time, Papaw apologized to me. “This is twisted up, baby girl. I haven’t seen a two-timing deal like this since I left Mirabel.”

  “Where’s Mirabel?”

  “I’ll tell you about it another time. The thing is, these guys are basically dishonest. Anything can happen here. We are, as they say, in a fluid situation.” He took a bite of his BeHo. “These are pretty good,” he said, reaching inside the machine for two more bags.

  “We’re just an escort for these guys, aren’t we?”

  “Sure looks that way.”

  A lizard ran past the front of the building and up the street where we’d just been. A beat later, another two lizards came by, but this time one of them noticed the open doors and turned its muzzle in our direction. It flicked a tongue in the air longer than my legs and snorted. Its partner in crime paused, then continued up the street. The one that had stopped, though, now had our scent.

  Stepping up to the broken portal, the crunching of broken glass under its feet gave it additional reason for speculation and it pawed the ground. I brought my weapon to bear along the lizard’s skull. Papaw stood beside me and aimed his gun as well. Kaliis watched our six for us.

  We waited for the kitzloc to enter but it lingered at the entrance. I was afraid its presence would draw others and so wanted to shoot it as quickly as possible. Where it presently stood were a few inches of glass surrounded by aluminum frames and a single column of unknown material, probably concrete, between us. If the lizard entered the lobby, I’d have a shot; otherwise, it was risky.

  At that moment, Riki came strolling out of the office, talking loud enough to catch the attention of the monster. It turned its scaly head and looked through the glass focusing on the only thing it could see that was moving, which was Riki and Alonzo.

  Riki said, “If there’s even one missing, I’ll find it, or I’ll find who took it, but probably both. Do you understand?”

  Alonzo shrugged and looked bored. “Sure,” he said.

  Kaliis waved his hands to get their attention, but it was too late, the lizard was already taking its initial steps inside. Not a problem. As soon as it presented a clear shot, Grandpaw and I took it down. Grandpaw’s flechette neatly bisected the animal’s skull on a vertical plane. “Fancy shot,” I said and Grandpaw smiled.

  Grandpaw looked at Riki. “Find your gold?”

  Riki and Alonzo were both holding black velvet bags. I’d never seen bags made from velvet before and I thought they were beautiful.

  Riki smiled and answered Grandpaw. “In a manner of speaking. Look, there’s gold in there,” he motioned to the room from which they’d just emerged. “Take what you want.”

  “Your father will pay me. Are we finished here?”

  “Not quite.” Riki looked to Alonzo and nodded. Alonzo turned his weapon to bear on the three of us.

  “What is this?”

  Riki laughed and shook his head. “I tried to tell my father it wasn’t necessary to hire you, but oh no, he had to do things his way. Well, look around; he’s not here. I’m in charge.”

  “We got you this far,” Papaw said.

  “I could have gotten here on my own. I tried to tell dad. You know, it doesn’t matter. We’re here now and we’ve got what we want. All that’s left is to get out of here and, of course, take care of you three.”

  Alonzo jabbed me in the back with the barrel of his rifle and motioned for us to move up the corridor to the office where Riki had retrieved the diamonds. When we walked in, the first thing I saw were three stacks of gold bullion sitting side by side on wooden pallets. Atop the middle stack was a bomb.

  It wasn’t a regular looking bomb (if there is any such thing), but even if a novice looked at it long enough, they’d figure it out. It was a device with wires and a battery, as well as a circuit board and other pieces I really didn’t recognize. Still, the totality of it all made one wonder just how big the inevitable bang would be. How far away did we have to go in order to survive?

  Papaw said to Riki, “You don’t have to do this.”

  Riki narrowed his eyes and stuck out his jaw. “Shut up! Move to the rear of the room!”

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. Grandpaw was in front and as he stepped forward to make room for Kaliis and me, he made a move on Alonzo.

  As Grandpaw struggled with the big thug, Riki stepped to the side, closed one eye, aimed, and squeezed off a shot that hit Papaw in the leg, just above the knee. Papaw, however, did not go down. He instead rotated his position with Alonzo so that Riki no longer had a shot. In the process, Alonzo conked Grandpaw in the side of the head with the butt of his automatic rifle. It had to have hurt, but Papaw just gritted his teeth and continued to wrestle with the man.

  Riki aimed at Grandpaw’s legs as he stood in a shooter’s stance with one of those stubby machine pistols that shoots an army of bullets when it’s on full auto, which it wasn’t. I faced him pushed his gun hand down. Multiple shots hit the floor, sending chipped pieces of tile flying before Kaliis shot him in the foot with his hand-blaster. Riki went down with a howl and grabbed his boot which was pancaked flat from the arch to the toes.

  “I’ll bet that hurts,” I told him, then turned to see Papaw taking the rifle from Alonzo. Alonzo let go and pulled a knife. Papaw parried the next thrust with the rifle, and then, using the butt, brought it down on Alonzo’s empty skull. Half-expecting it to explode like a melon, I almost shouted at Papaw to stop, but Papaw knew what he was doing and tapped the hoodlum just hard enough to knock him out.

  Chapter 17

  Riki’s pancake foot didn’t remain flat for long. In minutes, it swelled up double the original size. Riki was in shook. He grew pale and lay on the floor beside the bomb.

  “That’s appropriate,” Papaw commented. Kaliis worked to stem the flow of blood from Grandpaw’s leg, stretching duct tape around his thigh, covering both entrance and exit wounds. Papaw stood on the w
ounded leg and nodded. “Let’s get out of here before this thing,” he jerked a thumb at the bomb, “goes off.”

  I looked at the two men who had double-crossed us, even tried to kill us. It wasn’t right. I didn’t want to be like them. “We can’t leave these two,” I said.

  Papaw took both bags of diamonds and stuffed them into his backpack. He looked at me and said he was about to say the same thing as he hoisted a still-stunned Alonzo to his feet. “Where are we?” the hood asked.

  Alonzo was bleeding a bit from a sizeable lump on the side of his head, but the lump on Grandpaw’s head was big enough to two or three new hat sizes. I saw blood trickling from an ear and when he looked at me again, I saw that his eyes were unclear – he could not focus. Still, he maintained his attitude and remained on his feet.

  He ordered Alonzo to disarm the bomb, but Alonzo shook his head. “It cannot be stopped.”

  So be it,” said Papaw. He directed the thug to pick up the smaller man and Alonzo helped Riki to stand on one foot long enough to hoist him across his back in a fireman’s carry. Riki screamed a final time and passed out from the pain in his foot.

  Without further ado, we started out only to stop again in the lobby of the bank due the presence of four more lizards drawn there, I’m sure, by the racket we’d been making. They stood in the entrance, one all the way to the edge of the lobby, another two in the alcove, and the last one lingering just outside.

  I put the first creature down with a single shot to the center of its chest as soon as I saw it, but in so doing I got the attention of the two loitering behind and they came scurrying into the lobby. They didn’t see us at first and that gave Papaw and me the right amount of time to adjust our aim and let fly, which we did. Smoke filled the air again and two more lizards sprawled on the carpeted floor.

  We re-loaded and moved to the entrance looking for the fourth but it had apparently wised up after seeing his buddies blown away. Kaliis’ local scan found dozens of kitzloc gathering just around the corner where I shot the first kitzloc of the day.