In a sense, it was just like the situation with Aphrodite all over again. Maybe that’s what bugged me the most about it, but I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone if I could help it.
“Then good luck, Cal. I checked this week’s supply shipment.”
“Let me guess, just like last week. No synth-muscle. Effing Promethia!”
José nodded. “I used to admire Mr. Patterson, but now he is just a petty and spiteful man waging a war against someone who wants nothing to do with him.”
His sentiments weren’t exactly true. If an unarmored Lazarus Patterson walked through that door right now, I’d have no problem scooping up my pulse pistol and playing energy weapon piñata with his body. Then again, the Mexican member of our team had taken a hit in all this as well.
“Anything salvageable from our bots in Florida?” José was not very creative, but he was an excellent technician, with an eye for the details. Give him the instructions and he can do wonders. The six pack did the maintenance on the bots on the base, and after Patterson’s ambush, the black haired man helped fix the armor I’d lost against the Dino magician, while I spent a few weeks hobbling around.
“All destroyed,” he said, shaking his head. “The bastard took his time and turned them to slag. I’m in a bit of a jam with the monies I’ve committed to my family’s new home. Are you sure there are no more of these bolt holes where we might locate new robots?”
Frowning, I’d hoped that I could scavenge the components out of the wrecked robots to make a new suit, but Patterson had blocked that option—not that a suit using recycled synth would last very long.
“I wish. Right now we’re shit out of luck in that department. I’m on inactive status and only get half pay until then.”
At that rate, it would take over a decade to rebuild my armor. I was weighing the offer Wendy sent to me about floating me a loan. It was an unexpectedly kind and surprising gesture from our absentee leader. She probably felt bad about Patterson’s assassination attempt, or not being here for this latest debacle. Ultimately, I wasn’t certain whether I’d want to be that indebted to her.
Plus, I’d probably have to behave if I took her money, and that was never going to happen.
“What about the dinosaur’s body?” José asked.
“I already tried. Sheila let the government take it away.” Not that I wasn’t pissed about it, either. I killed it and should have had a say in its disposition.
José frowned and looked at the shards of that teleportation gate crystal spread out on an examination table. “Too bad these aren’t diamonds or emeralds. We could have at least put them into necklaces and made something with them.”
When he reached for them I shouted, “Stop! Don’t touch those!”
My warning was too late and his fingers closed around one of the shards. His thumb broke the event horizon of the crystal; it just kept going through the material.
“Madre Dios!” He screamed, and jumped backward like he’d been burnt.
I’d been inspecting the pieces and trying to find a way to make them work for me. “Are all your fingers still on your hand?”
He flexed his palm and surveyed for any signs of missing digits “Thank the creator; they’re all still where they are supposed to be.”
I used a pair of tongs on the outside edges of the greenish material to move it back. Previously, I’d stuck a couple of things into them, but hadn’t been brave enough to stick anything organic through them. Jose’s blunder actually saved me a few hours of sticking carrots or celery through the gap before trying some kind of critter, like a mouse.
“I’d been worried, after seeing how much flesh Kimodo and the dinosaur had removed by these things. I’d have had to start calling you Frodo or something.”
The clone got my reference and said, “So, this portal thing is still active?”
“Seems to be,” I replied. “My guess is that the other side is just as wrecked as this side is. Cool stuff though, teleportation. That’d be a useful power to have.”
“Then again,” the clone replied, with a no-nonsense grin. “Just because the end of this portal is destroyed doesn’t mean there’s not anything valuable.”
José was a man after my own heart. He worked pretty damned hard, and he liked to be paid. We quickly came to an understanding.
It took about two hours for me to cobble together a transmitter, power supply and GPS that I could slide through the largest piece, but we had a location shortly after that. The other end was deep in the middle of a swamp.
“Now for the big question,” I asked both of the clones present. “Do we bring in the others, or do we just do this ourselves?”
“Sheila won’t go for it,” the José on my left said. “And if she did, we wouldn’t see any money. Jin is already doubling up on patrols to make up for all the injuries.”
I thought it over. “You and I are a little undergunned if there is anything guarding Rex’s lair. I can scare up some of my pulse pistols. I’m on pretty good terms with Swamp Lord and it’s his turf. He’s going to want a cut, but I’d feel better if we had him backing us up.”
The clones agreed and I started planning a trip out to the bayou. Old Hooch was still pretty ticked that someone beat him on his home field, and I figured it wouldn’t take too much to get him interested—not so much payday as payback.
• • •
When people talk about going deep into the swamp, they invariably imagine scenarios where they are attacked by gators, snakes, and the like. Firing pulses of energy from the pair of pistols in my hand, I knew I’d never have to worry about those images again.
Those fantasies would be tame compared to this!
The thing might’ve been some kind of a constrictor at some point, but Rex’s magic pushed it back a few notches on the old evolutionary belt, and turned what would have been a terrifying encounter into the stuff of nightmares. My pistols clicked empty as the monster thrashed on the ground. The long departed Maxine Velocity would have been impressed by my rate of fire.
My accuracy, on the other hand, left much to be desired.
“Don’t rightly recall these things being here last time,” Hooch said, in a barely corporeal form as he gestured at the muck next to a similarly transformed gator. Roots erupted from the mud and wrapped around the thrashing body of the creature, dragging it to the side and effectively demonstrating Swamp Lord’s main power. This swamp seemed to obey him.
Sliding the spent pistols back into their holster, I yanked on the handles of the replacements. “A simple No Trespassing sign would’ve worked.”
My feeble humor aside, this expedition seemed less Raiders of the Lost Ark and more Bungle In the Jungle—or more aptly put—Stumble around the Swamp. Even with a GPS telling us where the destination was, getting there was an ordeal.
A short distance away, a trio of José clones worked as a team to fry anything that wasn’t human. Two carried military grade plasma rifles, and the third used my pulse pistols. Normally, I’d be bitching about someone using something other than my weapons, but in this case I was glad to make the exception. The rifles were crude, but had a certain effectiveness to them that I could appreciate.
Watching the roots and vines pull the hapless creature back into the brush, I sighed and said, “Hopefully, that’s the end of the welcoming party.”
“Could just be the warmup act,” Hooch said, as pragmatic as ever. Enough of me agreed that I changed out the cells in the empty pistols for fresh ones, as one of the José clones consulted the scanner I’d put together to pinpoint our destination.
“Looks like it is a bit closer, maybe half a kilometer in that direction,” he said while gesturing due west.
Turning to the semi-coherent mass of stench next to me, I asked, “Would you mind floating ahead while we finish cleaning up here?”
“Sure,” the cloud said and drifted in the direction of the signal. Truth be told, I wasn’t too keen on sending our heaviest hitter on ahead as a scout, but
his physical invulnerability meant that I wouldn’t have to risk myself or one of the clones.
It was less messy that way.
Giving Swamp Lord a two-minute head start, I finished changing my powercells and helped a clone adjust the backpack containing the energy source for his rifle. The connectors had come loose when he had to jump out of the way of certain death. His two other clones moved to the perimeter while I inspected his weapon for any damage.
“Nice shooting. Way better than mine,” I offered him a compliment.
“All my practicing is starting to pay off,” he answered.
The big chip on Jose’s multiple shoulders was he knew that no one him seriously, except for me and the Bugler. If I was being honest, it was only a recent development on my part. Then again, Bo and I were the only people in this group of misfits who didn’t have any super abilities. Given Jose’s powers, I’d have my own engineering team and more completed projects than I could shake a stick at. In fact, I’d even have built a machine to shake a stick at all my completed projects.
Of course, that was the dream. The reality would probably be that I would watch five times the amount of porn. Hell, sometimes I’m such a slacker that I could even picture my clones arguing over who had to do something. So, I applauded Jose’s efforts to turn himself into a group mind version of a SEAL team. That level of badassery could come in handy down the road—more power to him.
“All set?” the one I was working with asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “It should hold, but when we get back to base we need to swap out the lines. Let’s find Swamp Lord.”
When we arrived at the source of the signal, I scowled. It was on top of some marshy hillock infested with trees and scrub brush. Finding an entrance would be impossible without Hooch. His semi-tangible hand extended and he used his plant powers to probe the root systems.
“That group of trees over there,” the man gestured to a thick cluster. “They ain’t real.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t sense them. Must be some kind of an illusion or something like that.”
To prove his point, he made a root from a nearby bush rip itself from the ground and snap at the fake trees like a whip. It passed through one side and out the other.
Impressed by the camouflage, I made a note to come back here and look at the illusion in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums to see if it held up to that kind of inspection as well. Magic had always been something I’d relegated to a sideshow act. Sure, there were a few magic users out there who were heavy hitters, but the majority consisted of charlatans and fakes. My college roommate, Joey Hazelwood had dated one of those, a tattoo artist who could do some minor charms and the like. She used this one for mental clarity during her artwork that I let her try on me one time. In my classes there were some “normal” students who abused Adderall to try and get better grades. Her spell was sort of like that and lasted for about thirty minutes. I spent that time engrossed in the pixilation and details of her artwork as she created the souvenir demon fighting an angel tat on Joey’s shoulder.
My OCD was basically tripping balls over that, and I vowed to avoid doing that again... ever.
Recent experiences hadn’t exactly given me any reason to adjust my opinion of the mystic arts, either.
“Yeah, there’s a tunnel behind them,” Swamp Lord said, continuing his check of the area. “There’s a whole building underneath this hill.”
“Well, if anyone wants to back out,” I commented. “Now’s the last chance.”
Greed overcame common sense and we started to walk through the illusionary cypress trees. It was strange, moving through a tree that both sight and smell screamed were real. The tunnel Hooch promised waited on the other side, with a reddish glow coming from inside.
“Trap?” José asked.
“Rex didn’t seem like a trap kind of... guy... I guess we can call him that. It looks like it’s just there to kill things.”
“Well, then, lemme send something down thataway and see what happens,” Swamp Lord said, and then concentrated.
In response, an old fern uprooted itself and came scuttling toward us using its roots like sets of insect legs. It was both impressive and creepy at the same time. The moment the animated vegetation crossed the threshold into the passageway, the red glow vanished. It was replaced with a low rumbling.
“Yup,” I said. “That doesn’t sound promising.”
Swamp Lord took that moment to sublimate as the rest of us scrambled to stay upright. Suddenly, my decision not to bring a jet pack along became fodder for one of those self-assessments that begin with the words, “In hindsight, perhaps I should have...”
There was the briefest of pauses before the ground next to me erupted in a burst of mud and dirt, tossing me bodily aside.
Climbing out of the hole in the top of the hill was a dirt covered T-Rex. Shit just got real.
“What the...” I said, stopping short of saying the “F” word.
“Shoot it!” The pistol wielding clone shouted. My first thought was run, but his idea wasn’t bad either. In fact, I could probably do both!
Backpedaling, I cut loose with my pulse pistols, hoping to hit something important, or at least slow it down. I didn’t come all this way to end up as something’s well-balanced breakfast. Plus, I was awfully high in fat content.
Bluish white needles of energy darted into the beastie. My attack pitted the thing’s chest, and left me with a sudden and horrifying revelation. This wasn’t a dinosaur in stasis that Old Rexxie left taking a dirt nap, this was some kind of stone construct that looked and moved like it belonged in Jurassic Park. It had red glowing eyes that might as well have been a targeting system—locked on me.
“Help,” I said. The words didn’t leave my throat with any real oomph behind them. Nor did they properly convey my sense of complete and utter panic. So, I returned to my original idea and started running, letting the foul swamp air fill my lungs for a second attempt.
“Help! Shoot it! Shoot it!” A frightened, young co-ed in a cheap slasher movie couldn’t have done it any better.
On the plus side, it was made of stone and not terribly fast, but this chase wasn’t exactly taking place over wide open spaces. I had to dodge around fallen trees, rocks, roots and everything else. All it had to do was follow the straightest path to me.
I ran past one of the clones carrying a plasma rifle who was trying to slow it down. All his high tech weapon did was leave some scorch marks on the surface.
Worse still, the T-Rex golem ignored him and kept following me. Secretly, I had hope that he’d draw the thing’s attention and it would stop chasing me. For better or worse, the animated creation only had eyes for me.
“Try explosives!” I yelled, already finding my breath coming out in ragged gasps. Adrenaline and panic were compensating for my poor exercise habits, but the situation was degrading by the second.
“We didn’t bring any!” The clone answered. “Remember? I said we should, but you said we wouldn’t need any with Swamp Lord here.”
I suppose I did actually say that, I thought. Still, it’s a dick move to remind me of it!
Frantically, I looked around for Swamp Lord, however, unless you were within ten feet of him and looking for a distortion pattern in the air, it was like trying to spot the Semi-Transparent Man in a football stadium on game day.
“Hooch! Save me!” I screamed. This was his home turf. Inside a swamp the dude is damned near invincible.
A tree near me pulled itself out of the ground and ran toward the thing gaining on me. It fared about as well as a tree would against something that out-massed it by more than ten tons and was made of far denser material. Of course, better the tree than me.
“Cal,” I heard Hooch say. “I have to go and...”
“No!” I shrieked. “Don’t leave me.” The words reminded me of the things my teenaged self might have said to any of the number of girls he’d tried to date.
“Just try not to get eaten,” he said. “I’m going to round up enough swamp gas to do some damage!”
“Hurry!”
One of Swamp Lord’s animated trees was excavating a trench—a low point where he could put the methane, I supposed.
Summing up my situation, I concluded that our weapons were useless and our most powerful member just ran out to get some gas. Things were so messed up right now that it seemed like a civil servant was in charge. Technically, I did work for Uncle Sam. Even if I had the time to rig my pistols to blow up like a grenade, it wouldn’t do nearly enough damage.
So, I ran. I ran like never before. I ran like Tom Hanks in that one movie, but there was no girl to run to, only a series of desperate sprints and evasions to save my worthless life. I felt like one of the marbles on a life-sized game of Hungry, Hungry, Hippos.
My only advantage was my mind, I stayed just inside the underbrush and moved through as fast as I could; letting the dinosaur golem behind me clear the path that I’d use on my next lap. I did my best to keep it away from Swamplord’s created monster, which was digging our own version of a tiger trap.
They sure look bigger on the screen; I muttered and dodged around a collection of trees and bushes. Of course, I was running out of juice fast and it could, and probably would, chase me to the ends of the Earth.
Time began to lose meaning, and my continued existence was reduced to that of a cornered rat. I’d considered trying to take it back down the hill to see if it would get stuck in the swamp, but that path back down wasn’t for the faint of heart, and there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t get stuck.
Twice, it had nearly gotten me and I’d scraped up enough adrenaline to skitter away from it, but now my body, less a well-oiled machine and more a sputtering clunker running on vapors, was giving out on me.
I fell and couldn’t rise. On my hands and knees, I pushed forward another five feet and could only watch as the behemoth approached. There wasn’t enough energy left in me even to scream. Something grabbed me from behind and I barely registered being tossed through the air. For a brief second, I though the T-Rex golem had snatched me from the ground and tossed me upwards to crush me in its jaws on the way down, but instead, I hit the ground and tried to figure out what just happened. It was Hooch’s plant monster, interceding on my behalf and grappling with the behemoth to buy me another twenty seconds.
Secrets of a D-List Supervillain Page 4