Fantasmagoria

by Rick Wayne

  The invader crept toward downtown. And all around the planet, similar craft moved in a coordinated spiral. In mere days, they would wipe everything. The whole world would become a blank white marble in space.

  Jack screeched to a halt at the entrance of the cross-town freeway. He needed to get across Parkus before the invader sliced the road in half, but it was filled with abandoned cars and impassable.

  “Fuck!” He hit the steering wheel and cracked it.

  And that’s when it happened.

  Gilbert Tubers changed the world forever.

  § § §

  It began as a tremor few would have noticed. Flocks of birds hiding in the trees took to flight. Dogs howled. Schools of fish darted from the island’s shore.

  The tremor was followed by a quake, and Jack felt it. He climbed out of the jeep and turned back toward the Serrated Hills. But there was nothing.

  The quake was followed by a cataclysm.

  The crater left by Gilbert’s demise erupted like a volcano. Great boulders flew a mile high as smaller debris arced out across the valley floor.

  Jack jumped back and stared, head tilting up, as the granite skeleton of the Serrated Hills rose into the night sky in a thousand pieces. And then fell.

  “Oh, shit.”

  A boulder landed on a shopping center, crushing it, and Jack ducked. Another took out a fifty-foot-tall road sign in a burst of sparks.

  “Damn!” He dove off the road and into a ditch as car- and house-sized rocks hit the ground like a meteor shower.

  The saucer stopped. The beam of light went dark.

  Jack stared at a smoking hunk of igneous basalt. It had landed in the road ten feet from him, left a crater, and covered him in dirt. He stood and shook himself off.

  The saucer was motionless, waiting, as the entire island groaned and shifted under a new center of gravity. Jack stumbled as the south facing beaches of the Floating Island dipped under water, and a great wave swept over the wharf swallowing twelve city blocks. Everything below Gunnerson’s Park was gone. Only the tops of a few multi-story buildings poked above the churning water. A crack in the bedrock swallowed Doubler’s Cross and snaked through the city. Fires erupted.

  Jack walked back out onto the road, now tilted with the rest of the surreal landscape, and looked toward the Serrated Hills. Several peaks were missing. In their place was a pillar of smoke so thick and high that it was visible from space, a planetary burn.

  And then he saw it in the dark. A small constellation of red lights smoldered inside the deep smoke. Jack thought they might be fires, except they were a thousand feet in the air.

  A thunderclap.

  A roar unlike any other parted the cloud pillar like a curtain, and Jack dropped to one knee.

  A great beast stood in the cratered remains of the hills. It rose on two legs and had four large arms tipped in ragged claws. The red lights were its eyes, all eight of them, and they burned in a constant scowl. Massive irregular spines, almost like crystals, covered its back from the top of its head to the tip of its long tail. The rest of it was dark, with skin like cracked granite. And its teeth . . . Jack stared. It had multiple rows, and while some marched in single file, others jutted sideways from the creature’s mouth like badly hammered nails.

  It bellowed again and stepped out of the crater and onto the valley floor. The ground rumbled with each step. Jack ran to the jeep, but it was crushed. He turned to see the red eyes trained on the flying saucer, a mere three hundred yards distant.

  Kraxus the Destroyer roared in anger at the alien presence. His spines began to flicker and glow. He opened his mouth and a darkness erupted, a beam of dark energy. Before it escaped his teeth, it collapsed on itself and inverted to pure white. Jack felt the blast of heat from several miles away. The beam rippled through the sky and obliterated the saucer, melting it clean through. The shell exploded.

  Jack ducked as a shard of metal ripped through the upper floors of a university dormitory. He saw bodies fly into the night. There was screaming. People ran from hiding in any direction away from the monster. He needed a way out.

  Down the street, Jack saw a gold-painted Aminal tank poking through the side of a grocery store. It was tipped in a solid steel lion head, like a battering ram. The metal tread was smoldering but the engine was still idling. He ran. The two occupants inside had burned to a crisp. The war dragon had baked them alive.

  A man and woman were on their knees inside the store, praying. They wore white aprons. Their faces were dirty and covered in scratches.

  “What do we do?” the man pleaded.

  “I don’t know,” Jack replied. He pulled the black skeletons out of the golden tank as Kraxus lumbered toward the shell of the downed craft. Each step shook the ground.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  Jack gritted his teeth. “I’m gonna kill Erasmus Pimpernel.” He climbed inside and shut the hatch.

  “But where do we go?” The man stood and cried out as Jack hit the wrong lever and crashed forward through rows of groceries. The couple yelled and raised their hands.

  Jack turned and rolled through the deli and into the street as Kraxus stomped on the shattered saucer again and again, crushing it beneath his armored feet.

  A second saucer appeared on the horizon. The Destroyer roared, turned, and again his spines glowed. The beam ripped from his mouth, flew over the ocean, and struck the approaching craft.

  But the invader had erected an energy shield, and the monster-god’s beam was deflected into the water. Great plumes of steam rose to the sky. The saucer erupted in an undulating energy wave of its own, and Kraxus was knocked back under a shower of sparks. He stumbled through an office park and landed on a house-covered hill.

  Now it was a battle.

  (THIRTY-FIVE) Rise of the Biodroid

  Jack rolled through town in the lion-faced tank, crushing anything in his path. The city was in anarchy. The warring armies didn’t know whether to engage their foes or retreat from the clashing titans. Discipline shattered, and Jack saw one gorilla soldier help an Imperial knight to his feet only to be shot dead by another.

  Jack avoided the major roads as he headed for the now-submerged wharf. He peered up through the tank’s narrow view port, trying to get his bearings amid the ruins of the city, when the war dragon attacked. It was following its last orders, oblivious to the cosmic battle that crept toward downtown, and it bathed the tank in fire. Jack cringed as the interior heated. His pseudoflesh baked and began to turn dark brown.

  “Shit.”

  But he was lucky, and nothing exploded.

  The dragon banked in the air and came round for another pass. Jack turned down an alley where the space was too narrow for an aerial assault, and the dragon swooped by. But now he was heading the wrong way, and he had no idea how to operate the turret.

  “Fuck it.”

  Jack turned again and crashed through a wall. He plowed through an office and pushed everything—desks, chairs, papers, filing cabinets, telephones, and potted plants—out of his way. Under the office roof, he was safe from the dragon’s fire.

  The tank crashed through the far wall and pancaked a row of cars as it covered the parking lot, then smashed through the glass doors of a pizzeria. The salad bar exploded in produce as Jack drove through it, and from there through building after building. Jack saw food, household appliances, tanning equipment, pets, clothes, shoes, home decor, computers, and rows of dry cleaning roll over the top of the tank or be crushed underneath. But it was the perfect cover; the tank was exposed only briefly as it crossed alleys and side streets. Jack smashed through an adult shop and a candy-striped sex toy lodged itself in his view port. When the Aminal machine tore through the side of a book warehouse, Jack smelled salt water. When he plowed through the far wall, he saw the new waterline. He had made it.

  Two Imperial tanks were waiting for him. The first shell ripped the armor from the rear of his vehicle, causing it to spin out of the line of the second shell,
which struck the tank’s tread and sent it tumbling into the air. The lion-faced war machine rolled across the inclined ground like a toy and disappeared into the water.

  The tank was down.

  As he felt the ocean swallow him, Jack stared at the burnt hulk of a now-submerged warehouse, the same warehouse where so many children had died. It had only been a few months, and the scablike structure remained a black monument to his mistake. Jack bowed his head.

  Imperial shock troops ran from cover and gathered along the waterline, guns pointed, ready for the tank driver to surface. But no one came.

  § § §

  The barrage from the saucer pelted Kraxus and showered smoke and sparks on the island. But the monster-god had enough. He rolled onto his hands and his long tail whipped through the sky, cracking against the energy shield and knocking the ship through a government tower, over the hills, and into the ocean. It landed with a splash and the ensuing wave wiped out every lighthouse along the northern-facing shore. The ship was intact, but the water interfered with its shield, which flickered and faded.

  Kraxus stood and turned to the sea. His spines popped and glowed. His mouth erupted in dark energy and a beam of white ripped through the air and struck the ocean. It flash-boiled thousands of tons of water before it connected with the hobbled craft, and like its counterpart, it too exploded.

  As it sank into the depths, three more craft appeared, falling down through the star-speckled sky.

  Kraxus roared.

  § § §

  A mechanical gunslinger doesn’t float, and he doesn’t need to breathe. But he does need his better half.

  Jack walked along the bottom of the bay and stuck his hands into the mud near the base of a pier. He lifted a chain attached to a ball of concrete and struck it.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Crack.

  Along the line of the water, white-armored Imperial soldiers stood, rifles at the ready. Three were vaporized by beams from the deep. Their colleagues stared at the blasted remains, shadows on concrete; then they turned and opened fire. Bullets riddled the surface as each soldier disappeared, one by one down the line, in a puff of ash.

  "Blackjack" Fulcrum strode out of the water with a scowl. He stopped and tied a holster to his leg as water poured from his every crevice. He was whole. He was complete. For the first time in months, he was his old self.

  Jack had rolled his sleeves in the water, and he noticed his skin. “Huh. Not bad.” He looked sharp in dark brown.

  The twin Imperial tanks turned their turrets toward him. With a mechanically precise aim and a draw so fast it seemed invisible, Blackjack vaporized both shells in their tubes, and the turrets exploded in smoke. The sole survivor leapt from his burning tank and ran.

  “You guys gotta be faster than that.”

  Jack looked at the ray gun in his hand. It was red and green with a bulbous barrel painted with intertwining roses on both sides. It was capped in a series of metal rings.

  “I missed you, sugar.” He holstered Rosa and walked down the middle of the street toward the carnival, where he knew Zen-ji would be waiting.

  His dip in the bay had given Jack an idea.

  § § §

  Kraxus watched from the hills as the three saucers formed a pyramid over the ocean. They began to rotate in the air and surround themselves in light. Energy crackled and sparked off the water, lighting the night in a parade of color. Then a great ball of energy grew from the center, engulfing the ships. There was a flash and the ball fell into the ocean.

  Kraxus roared and stepped back as a submerged mass pushed a tsunami toward the shore. When it reached the shallows, a biodroid, a robo-organic organism, stepped forth from the sea. It was just as tall as the monster-god and mimicked his form, with segments of metal armor covering a biomechanical frame. It had two massive legs and four arms, the larger of which carried drills in place of hands. The smaller set shot forth plasma torpedoes. They screamed toward Kraxus, exploded, and knocked him back.

  The biodroid’s head had no mouth, just two massive eyes that rippled with energy. Beam weapons struck the Destroyer in the chest. Kraxus stepped back again and again under the onslaught as the biodroid climbed onto the beach and crested the hills. Within several minutes, Kraxus was beaten back over the peninsula, through a smoking power plant, and into the bay where he fell with a splash.

  And still the biodroid did not relent. Its eyes shot beams into the ocean. Its hands launched missiles. The drills started turning.

  § § §

  Jack didn’t turn to see the trail of wreckage he left on his walk from the wharf. He’d vaporized countless Imperial knights and quite a few Aminals, but he never took his eyes from the carnival ahead, and underneath . . . Erasmus. He hoped.

  He heard wings. The war dragon landed on an abandoned car, crushing it. Glass flew.

  “Outta my way, asshole.”

  The dragon squinted down at him.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Now, move. I don’t have time for you.”

  The dragon spread its wings, blocking the road.

  Jack sighed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  The dragon bellowed.

  “Fine.” Jack backed up ten paces and stared at the beast. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  The dragon inhaled and the great bellows of its fire organ rumbled into the air.

  Jack waited. He waited until the creature’s mouth was open, just before it erupted. Then he drew Rosa and vaporized the special bone at the back of the dragon’s throat that capped the furnace in its belly. The monster’s head exploded as the force of its over-filled lungs pushed the full contents of its fire organ out unchecked.

  Jack dove for cover as the neck of the headless dragon flailed about, spewing a stream of flame in all directions like a wild hose.

  As the lungs collapsed, the long neck fell to the ground and the last of the fire streamed into a nearby building. Jack could hear the air inside the structure whine, higher and higher, until the entire building exploded, snuffing the flame from the dragon’s corpse.

  Jack stood and dusted himself off. “Asshole.”

  § § §

  Kraxus stood waist deep in the ocean, his spines crackling and glowing. His mouth erupted in darkness and a beam of white struck the biodroid. But it had the same shielding as the saucer craft, and the blast was deflected. Kraxus breathed again with the same result. Entire city blocks exploded. The death toll was catastrophic.

  Kraxus marched out of the ocean and the two titans grappled. A drill pierced the monster-god’s side, and he felt his energy, his life force, being sucked through the wound. He bellowed and struck the biodroid with his tail, knocking the drill loose and the invader to the ground where it crushed a commuter train. Kraxus leaped onto the robot, which fired thrusters. It crashed through four buildings and left the Destroyer flat on his face.

  Kraxus stood and shook his head as the biodroid flew by, blasting him with beams and missiles. Kraxus breathed his dark energy, but each time the shield deflected it. Under a steady barrage, attack after attack, the Destroyer began to tire. He stumbled back and was forced deeper into the city. The biodroid’s tail struck him in the head as it flew past, and Kraxus dropped to one knee. The island shook. His face was cracked, and one eye no longer glowed.

  The biodroid landed on a street in midtown between two skyscrapers. It spun its drills, stepped forward, and opened fire. The Destroyer blocked the marauding torpedoes and beam weapons with his terrible breath, but it was only defensive. The biodroid’s shield held fast. And the drills were getting closer.

  § § §

  Jack walked through the door of Erasmus’s office. At the top of the grand staircase, Zen-ji stared down at him. The gunslinger stepped to the right and readied himself. The samurai nodded, and Jack did the same. A long moment of silence passed between them as the subterranean complex shuddered from the battle above. Both men were strong. Both men were fast. Both knew, regardless who won, the battle would b
e over quickly.

  Jack drew, fired, and missed. The samurai had already leaped from the stairs, sword raised in one hand while the other flung curved, twin-sided blades, three at a time. Jack vaporized them as they spun through the air, but each traveled in an arc like a boomerang, and he had to move back and forth to hit them all. He wasn’t keeping pace.

  The samurai had been ready for him.

  A flying blade struck Jack’s shoulder. His torso twisted, sending wide the shot that would have killed his opponent. The samurai swung his sword as he landed. The massive blade cleaved Jack’s right hand, taking three fingers and cutting Rosa in half. She shattered in sparks as Jack’s fingertips bounced over the ground.

  Jack stumbled back from the force of the blow and ran into the wall right next to the fire alarm. “Gotcha.” He smirked and pulled the lever.

  Erasmus had wired the roof to blow in case the office was raided, and the alarm was the trigger. A hundred thousand gallons of water, the full contents of the squid tank, burst through the roof. The weight was crushing.

  A mechanical gunslinger doesn’t float, and he doesn’t need to breathe. And in the water, the samurai would be slow. The odds were even. Now it was anyone’s fight.

  Zen-ji swam for the stairs, but Jack pulled him back. The Japanaman swung with his sword, and Jack dodged. He watched the blade slice through the water an inch from his eyes. Then he slammed the ten-foot samurai to the floor with the strength of his draw arm. Zen-ji raised his sword again, but before he could strike, long tentacles grabbed them both.

  Archie the giant squid squeezed through the hole in the roof and wrapped samurai and gunslinger in the vise of his massive tentacles. Zen-ji cut one only to be smothered by three more. His sword was immobilized, and the air was crushed from his lungs. It bubbled to the surface in a dance. The massive squid thrashed the samurai from side to side.