Rescue From Planet Pleasure

by Mario Acevedo

  A bluish light darted through the shrubs along the side of the ravine. Without breaking stride, I readied the carbine.

  “Don’t shoot,” a voice warned. El Cucuy leapt over the bushes.

  I relaxed my grip on the trigger. “How’d you find us?”

  “Marina told me to expect you.”

  I was about to ask when and how and realized these local supernaturals must have their own unearthly Internet.

  We climbed out of the ravine and onto flat ground that rose toward the butte. From this vista I could see across the canyon floor. To the west, a quarter of a mile away, a fan of green and white light shimmered.

  Jolie pointed. “Phaedra.”

  If we could see her, she could see us.

  The ground trembled. All around Phaedra, spouts of earth showered upward, each revealing an orange aura. Vampires. So many that they appeared like a glowing rash spreading against the landscape. Had we proceeded on our original route, we would’ve run straight into them. Rainelle’s gambit had worked. We had sidestepped Phaedra’s trap.

  We sped up and continued toward the butte.

  “Pity,” Jolie’s fangs glistened, “I was looking forward to a good brawl.”

  El Cucuy stopped suddenly. Four vampires emerged from the folds in the ground between us and the butte. Talons and fangs extended, they charged us.

  Without hesitation, I blasted one. Levered the Marlin. Blasted another. The silver/depleted-uranium slugs ripped into the vampires like a pickax.

  El Cucuy spread his arms and snagged one, scooping and crushing him in his grip. The vampire snarled and snapped at the boogieman but his fangs only skipped across the metallic hide.

  Jolie had drawn a .45. She fired, and the remaining vampire’s head exploded.

  El Cucuy tossed his mangled victim aside. “Keep going. Don’t let them bog us down.”

  These vampires were outliers, put here in case we scored an end run around Phaedra’s main force, which we had. They may have been used to intimidating humans but they were fodder against us. No doubt new vampires eager to win Phaedra’s approval. Their job was simple. Slow us down until her army could envelop us.

  I plucked two rounds from my cartridge belt to top off the Marlin. I aimed at the main force. At this range, I could only hit a big target, but if I fired into a cluster of auras, I was certain to hit at least one vampire. I picked out a group and squeezed off a round. An orange splash from an erupting aura let me know I had hit my mark. I fired again and again. Two more splashes. The group scattered to save themselves.

  Phaedra held position behind a phalanx of bloodsuckers, out of range. I tried a shot anyway, hoping for a lucky hit. I missed.

  “They’ve stopped advancing,” Jolie announced.

  The vampires hadn’t just stopped but were retreating. I gave a snort of ridicule. We’d beaten Phaedra without much of a struggle. Maybe this was a good omen for the rest of our adventure.

  At this distance, Phaedra was a green and white spot. I tracked her as she moved toward a Cress Tech tower. WTF? Her aura brightened like she was stoking a fire. A plume shot from her, splattered against the top of the tower, and shrouded the psychotronic diviner in sparks of psychic energy. She was punching the Cress Tech panic button. If she couldn’t stop us, then they could, or at least slow us down. For all their gung-ho bravado and military hardware, there were being played by Phaedra.

  My elation sank back into unease. I glanced at my watch. 11:27 p.m. Less than twenty minutes to reach the Sun Dagger. It had taken Cress Tech an hour to respond the first time we’d tripped their alarm. Yesterday, less than thirty minutes. My legs churned with renewed urgency. I could sense the jaws of disaster begin to close.

  Jolie and El Cucuy raced ahead, Jolie nimble as a doe, El Cucuy galloping like a two-legged horse. Looking back at Phaedra, I saw that she was gone and that her army of vampires was shrinking.

  We sprinted over and around the large rocks on the slope skirting the butte. The tall cylinder of mountain towered before us. Jolie bounded against the face of the butte and scrambled up through a chute between the stone columns. El Cucuy jumped behind her, then it was my turn. The chute narrowed like the neck of a funnel.

  Someone at the top called for us. Marina. She greeted each of us as we climbed out of the chute and into the open air. Moonlight painted the summit in muted hues.

  A familiar thrumming chewed through the silence and gnawed my kundalini noir. From the south approached the green and red navigation lights of a helicopter.

  Marina led us up the terraced summit to the slabs hiding the petroglyph. She reached into a shirt pocket and unfolded the rubbing of the Sun Dagger. She crouched between the slabs and ducked beneath. Jolie went next. Then me. El Cucuy stood guard.

  I crowded against Jolie who leaned against Marina. A dagger of moonlight fell between the slabs and across the petroglyph. She placed the rubbing over the carving.

  The helicopter grew louder, and I forced my kundalini noir to hold still.

  I reached over Jolie’s shoulder toward the petroglyph. Marina clasped my wrist and matched it with Coyote’s tracing. The dagger of light sliced across my knuckles.

  She eased the paper from underneath my hand, careful not to disturb my position on the carving. My kundalini noir quivered again. How precise would we have to be to keep Jolie and me from shooting into oblivion? I swallowed and the more I tried to remain steady, the more my insides trembled. I’d be calmer defusing a bomb.

  Jolie placed her hand over mine. La Llorona let go and extended her left wrist to show us the Rolex. 11:43 p.m. Showtime. The second hand raced around the dial.

  The helicopter’s rotors boomed like we were inside a drum. My kundalini noir screamed inside me. My mouth went bone dry.

  A glance upward. The moon was a white platter of light. A glance behind. El Cucuy grinned. Better you than me. A glance to the Rolex, then to my hand on the petroglyph. Nada.

  Jolie flexed her fingers against mine.

  The second hand swept past the twelve. Nothing.

  Outwardly, we were still as statues, but inside the tension was tearing us apart.

  Marina whispered, “There must be a blockage.”

  “What does that mean?” I whispered back. I rested the carbine against the rock and took the rubbing from Marina. As I positioned the paper on the petroglyph the gun belt dug into my back. I unbuckled the belt and handed it to El Cucuy, saying, “Hang on to this for a minute.” I placed the rubbing right over the carving.

  Marina scooted backwards and got behind me. Out the corner of my eye I saw her raise one boot. Then she kicked me in the ass.

  I bumped against Jolie. She bumped against the rock. Something snatched my hand, and we blasted through the petroglyph.

  ***

  Chapter Seventeen

  I had the sensation of being caught between being awake and asleep. No sound. Just the impression I was moving.

  Then came a howl, growing louder, and in the next instant, all was again silent and I was surrounded by light.

  I blinked and found myself standing upright. I faced a landscape of rolling hills covered in what looked like grass and a pattern of dense green shrubs. The sky was an immense yellow bowl bisected by a thin black line. I studied the thin black line as it looped over me from horizon to horizon. Then I figured out what it was—the planet’s ring. A band of blue rimmed the horizon. A quarter of a mile away stood a collection of tall structures covered in shiny facets like they’d been sculpted out of quartz.

  D-Galtha?

  The air was cool, temperate. No smells. I flexed my knees and measured the pull of gravity. Seemed earth-like. I still wore my clothes. But the carbine and my gun belt remained back on earth. Shit.

  When Coyote had first demonstrated the power of the petroglyph, we had been whisked across the U.S. in a blink. This trip took much longer. Maybe traversing the galaxy takes time.

  Where was Jolie?

  I sensed movement to my right.


  Jolie stood beside me, her eyes the size of eggs. She blinked in supreme astonishment. Her eyebrows inched upward as she gaped at our surroundings.

  “You okay?” I asked. My voice sounded normal so the atmosphere was similar to Earth’s.

  Slowly, her mouth closed. She kept blinking and her eyes shrank to normal size.

  But she had no aura. I raised one hand. Neither did I. Without the ability to see auras then we had probably lost night vision as well.

  Jolie surveyed the area about our feet. We stood on a path made of red hexagonal bricks that curved across a lawn of dense grass. Other than the weird-ass sky and the funky buildings we could’ve been on Earth.

  She patted her arms and chest as if to prove to herself she was here. “Can’t speak for you, but this is some fucked-up bullshit.”

  “Could be worse,” I replied. “I mean what are the chances? The atmosphere could’ve been corrosive high-pressure methane.” I breathed deep and exhaled dramatically. “Air seems fine.”

  Jolie hopped upward and levitated to a height of twenty feet and then sank back down.

  I did the same. At the top of my jump, I got a better view of the odd buildings in the distance. When my feet returned to the ground, I said, “At least we have that power. When we get a chance, let’s test our strength.” I swept an arm across the vista. “If nothing else, this planet looks like a bizarre theme park.”

  “Now what?” she asked, her tone panicked and angry. “So we’re on D-Galtha? How do we find Carmen? This is like landing in Moscow when the person we’re looking for could be in Los Angeles.”

  “Why don’t we think positive?” I replied. “How many earth vampires could be here? I’ll bet only one … besides us.”

  “That’s fucking brilliant, Felix.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Carmen! Carmen! Where are you?” Jolie placed a hand behind her ear, waited for an answer that never came, then smirked. “Nada. Am I not surprised?”

  “Then we go looking for her.” I began down the path toward the glassy structures. Jolie fell in step beside me.

  My kundalini noir remained at a steady vibrato of alarm. I had to assume we were on D-Galtha but there were other possibilities. Maybe we had landed on the wrong planet. Maybe we were in a computer simulation. Maybe I was dreaming.

  The path beneath us wound between two shallow hills. As we approached the structures I could see they were high-rise buildings some sixty stories tall, each of a golden or silver hue, and covered in rows of dimpled windows. Rounding a bend, we slowed our steps and proceeded hesitantly toward the closest building, a glassy structure with golden highlights that stood on our side of a broad plaza paved with large red tiles.

  Some kind of erect creatures … walked? … slid? … across the plaza. The creatures had yellow heads and shoulders, red upper torsos, and a lower torso of red and yellow horizontal bands. Noodle-like dreads hung from the backs of their heads. A red cone or skirt covered their feet, if they had feet. Long spindly arms dangled from their shoulders. Many carried flat rectangular objects. Books? Briefcases? Laptops?

  I counted perhaps fifty creatures crisscrossing the plaza, gliding in and out through arches along the base of the golden building. Other similar creatures traversed at a higher speed on bridges connected to the other buildings. I figured these were high-speed walkways like in an airport terminal. Everyone moved with a purpose, as if they had business on their mind.

  On one hand, the scene was remarkably pedestrian. Literally. It appeared to mimic the commercial bustle of any Earth city. But on the other hand, the bizarre creatures, the fantastic buildings, and the garish primary hues—red! blue! yellow!—reminded me of a Frank R. Paul cover from a vintage science-fiction magazine.

  Jolie asked, “Do we just go up to these guys and ask for directions?”

  How to answer? I wished I was dreaming. Assuming we were on D-Galtha, our predicament was simply too overwhelming to comprehend.

  Jolie grasped my wrist and pulled me off the path to shortcut across the lawn. As soon as we stepped on the grass, or whatever it was, blue rings began to emanate from the bottoms of our feet. The rings floated across the grass and faded away. We must’ve trigged an alarm.

  The heads of the creatures closest to us rippled in our direction. A few slowed to watch. None acted too concerned.

  Jolie and I gingerly stepped back onto the path but the blue rings kept growing from under our feet.

  “If they wanted us to keep off the grass,” she groused, “they should’ve put up a sign.”

  The creatures in the middle of the plaza parted to make way for a pair of their kind. These two each rode a contraption that resembled a hover Segway.

  A voice in my head yelled: Run!

  Another voice yelled back: Where to?

  Jolie clasped my fingers and squeezed. I squeezed back, afraid … make that terrified. My right hand tightened, ready to snatch the revolver from inside my jacket.

  The two creatures halted their hover Segways in front of us, levitating about a foot off the ground. Up close, these creatures were at least ten feet tall, and appeared taller on their floating machines. The one on the right was a bit leaner. Both creatures wore a blue pillbox hat, which cinched the notion they were cops. Or mall security. They stared at us with white eyes inside deep black sockets. A horizontal slit of a mouth cracked open across the bottom half of an otherwise featureless face.

  The creatures tilted their heads as they studied us. Their dreadlocks began to undulate. I couldn’t read anything in their eyes. I couldn’t hear them communicate. I saw nothing on their bodies like a belt or a weapon.

  I raised my left hand. “Hi.”

  The skinnier creature touched the steering bar of his (her?) vehicle. The rings quit growing from under our feet.

  So far, they hadn’t threatened us, but that didn’t soothe me.

  The creature on the left tossed something small and shiny toward Jolie and me. The object stopped above us and rotated like a spinning coin. Then it extended into a rod, which in turn sprouted ribs like an umbrella. The umbrella grew and fell over us like a cage.

  My kundalini noir rang in panic, and I wanted to tear at the cage, but I started to tremble uncontrollably. Then my jacket melted off my torso and fluttered to the ground. Followed by my shirt. My pants. My underwear. My socks and boots vibrated right off my feet. Within a moment, Jolie and I stood naked, helpless in a trembling palsy, our clothes and possessions piled around our feet.

  The umbrella clamped tight around us, forming a missile shape. The metal was cold and unyielding. Squeezing. Mashing Jolie and me together like sausages. In other circumstances, pressed against a naked Jolie in an S&M cage might have brought me to the money shot, but now, my kundalini noir had my mind screaming in horror.

  The creature on the right touched the handlebar again. The umbrella cage shot from the ground and carried Jolie and me into the sky.

  ***

  Chapter Eighteen

  Imprisoned in our flying cage, Jolie and I raced through the sky above D-Galtha, my fear meter pegged deep into the freak-out zone. Then my brain said, “Screw it,” and embraced a Zen-like calm. Hunker down, wait, and hope for the best.

  The wind blasted through the metal ribs of the streamlined capsule locked around us. My naked flesh felt cool, and Jolie’s hair whipped against the back of my neck. I couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t smell anything, either. I couldn’t do much except watch. With this paralysis I was little more than a pair of eyeballs.

  The landscape scrolled below. Without a scale of reference, I couldn’t tell how high we were but I guessed a couple of thousand feet.

  A jade carpet of vegetation covered the planet, the landscape dotted with small clusters of crystal buildings connected by roads and narrow winding paths. Everything seemed uniformly spread out and orderly like we were flying over a well-groomed, never-ending campus.

  The paralysis ebbed. I could blink, then swivel my eyes. I was able to move my fa
ce … a little. Enough to grimace.

  Where were we headed? I had assumed the locals who had captured us were cops, but they could have been custodians. Maybe Jolie and I were on the way to a landfill.

  Or an incinerator.

  Something flashed at our side, then disappeared from view.

  I spied movement on the roads. From this height, the vehicles looked tiny as specks but they could’ve been the size of eighteen wheelers.

  Another flash caught my attention and I managed to lock on it. Light reflected from a circular object of a dull pewter color and with a diameter of a hundred feet. The object crossed a few hundred feet below us, made an abrupt flat turn to fly parallel to our course, then made another abrupt turn and began to descend. As it receded, I could tell it was disk shaped with a spherical center: a flying saucer.

  The saucer approached one of the crystal buildings, which had flying saucers stuck to its sides like gigantic petals. The one I was tracking docked in a gap between two others. A moment later, another saucer uncoupled from the building, backed away, and lifted straight up, accelerating into a blur that disappeared high into the atmosphere.

  The saucer port scrolled out of view. We passed over more crystal towers and roads and acres of green rolling hills.

  Our missile-cage tipped downward, and fear poked its ugly head from the box I’d shoved it into. I rolled my eyes to see where we were going. Our trajectory aimed us at an orange crystal structure, only this one was long and horizontal, with a rounded roof like a Quonset hut. The far end of the building faced a copse of earth-like trees that surrounded a large blue pond, the first evidence of water.

  We dove straight toward the building. I hoped we weren’t going to smash into it, but we weren’t slowing down. I tried to make my fingers touch Jolie, to reassure her that we’d survive—or that we’d perish together—but nothing but my eyes seemed to work.