She heard wincing and pained moans behind her, which she hoped were Talon and Chandra getting their ass out of Dodge.
“You next!” Grognard said, the end of his word devolving into a growl as she heard steel tear leather and flesh.
She felt a blood-slicked hand reach out and push her backward. Eastwood filled the doorway, pressed on all sides. His coat turned aside some of the blows, but not nearly enough. Ree grabbed the geek by the collar as she felt something pulling her back, and the three of them toppled onto the cold concrete floor of Grognard’s. She saw another spectral hand slam the door closed, breaking bones and severing limbs in a very un-cartoon-y fashion.
“Holy shit!” Ree said, the lack of immediate mortal danger reminding her just how many times she’d been stabbed, cut, and bludgeoned.
And they said I hit the healing limit last time. That’s just fucking great.
Grognard was there, with glasses of water and his medical kit. She assumed Drake was still with the brew, working on their Hail Mary.
Eastwood did his best to brace the door while Grognard bandaged wounds with the rapidity of an EMT on speed.
“Were you a medic or something?” Ree asked as her boss tore off part of her pants to get at the wound along her shin. He washed the muck and blood out, then glopped so much antiseptic on it that Ree nearly shot straight up in the air.
“Something. You can wrap the arm yourself. And keep your head elevated.”
“How’s the beer bomb?” Ree asked, but Grognard had already moved on. Chandra and Talon were unresponsive, but looked like they were still breathing.
“Not ready,” Eastwood said.
Ree looked at the door, where Eastwood was as much leaning on the door for support as bracing it against the hordes.
“Where did she get all of these things?” Ree asked.
“Lucretia has been at this for quite a while. Anyone who’s been in the game keeps some resources back. But I didn’t expect that she’d go this far, not for something that she frakking stole from me in the first place!”
Chapter Nine
Once More, with Feeling
A hundred fists hammered at the sturdy wood of the thick front door at Grognard’s Grog and Games. Ree pressed her back against the door, her boots sliding on the smooth floor of the concrete, failing to find a good grip. The shop was a total wreck—games, cards, figures, and props scattered everywhere, drinks spilled across the bar, tables upended and shattered. Ree wanted to think that the gnomes couldn’t make it much worse, but the “getting eaten alive” part banished that thought pretty fast.
“What the fuck has gotten into those little guys?” Ree asked. Pearson’s sewer gnomes were already more like ghouls than the helpful creatures in David the Gnome or the curious childlike tinkerers from D&D, but this was a whole new level of rabid.
Eastwood stood beside her, leaning into the door with one shoulder, cuts and bruises scored across his face and hands.
“Don’t know, but we can’t hold out long like this. And if they get in, we’re bantha pudu.”
Ree could feel the scraping and scratching at the door, then a louder thud.
That was no gnome. Ree took a millisecond to consider what else might be out there, but it didn’t really matter, since it probably wanted them dead just as much as the tiny creatures.
“How we doing back there?” Ree shouted to the back room.
“A short while longer, sad to say!” Drake answered, his voice hoarse.
Ree cursed under her breath. “We’re not made of time out here. Either the gnomes have made themselves a battering ram, or there’s a cave Troll out there!”
“It wouldn’t be a cave Troll. They hate the smell down here. Sewer Troll, maybe,” Eastwood said.
“Thanks, Mr. Monster Manual,” Ree said, short temper unleashing the full power of her snark. “How does this help us not get dead?”
Beat.
“It doesn’t,” Eastwood admitted.
“Then I don’t need to know. Hurry up, guys!” Ree shouted again.
Eastwood nudged her. “Get to a weapon. I’ve got this.”
“That’s idiotic. The door will cave in as soon as I move.”
“Trust me. We need to be ready.”
“I trust you, but I still think it’s stupid.”
“I’ll take it,” Eastwood said, pushing her away from the door.
What the fuck is it about Saturdays? Ree asked herself as she felt the door splintering behind her.
Ree looked to Uncle Joe. “Do you have anything left? For the door, for crowd control, anything?”
Joe flipped through his binders. Most of the pages were empty. “I lost most of the cards I had on consignment in the curse. This was just what I had on me.”
“I don’t need Serra Angels here. I’d take some Thallids, even.”
Joe shook his head. “You don’t want Thallids. The last time someone used Thallids, it ended up like VanderMeer’s Finch.”
“Didn’t see that one. But we need something, Joe.”
Joe pulled a card out of a sleeve, looking at it like it was his child. “If it’s the only way.”
“It’s the only way!” Ree said as she felt splintering wood bite into her back. The Die Hard mojo was almost gone, and she could feel world-annihilating fatigue at the edge of her mind.
“It’s not the only way!” shouted Drake from the back. “The brew is ready!”
“Thank God,” Uncle Joe said.
“Can you get it out here?” Ree shouted.
In response, Drake wheeled a cart with a glass jug filled with many gallons of a dark amber-brown liquid.
Grognard met Drake in the bar section and guided the jug over to the door.
“How exactly is this going to work?” Ree asked.
“The glass is warded against the effects of the beer,” Grognard said, spinning the cart so that it would fit through the door. “But if we break it, it’ll go off like an omnidirectional mine.”
“Won’t that take out the door, too?” Ree asked.
“That’s why as soon as we shut the door, we run.”
Ree’s eyes went wide. “No one told me this plan involved running away from explosions and jumping at the last second to avoid getting killed.”
“We’re not rich with options here, kid,” Grognard said.
He was right. The store was already ruined, and if they wanted to get out alive, it’d take something extreme.
She went over to help Drake drag Talon, Chandra, and Shade into the back room, where there’d be at least one more barrier between them and the explosion.
“So we’re going to hide up in the wreckage there?” Ree asked, pointing at the game store section.
“Seems like,” Grognard said.
They did their best to arrange the downed geeks as comfortably as possible in the back room, then jogged out toward the door.
The dramatic and fatalistic part of her mind wanted to do something stupidly cliché and grab Drake for one good smooch before they kicked the jug outside, but she was too tired for a grand gesture, especially a stupid one.
Down, girl. If getting one smooch is the only thing you can think to do before maybe dying, you’re doing it wrong.
What she really wanted to do was write that letter to her dad. Or to the Rhyming Ladies, Bryan, and the Blins. Anyone, someone who would remember her as something other than the doomed barhand at Grognard’s.
“Here goes nothing,” Ree said, propping herself up on a table, the permanently borrowed jian by her side.
“No. You go that way,” Eastwood said, gesturing to the store section. “This is a two-person job. You’ve done enough.”
Ree’s oppositional defiant impulses flared. She wanted to fight again. But he was right. There was no reason for them all to stand by waiting and then have to go running. This wasn’t an action movie.
Eastwood held the door ready, and Grognard pushed the cart back and forth, building up momentum. Drake offered an arm to he
lp Ree hobble over to the store section, where they took cover behind one of the overturned tables. Even after everything else, Drake still had his rifle at the ready, as if he’d actually be using it. Whatever version of Boy Scouts they had in Avalon were very impressive.
Grognard counted down, and after he called one, Eastwood pulled open the door. As he did, Grognard shoved the jug forward, his timing perfect. The cart picked up several creatures in its path, and Ree saw the whole thing go off the side of the walkway as the door slammed closed. Eastwood and Grognard dove one each to a side.
The subsequent BOOM! sounded strangely like the kind of burp you made after shotgunning a half-yard of beer. Not that Ree had any idea what that sounded like. Nope, she definitely hadn’t made it herself back in college, followed by her being sick for a day and a half.
She was a writer, after all. Creative license. Definitely not the other thing.
The explosion tore the door off its hinges, a plume of amber-brown flame gushing through the doorway and filling her vision of the bar section.
The wave of heat rolled over the table and dropped onto Ree like a five-ton cartoon weight. She dropped to the floor, huddling behind the table with Drake beside her.
But a moment later, the heat faded. She looked up over the table and saw the roof and floor of the bar scorched black.
But on either side were Eastwood and Grognard, shaking themselves out and wobbling to their feet.
And out the door, Ree saw nothing.
Not a fucking thing. For the first time in what seemed like forever. It had been maybe two hours, but it felt like she’d been in and out of that now-absent door for a week.
“Are they gone?” Ree asked as she and Drake hobbled back toward the bar.
Grognard stepped into the doorway. He looked left, and he looked right. And most important, nothing tackled, stabbed, or jumped him.
He put his hands on his hips. “Good riddance.”
Ree fist-pumped, then regretted the action as it tore open one of her cuts. She strung together some dockhand-worthy obscenities but kept walking with Drake to the door.
“Next up, Lucretia,” Eastwood said. His voice was determined, but he was a dead man walking. Each step looked like it cost him minutes off his life.
Grognard looked a bit better, but not much. Drake was in the best shape of any of them, only fairly bedraggled. She blamed it on his unflappable pseudo-Britishness.
“Are we quite certain that it is necessary to seek justice right now? We’re hardly in any shape for another melee.”
“After a stunt like this, she’s not going to waltz into market and make herself an easy target,” Grognard said. “We finish this . . . now.”
“She can’t have much left in her,” Eastwood said, clearly trying to psych himself up. “Not after all that go-se.”
Ree mustered as much askance-itude as possible. “So we’re just going to go stomping through the sewer, most of us dead on our feet, in the hopes that the person we’re after doesn’t have a contingency plan? It may be the concussions talking, but that sounds idiotic.”
Grognard growled. “She can’t get away with this crap. Even half-dead, there’re four of us.” He looked at Uncle Joe. “Five if you want in. How much has she cost you tonight?”
A wave of pain passed over Joe’s face. “I lost count at sixty-five hundred dollars.”
“And?” Grognard asked, a question so leading it was close to stealing the next base.
Joe threw up his hands in frustration. “I’m down to crap commons and resource cards, man. I’m tapped out.”
“If you won’t go, I’ll do this myself,” Eastwood said, taking up the simple one-handed sword he’d been using since his lightsaber went out. He crossed to a mound of broken, bent, and mangled weapons, rummaging through the detritus to pull out a hand-size buckler.
What? It’s not like you haven’t done things just as stupid before, Ree told herself. But this felt different. It felt more like the Alamo or Marathon, despite the fact that they’d already come through the “big” battle.
Ree took a step toward the doorway, facing the room to block the guys off from leaving. Though she couldn’t properly do that without putting her back to the tunnel, which would be asking for trouble. She settled for leaning against the wall by the door.
“Can’t we find her with a tracking spell, you know, after we’ve had a chance to sleep and see a real doctor? Eastwood, you did this earlier with the ring. And if she’s skipped town, we call up some friends and put together a posse. If she wants to run in the underground, someone will notice her. Plus, Lucretia doesn’t strike me as someone who’d be good at keeping a low profile.”
Drake stepped in to her aid. “Ms. Reyes is correct—pursuing the witch now would be playing into her plans. We have wounded to tend to, and the proud, if bloodied, store to protect.”
“Thank God, someone’s skipped the crazy pills,” Ree said.
Grognard cracked his neck, loud. “It’s crazy, and I’m doing it. Eastwood and I have come through our share of tight scrapes just fine. You can stay here and mind the shop.”
With that, Grognard grabbed his glaive-guisarme and walked out into the tunnel. Eastwood fetched a flare out of his jacket, along with a lanyard. He followed Grognard, cracking the glow stick as he went.
Ree face-palmed. “Clearly, we’re in crazy town. So let’s at least be smart about being dumb.”
“Shall we join the light brigade or defend the fort?” Drake asked.
Ree turned to Joe. “Can you watch the others?” She fished around in her still-mucked pockets and pulled out a grimy key ring. It smelled like metallic ass. “You can even lock yourself in, because Grognard is a paranoid bastard. And if we aren’t back by the time they get up, just hightail it.”
Joe regarded the keys with a bit of fear, but he took them, nodded, and made his way to the office door, muttering to himself.
They could get lucky and find Lucretia all repentant and happy to go with them to her judgment. Ree could also win a lottery she never entered and be whisked away by Jennifer Lawrence to a life of luxury for no good reason.
She looked to Drake. “Theirs not to reason why.” Then she set off through the door.
The inventor picked up his rifle and followed.
Chapter Ten
Daedalus, You Dick
Ree and Drake took the left-hand path away from Grognard’s, following the older geeks’ best bet at where to find Lucretia.
But as they turned the corner, someone or something hit a toggle on the universe.
Instead of a tunnel, the pair found themselves under a vast dome, with a starscape mural on the ceiling. The walls had opened up at the top, ending twelve feet up. Where there had been slowly cracking concrete and a base-running sluice for waste, the floor was now all cobbled stone, with small plants and tufts of grass peeking out through the sandy mortar here and there. And where the walls had been rough concrete, they were now finely layered brick. The air was crisper, a subtle breeze replacing the stale, musty air of the tunnel.
“The fuck?” Ree asked, turning in place. The corner behind her was gone, replaced by a solid wall. She stepped up and pushed on the stone, which was solid and cold and totally not there five seconds ago.
“My word,” Drake said, turning as well. “This must be Lucretia’s doing as well.”
“But how?” Ree asked, prodding at the wall. She closed her eyes and walked forward slowly, wondering if there was some kind of perception filter, like she had to shut her eyes to move through the illusion.
Bonking her nose and the goggles against the brick put the lie to that idea pretty damn quick.
“Balls,” Ree muttered. “Worth trying, though.”
She turned to face the path before her. The air was open, so if they could go over the walls, life would be way easier.
“Why don’t you bust out the aerothopter so we can take a look at what’s up?” Ree suggested.
Drake nodded, setting his
rifle against the wall and producing a folded-up brass-and-copper bundle. He set it on the ground before them and pushed a button. Ree backed up against the wall, in no particular mood to be smacked by a magically expanding pipe.
In fits and starts, the device unfolded and expanded, rocking from side to side as it wobbled its way to its full size. Totally expanded, the aerothopter was the odd lovechild of a Leonardo da Vinci design and a modern helicopter. It was all frame and engine, no fuselage, no weaponry, and no comfortable seating. And since Ree lacked natural posterior padding, it made the thing an incredibly uncomfortable ride. Not to mention the fact that she was still afraid of heights.
But they needed to catch up to Lucretia, or at least find a way out of wherever it was that they’d ended up.
“Are you sure you can’t install some seating? I’d take cardboard, honestly,” Ree said.
“I’m sorry, Ree, but I haven’t found a way to add any material that close to the core without ruining the folding schema. It’s rather like the Japanese tradition of origami, actually. Folds must be done in a certain order, to a certain degree, in order to preserve the integrity of the components and ensure the appropriate final shape.”
Ree shrugged, climbing into what passed for the passenger seat. “Well, if you get it figured out, I’ll make it worth your while. I am happy to reward innovation with milk shakes and crack fries.”
Drake made a typically masculine happy sound at the mention of the super-unhealthy delicacies. He may be a gentleman from an alternate Britain, but his palate had taken quite well to twenty-first-century American fare.
The inventor took the pilot’s seat, and started the engine. Ree held the rifle, which was more secure than tying it to a crossbar. Plus, it gave her a chance to play a rails shooter if anything nasty showed up.
The vehicle lifted off, rotor blades less than a foot from each side of the walls.
“Keep it steady . . . ” Ree said, her eyes glued on the walls. Running a rotor into the wall would go . . . poorly.
Drake pulled the aerothopter up and out of the hall, and Ree exhaled. They moved forward, and Ree took in the labyrinth below.
Attack the Geek: A Ree Reyes Side-Quest Page 9