Paws

by Stefan Petrucha

  My last count puts me at thirteen. I’m not great at math, but I’m pretty sure that means there’s one more to go. I saved Snuffles first, but I’ve been saving another special guy for last—a pointer, because he’s so damn frisky. They’re hunting dogs: naturally fearless, lots of stamina, bred for sport, always raring to go. That’s the problem. He won’t sit still. I spot him easy enough, but the trick is getting ahold of him. He’s running across Fangu’s lava-lamp-like back, chasing one of Monsteroso’s swinging tendrils, barking his head off like he knows what he’ll do with it if he catches it.

  Whenever he sees me coming, despite the hunks of metal and powdered rock tumbling from the widening ceiling cracks, he thinks I want to play. Each time I almost catch him, he slips through some thrashing creature crack too small for me to follow. On the lighter side, since he does want to play, whenever I lose track, he barks so I can find him. If I fall behind, he waits for me to catch up. It’d be great fun if he wasn’t about to be flattened.

  I hop onto the head of Grottu, King of the Insects, figuring I always do my best thinking atop a giant ant. But Grottu’s not having it.

  “I am Grottu!”

  He pokes me with his antennae, yammering about conquering mankind. Still, it gives me an idea. If you’re squeamish about bug guts, you might want to skip this part.

  What with all the shaking, it’s tough to swing a blade, but I manage to sever a stick-sized bit of big ant antenna. Grottu does this insect screech, but it’ll grow back in a flash, and at least that’ll shut him up for a while.

  The pointer sits on the rocky belly of Sserpo, the Creature who Crushed the Earth, wagging his tail. I shake the piece of antenna at him. “Here, boy! Here! Look what I’ve got!”

  He shakes excitedly, wags his tail faster, and does that thing dogs do where they put their head down and keep their hindquarters up, ready to pounce.

  “Fetch!” I throw the antenna out the door.

  The good doggie goes diving after it. Just in time, too. I barely make it out myself before the kennel ceiling comes tumbling down. That doesn’t make the monsters very happy at all. It doesn’t damage them so much as rile them, and they weren’t the peaceful sort to begin with. The entrance is too small for them, but the wall around it is creaking, and it looks ready to give. Once they get here into the lab, there’s enough space for at least one of them to try to eat us.

  I grab my sacks and start scooping the pups back in. There’s only fifteen of them now, so they all fit in two. Then I realize someone’s missing.

  “Al! Al! Where are you?”

  In a single, completely unexpected moment, all the angst and agony, senseless death, ruptured memories, and buried remorse suddenly seem worth it. Blind Al staggers into view, the gooey end of the ant antenna stuck to the top of her head.

  “Wade! Something hit me! Am I bleeding?”

  It’s all I can do to keep from laughing so hard I’ll wet myself.

  “No! You’re fine.” She starts to reach for it. “But whatever you do, don’t touch it. You find us a way out?”

  “I did! Surprise, surprise, that OS is handicapped accessible. Couple of voice commands, and that exit back there opened up!”

  She points at a wall. A few yards over, there’s a sleek gray corridor with a wide ramp heading down. Boy, that’s one great operating system.

  “Do you know where it goes?”

  The floor shakes. Fissures open in the walls on either side of the kennel entrance.

  “You want to ask questions, or you want to run?”

  “Run, I guess.”

  I hand her one puppy sack and take the other, and we hightail it. As the wall collapses behind us, I turn back to see Grogg from the Black Pit and Zutak the Thing that Shouldn’t Exist stuck in the breach, fighting like Abbott and Costello to see who gets out first. The pressure from the other thirteen gets to be too much, and they all come sprawling into the lab.

  Another voice command seals the exit behind us, and we run down, down, down. The ramp turns on itself like a stairwell, but it’s plenty tall and wide enough to carry all sorts of equipment, and maybe even let a monster or two through.

  We’re not out of the woods yet. Thuds and crashes continue from above, but the deeper we go, the quieter it gets. In time, the hum of the machinery ahead dampens the rampaging-monster sounds to about the volume of the bass speaker on that irritating car stereo owned by the jerk who pulls up beside you at the light, too stupid to realize not everyone shares his crappy taste in music.

  We reach an open area that looks a lot like the one we left behind, but with no monsters and no damage. I lower the bag and let my doggies breathe.

  “A secret lab beneath the secret lab? How’d S.H.I.E.L.D. miss this?”

  Al puts a finger to her lips. “Wade, shh!”

  “No. I will not shh! I know it’s not ‘politic’ to criticize your employers, but come on! They’re the smartest, best-funded outfit on the face of the Earth, and they don’t notice there’s a whole second lab down here? Preston ought to be…”

  Her hand goes up, and she hunches over, listening. “Shh! You idiot! We’re not alone!”

  “Oh.”

  Once I quiet down, even I hear the heavy breathing. Sounds like someone’s been in a fight. Al, who’s much better with the whole audio-location thing than I am, points toward what looks like an examination table, but could be a really expensive reading chair. A pool of red liquid is seeping onto the floor from the space behind it.

  Weapons drawn, I approach on tippy-toe. Slowly, the feet and shapely legs of an unmoving body come into view.

  Oh, no.

  I’d recognize those gams anywhere. It’s Jane. She’s hurt. I inch forward and see that the reddish fluid is flowing out from somewhere high on her body. Her neck. Why? Because her head isn’t there to hold it in anymore.

  And there, crouching above her lifeless form, is the source of all that exhausted, heavy breathing.

  Dick.

  He looks like a kid who’s been caught trying to hide the hand of his murder victim in the cookie jar.

  “This isn’t what it looks like!”

  “Good thing, because it looks like you’re hovering over Jane’s headless body.”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  Emotionally speaking, I am having a tough day. At times like this—feeling raw because you just remembered how your dog died, and you’re enraged that the love of your life has been decapitated—when you leap through the air wielding dual katana, all you can really say is:

  “YEEARGH!”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE KATANA strike Dick’s arms. But instead of piercing muscle meat, the hardened tips are deflected. He must be wearing some kind of flexible, skintight armor under that suit. No problemo. His head’s vulnerable—I remember it bleeding back in the alley.

  “Let me explain!”

  I unleash a flurry of blows on his smug, masked face—a flurry, I tell you again! The feel of flesh and bone is much more satisfying.

  Hands up, he steps back, but I keep it coming. “You don’t understand!”

  After a count of eight, he finally gets the idea I won’t be listening to any more of his BS.

  “Have it your way!”

  But by then good ol’ Dick is backed into a wall. It’ll take a desperate Hail Mary move to get himself out. He tries one. Clenching his fists, he raises his arms and tries to drive his pointy elbows down toward my upper chest. Peh. I see it coming a mile away. I’m already bending over, focusing my fists on his abdomen. His elbows hit my shoulders.

  Hm. Those elbows aren’t only pointy, they’re hard as molded metal—the classy stuff. That’s good armor. I may try to get his tailor’s name out of him before I kill him.

  Stupid. The two sentences I spent admiring his duds give him a chance to bring a knee up into my chin. It’s as hard as the elbows, but bigger and driven by the stronger force of a leg muscle.

  My head snaps back, but it’s not as if I’m terribly i
nconvenienced. If this is going to be anything other than a slaughter, he still has to get himself out of this corner. Next, he tries a few feints, then throws himself to the side. My foot shoots out to trip him, but by then he’s in midair, landing on his hands and cartwheeling onto his feet near the puppies. Damn, he’s out!

  That cartwheel at the food festival wasn’t a one-off, after all. The piece of crud probably wanted me to catch him so he could slip me that flash drive. He was holding back.

  The pups are underfoot, Mr. Snuffles leading the junior pack. They’re all growling like they remember him.

  Dick sneezes. “Stupid mutts!”

  He looks at poor Mr. S. like he’s about to kick him, reminding me in a funny way of my dad. Bad move. There are only three things I’ve even thought of caring about during this whole mess. One died from misadventure, Dick’s already killed the other one, and now he’s threatening the third.

  I grab the nearest heavy object: the examining table. Sure, it’s bolted to the floor—but I’m so amped, I pull it up and send it into the center of Dick’s back with enough force to shatter a normal man’s spine. That armor saves him again, but the impact pushes him forward. His arms and legs bend behind him, but he doesn’t even have the decency to fall down.

  When the table clatters to the floor, the puppies scatter, resuming their barking at a safer distance. Grateful for the extra space, I use my guns to lay down some suppressing fire—into his gut. Dick jiggles like a stripper as the bullets hit, but otherwise stays put.

  Impressive.

  He runs, but I’m not into another chase. Besides, other than the ramp leading upstairs to the monster convention, there’s no way out. Speaking of monsters, it sounds like they’re pretty drunk up there, trashing the place like a rock band stuck in a fancy hotel room.

  I rush past Jane’s body to get to Dick, but slip and slide when I hit the puddle. That’s some really oily blood. Hasn’t even started coagulating.

  I’m nothing if not adaptable, so I twist with the momentum and slide right on up to Dick. Before he can offer to explain again, I grab his right hand and snap it back. I’m expecting to hear bone crack, but don’t.

  He does a full-body flip to break my grip, then takes a sweep at my legs. I jump and come down hard on an ankle. There are seven tarsal bones in the human ankle—but again, nothing cracks. The guns didn’t work, either, so I holster them and try the katana again.

  I swing for his head, and he blocks…

  …with his forearm? They hear the metallic clunk all the way in Peoria.

  Okay, so there’s more to Dick than it appears. And again, no that’s what she said jokes. What’s the freak got under there? (See previous sentence about this sort of joke.)

  In the half second I take to wonder why his arm isn’t sliced, he goes into a jump kick, sailing three feet up from a resting position. Not waiting to wonder about it this time, I grab his legs. Holding him up, I run him across the floor—right into some built-in shelves. That back has to give at some point.

  Shelf contents tumbling, he grabs the falling pieces and flings them at me. I get hit by a tablet computer, pens, and a coffee mug— all of which bounce off without stinging. But then he lucks out and latches on to a surgical saw. When I see that flying my way, I figure I should duck.

  Good decision, too. It embeds itself about six inches deep in the wall behind me.

  I rip it out and send it back. This time I don’t aim at his body, since that hasn’t exactly been working, but at his clothes, hoping for a peek at what’s going on under there. The saw sheers off a nice slice of fabric. Yep. Robotics.

  His head seems real enough, though. When I close the distance again, I grab his knuckleheaded skull under my arm and start slamming him into the nearest wall, over and over. This, at last, has the desired effect. Better yet, every time his head hits the wall, his robot arms snap out to the sides, like I’m yanking the string on one of those pull toys they put in baby cribs.

  The location of that string always made me uncomfortable.

  With Dick’s body twitching and his head feeling pulpier, I’m starting to think I may actually knock him out. But he gets a second wind, like someone gave him a new battery, and wrenches himself free. We stand toe-to-toe, grabbing each other by the shoulders and pushing each other’s chins up and away, trying to pull or push each other off our feet. Goes on like that a while, until we wind up breaking it off out of boredom and taking a few steps back.

  He comes running at me. I’m expecting another kick. Instead, he runs up my chest, clamps his legs around my neck, twists, and takes me down. Nice move. I’d applaud if it didn’t hurt so much. Before I can congratulate him, he picks me up and starts slamming me sideways, again and again, into another of those exam tables.

  He’s got me. He’s got me good. He’s slamming and slamming, harder and harder, until we both hear this loud SNAP!

  No, not my spine. I’ll give you a hint: It’s something I’m carrying. Not the guns. I left those on the floor. Not the katana. They’re sheathed along my back—hitting me sideways wouldn’t do squat to them. Think a minute. What else am I carrying? No, not the ’porter!

  That’s right. The ADD. The deadly nano-catalyst in a supposedly indestructible container. But we’ve already seen S.H.I.E.L.D. containment at work on the monster-goo tank, right?

  Between slams, I try to call a time-out. “Hold it! Wait!”

  Not having it, Dick hurls me down again. This time, I do my own Hail Mary: I draw a katana and brace the hilt against the table, the angle just so. When he slams me down, he smashes into it, wedging the blade in his robo-shoulder.

  It doesn’t go in deep—maybe an inch—but it’s enough to make him back off.

  Less worried about him, more worried about ending up a puddle of whining pinkish glop, I yank the ADD free from my belt. The light’s blinking like crazy, green-red-red-green, but I don’t need a code book to see the problem. It’s got a crack along the side. It’s not seeping—not yet, anyway—but I don’t plan on holding onto the damn thing much longer, let alone carrying it around in a fistfight.

  I set it on the table and point. “Dick, we can keep beating the crap out of each other anywhere else, with anything else, but don’t touch that, okay? It’s like home base. You’re gonna have to trust me on this. Got it?”

  Huh. What do you know? Looks like there won’t be any more fighting. I may already be a winner. The katana struck electronic gold. What would have been a flesh wound for a living body’s got Dick twitching like a dancing machine. His head’s flopping this way and that, like it’s about to come off.

  “Oh, never mind, then. You ready to say Uncle, Dick? I mean, Dick, do you want to say Uncle? Not that you’re my Uncle Dick.”

  “No, Deadpool. Not just yet.”

  His internal mechanisms whine, metal clicking into place.

  “Oh, Dick, you’re not rerouting all your power for one final, all-or-nothing strike, are you?”

  Head askew, he pulls the blade from his shoulder and levels it at me. “Yep.”

  I nod. “Then come to Papa.”

  We rush at each other. I was wrong about his speed before. He’s faster than I am, at least on foot. But half the key in most martial arts is using your opponent’s strength against them. I make it look as if I’m planning to butt heads with him, like we’re a couple of freaking rams in heat, but at the last second, I drop and let him go flying over me.

  The idea was for me to hop back up while his back was to me, then hit that weakened shoulder from behind. Didn’t realize how long it’d take him to stop. Matter of fact, he doesn’t stop at all—not intentionally.

  He sails right into the base of the exam table holding the ADD.

  “Oh, man! I told you to stay away from that!”

  “Sorry!”

  He stumbles away. His right arm’s twitching, and his body takes to dancing again—but try as he might with his snazzy moves, he’s no longer the most interesting thing in the room. That would
be the ADD. With the table tilted from the impact, the canister wobbles, rolls, and then stops right before falling. I’m all set to breathe an exaggerated sigh of relief when I spot the gleam swelling at the crack. Clear liquid flows from it, down to the table’s surface and onto the edge, where it beads into a single, clinging drop.

  And who, of course, is right beneath this single drop, wagging his tail?

  “Mr. Snuffles! Get out of there! Now!”

  Either I didn’t use any of those 165 words the average dog is supposed to understand, or Snuffles is below average. He stays put, twisting his head curiously up at his imminent demise, eyes wide, tail wagging, tongue lolling, as if saying:

  “Oh, boy! Oh, boy! What is it? I can’t wait to find out!”

  Stupid freaking dog. But I still love him.

  As I dive for him, everything goes slo-mo: me hurtling toward Mr. Snuffles and the deadly droplet dangling on a long strand, lowering toward him like a spider. I’m three quarters of the way there when the strand snaps. The nano-catalyst falls, nothing between it and Mr. Snuffles but air and gravity. I want to speed up, but being in midair, I don’t think that’s technically possible. I try anyway.

  Almost there…almost there…me and the droplet. The droplet and me. The droplet and Mr. Snuffles. Me, the droplet, and Mr. Snuffles.

  It’s a game of inches, but it won’t happen. I’m not going to get there in time to shove him out of the way. Fortunately for the dog, I’m good at quick decisions—real good. Unfortunately for me, they’re not always very smart decisions. I stretch my arm out ahead of me, stick my open hand between his furry head and the nano-catalyst…

  …and catch it!

  Yeah, I can regenerate, but so could the monsters, and they splooshed into goo in under a second. So, hey, I just committed suicide for a dog.

  Puts quite the look on my face, I can tell you.

  I’m still in that slo-mo thing, so we can give this a couple of sentences. Neurons firing all over my body, the wordless word goes out, not only to every one of my major organs—internal or otherwise—but also to the little guys, the individual cells that make it all possible. The message careening at the speed of bioelectric reactions? This is it, gang: the last gasp of the molecular pattern that comprised the corporeal Wade.