by T L Barrett
“What the hell? Mom, who is this?” Jessica demanded.
“He’s a friend, honey, and he’s right. Daniel is some kind of snake man. He was going to kill me because I knew. Barry saved me from him, but we have to leave right now. We don’t know if he’s still alive. So be a good girl—” Brenda started.
“OMG! A snake man?” She went and sat on the hotel chair to process this bit of news. “Well, I guess that would explain all the moisturizing routines. I just thought he was a metro sexual.”
“Listen, I know this is weird and all, but you need to get up and get out of the hotel now. I’ll take you both down to your mother’s car,” Barry ordered. Jessica got up. Barry turned to her mother. “I want you to drive as far away from here as you can without stopping. Go to Washington state if you have to, stick to the cities as much as you can and get a hotel under some other name, all right?”
Brenda nodded.
Barry led them down the elevator and out of the lobby. He went outside and looked around for a moment before, motioning them to follow. Outside the stars were brilliant in the desert night.
Jessica got into Brenda’s car. Brenda turned to Barry.
“Barry, come with us!” she pleaded.
“Brenda,” he said and pushed her hair back over her ear. He’d always wanted to do that. “I can’t. I have to make sure he’s dead. I also can’t just leave my friend in a cave in the desert without telling him where I’m going.”
Brenda nodded, tears in her eyes. Then she leapt forward and hugged him and kissed him passionately.
“Let me give you my cell phone number. Call me as soon as you can, okay?” Brenda said.
“Yes, of course,” Barry said as she wrote it down.
“I don’t want to lose you Barry,” she said, stuffed the number into his jean jacket pocket and kissed him again.
“Go, quickly, Brenda. I’ll call you, I promise,” Barry said. Brenda got into the car, turned on the engine and drove out of the parking lot. Barry watched the love of his life drive away.
What was he supposed to do now? He wanted to run back to Glen. He wanted to run after Brenda and tell her not to go. He wanted to run around the hotel building, find Daniel’s body and tear it to tiny strips of snake meat.
He decided he wouldn’t rest until he knew the naga wasn’t going to be a threat to Brenda and Jessica ever again.
He ran around the side of the hotel. There was no sign of the body. He looked up at the third story to be sure that he had the right side of the building. A security guard looked out the broken window and yelled something down at him.
Barry ran back to the parking lot. He had to get out of here! He turned toward the desert and Glen.
Glen came running through the scrub brush on the side of the parking lot.
“Barry,” he panted, “Are you all right. Why aren’t you wearing a shirt or shoes?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I had a vision—” he panted and stooped down to rest his hands on his knees. “Man, my side hurts!”
A helicopter roared overhead. A spotlight fell on the two in the parking lot. Sirens blared in the distance.
Daniel stepped out from behind a car.
“Get behind me, Barry. It’s that snake bastard!” Glen shouted and shoved Barry behind him.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Daniel hissed. “You have both been quite an inconveniencies for me. No worriesss. I’ve put a call in to some friendsss of mine in high placesss. They’re going to put you in the pound where you belong. I’ll come and visssit you in just a little while! Bye-Bye!” He slipped into the dark and disappeared.
“I don’t think I can run anymore, buddy. You go! I’ll hold them off as long as I can,” Glen panted.
“No, we’re going to stick together from now on. Okay?” Barry said.
A dozen police cruisers and a van pulled into the parking lot. Men leapt out and trained their rifles and pistols at the two of them. Barry raised his hands up in the air. Glen followed suit.
“These bastards better not think they’re going to keep us from getting to Comic Con,” Glen said.
Chapter Fourteen
Pound 51
Barry sat in his cell, which was, for all he could discern, far underground in the desert, and stared at the cell to his left. He didn’t like looking at the cell directly across from him. The horribly decomposing inhabitant would occasionally try eating his own bits. To his right, the cell was empty except the general stink a Sasquatch left behind. Barry hoped that Glen was all right, as he turned his attention to the inhabitant on the left.
The inhabitant on the left stood at just above three and a half feet tall. His skin had a papery whiteness to it. His huge eyes on his bulbous head were a uniform and matte black. Staring at the goblin was disconcerting, but it saved the breakfast Barry had been given from coming back up.
The goblin wiggled its long pointed ears, held out a three fingered hand, palm up, and looked down at it. Something gurgled in staccato rhythm. The goblin bobbed his head forward and vomited a little mound of paste onto his hand. He sniffed it, probed it with a long thin finger and flicked a little on the ground. Nothing happened. Finally, he shrugged and fell to eating his vomit out of his hand.
“Jesus, why do you keep doing that?” Barry shouted.
The goblin burped and looked at him with a blank expression.
“I’m trying to discern if my regurgitation consists of a high degree of acidic materials. So far, I have not found that this is the case. I’m doing it repetitively every 1.2 hours in the hopes that it will build in consistency. If such is the case, I will use the acidic vomit to melt the bars and procure all of our freedom.
“Well,” the goblin said with a twitch of his head at the zombie, “almost all of us.”
“Could you warn me next time, so I could kind of look away?” Barry asked.
“I have informed you already that these experiments occur every 1.2 hours. What more can I do?” the goblin asked.
“Do I look like I have a Rolex shoved up my anus or something?” Barry asked, pulling his orange jumpsuit away from his chest.
“I apologize for forgetting just how amazingly inefficient and primitive your brain functions are,” the goblin said without inflection. “I’ll be sure to notify you ahead of my next experiment.”
“Thanks ever so much,” Barry said and lay down on his cot.
“I just wish that my memory hadn’t been hampered by the experiments and my long incarceration,” the goblin said with a touch of forlorn decorating his otherwise monotone voice.
“How long have you been here?” Barry asked.
“I estimate it has been sixty-four Terran years since my arrival,” the goblin said. “I fear my incarceration has driven me quite insane.”
Barry eyed the goblin suspiciously.
“Well, let’s see. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of goblin’s vomiting acid if that helps,” Barry said.
“Are you insinuating that I’m a goblin?” the goblin asked.
“Yes, I guess I am,” Barry said. He knew he shouldn’t get the little psycho going, but he was very, very bored.
“I am not a goblin, sir!” the goblin hissed.
Just then the lights flashed a strange sequence that made both the goblin and Barry blink and sit down. Their heads whirled, and their stomach’s churned. The door on the wall between Barry’s cell and the goblin’s slid open. A trolley carrying a sopping wet Glen slid into view. A couple of agents in suits and dark sunglasses operated the trolley from behind.
“Glen! Are you okay, buddy?” Barry asked.
Glen coughed and barfed up a little water onto the stainless steel trolley bed.
“Yeah, I think,” Glen said weakly.
“What did they do to you?” Barry asked.
“They keep dumping me in this giant tank that I have to tread water in. I guess they want to know how long it takes for a Sasquatch to drown.” While he talked, Glen’s cell door opened. The troll
ey slid inside the cell and unceremoniously dumped Glen upon the floor.
“What? This is nuts! Why would you bastards ever need to know such a thing?” Barry yelled at the agents behind the trolley. “Obviously you aren’t going to make him into some depth mine soldier or anything! You’re torturing us for no good reason, because you apparently enjoy it! When I get out of this cell—” Barry switched to werewolf form and growled the rest of the words. “-I’m going to rip your throats out!”
An agent pulled a small device out of his pocket and pointed it at Barry. A beam of microwave energy raised the temperature in Barry’s skin cells to a terrible heat. He twisted in agony and fell, gasping to the floor.
“Barry!” Glen screamed and struggled to his feet. He rushed forward, but the door of his cell hissed shut.
“Arrr!” Glen screamed and beat his hands against the bars.
“What’s all this commotion about?” a familiar voice said. Barry looked up to see Daniel Westmore walk into the space between the cells.
“You know no one is going to adopt you boys if you put up a fuss every time someone comes to visit the pound,” he said and grinned.
“We’ve got nothing to say to you, rat breath,” Barry said and stood up.
“Well, I just wanted to come down and gloat a little.”
“Men, this man is a monster, a naga in disguise. You need to throw him in one of these pens. I’m telling you he’s dangerous,” Glen shouted.
One of the agents stopped and looked at Daniel and then looked at Glen. Slowly he pulled off his shades and revealed his serpentine eyes. The other guard swung around and hissed venom out at Barry. Barry stepped back away from his bars.
“If you hurt Brenda or her daughter, I’ll…” Barry said.
“You’ll what? Call Amnesty International? How about PETA? No, I don’t think you have to worry about Brenda and her snot-nosed brat. They aren’t going to cause a fuss. Everyone who encounters one of us always just assumes that we’re everywhere, you know? They think if they alert the local authorities than everyone in a uniform or making six figures will sprout fangs and eat their babies. Actually, we have a couple of writers amongst us that helps the old conspiracy theorists along on the internet.”
“I mean do we want to control the world? Could we control the world? Not really. It is way too much work. No, we just want to own everything and eat whenever and whoever we want. It all works nicely. I know you would do the same thing fellows, if you were just a tad bit brighter and a whole lot less mammalian.
“I got you both right here, and here you can give so much to the world in the form of research and psychological techniques. I mean, who needs silver bullets, stakes, or crosses when you can find out what makes all you diseased freaks loathe yourselves enough to do yourselves in.” Glen sat down on his bunk. Daniel himself, looking bored with his speech, turned his eyes to the fourth captive in the block.
“This is the real future! This specimen and a hoard of others like him in this facility will be the key in keeping a too suspicious and informed public on their toes. Forget manufacturing the occasional natural disaster, or starting a war under the imaginary hidden pretext for oil. No, this baby is a real disease, an outbreak just waiting to swallow the hordes of fat lazy mammals and spit them back out.
“Do you know that we started the research that led to this gentlemen’s ‘condition’ in the hopes of procuring immortality? Well, it didn’t end up the way we liked, but when we let military researchers have their way, we got the best little bioweapon on Earth. Turns out the old aphorism is true: ‘you can’t always get what you want, but you can get what you need.’”
Daniel walked very close to Barry’s cell. Barry came forward and stared him down.
“I wanted you to see what is going to be loosed upon the world someday, and soon. You see, it is largely your fault and the fault of those like you. You are a dreamer, you think that everyone can just get along, make peace, abolish fear and prejudice. It’s all very noble, but the problem is that it’s just not profitable. You’ve got folks talking of a new age for mankind working with the folk races to make a golden tomorrow. That’s just not on our agenda.”
“The truth will get out. I opened up a can of worms, and you can’t hope to put them back. Enjoy this moment,” Barry said, “because it will be one of your last.”
“That’s funny,” Daniel said, “I was just about to say the same to you.”
Daniel walked out of the room. The naga with the trolley followed.
“You wanted to be a superhero, Glen. Well, it looks like you got your super villain, that’s for sure,” Barry said.
“Yeah, and man was that a maniacal rant, or what?” Glen said. “I thought they only did that in comic books. We have to get out of here. We have to warn people about what these naga bastards have planned. Look at that sorry ass bastard.”
All three of the inmates turned to look at the zombie in the fourth cell. The zombie looked up, a comic expression of surprise on his ghastly face. He shuffled forward expectantly and pressed himself against the bars.
“Bran?” the zombie asked.
“Bran? Holy shit—talk about the dumbing down of America. The zombies can’t even get it straight!” Glen said.
“Well, at least the zombie apocalypse will be regular,” Barry said.
“Bran!” the zombie moaned.
“Shut it, Bran flakes!” Glen shouted. “I got to think about how to get out of this hell hole.”
“You would think you would become accustomed to being imprisoned,” the goblin said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Barry asked.
“Well, your races have always been persecuted and trapped into seclusion,” the goblin said.
“Yeah, what’s your point, whitey?” Glen asked.
“There’s the fact that your entire planet is one giant prison,” the goblin said.
“What’s with the ‘your planet’. This planet is yours, too, for your information,” Barry said.
“Actually, it isn’t. I came to this disgusting mud ball sixty-four years ago. My vehicle crashed, and my copilot died. I’ve been a prisoner here ever since.”
“You’re a goblin, dude! I don’t know how many times we have to tell you this, but you are just a grub eating, tunnel-dwelling munchkin like the rest of them,” Glen said.
“I believe you are referring to the members of my race that were incarcerated here hundreds of years ago for being deviant criminals, I think you would call them pedophiles,” the goblin said.
“What a minute, are you trying to tell us, that goblins were originally from another planet?” Barry asked.
“Yes, we were assigned to drop off a particularly nasty creature, I think you would call it a Troll. The Troll got loose inside the ship and trashed the place. I managed to exterminate the beast, but, sadly the damage was done.”
“You mean all this time people have been worried about alien invaders and you’ve just been using Earth as a, what, garbage dump?” Barry asked.
“Invasion? What race in their right mind would have anything to do with this terrible place? My home planet is a shining jewel in comparison. I still dream of floating through the greater Valtain Caverns!” the little pale alien quivered in his ecstatic memory. He turned to Glen. “Your home planet is really quite a wonder, as well.”
“My home planet? You mean my people come from another planet?” Glen asked in wonder.
“Yes, it is a marvel. Your people are a proud race. Their heroic sagas are told across this quadrant of the galaxy,” the alien said.
“Then, why the hell am I here?” Glen said. He grabbed the bars and grunted. “We have to get a signal out. I want to see this planet!”
“Your ancestors made a bad name for themselves for their sloth and their penchant for public self-pleasure—” the alien said.
“Well, that’s not enough to lock a people away for an eternity!” Glen said.
“I did not mention the cannibalism. They w
ere deemed too intellectually inferior for rehabilitation. In pity, the other members of your race saw the natives of this planet and believed your people could blend in without too much trouble.”
“What about the naga? Do they come from another planet?” Barry asked.
“No, they were genetically bred from ancient reptiles on your planet by my race,” the alien said.
“Why would anyone do that?” Barry asked.
“They were specially programmed to be devious and greedy. They would sabotage any real development of the peoples of this prison planet. For all intense and purposes they are the unconscious prison guards.”
“Excuse my French,” Glen said, “but you guys sound like royal assholes. You can keep your damn beautiful planet. I wouldn’t want to see it anyways. I just want to go to Comic-con, and now I’ll never get there!” Glen said and started bawling. Barry and the alien sat in silence as Glen continued weeping like a babe for over an hour.
* * * *
Seven days later, an agent arrived with one of the inmates’ meals and a stowaway.
The agent pushed the little wheeled cart into the central area and pulled out the trays that would be slid in a little four inch slot under the bars. As he slid these meals of gray gruel under the bars, the metal box under the cart top began to move. Someone grunted from inside, and the top of the metal box slid open about six inches.
The guard stopped and looked at the box. He walked over and peered inside. The silenced end of a pistol probed out of the box and shot the guard in the head. The guard fell over, leaking reptile blood on the floor. The zombie in the fourth cell put his head to where the door met the floor and wavered his black tongue in anticipation.
Barry, Glen, and the alien all stood and watched with fascination. The creature in the box grunted and shifted. The lid pulled back another six inches. Little hands came out and pulled. Apparently, this did not give the little person enough leverage to slide the box off the lid of the bottom tray of the cart.
L. P. Kahn’s face appeared out of the cart as he strained.
The little man cursed in German and disappeared. He started shaking back and forth. He pushed and cursed. He cursed and pushed. Finally, he managed to roll the cart against Barry’s cell. Barry reached under the cell and caught a wheel. He twisted it up and the cart fell over with a crash.