by Joseph Calev
*
Jason awoke to the coo-coo-coo-ka-ka-ka of some strange animal in his jungle. With no sign of Raynee, he decided to explore his new backyard. His father was already on his tablet when Jason passed him on the way outside.
“I wouldn’t go out there,” stated his father while continuing to stare at his tablet. “There’ll be a lizard invasion in a few minutes.”
Jason halted. “Lizards?”
“Yes,” his mother said.
“They’re coming for you,” his father remarked, “and that’s not very nice.”
“They’re coming for me? Why the hell me?”
“No time to explain,” his father said, and for the first time looked up from his tablet. “Besides, you’ll know soon enough.”
Jason shook his head. At least they didn’t call him a turnip.
His father walked to him and put his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “They’re going to be here any moment,” he said with the first tear Jason had ever witnessed from him. “But before they arrive, I need to tell you something very important. I know I haven’t been the best of fathers. I’ve never said much of use to you, but what I’m about to say will make up for those faults.”
He kneeled and looked Jason straight into the eyes. Jason leaned forward, ready to receive the first piece of fatherly advice in his life.
“You need to have some waffles.”
“What?” Jason asked, incredulously.
“That new pancake house in Renton. They have amazing waffles, too.”
“You want me to eat waffles.”
“Yes.”
“The world’s going to end, and you’re concerned with waffles.”
“Yes. They’re very good waffles.”
There was no time for further questions. A scream came from outside, followed by two loud roars. Jason’s parents moved to either side of him, ready to serve as shields against the onslaught.
“Who are you guys?” he asked just when the first lizard burst through the wall.
“We’re turnips,” his mother answered, her arms drawn back and her stance wide. “Just a little better than average.”
The lizard lunged and she grabbed it by the head. Despite the two-foot height difference and her miniscule frame compared to the behemoth, his mother had little trouble prying open the struggling creature’s mouth, then pulling apart its jaws until the lifeless reptile slumped to the floor.
“Is this because Raynee distintegrated that guy’s arm?” yelled Jason when three more appeared through the windows.
“No,” his father replied. “We knew this would happen. It was only a question of when.”
All three creatures lunged at once and Jason had no chance to run. Immediately, his father pounded his first straight through one, while his mother tore the arm off another, then lifted the huge body without effort and broke it in half. The third stood back and snarled while it contemplated the fate of its comrades, until his mother jumped on its back and snapped its neck.
Jason yelled in joy as the last thirty seconds seemingly made up for a lifetime of boredom. Though he had no clue how his parents suddenly became so powerful, he wasn’t going to complain now.
“They’re not so tough,” he remarked with a broad smile. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this would happen?”
His mother shook her head. “We just learned ourselves, and these are just lizards. Same dimensional, replicated creatures. Worse things are coming.”
Before he had time to consider how she knew this, the floor began to shake apart and every window shattered. The ground was trembling while some gigantic engine roared. A house across the street collapsed, then dozens of footsteps echoed from behind it.
“We can’t stay here; they’ll surround us,” his mother said. One sweep of her arm was all she needed to destroy the wall so they could easily exit. Their new enemy appeared only a few meters outside.
Adorned in black armor and nearly twice as tall as the average human, the soldiers sported shining visors with nothing behind them. They had the shape of humans, but a whirr with every movement revealed well-oiled machines. Each carried a five-foot-long rifle.
“Well, this sucks,” admitted his father. “I didn’t know they’d have lasers.”
There were thirty of them now, a horde of hell-bent robots running in unison.
His parents understandably looked worried.
“New plan,” his mother stated. “Jason, you make a run for it and we’ll hold them off as long as we can.”
“They’ll kill you!” he protested. He had never been close to his parents, but he certainly couldn’t take losing them. They’d always treated him well, even if they weren’t active and placed an imbalanced importance on kitten videos and waffles.
The soldiers marched forward, while the three stepped back. Every robot raised its gun.
“The honor has been ours,” his mother said, then somersaulted into them.
“Take care,” was the last he heard from his father.
Before the soldiers could fire, his parents were on top of them. His father punched one of their heads so furiously it tipped straight back, but these were tough customers. One tumbled to the ground from his mother’s blow, but then stood back up.
“Run! Now!” they screamed, and Jason took off.
Of course, he had no idea where to run to. A cascade of blasts landed all around him, and Jason was thankful that these things, despite being huge and powerful, were no better shots than in the movies. The lasers scorched the grass everywhere and kicked up enough dirt to make him choke, but amazingly not a single one hit him.
He considered running into the jungle, but then thought of the tree kangaroos. A blast might hit them. In the absence of any better ideas, he made for a nearby park. On his last trip there he’d been knocked unconscious by a soccer ball, but there weren’t any real options.
Jason took off at full speed, and behind him the ground shook. He’d forgotten. At twice his height, these untiring machines could run a lot faster. He’d barely made any distance before a huge hand swatted him off his feet. He looked up. Over a dozen blank visors now loomed over him.
“Howdy,” said a most welcome voice. Raynee was lying on the grass next to him. Her arms were sprawled out, but not from agony. Instead, she was staring past the robots to the blue sky and admiring the foliage.
“We have to get out of here!” Jason screamed.
She stood and brushed off some grass while every soldier trained its sights on him.
“You mean these things? Right?” she said and waltzed over to one. Three followed her with their guns, while the rest remained aimed at Jason.
“Raynee! No!” he yelled.
She walked straight through the nearest one’s leg, which promptly disappeared in a fuzz in the same manner as the assailant’s hand. Now unbalanced, the rest of the robot collapsed on top of her. The instant its armor touched her, it too burst apart. She skipped back to Jason, obliterating another robot in the process. Now every gun was directed at her.
“I think these are sad robots,” she exclaimed with fake pouting eyes. “They need someone to play with.”
She whistled and Jason swore all of reality turned into a single pane of glass, then a dozen pink spotted leopards came trotting out. With each step, the grass beneath them turned pink. The robots aimed their lasers and the leopards roared. Yet Jason suspected these weren’t normal cats.
A barrage of lasers turned to the leopards, but the leopards were too quick. Instantly, they leaped dozens of feet and landed directly on the black armor. But instead of tearing them apart, the leopards snuggled against the gleaming metal, which turned pink, and the machines morphed into gigantic pink trolls, complete with lasers. Both trolls and leopards then moved on to new foes
Jason walked toward one of the leopards, ready to pet it.
“Don’t do that!” Raynee warned him. She turned her attention from the fight and threw him back. “They don’t have the shields I use. One touch and you’r
e gone.”
He nodded. He just hoped there were no little girls around who loved cats.
The last soldier was barely morphed when a cuboid ship popped in from nowhere in the sky. Briefly, it appeared that the world had been crushed to a single dimension, then the ship roared downward. Lightning flew from every side of its gray exterior. A hatch opened and a hundred more robots appeared.
The field exploded with lasers and robots, charging against other robotic trolls. Elsewhere, the huge machines were crumbling to the grass while leopards snuggled to make new trolls. When Raynee’s troops finally began to falter from the laser onslaught, she sent another set of growling allies into the fray.
Jason looked back to where his parents had held them off. Their lifeless bodies lay next to each other. Tears fell down his cheeks as he remembered those endless days as a child when he’d danced around his father, who even then was deep into his tablet. His mother had spent a few minutes each day rapidly cleaning, and the rest seated on the couch face forward, her eyes wide open and never blinking. He had danced around her too. In retrospect, he should have noticed they were different.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” Raynee said in a soft voice.
“They died protecting me.” He thought of taking their bodies home and burying them, then considered a much better idea. “I need your help.”
“What would you like? I can help you bury them.”
“Not yet. First, I want some vengeance.”
She smiled. “As you wish.” She curtsied, and the world collapsed again until a house-sized spaceship slid into existence. Its silvery body nearly blinded them with its reflection, and two massive guns adorned each side of the pod-shaped craft. Another cannon projected from the middle, and a gun turret hung from the bottom.
Jason grinned. “You fly and I shoot?”
“Exactly. Only eat this pill first.”
She handed him a moldy gray peanut.
“Umm, no thanks.” He tried to push her hand away.
“It’s a reverse decombulator. You touch that ship and it’ll disintegrate you. Take this pill, and everything will be fine for an hour.”
“And after that?”
“Then your quarter’s up.”
He gulped down the pill, then nervously approached the ship. A door appeared and he barely nudged it with his pinky. A dull electric pulse rolled through his body, but left his finger in one piece. Satisfied, he jumped aboard and climbed down the turret hatch.
The leopards and trolls had been overrun, and the instant he and Raynee took off a dozen ships appeared. Lightning burst from the ships’ sides while Raynee did a loop and headed straight toward them. The first enemy was in his sights and he didn’t leave it unscathed. The turret was simple to aim, and the moment the crosshairs turned red he fired and the entire enemy craft burst into an orb of fire.
Lizards fell from its sides and he locked down the trigger so a stream of blasts picked them off. Jason screamed. This was fun. He unleashed his fury on three more ships, while Raynee used the side cannons to finish off several more.
Yet with each enemy they destroyed, three more took its place. Soon they were soaring over downtown. Below, thousands screamed with each craft that teleported into existence. Their lightning bolts incinerated everything they flew near. Jason winced as one collided into the Space Needle, removing its base and causing the saucer to tumble into the buildings below. Another flew directly through the side of the largest building, releasing a tremendous fireball in the process.
He had destroyed perhaps fifty of them already, but over two hundred now dotted the horizon. Below were the nee-naws of ambulances, cars sliding off the road, and entire skyscrapers collapsing. His finger left the trigger. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“This isn’t working,” he said through the com. “We need to do something different.”
“Yeah. They’re awfully persistent.”
He thought back to what his father had said. There was only one proper thing to do. “We need to go for waffles.”
“What the hell? Your entire world is being destroyed and you want waffles?”
“Yeah. There’s a place in Renton; a pancake house, actually. My father kept telling me to go there. I think it means something.”
Raynee groaned, but soon they were hovering above a simple structure with three walls of windows and a sign with the words:
RENTON PANCAKE HOUSE And Now Waffles Too!
To his surprise, the patrons were oblivious both to their ship’s presence and the carnage that surrounded them. Jason opened the ship’s hatch.
“Care to join me for a waffle?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “You know I can’t eat your damned food. Listen Turnip. I’m just feeling sorry for you. I can’t hold them back forever.”
After tossing him a com, she turned her attention back to the ships, every one of which was heading directly toward them. “Go eat your stupid waffles.”
Music from the ’fifties played softly at the entrance. From every window was death and destruction, but the clientele here was just calmly chowing down on breakfast. There was a mix between pancakes and waffles, he noted, but his father had been specific on the waffles.
A hostess showed him to a booth where he had a great view of Raynee commanding the battlefield. She was constructing waves of pink armored drones, each with rotating lasers that annihilated rows of enemy ships. Still, with each casualty, more enemies appeared.
The waitress was slow to stop by for his order.
“I’ll have the waffles,” he said, then looked through the menu again and added a side of eggs with some hash browns. She recommended the fresh orange juice to accompany it, and he agreed. Outside, the restaurant next door was obliterated where a damaged cuboid crashed. He folded his fingers together and tapped on the table in anticipation of his order, while several robots almost grasped the window until Raynee finished them.
“I’m getting really sick of this,” Raynee said through the com.
He smiled at her through the window and she frowned back.
She was tiring now, but the waffles finally arrived ten minutes later. They were missing syrup, so he waited another few minutes before it was delivered. He doused his waffle, then cut off a piece and tasted it. There was no revelation. Though he was no expert in waffles, it tasted fairly average. He downed it with a gulp of the orange juice, which felt a bit tingly but otherwise was unspectacular.
Why had his father ordered him here? Perhaps he was simply crazy? Maybe he was just a waffle nut? His breakfast was nearly done and Raynee was now sweating profusely. Seeing him with his fork dripping with syrup, she blasted the nearest robot and stormed inside. Jason gobbled up the last of his food before she reached his table. Several feet away, though, she stopped. She stared behind him.
“You dumb shit!” she yelled, then stepped forward and forced his head to look back. The entire back wall was covered in a mural of a park in downtown Seattle. The Seattle Center fountain was directly in the middle. Next to it lay the remains of the Space Needle. Everywhere on the image were people screaming, and the gray cuboid ships covered the horizon. A column of water was erupting from the fountain, whose center had been torn off.
“Seriously, all you had to do was look at that picture,” she said and shoved his nearly empty plate to the side. “To hell with the waffles.”
Jason calmly turned to look at the scene, then nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“Of course I am.” She pulled him to his feet. “Listen, I’m doing you a favor here. I could just as easily have left them to kill you, but instead I’m here. So, stop screwing around and let’s go!”
When they reached the skies again, the enemy had increased tenfold. Downtown Seattle now resembled more of a pixelated hodgepodge of death and destruction. Every building was missing some part, having been disintegrated by the alien crafts, and fire roared from many of the pockets. He winced as another building tumbled into a mushroom of
dust.
The fountain was mostly spared, but not much remained of the Space Needle and other structures. A trove of lizards was dismantling the Museum of Pop Culture, and still not one came to tear off the fountain’s center. Other than the missing water column, the scene resembled exactly that shown at the pancake house.
“Strange,” Jason remarked from the seat next to Raynee. It seemed pointless to destroy any more ships, since three replaced each one that fell.
Raynee nodded glumly, and a slight tear formed in her eye. There was something she wasn’t telling him.
She quietly landed the ship and sent it away. No sooner had they stepped on the concrete did every ship aim their way. The ground trembled from the march of thousands of robots and lizards.
Somehow, Jason felt that the answer to everything resided in the mural from the waffle house being complete. Within that column of water was the answer to why Seattle was under unceasing attack, why everyone behaved so oddly, and why he seemed to be in the middle of it. He gulped. It was time to know.
“We need to remove the center,” he said.
She gave him a bewildered look, but finally nodded. With one swipe of her arm the fountain center was thrown to the side and the picture was complete. Jason jumped back as the basin around the geyser got deeper. He’d never been crazy about water, and something now made him even more afraid.
Raynee held out her arm and rocketed a blast that took out a dozen of the shining black robots. Twenty more took their place. A flotilla of craft moved in to hover over them. She reached her arms out and a hydra of fireballs poured out to devour ever ship in sight. And in seconds, the sky was a patchwork of new ones.
“I’m sorry,” she said, then dropped her arms to her sides. “I can’t stop them.”