“I don’t know—” Quill began.
“Yes, you do,” replied Paul as he placed his hands on her shoulders. He saw the nervousness, heard her voice shake and knew what had to be done. “You do. You helped us in Manhattan, and you’ve stuck with us all this time. We have just one more job to do and we’re going to do it, but we need your help.”
Quill took in a series of deep breaths and nodded. “I got it. So what’s the plan?”
Let me take a look, signed Sandstorm then he slithered off. A few minutes later, he returned. The entrance is clear. There’s a narrow passageway. Go single file. About three hundred yards down the passageway is an elevator. Use that. There’s no other way down.
“What’s at the bottom?” asked Angela.
I saw lots of bad people.
“So,” Paul said, thinking fast, “we go in, hit them hard then destroy the mine. It sounds good, right?”
Everyone nodded. It seemed like a plan…or was it? Could they lure them outside? That was the question. As if reading their minds, of all members present, Sandstorm signed, Let’s do this.
It would have to happen. For the first time in his existence, Sandstorm took the initiative and slithered off. They followed him and, true to his description, the passageway was narrow and cold. After picking their way down the corridor, at the end, a rusted and rickety-looking elevator stood waiting. Angela whispered, “I’ll glide down. You be careful.”
She jumped over the edge and soared off. Sandstorm made his way down the side of the wall, while Paul and Quill rode the elevator. At the bottom, they found themselves in a large, circular chamber the size of a small airplane hangar. At the rear of the chamber lay a door, presumably leading to another chamber. Yellow lights overhead sent a sickly yellow glow over the area.
However, Paul’s attention wasn’t on the atmosphere. It was on the welcoming committee. A zombie, one of the slug creatures and something else that looked like a spider with two human heads attached to it, waited with dead eyes, tensed bodies and murder in their hearts. “I got the spider,” Paul said.
“In for a zombie,” called out Quill.
Angela had already flown aloft. Her voice rang out loud and clear. “I’ll handle zombie number two!”
The battle was joined, and immediately the spider-thing shot out some webbing from both its mouths. It caught Paul around his legs, and he felt it contract hard. That stopped his rush cold, and he went sprawling on the hard ground. “You’re not so smart,” said one of the heads. The other simply grinned.
“Can’t hear you,” Paul replied. “Come a little closer.”
Doing as he requested, the spider thing bent over, salivating. It had mini-fangs, and its breath was most foul. “I said—”
It didn’t get the chance to say anything else, as Paul extended his own fangs and bit into the thing’s neck. It gasped and pulled back—minus half its throat. With his free hand, Paul launched an upward punch, palms up to slam the thing’s nose bones into its brain. He turned to do the same to the other head but found it unnecessary.
Reeling backward and clutching at its throat, the spider being fell to the ground, spasmed and soon dissolved. Paul ripped off the webbing and got to his feet. He spat out the manufactured flesh, and it tasted even worse than the zombie had.
To his right, Angela was ripping and hacking away at her undead opponent. She managed to get close enough to bite into its neck and tear out a sizeable chunk of flesh. It too fell over and melted.
Quill called out in a cheerful voice, “Hey, how am I doing?”
She was busy chucking her bodily weapons at her opponent with unerring accuracy, taking out its eyes and piercing all of its vital organs. It bellowed with rage, but couldn’t survive the onslaught and soon collapsed with a groan.
Paul bent over at the waist, panting. Angela came over, wearing a tiny smile and asked, “You all right? It seems you took care of business.”
He wanted to say yeah, business as usual, but wondered if he’d been in the chamber long enough to have fully transformed. Right now, there was no way for him to check…
“I’ll make it,” he replied, still sucking wind. A second later, his strength started to flow back. “Who’s up for round two?”
“I’ll take some of that,” she said cheerfully. “I think this was just the warm-up. The main event is inside. Sandstorm, can you check things out?”
Obediently, Sandstorm slithered inside and came back a minute later. There’s nothing inside. It’s a chamber like this one, except it’s a little bigger.
Impossible. There had to be something. The enemy had to have come out of that room. They couldn’t just grow from the dirt, could they?
He got his answer a second later as the ground under their feet began to tremble. The trembling segued into a full-fledged shaking, and something totally unearthly erupted then smashed its legs onto the surface. “Oh, holy crap,” Paul whispered. “I think I saw this in a movie once.”
Movies didn’t do this creature justice. With the body of a centipede, it had to measure at least twenty feet in length. The head was human—barely—with piercing black eyes and a slit for a mouth. No nose and it had tiny, shell-shaped ears. A stinger on the end of its tail waved in the air much like a scorpion’s, and no, Paul did not want to find out if it was poisonous.
“Um, what do we do?” asked Quill nervously.
“Target practice,” replied Angela. “I don’t think I could get close enough to bite it.”
Quill started to tremble, but she nodded. “Back off. I’ve got this.”
Extending her arms outward, she threw a series of barbs, and they embedded themselves in the thing’s body. It let out an unearthly screech, but moved forward all the same, spitting and gnashing its teeth.
“Watch out for the tail!”
The warning came from Angela and good thing, too, as the creature stabbed its tail in a series of lightning-quick movements toward them. She took to the air to avoid the stinger. Paul grabbed Quill and pulled her out of harm’s way as the creature continued to screech and shook itself all over, shedding the barbs. It then roared its defiance. “Plan A didn’t work,” Angela called from above.
“Go to plan B,” he answered. “Sandstorm, can we have a little help, please?”
A wall of sand rose up in front of the creature and two words formed—Knock knock.
In an instant, the sand formed into a giant fist and smashed the creature squarely between its eyes. It scuttled backward, lashing out with its stinger, but trying to hit sand was like trying to count the drops in a rainstorm.
However, the creature was too stupid to notice its surroundings and kept retreating faster and faster until it neared the far wall. Angela swooped in, grabbed the tail and jammed it into the stone. “Sting me now,” she dared.
Realizing it was stuck, the monster motored forward, straining to get free. It only succeeded in tearing off its tail and reddish-black blood flowed over the earth. Its howl of agony filled the room. “Sandstorm, now,” Paul yelled, and another giant sand-fist crushed the creature’s head flat.
Angela alighted gracefully. “Well, that was easy enough.”
“Yeah, sure thing,” answered Paul, wondering what other monstrosities lay behind the door. “Let’s go have some more fun.”
Cautiously, he opened the door, expecting some weird hybrid to toss acid or fire or something equally destructive at him. When nothing happened, he was a little disappointed. What got his attention was the vast array of equipment. Work tables lined the wall to his right, while three power generators took up most of the space on the left wall. Heavy cables snaked across the stone in every direction and, along with a number of computers, he saw a refrigerator, a cot and five chambers. They were lit and glowing…fully functional.
Yet another door lay at the back. This time, though, there was no need to go through it,
as it opened and the forms of Hija, Sluggo and Peterson stood in a line, arms and multiple arms folded.
“Glad you could finally make it,” Peterson said, a grin painting his slash of a mouth. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place? With practically unlimited funds and a little imagination, you can do just about anything.”
“You got really good at making copies,” said Paul, carefully eyeing each of the opposition. “Hija, you’re another clone. You know that, right?”
A languid, almost arrogant, response came from the firebrand, and a grin painted his features. “Yeah, I know, but the doctor’s going to help me. And I don’t care if I’m a clone or hybrid. I’ve got flames, man, and I’m going to use them.”
“I’m real,” Sluggo said. “The guy you met in California was a clone. He’s gone, we’re here and soon you’re going to be history.”
Weary now of the one-liners and fighting and all that came with it, Paul decided against reasoning with these things. They simply didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“It ends here and it ends now.” In a moment of the absurd, he realized he’d uttered another one-liner. Well, one more wouldn’t hurt.
“For you it does,” Hija said. He did not smile. Instead, he stepped forward, his hands beginning to glow. Flames started to lick their way up his forearms. “We’re the last line and the last faces you’re ever gonna see.”
“You said that before,” Angela replied in a very nonchalant voice. “Let’s see you prove it.”
Quill cried “Me first!” and aimed a salvo of barbs at the enemy. They bounced off Sluggo’s hide and Hija melted them with ease, the flames shooting out from his hands with terrific accuracy. Paul decided ‘to hell with it’ then went after Sluggo, punching him as hard as possible and wherever possible.
Out of the corner of his eye, Paul saw Angela take to the air and aim wind blast after wind blast at Hija, driving him back. He ended up against the wall, and he fought back with sharp missiles of flame, which she managed to avoid by darting and dipping.
More and more zombies came from the ground, and Quill cried out, “I’m on them!”
“You need help?” Paul asked, as he ducked a series of blows from his opponent. It was like fighting ten guys at once, wrapped up in one horrid creature.
“I’ve got it,” she called back.
“Deal with me,” Sluggo said and tossed out some acid.
Paul avoided it by jumping to his left. His maneuver was a millisecond late and some of the acid got through and burned his right leg, tossing him off course and sending him to the ground. “Not back to full strength, are you?” Sluggo asked.
Fighting down a scream of pain, Paul got to his feet. “Shut up and fight.” He launched a left hook, which caught Sluggo in the jaw and sent him reeling. He followed up his advantage by raining down more strikes, but getting through his opponent’s multiple arm defense proved to be more difficult than he’d thought it would be.
“You can’t beat me,” Sluggo gloated. “You punch like a girl.”
His arms began whirling, and they sent out a steady rat-a-tat attack. Paul felt as if his bones would break. He had to find some way to get inside that thing’s defense.
Another belt sent him to the ground then Sluggo got on top of him, his large hands around his throat. The thing’s strength was monstrous and Paul fought for air. “Hang on,” a voice cried. A second later, a barb sang out of nowhere and embedded itself in Sluggo’s eye.
The creature screamed in agony and let go. He sat back to pull the quill out. “You little slime,” he hissed then sprayed a fine mist in her direction.
Quill covered up and the acid fell on her protective coat. “Is that all you got?”
Paul recovered enough to yell, “Look out!”
His warning came too late, though, as Hija had managed to evade Angela’s gusts of wind for a second. A moment was all it took, and he sent a blast of fire at Quill. It traveled through the air so fast that she didn’t have time to cover up. The fireball hit her square in the chest, lifted her off her feet then sent her into the far wall, where her head collided with the rock and made a sickening crunching sound. She fell to the ground and didn’t move. “Yeah, that’s the way we do it,” he said, with satisfaction lacing every word.
“This is how I do it,” Angela hissed as she flew down to Hija’s position, lifted him off the ground then sank her fangs into his throat. He gasped and tried to flame-start his body, but she’d sunk her fangs in deeply. Blood spurted out, and he went limp. She then tossed his corpse to the ground.
Sluggo, still covering his wounded eye, turned his attention back to Paul. “I’m going to kill you now,” he said. “I can still see, and you can punch me all you want, but you’re not going to make a dent in my body.”
Paul knew that, but claws out and fully extended, he didn’t need to punch. All he needed was one good swipe, and he took it. In a last, desperate move, he lashed out and his hand tore half of Sluggo’s face off. “I may punch like a girl, but I slash like a wolf.”
Absurd one-liner or not, it didn’t matter. Sluggo was in no position to reply. He had no mouth to reply with. Instead, he fell back, the empty space that had once been his face spurting blood, and he toppled over.
“Well, that was fun,” Paul muttered, as he laboriously got to his feet and wiped the blood from his face.
In all the confusion, he’d forgotten about Peterson. The chief monster stood with arms crossed and gazed at the death and destruction with a bored, almost detached, expression. “I’ll just make more. I have chambers everywhere, I’ll get more volunteers, and I’ll have my army in place before summer. Wait and see. Once I take care of you, no one will stop me.”
“Then we’ll take care of you,” Angela challenged, and she sent a sheet of wind against him.
It staggered him, but only briefly, and he lashed out with his right flipper. It sent a bolt of electricity through the air and a blue glow enveloped her body. A scream erupted from her then she fell to the ground, twitching. “Electric eel DNA,” he called out. “Like that?”
Paul then tried his luck, but hitting Peterson was like hitting a wall. The monster took everything he had and batted him aside. “You can’t win,” he gloated. “My body is the combination of twenty different genotypes—all dense muscle—and I have an almost infinite regenerative capacity from external injuries. You’re nothing.”
Gasping from the impact of Peterson’s swat, Paul sat up and tried to think. He couldn’t beat him from the outside, true, but…
“Sandstorm!” he yelled. “Take a dive!”
With the last of his strength, he jumped on the mad doctor and toppled him to the ground. Claws out, he jammed his left hand into his opponent’s nose and yanked backward. His right hand pierced the thing’s oversized chin, and he forced his mouth open. Sandstorm poured his way into the gaping maw, twisting his way down the monster’s gullet.
Peterson began to choke. “No,” he gasped as the grains of sand flew inside ever faster.
Angela screamed out, “Eat that!”
It wasn’t the most original line, but in this situation, it seemed apt. Peterson’s eyes bulged, followed by his stomach, and his massive, deformed body began to shake. “Oh, this is not going to be good. Move back, boyfriend,” Angela warned.
Drained from his fights, Paul couldn’t get his legs working and, now thoroughly exhausted, he fell to the ground. If he had to die, better it be here and have done with it. He wondered if Max would have been proud of him, wondered about the future not yet set… An instant later, he felt powerful hands yank on his shoulders before the world exploded. Soon, it did, and he heard a scream of inhuman proportions.
Then everything went dark.
Chapter Sixteen
A Walk in the Sun
It was over, and Paul slumped back, exhausted, beat, beaten, yet not defeated, a
nd Angela leaned wearily against his side. The remains of Hija and Sluggo lay dead not ten feet in front of them, blood oozing from their numerous slashes and gouges. Peterson’s body splayed all over the chamber, painting the walls in a grotesque graffiti impression. None of them would be coming back this time.
A second later, Sluggo’s body began to disintegrate. Its molecular and cellular integrity had been spent, and the body of the massive combo slug broke down into a puddle of organic slime. A second later, it disappeared into the earth.
To the right lay Quill. “Wait here,” Paul said as he got up to totter over to her. She lay in a small, pathetic heap, her steel-sharp spikes now limp.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Angela whispered.
Reaching Quill’s position, Paul gently touched her shoulder and was rewarded with a faint moan. Her body felt cold, and it was quickly growing colder. He turned her over and her lips moved. There was life yet, but it was fading quickly. “We can get you to a doctor,” he began.
“No, no doctor,” she interrupted, putting a hand up to stroke his face. “I can feel things inside me. I’m too broken to fix.” A cough erupted from her lungs, accompanied by a spray of blood, and she groaned in agony. “It doesn’t matter. They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, they’re gone,” Paul answered, glancing over at the bodies of his adversaries. “You fought like a pro, Brianna. Thank you for saving my life…and Angela’s.”
A bloody smile greeted him and a sigh drifted from her ruined mouth. “I never remembered where…where…but I know I did a good thing joining…joining up with you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank…”
Her voice trailed off and a second later, her head lolled. A rattle escaped her throat, and she stopped breathing.
“No…” he whispered, and put his hand to her throat to feel for a pulse. It fluttered and then stopped. His throat seized up. He hadn’t ever had the chance to get to know her. She’d been a stranger, and yet, he still related to her. If she had lived, perhaps Ooze could have helped her regain her appearance, but now she was no more.
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