by N M Tatum
“Are you serious?” Cody’s voice jumped a decibel and climbed in pitch. “With all the evidence I’ve found, it’s like you’re trying not to believe me.”
“Your evidence sounds like some crazy bullshit,” Joel said.
“It all just seems like it could be a coincidence,” Reggie said, trying to act the peacemaker.
Sam paced around the edge of the galley, sneaking behind Reggie, a wolf stalking her prey. “I don’t think so, sounds pretty conceivable to me. Galactic corporations sabotaging each other with no regard for the innocent lives lost or damage caused? Sounds about right.”
Reggie watched her with a hefty dose of apprehension.
Joel wasn’t paying her any attention at all. “Whatever. I think it’s all a big pile of—”
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam jumped out from behind the table, surprising Joel and Peppy.
Joel fell backward, and Peppy scurried behind him and pressed against his back. “What’s the matter with you? Are you insane?”
“You just fed something to that fuzzy creature of yours.” Sam’s eyes were wide and wild.
“Holy shit, Sam,” Joel said. “You ate like three hours ago.”
“What was it? Where are you hiding the food?” She inched closer to Joel and Peppy.
Joel stood slowly. “I’m not hiding anything. It was just a piece of stale bread.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Sam said. “That thing has grown a foot since you got it. Must be twenty pounds heavier. It grew like that eating stale bread?” She leaned around Joel and caught the creature in her frenzied sights. “Maybe I should eat your dog.”
Fire shot through Joel. “Don’t you touch Peppy!”
Reggie stepped in between Joel and Sam, still playing at peacemaker. “So, just so I know, was that a yes on taking this job?”
“Yes!” Joel and Sam both shouted.
Chapter Three
Sonic’s cockpit was small, built to seat only two, but when one of those two was Reggie, the bridge really felt cramped. Cody keyed up the coordinates for the location of the job, a planet called Kaufman.
Once Reggie told them the destination, the Notches couldn’t help but get excited. The entire planet was well-known for being one large spa and fun center. There were dozens of warmed lakes scattered across the surface of the planet, each offering activities like diving, water skiing, boating, and hover boarding. There was one of the most famous spas in the galaxy where celebrities went to get their bits waxed and their bodies covered in weird mud that was supposed to keep you looking young.
Tar pits. Sporting complex. Amusement parks. It was a paradise planet.
Sam couldn’t care less. If she couldn’t eat it right now, she didn’t want to be bothered.
Sonic whimpered like a whipped puppy all the way to Kaufman. Cody didn’t dare push her too hard, for fear the engine would explode and vaporize them. But they got there eventually.
The Notches met in the loading bay to gear up, while Reggie pulled up the coordinates of the job. He hadn’t gotten specifics, just the information that a site on Kaufman had an infestation problem. He had no idea what kind of site it was. It was just a blip on the GPS.
However, they spent no small amount of time fantasizing about the site. Reggie imagined one of the domed sports complexes. Some of the Intergalactic Football League teams trained in the Kaufman sports domes. He wanted to run the fields and imagine scoring a touchdown and winning the Supernova Bowl. He had been a star football player in high school… He could have taken it to college. Some days he wished he had and couldn’t remember why he didn’t.
Or maybe he’d hit up the batting cages or the obstacle courses. There was supposedly a course so complicated that a contestant got lost in it for a week. No one even realized he was missing until the course started to smell like someone had been living in it for a week without access to a shower or toilet.
Cody hoped the job would take them near the tar pits. They were one of the only natural, unaltered features of Kaufman that drew visitors. Even the lakes were artificially heated, and the ones used for sport fishing and shark wrestling were stocked with game. But the tar pits were untouched and super old. Prehistoric old. Paleontologists were still discovering the remains of ancient alien species in the tar.
What he wouldn’t give to add an ancient alien fossil to his collection.
But the trip took them in the opposite direction of the tar pits and past the sports domes. Cody and Reggie deflated, but upon arriving at the job site, Joel blew up like a parade balloon.
“An amusement park?” he shouted, jumping up and down. “And not just any amusement park. An abandoned amusement park!”
“Why is that more exciting?” Sam asked.
“Have you never dreamed of having your own amusement park?” Joel sounded genuinely surprised. “Having your run of the place, doing whatever you want on any of the rides, breaking all the rules, standing on the highest peak of a rollercoaster track?”
“I can honestly say no,” Sam answered.
“What about eating all the cotton candy?” Cody asked.
Sam’s eyes widened. “Will there still be some?”
“Sure,” Joel said, hoping he was right. “That stuff lasts forever.”
The four of them stood at the entrance of Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park, strapped with all the gear that had become standard for them. Sam unsheathed her sword and twirled it a few times, getting reacquainted with the weight and balance. Reggie opted to leave the gatling on the ship, choosing instead for a lighter, more maneuverable submachine gun. Cody checked his scatterblaster. Joel zeroed the scope on his sniper rifle and made sure his dual pistols were loaded and ready.
“I’m just glad it’s not a space station,” Reggie said.
The others agreed and entered Rocket Roger’s, ready to work.
“I’m going to play all the games,” Joel said.
The alley with all the classic fair games lay just up ahead. A few of the lights flickered, and one of the skee-ball games tried to play its music, but it sounded like a dying animal.
“We’re not here to play games,” Reggie said. “We’re here to work.”
“There is no way I’m letting this opportunity pass me by,” Joel said. “Whether you have that stick up your ass or not.”
Reggie stopped at the entrance to the street of games, which was about as big as a city block, crisscrossed with rows of machines. The team gathered around him.
“We need to clear the entire park,” he said. “We should do it one section at a time. Games will be first.”
Sam cast a skeptical glance over the area. “There are a lot of places to hide in there. Under the machines, in the machines. It’ll take all day to check each one.”
Joel’s face lit up with an idea. “Only one row of games is getting any power, and it doesn’t look like it’s even full power. If we pump juice back into the park, it could flush the creepy crawlies out of their hidey holes.” He looked at each of the Notches’ skeptical faces.
Reggie finally relented. “I know you’re doing this just so you can turn the power back on and live out your weird fantasy, but it’s actually a good idea.”
Joel barely stifled a joyous outburst. “Then I’ll take Cody to the power station and get this place cranking.”
Cody didn’t seem excited about this, but he knew better than to argue with Joel when he had his teeth in an idea. According to the specs Cody had downloaded to his wristcom, the power station was near the entrance, so they doubled back.
Cody had never been a fan of amusement parks. A memory came roaring back of a childhood vacation to Disneyland. Thunder Mountain loomed over him, and his dad dragged him on, despite his adamant protests. He’d thrown up all over his dad, himself, and the two teenagers in front of him.
It ranked up there with the worst moments of his life. His stomach bubbled just thinking about it.
The power station was a squat, concrete struct
ure that faded into the background amidst the color and lights. A red sign with a lightning bolt in the center adorned the steel door that squealed as they entered, the sound echoing inside the station.
“I’m just now realizing how creepy this is,” Cody said. “An abandoned amusement park? This is prime serial killer hideout territory.”
“Relax,” Joel said. “It’s much more likely that we’ll get eaten by mutated rodents than have our skin peeled off and turned into a suit.”
Cody froze. “Why do you say the things you say?”
The power station was a single room of fuse boxes and cobwebs. Most of the room was occupied by a generator. Joel set about examining the equipment, while Cody tried to control the gurgle in his gut and the increasingly urgent desire to pee.
Joel opened several of the fuse boxes before inspecting the generator. Despite the vintage look of the amusement park, the tech in the room had been built sometime in the last twenty years. It hadn’t been maintained in a while so it was coated in years’ worth of dust, but it was still operational.
“Here’s the problem,” Joel said, his hands disappearing inside the generator. “Generator’s running, everything’s just gummed up with dust. Can’t make a proper connection.” He unscrewed several components, cleaned them, and then replaced them.
“Hurry it up, would you?” Cody said. “My horror movie sense is starting to tingle.”
“You could do something useful while you wait instead of breathe down my neck. You’re a sort of smart guy; I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Cody paced a small circle in the floor, his scatterblaster held tight to his chest. He spotted a terminal on the other side of the generator.
“Maybe you’re right.”
He lowered his blaster and raised his wristcom. He powered up the terminal and synced it with his wristcom. It was a control panel for the park’s power system. Now he could access all those systems on the go.
Cody spoke into the comm, reaching out to the whole team. “I’ve got control of the power system, and Joel is working on getting it all up and running. Once it is, I’ll turn the lights on one section at a time.”
“Good idea,” Reggie responded. “That limits our search area. Very systematic. We’re such pros now. We’ve totally leveled up.”
Joel brushed his hand on his pants, smearing them with dust and grease. “Done. Let’s light this fire.”
“Can we kill something now?” Sam asked, as Joel and Cody rejoined her and Reggie. “I want to move on to the food section.”
“I second that,” Joel said, pulling his dual pistols from their holsters.
Reggie nodded to Cody, who then pulled up the connection to the power station on his wristcom. “Power up in three, two, one…”
The hum of the generator carried on the air, the only sound in the entire park. When it reached them, the electricity also reached the game section. Light flared. The music from the various games all sounded at the same time, a distorted symphony of carnival noise mixed with the shrieks of surprised critters, startled from a peaceful sleep.
A shudder ran up Cody’s spine. “Well, that was terrifying. I swear to God, if a clown pops up out of anywhere, I am going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”
“If everything we’ve been through so far hasn’t given you night terrors, then I think you’ll be okay,” Joel said.
As the last word left his mouth, something in his periphery vision caught his attention. He spun, trained his pistols on the bug soaring through the air at him, and pulled the trigger. The bug, about the size of a small terrier, exploded in a burst of green goo, splattering Joel’s front.
“ShimVens,” Joel said, wiping the guts off his face. “Goddamn ShimVens.”
Chapter Four
They didn’t have a lot of time to bemoan their current situation. It wasn’t quite a swarm, but the rest of the ShimVens hiding in the games section of Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park followed that first nasty bug, and were equally upset that their naps had been interrupted.
The Notches formed a defensive semicircle at the entrance of the park section. Reggie stood at the front with his submachine gun, mowing down bugs as they charged them. Cody stood a safe distance away, using his scatterblaster to pick off the ones that snuck by Reggie. Sam and Joel took the wings, targeting any bugs that tried to flank them. Cody and Joel had played roshambo for the scatterblaster. It was Cody’s turn to have fun with the weapon now.
It was probably a good thing that they didn’t have time to think about it. It had been less than a week since they’d escaped the belly of the ShimVen queen. Given that space, they realized that they never expected to make it out alive. Each of them had stared death straight in its pale face and thought it was the end.
Making it out alive felt somewhat like a second chance, like maybe they were living on borrowed time. They planned to take advantage of that opportunity, to chase down the things they wanted. To live life to the fullest. They’d at least hoped to never see a ShimVen again.
Sam didn’t mind as much as the others. Fighting was all she knew. She had nothing else to compare her life to—no ‘once upon a time’ scenarios where she was prancing through a meadow all happy and pigtailed. There’d always just been this—murder and mayhem.
Plus, if she was killing bugs, she couldn’t think about how hungry she was.
The wave of ShimVens ceased just seconds later. The work was quick and bloody, but nothing the Notches couldn’t handle.
Joel kicked one of the dead bugs, punting it down the lane of carnival games. “I thought we were done with these things. We killed the queen.”
Cody stooped down next to one. “We killed a queen. There’s no telling how far Layton has dispersed these things. They could be spread across the galaxy. They could be everywhere.”
Joel groaned. “I’m not in the mood for conspiracy theories.”
“Calling it a conspiracy theory doesn’t automatically invalidate it,” Cody said as he examined the dead bug. “It just means it hasn’t been proven yet.”
“If Layton is responsible for these things,” Reggie said, “Then what are they doing in an abandoned amusement park? What would Layton gain from infesting a business that’s not even running?”
Cody scratched his chin. “The ShimVens aren’t soldiers; they don’t follow orders. They’re wild animals. They go where they can find food and shelter. They’re dictated by their instincts, even if those instincts have been tampered with by scientists.”
“Whatever,” Sam said as she sheathed her sword. “What’s next?”
Cody consulted the schematics on his wristcom. “Next section is the food vendors.”
Sam’s face lit up, and her stomach growled. “Hell yeah.”
They moved in formation down the lane of games, stepping over the dead ShimVens. They didn’t encounter any more bugs, but Joel did blow the head off a stuffed elephant hanging from one of the game marquees. From the corner of his eye, its trunk looked like a set of pincers.
The lights and sounds of the game section faded as they exited the lane and moved further into the park – the food section.
“So, where is this cotton candy?” Sam asked.
The guys looked at her with quizzical expressions.
“What?” Sam said.
“You said ‘cotton candy’ the way my grandma says ‘virtual reality,’” Cody said. “Have you never had cotton candy before?”
“I’m a ruthless mercenary known throughout the galaxy. One of the best killers alive, fluent in a dozen forms of martial arts and proficient with twice as many types of weapons. Do I strike you as the type of person who eats something called ‘cotton candy?’”
“Holy shit,” Joel said. “Are you the terminator?”
Sam reached for her sword.
Cody stepped between her and Joel. “I’ll find some. No need for stabbing. Priority number one: get Sam some food.” Cody pulled up the park schematics again and zoomed in on the f
ood vending section. “Here.” He pointed to a tent in the northeast corner. “Rainbow Shack. They were cotton candy vendors. But remember that this place has been shut down for months; there’s no guarantee there’s anything left. And, even if there is, do you really want to eat it?”
Sam marched off toward the northeast corner. “I’ve eaten worse.”
The guys hurried to catch up with her. They were reluctant to split up, even for a second. After everything they’d gone through on the space station, all the times they thought would be their last opportunity to see each other, they would rather stick close.
The food section stank of deep fried oil, like the entire area had been battered and dipped in the boiling stuff. It made Sam’s stomach rumble. As hungry as she was, she knew the food choices here would be limited, so she didn’t bother following her nose. Meat and dairy would be spoiled. Produce would be rotten. Only processed food would have survived. And the more processed, the better.
She marched past stands for sausage and peppers, pizzas, French fries, bloomin’ onions. The pictures alone were enough to make her mouth water. She broke into a run the second she spotted the colorful banner for Rainbow Shack. Unicorns jumped over a pink and blue swirl that sat on top of a thin, paper cone. The tent was painfully bright and cheery, in no way reflective of Sam’s mood. She wanted to decapitate those unicorns.
She surveyed the inside of the tent. “Where is the cotton candy?” It came out like a threat.
“You probably need to make it,” Reggie said. When he saw her hand slide toward her sword, he immediately added, “I can make it! I worked a summer at the county fair.” He nodded to Cody. “I just need the power.”
Cody connected to the power station via his wristcom. “Maybe we could kill the ShimVens before we eat cotton candy?”
Sam growled.
Cody took that as a yes. He activated the power.
Sam stepped out of the tent. “We protect Rainbow Shack at all costs. If you must give your life for it, then do what needs to be done. Except you, Reggie—I need you to make the cotton candy. Cody, Joel, be valiant.” She drew her sword and sliced a ShimVen in half as it scurried out from under a hot dog stand.
