Knee-Deep in the Dead

by Dafydd ab Hugh

  “But the fears were all unreal. And after a while I realized I could take it. You just have to accept being afraid like you’ve never been afraid before; but if it can’t break you with fear, it doesn’t know what to do next.”

  “What did it do to you?”

  “It started ordering me to reprogram all the Phobos and Deimos equipment. When I refused, it tortured me with more and more Fear Itself, which is what I started calling the hallucinations. When that didn’t work, it hung me from the ceiling with its webbing, like it was saving me for later.”

  “I got the impression it needed to find out more about humans so it could figure out how to crack us. Meanwhile, I think it went looking for a more cooperative programmer. I’m sure it would have killed me when it found one.”

  “To find out more about humans,” I repeated, feeling a chill. “Arlene . . . do you think all this crap that’s been thrown against us . . . ?”

  She glared at me, then glared at the deck. She knew what I meant; she knew it made sense.

  We had been the secondary information sources. Had we given the mastermind anything useful? Mater Dei, I hoped not.

  “Describe the monster,” Arlene said.

  Ritch gritted his teeth. “It’s like a huge, brainlike thing inside a mechanical, spiderlike body.”

  “What about the weapons?” I asked.

  “Ringed with more weapons than you can imagine,” Ritch said. I doubted that. I’d reached the point where I could imagine quite a lot.

  Actually I was glad to receive Ritch’s news. A leader alien meant we had something to really fight. I was exhausted cutting off the inexhaustible limbs of this army. I was ready for a general. The new information cheered up Arlene as well, bringing color back to her cheeks. She and I didn’t need to talk about it. We were on the same wavelength. We shared our theories with Ritch, especially the one about Deimos as a spaceship and what we had discovered about the hyperspace tunnel. He had already guessed a lot.

  Then we continued our journey up the ring finger, where we’d seen the shack. We ran into one specter, hardly a match for the three of us. I couldn’t help contrasting our casualness now with my terror at seeing my first zombie. Nowadays, I was almost blasé.

  We prowled our way up to the ancient, crumbly, wooded hut. Hell needed a facelift.

  “Check out the lock,” Arlene said, grinning like a girl with a Christmas of accessories for her favorite doll. “I love these!”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “They take an old-fashioned key.”

  “I’ll help you look for it,” Ritch said before I could.

  “Hell with that,” she said. “I’ve already got one!” She dismantled one of the pistols; then she took the gasexpander stablizer spline for a flexor and the fixed end of the magazine-advance spring for a tensor. It took her just five minutes to pick the lock.

  “Where’d you learn that?” Ritch asked.

  “I read a lot of comic books.”

  “You need help putting that back together?” I asked with a straight face. I couldn’t resist teasing her a little. She rolled her eyes and reassembled the piece in nothing flat. She made us wait until she was good and ready to open the shack door.

  Inside was a switch. Surprise, surprise, surprise . . . as our patron saint Gomer might say. Arlene did the honors, lowering the wall ahead, revealing a hidden platform containing a dozen dead, mangled, squashed imps and a teleport pad.

  “It’s about that time,” she said.

  “I want a new travel agent,” I said.

  We teleported and stared, stunned into angry silence.

  We were right back where we’d started after crawling down the hyperspace tunnel! The only improvement was we still had our clothes and weapons—and Ritch, of course.

  31

  Déjà,” said Arlene.

  “Vu,” I said.

  “Dejah Thoris,” Ritch said, and Arlene snorted. They were speaking some kind of secret code. I wasn’t going to worry about it. Starting all over was something to worry about.

  As before, I inserted my arm up to the elbow in the membranal switch and opened the door. Inside, we found Weems and Yoshida in the same room, same position, still joined head-to-head . . . and still holding their pistols in exactly the same position as before. Clothed!

  We stared for a long time, and poor Bill Ritch had no idea why Arlene and I were so stunned; he started to examine the bodies, but Arlene gently pulled him back before he could see what they’d done to them.

  “This is worse than the monsters,” I said. We passed by and crawled through the narrow tunnel, a very tight fit for Ritch.

  When we reached the end, we faced the same seven imps as before, only this time we used shotguns. At least that was an improvement.

  We popped the same door. Out came two pumpkins, just like last time. The pumpkins were pretty much the same except for varying sizes. Arlene used the AB-10, and I finished them off with a shotgun, our favorite tactic. Ritch made a comment that was new: “They’d look better with two burning candles for eyes instead of that headlight in the center.” No one argued.

  We started to bypass the collapsing pier, going for the other door instead; but suddenly Arlene said, “Fly, I have a feeling we should duplicate our actions as precisely as we can.”

  “Arlene, last time the demons creamed you in that narrow hallway,” I reminded her. She nodded, a bit shaky at the thought. She wasn’t in any condition to survive a bout like that again. I pursued the point: “We’ve already deviated by not taking Weems’s and Yoshida’s pistols and by killing the pumpkins outside.”

  “I know,” she said. “I don’t have any good argument except for female intuition.” I was about to make a crack about the unlikelihood of that particular attribute in Arlene Sanders, but I saw that she was deadly serious. She glared at me until I saw reason.

  We left Ritch in the corridor. He wasn’t in shape for what we had in mind. Of course, after we cleared a path for him, he could stroll through in relative safety. We ran like bats out of Deimos down the pier, this time charging through the illusory wall of flame and blowing away the imps we knew to be on the other side.

  There was another reason I’d insisted we leave Ritch behind, one I kept to myself: I half thought we’d find a second Bill Ritch hanging from the ceiling here.

  We didn’t . . . and I never brought the subject up to Arlene or Ritch. God only knows whether they thought of it themselves—probably, but they kept quiet as well.

  We slipped back by the secret corridor and used the same trick on the pumpkins and imps inside the room. It was a lot easier when we knew what to expect. This time I knew where the last pumpkin would be floating in ambush when I opened the door, and I enjoyed not being surprised. Pop goes the pumpkin.

  Crossing the patio, Arlene grabbed the chain saw and revved it up; but she made me promise to start shooting the moment she lost it this time. Except that this time, since she knew what to expect, she didn’t slip and wasn’t out of position where a demon could knock the chain saw out of her hand. She ducked. She weaved. She sawed all the demons to death. It was hard to believe she’d been seriously injured only a short time before; but having a chance to get it right the second time did wonders for her psychological recovery.

  We continued up the narrow corridor to the teleport. “So what happens now?” I asked. “Back to the hand again?

  I should’ve kept my hole shut. We stepped aboard, but instead of teleporting, the walls of the chamber lowered into the floor, leaving us standing behind some pillars in a very wide open courtyard.

  A neat row of UAC boxes stretched across the courtyard before us like a skyscraper on its side. Every box held a five-pack of rockets—all the rockets in the world. There was also another launcher.

  A silver lining like this couldn’t possibly arrive without an accompanying thundercloud. We heard the thunder of the heaviest feet in all monsterdom. Another lovely steam-demon . . . and there weren’t any convenient zero-g
zones around this time.

  “What the hell is that?” Ritch whispered, crouching behind a pillar.

  “That, my friend, is a steam-demon. Fifteen feet tall, long horns, a missile launcher for an arm—”

  “Oh, one of those,” Ritch said, nodding.

  “You know about them?” asked an incredulous Arlene.

  “Sure; I’ve just never seen one before. They ripped off my programming for an ore-crusher to run the creature.” His tone of voice was what you hear in small claims court, offended about business-as-usual.

  “Any way to sabotage it?”

  Ritch frowned in thought. A steam-demon was large enough to inspire frowns in anyone. “If you can get me around back, maybe,” he said. “That’s where the missile feeder is.”

  “Worth a try,” I said. I looked at Arlene, and she nodded. We dashed out to either side of the pillars as the steam-demon spotted us. It was as ugly as last time, but not as terrifying when frozen in indecision about which target to attack. While it made up its mind, assuming it had one, Arlene and I fired rockets from opposite directions.

  At last the steam-demon chose the prettier target and raised its missile-launching hand. Arlene saw what was coming and dived behind her pillar. Three small cruise missiles struck dead-on, shattering the pillar.

  I jumped out and shot the sucker over and over until I got its attention. As the big ugly mother deigned to notice me, I popped behind my own column; Arlene repeated the same process, out from her cover and blasting away. It was kind of like dealing with the playground bully where the stakes were real.

  The steam-demon proved that it had a mind by passing our little intelligence test. It stomped closer to the pillars, cutting off our angle. Arlene was ready for this. She ran backward, zigzagging, popping off an occasional rocket.

  Time for Ritch’s plan.

  While all this was happening, Ritch and I were moving into position. When the monster was finally standing with its back to the pillars, lining up a fatal shot for Arlene, I interlaced my fingers, bent down, and let Ritch climb aboard. Heavy as he was, I could barely boost him up high enough to grab the back of Godzilla for the ride of his life.

  He shoved his hand into the missile-loading machinery up to the elbow. I ditched him, as agreed beforehand, and leapt to a safer position to try something else in case Ritch failed.

  Arlene was still dodging around as if she were an actress at a producers’ convention. She was too busy now to even take a shot. Besides, she wasn’t going to risk hitting Ritch. As for the behemoth, it hadn’t even noticed that someone was riding on its back.

  Then Ritch ripped out a cable, and the steam-demon noticed.

  It jammed its left arm back at an impossible angle; it could just barely brush Ritch, but couldn’t bring much force against him, not enough to dislodge him.

  The hand with the launcher had a better angle; the steam-demon got it back, pointed at Ritch, and I held my breath, expecting Armageddon. But at the last moment, rarely used self-preservation circuitry kicked in, preventing the big guy from firing into its own missile supply. The steam-demon alternately swatted at Ritch from both sides until our man finished his task and jumped down.

  Then Bill Ritch started running, headed in my direction. The steam-demon turned around with great deliberation and aimed its missile launcher at Ritch’s head. This was point-blank range. Ritch would never have to worry about a hat again. The monster fired. We heard a loud, empty click. Nothing happened. Ritch kept running. The steam-demon kept clicking, pointing and clicking, as if it couldn’t fathom the situational evolution. It flunked that intelligence test.

  Arlene didn’t waste the opportunity. She started pumping at it from behind. The poor bastard turned and aimed its useless arm at her. Click! I shot it three times with my own compact rockets. I kept at it, squeezing the ring until my palm became numb; after what must have been twenty-five direct hits at least, the titan finally staggered and fell to the deck like a skyscraper under demolition—I kept firing, and it got weaker and weaker.

  Then Arlene got smart, ran around back, and pumped a couple into the missile supply; the steam-demon’s last words were pretty spectacular. I was surprised the entire hyperspace tunnel didn’t collapse.

  I was tired. But Arlene and Ritch were still full of fire.

  We went back the way we’d come, but there had been a change in the architecture. Walls no longer stood where they had. Floor plans were different. A room that had been a small, empty antechamber was now a huge room with the equivalent of a “beach” against which red waves of toxin washed relentlessly.

  “Look!” Arlene said. I followed her pointing finger to the unwelcome sight of a hell-prince wading through the crimson toxic surf. After playing patty-cake with the steam-demon, a minotaur didn’t seem that serious—but back on Phobos, Arlene had ripped through a crack to avoid one, and I’d been almost paralyzed with fright. How times change!

  But it wouldn’t do to be careless. We took it left, right, left, right with rockets until it was slagged. It made one gratifying “Ork!” before dying.

  The long, narrow corridor where Arlene had chain-sawed the demons was now one edge of a triangular room full of specters. We gave that a pass, rushing through before the lumbering, invisible pinkies could avenge their more-visible cousins; we beat cleats back to the door leading to the central corridor and slamming it, jamming the latch with some 10mm rounds.

  We didn’t see anything in the corridor outside, so we went back along the secret passage by which we had exited from the room behind the illusory wall. From that room we could see that the lava lake now had a wall at the back, and next to it a corridor that offered the possibility of dry land. I was about to slog across the corridor when Ritch got into the act.

  “Why don’t you use the toxic protection suit?” he asked, pointing.

  “What? Where?”

  “See those coveralls?”

  Huh! I pulled one on over my armor and boots before making a dash through the crud to the island behind it. There, I found the damnedest rifle I’d ever seen, huge, gyrostabilized, and with a gigantic battery backpack. Hoisting it up, I was pleased that it was a lot lighter than it looked and considerably less unwieldy. Grinning like I’d won a bowling league trophy, I humped back to where the others were waiting.

  It was a good thing I followed Ritch’s advice on the protective suit; the toxic glop ate away at the material with a consistent low hiss for company. I started feeling lousy by the time I was out of the stuff, but at least I wasn’t in pain. Arlene reached out to help me climb from the red pool.

  “Get it off!” she said. “Your suit is disintegrating.” I eagerly stripped for her. She noticed a telltale bulge under the suit. “What’s this?” she asked.

  I looked at it. “It’s a . . . it’s a big, freaking gun, I guess.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “I hate to say it, but we’d better find out in combat; I don’t want to waste power. Ritch?” He looked at the thing and shook his head.

  My skin was tingling after dumping the suit. We three exchanged that special expression that is only shared by those who skirt close to death. We touched hands, more than a handshake—more like taking a secret oath.

  There was nowhere to go but back out to the courtyard, and now I was glad we’d already popped the two pumpkins. We found another difference in the pattern: a new door next to the old, this one locked. Arlene dropped to her knees and fiddled with it. “Bad news,” she said finally. “I can’t pick this one.”

  That was annoying. I’d about convinced myself that she could handle any of these. Surveying the scenery, I noticed a third door on the far side of the courtyard. This place was turning into a hotel lobby! “Let’s try over there,” I suggested.

  We skulked through the doorway and entered a dark corridor. I took point and no one argued. I suppose I’d become careless. I didn’t notice the teleport pad until I’d stepped on it.

  This one was quick, but it made me
feel like I wanted to throw up. Suddenly I was standing on a triangular platform directly behind two pumpkins, not two meters away!

  32

  They didn’t see me. That was a good thing because there was no way I could kill them quickly with a shotgun or pistol. It would take multiple shots to destroy them, and at this range, long before that happened they’d fry me with their lightning balls. And I could forget about rockets, unless I had a “burning” desire to be a burn-ward poster boy.

  This seemed a fine time to give the big freakin’ gun—call it a BFG—a shot. Taking a deep breath, I raised this fine piece of Union Aerospace Corporation craftsmanship and pointed it at the nearest oblivious target. There was no obvious trigger mechanism, so I squeezed the hand grip. There was no kick at all. Instead, I heard a loud whine of energy. The pumpkins heard it also and started rotating.

  Nothing had come out of the muzzle of the weapon yet; I had just about decided I’d made a big freakin’ mistake when a green ball of energy exploded from the sealed mouth of the gun. The light was so bright it seared my eyes . . . the pumpkins screamed and popped like balloons, leaving nothing but smoking, blue and orange shreds.

  But my troubles were not over; I wasn’t back home with my feet up.

  A horde of zombies poured out of cubbyholes that were like eyes stretched up and down both corridors. Funny how I hadn’t noticed them until trouble came out. Exhaustion was taking its toll and making me lose my edge.

  I’d already dropped to my belly when I heard the unmistakable clatter of machine-gun bullets ripping over my head. Who the hell was shooting now? The attack came from behind. I was tired of attacks coming from behind.

  Rolling to the side, staying low, I fired off another BFG blast down the corridor to the left. The results were good—a large bunch of fried zombies. I was ready to institute a firm gun-control policy for all undead: I would firmly control my BFG as I fired it.

  Leaping down from the pumpkin platform, I bolted along the corridor to the left end, ducking into a cubbyhole myself. Old rule: when a bad guy comes out of a hole, he’s not there anymore. I laid down the BFG and unslung my trusty shotgun, then poked my nose out of the cubbyhole again. Seemed like a good idea at the time.