Kornack approached Cal, and his minions scurried over to move the chairs out of his path. Cal smiled and held out his hand. “Mr Kornack, nice to meet you.”
The alien’s face turned stony. Or stonier than it had been, at least, which was really saying something. He peered down at Cal’s outstretched hand in something close to disgust. “You kidding me?” he said, and an excited grin lit up his face. He held his arms out at his sides. “Get in here for one of these, you crazy bamston!”
With a nod of encouragement from Loren, Cal stepped in and tentatively gave Kornack a hug. The rock-like arms wrapped around him and hoisted him off the ground.
“Now that is what I’m talking about!” Kornack said. “That’s the real thing, right there. Am I right?”
“Always, sir,” said Gadston.
After several highly uncomfortable seconds, Cal was set back down on the floor. He smiled weakly as the air filled his lungs again. “Thanks,” he croaked. “That was nice.”
“Kornack, on behalf of Zertex, we would like to extend our gratitude. We appreciate you coming to us with the information you obtained, and would--”
“Yeah, yeah, fine. Whatever. No problem,” said Korvack, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “Talk to Dtsgadston. Me and the Butcher here have a lot to discuss.” He raised a hand the size of a small Eastern European country. “But first, I want to show you something. I made it myself.”
He ushered the crew towards their seats. The hat-minions carried Kornack’s throne over to Mech and deposited it quite unceremoniously behind him.
“Please,” Gadston said, gesturing to the chair. “Mr Kornack insists.”
Mech looked the solid gold chair up and down. “Well, you know, if he insists,” he said, lowering himself onto the throne. He wriggled, enjoying the moment. “Man, I could get used to this.”
“This took me weeks,” Kornack said. “How long did it take me, Dtsgadston?”
“Weeks, sir,” Gadston confirmed.
“Worth every minute. Seriously. Gonna blow your mind,” Kornack said. He gestured to a patch of empty wall behind him. “Look. See? Nothing there, right?”
“Right,” said Cal.
“I mean, nothing. Literally nothing there.” He waved a hand in front of the nothing. “You’re looking at me now, all like, ‘what’s he doing? Ain’t nothing there.’ Right? That’s what you’re thinking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” said Cal. He looked at the others. “I mean, I don’t know about anyone else, but you’ve captured my thoughts perfectly.”
“Yes,” agreed Loren. “It’s just what I was thinking.”
Kornack grinned. “I knew it. Now watch!” he said. “Dtsgadston.”
Gadston produced his remote control again. Cal braced himself for a point-blank range blast of Dolly Parton, but instead a large piece of cloth rolled down from the shadows near the ceiling, accompanied by a handful of confetti, three underfilled balloons, and a sound like a disappointed trumpet.
It was a sign. An enormous, hand-painted sign.
Across the top were the words “Welcome, Butcher” in red.
And below the words, to Cal’s dismay, was a fifteen feet high portrait of the real Eugene ‘the Butcher’ Adwin.
Kornack’s face contorted itself into a terrifyingly wide grin, as he stabbed a finger up in the direction of Eugene’s enormous impassive face and wispy white hair. “Surprise!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mech, Loren, and Miz all looked up at the banner.
They looked at Cal.
They looked at the banner again.
“Hey, wait a minute…” Miz began.
“Oh no,” Loren whispered.
“Wait! I can explain,” said Cal. “Just give me, like, twenty to thirty seconds…”
“Explain what?” asked Kornack, his smile waning just a fraction. “You like it or not?”
“What? I mean, yes, I love it, but--”
“He loves it!” said Kornack, visibly delighted. “Hear that, Dtsgadston? He loves it.”
“Indeed he does, sir,” the butler confirmed.
Kornack rocked back on his heels and cast the banner a lingering look of admiration.
After he’d spent a while really taking it in, he turned to Cal. A flicker of something like confusion passed over his face. He looked back at the banner. “Have you… is there something different about you?” Kornack asked.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. I changed my hair,” said Cal. “And, you know, lost like a hundred and eighty pounds.”
Kornack shrugged, his grin returning. “Ah, wadda I know? You all look the same to me. Am I right, Dtsgadston?”
“Always, sir.”
Mizette frowned. “But--”
“Miz, honey,” said Cal, turning in his seat. “I want you to really carefully consider the next words out of your mouth, OK?” he urged, shooting Kornack a sideways glance. “Mr Kornack took weeks to put together this banner on which is very clearly a picture of me, the Butcher of planet Earth. Understand?”
Miz looked Cal up and down. Her snout wrinkled up, like she’d suddenly got a whiff of something unpleasant. “Yeah,” she said, coldly. “Yeah, I understand just fine.”
“Gunso Loren,” said Gadston, clicking his heels together crisply. “May I suggest we retire to make arrangements?”
Loren stood up. “Yes. Of course.”
“And may I also suggest that your companions may be more comfortable elsewhere in the room, leaving Mr Kornack and the Butcher to their private matters?”
Cal’s eyes widened. “Private? It’s fine, they can stay. There’s no secrets between us, right guys?”
“Man, you’re something else,” Mech muttered, getting to his feet. He gave the throne a loving stroke. “We’ll be elsewhere. Come on, Miz.”
“Right behind you,” Mizette growled, turning her nose in the air as she pushed past Cal’s chair.
“Guys? Come on! Guys?” Cal called, but they crossed the room and stood together in the corner, deliberately keeping their back to him.
Only Splurt remained where he was, but Kornack didn’t seem to have noticed him. With a faint grunt of effort, Kornack lifted his throne, then set it in front of Cal with a clang that echoed around the cavernous space. He sat on it, perched right at the front, leaning in as close as he could get to the deeply uncomfortable Cal.
“This is… cosy,” Cal said.
“Thank you,” said Kornack. “Like the music by the way? That was for you.”
“I appreciate that,” Cal said. “It’s my favorite.”
“I know,” said Kornack. He placed two fingers on Cal’s knee, and slowly walked them up his thigh. “I know all about you.”
Cal swallowed. “Yay!” he said. “But I’m not that interesting, honest.”
Kornack pulled a mock-offended face. At least, that’s how Cal read it. It was difficult to tell with the alien’s folds of rocky flesh hanging down from his jowls. “Are you kidding me? You’re exceptional. You’re exquisite.”
He dragged his fingers back down Cal’s leg, then rubbed his hands together. “Now, tell me what it’s like.”
“What what’s like?”
“Cannibalism.”
Cal nodded. “Oh, yeah, that. Right.” He shrugged. “It’s, you know, nice.”
Kornack’s excited expression didn’t change. “Nice?”
“Really nice,” said Cal. “I highly recommend it.”
“No, but… what’s it like?” Kornack pressed. “That moment you sink your teeth into flesh of your flesh. The sound it makes as you tear them apart. The ripping. The shredding. That feeling of their juices flooding your mouth.”
“It’s… great,” said Cal. “I mean, you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head with that… vivid picture you’ve just painted there.” He forced a laugh. “Are you sure you’ve never tried cannibalism?”
Kornack’s face turned somber. “Oh,
I wish,” he said, and a shudder trembled his body, making tiny pebbles roll off him like a landslide. “I would like that very much.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s great alright,” said Cal. He leaned back and made a show of taking in the room around them. “Still, this is nice.”
“Fonk that shizz!” cried Kornack, jumping to his feet with such force his throne skidded backwards across the floor. “I want to hear the good stuff! Tell me what it’s like. Blow by blow, bite by bite. I want to hear it all!”
Cal raised a hand, hoping to calm the warlord down. Kornack was still smiling, but it looked in real danger of slipping away at any second, and Cal didn’t really want to find out what expression he wore underneath.
“OK, OK,” he said. “Have you ever tasted chicken?”
“What the fonk is ‘chicken’?” Kornack demanded.
“No, course you haven’t. It’s a flightless bird, doesn’t matter,” Cal said. “What do you eat?”
“Silicate.”
“What, like… rocks? Well, I guess it’s like that. But, you know, not as crunchy.”
Kornack’s smile dribbled away. His eyes turned glassy and dark.
“And,” said Cal, quickly. “It’s… It’s like an explosion of taste that fills you all the way from your toes to the top of your head. It’s like… you’re not just eating their flesh, you’re eating everything they were. Their thoughts. Their hopes. Their childhood memories. It’s like they’re now yours. Like they belong to you.”
Kornack’s mouth tugged upwards at the corners. “Go on.”
“And… the energy. You feel strong. Like they’ve given you all their strength, all their power. It’s like they’ve given themselves to you in the fullest way possible. More than sex, more than love. They’ve literally given themselves to you on a plate,” Cal continued. “Even if, you know, you’ve had to bash them over the head with a rock to get them there.”
A string of drool dribbled from Kornack’s bottom lip. He wiped it away on the sleeve of his ill-fitting suit.
“More,” he urged. “Tell me more.”
Cal’s mind raced. “Um… what else? It keeps well in the fridge? You know, if you wrap it properly,” he said. “Or the freezer. You can freeze it.”
“Like you did to your parents,” said Kornack, his eyes blazing.
“That’s right. Like I did to my parents. They kept for months. Then you just thaw, reheat. You know, microwave or whatever. That’s you. You’re all set.”
Kornack’s dark purple tongue scraped across his stony lips. “Who was the tastiest?”
Cal puffed out his cheeks. “My mom, probably.”
“Apart from them,” said Kornack. “Apart from your parents, who was the tastiest victim?”
Cal narrowed his eyes and looked upwards, as if searching for a memory. “Fifth one, probably.”
“Alanna Owen. The secretary?”
“Yep. If you say so.”
“Tell me about her,” Kornack urged in a breathless whisper. “In detail. Slowly.”
Cal glanced across to see Gadston bowing at Loren, who then turned away. She gave Cal a nod, and he almost sobbed with relief. “You know, I’d love to, but it looks like we’re done here and, boy, our schedule is packed today.”
He stood up. Kornack’s expression turned to one of confusion. “What?”
“We’re done. Deal’s made, right Loren?”
Loren nodded again as she joined them. “Yeah. All done.”
Cal took Kornack’s hand and shook it. “Mr Kornack, it’s been a pleasure. Good luck with the cannibal stuff, I hope it works out. Mech, Miz! We’re going!” he said, backing away from the warlord. “Splurt, let’s go, buddy.”
“He’s not coming,” said Loren.
Cal shot her a sideways glance, not taking his eyes off the increasingly unhappy-looking Kornack. “What?”
“Splurt… I mean, the organism. It’s not coming. It’s part of the deal. It stays here.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“That was the trade,” Loren said. “The data for the organism.”
“Stop calling him ‘the organism,’” said Cal. “And there’s no way we’re just leaving Splurt with this guy.”
“Yes,” said Loren. “We are. The deal has been done.”
“Well, not by me, it hasn’t,” Cal protested. “Mech! Miz! She’s given them Splurt.”
The cyborg and the wolf-woman approached. “So?” said Miz.
“So, he’s one of us!” said Cal.
“What you talking about, man?” Mech snorted. “There ain’t no ‘us.’”
“Well, I’m not leaving here without him,” said Cal. He became aware of movement in the shadows at the edges of the room. Shapes lurked there. Dozens of eyes studied him from the darkness.
“The shapeshifter is mine now,” said Kornack, all his earlier joviality now notable by its absence. “The rest of you may leave… after I’ve seen the Butcher eat.”
Cal blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I want to see you consume human flesh,” Kornack said. “I want to admire you in action.”
“I’m not really that hungry,” said Cal. He gestured around them. “Besides, do you even have any other humans here?”
“No, sir,” Gadston admitted.
“Well, that’s that, then,” said Cal. “Shame, obviously, but I can’t very well be a cannibal without a human to munch on, can I?”
“Oh, we have a human, sir,” said Gadston.
Cal frowned. “Who?” he said, turning to face the butler just as he produced an axe-like weapon from behind his back.
“You, sir.”
“Me? But… hold on.”
“You’re gonna cut a piece off,” Kornack explained. “An arm, maybe. You choose. But something meaty. Then you’re gonna eat it, and I’m gonna watch.”
Cal’s jaw dropped. “That is… the maddest fonking thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. He glared at Loren. “You know about this?”
“No. Warlord Kornack, this wasn’t part of the agreement.”
“I know. You’ve got what you wanted. The deal is done. This here? With the eating himself and whatnot? That’s purely for my own enjoyment.”
Loren straightened her shoulders. “I must insist--”
“I must insist you shut your mouth,” Kornack warned. “Dtsgadston, give him the blade.”
“Of course, sir,” the butler said. He turned the weapon and presented it to Cal like a newborn baby to a first time father. “I had it sharpened specially, sir. It should take no more than two to three strikes to cut through.”
“My arm?”
“Or leg. Like I say, your choice,” said Kornack. He settled himself on his throne and flicked his tongue across his dry lips. “Just… don’t take too long to get started. After that, take as long as you like.”
Cal took the axe. It was lighter than he’d been expecting. He hefted it from hand to hand and took a deep breath.
“Oh, man, this is… this is all kinds of messed up,” said Mech.
Cal shot Mizette an imploring look, but she turned away and crossed her arms, her tail curling angrily in the air.
“OK, then. Looks like I’m doing this,” he muttered. “Everyone ready?”
“Cal,” said Loren.
“It’s fine,” said Cal, offering her a shaky smile. “Don’t worry about it. I barely use my left arm, anyway. I won’t even notice it’s gone.”
He lined the blade of the axe up with his arm, just below the elbow. Kornack leaned forwards in his chair, groaning with anticipation. Cal took a deep breath. He swung.
And the blade buried deep in Gadston’s skull, splitting him from the top of the head to the tip of his nose. “Ooh, shizz,” Cal grimaced. “That went in further than I thought.”
Before anyone could react, he made a grab for Splurt and tucked him under his arm. “Now come on,” he urged, just as Gadston toppled sideways to th
e floor. “Let’s get the fonk out of here!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Cal powered along the passageway, trying his best to ignore the squealing, howling and roaring of the things that currently chased him. Unfortunately, the fact the din was getting louder and closer with every moment that passed made ignoring it quite difficult.
“You idiot!” hissed Mech, thundering along beside him. “You couldn’t just have cut your arm off like the man asked? And why’d you have to split that dude’s head open?”
“The other guy was made of rock,” Cal said. “There was no way I could have split his head open.”
“Well maybe you could have tried not splitting anyone’s head open,” Mech suggested. “Ever think of that?”
The cyborg’s top half spun one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, while his bottom half continued running forwards. Raising an arm, Mech let rip with a short spray of blaster fire from his wrist.
“Gun arms? When did you get gun arms?” Cal demanded. “You never told me you had gun arms!”
Up ahead, two figures lunged at Loren and Miz from the shadows. From the way the attackers’ expressions changed, mid-leap, they both realized pretty quickly that they’d made a terrible mistake. Loren slammed the heel of her hand into the center of one attacker’s face, while a flash of Miz’s claws gave the other a more detailed knowledge of his innards than he’d possibly have liked.
Splurt squidged around under Cal’s arm, almost slipping out as they rounded the bend that led to the exit. The enormous metal door was shut tight, the floor in front of it swarming with the little hat-things.
“Still hungry?” Loren asked.
“Ravenous,” Miz snarled. She dropped onto all fours and sped ahead, her jaws snapping furiously at the creatures, and sending them scattering in all directions.
“Mech, we need an exit!” Cal urged.
Mech’s top spun like a tank turret. “Coming right up,” he said, taking aim. A volley of blaster fire screamed along the corridor, bounced off the door, and screamed back. Cal ducked just in time to avoid it punching a hole straight through his head.
“It’s reinforced. Blaster won’t cut it!” Mech said.
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