“Not just cute, but brave, too. See, these Floomfles are willing sacrifices—no, grateful sacrifices—to the Sloorgs.”
Gasps and thrilled-sounding murmurs went around the studio. The host produced a small thin microphone from his pocket and approached the Floomfles. They all shuffled anxiously, nudging each other and giggling as he squatted beside them.
“Hey there, little fella,” he said, ruffling the red hair of a short, stocky Floomfle. They were all short and stocky, but this one was notably more so than the rest. “What’s your name?”
“Floomjin,” said the Floomfle, barely able to contain his excitement as the host shoved the microphone close to his face. “I can’t believe I’m here! I’m a huge fan of the show!”
The host winked at the audience. “Must have a different definition of ‘huge’ back where he comes from!”
Everyone laughed. Even, to Cal’s dismay, the Floomfles themselves.
“And tell me, Floomjin. How are you feeling about being eaten by the Sloorgs on system-wide television? Nervous?”
“Oh, no. I’m not nervous,” said Floomjin, but a bearded Floomfle beside him begged to differ.
“He shizzed himself on the way over.”
Floomjin elbowed him and scowled, clearly annoyed that his big moment was being spoiled. “I didn’t,” he told the host. “And anyway, that was nothing to do with the show. The pilot of the ship we were in was terrible. We kept getting thrown around.”
“We were in a shootout,” Cal hollered through the glass. “It wasn’t her fault! On this occasion.”
“And how about you, miss?” asked the host, stretching the microphone above the heads of Floomjin and his bearded antagonist, and pointing it at the face of the woman with the uncertain eyes. “Looking forward to playing your part in The Hunt?”
The female Floomfle straightened and pushed back her shoulders, trying to disguise her doubt. “We have been waiting for this moment our whole lives,” she said. Her voice was hesitant and slightly robotic, like she was reading from a cue card inside her own head. “It is a great honor to die for The Hunt.”
“And we thank you for it,” said the host. He stood, saluted them with absolute sincerity, then turned to the audience, all-smiles. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Floomfles!”
The applause came again, but it was less enthusiastic now. The space tomato had slid down the glass, and Cal could see that the audience members were getting restless. They weren’t here to see space-midgets being interviewed, no matter how cute they might be. They wanted blood. Cal’s blood, in particular.
The host had clearly picked up on it, too. Or maybe he just knew, through experience, exactly how long to keep them waiting.
He touched a finger to his ear and nodded. “The Huntsmaster has just given confirmation that the course is set, and the Hunters are in position.”
Silence fell across the audience, almost as if the audio feed had been cut. Other than the occasional excited squeak from the Floomfles and the faintest hum from the overhead lights, there was not a sound in the studio.
“Join me in counting down, friends,” the host said. “And friends at home, that means you, too.”
He pointed up to the screens overhead. He and the audience spoke with a single voice.
“Ten! Nine! Eight!”
The Floomfles looked like they might burst with excitement.
“Seven! Six! Five!”
Cal had an idea. Frantically, he breathed on the glass, and began to write, ‘I AM NOT REDUK TOPA,’ in the condensation. Ideally, he’d have been able to use a finger, but as his arms were both pinned at his side, the only writing utensil available to him was his nose.
So that the audience could read the message, he wrote it backward. The first three letters were fine, since they were the same backward as they were forward. When he got to the ‘N,’ though, things started to get trickier.
“Shizz, wait. So… up, then down, or…?”
Outside the tube, the audience watched the pirate, Reduk Topa, smearing his face against the glass in a manner they unanimously deemed grotesque.
At least, they would have unanimously deemed it grotesque had they not been busy with the countdown.
“Two! One!”
Cal nosed an ‘O,’ and a ‘T,’ grateful for their simplicity. He was psyching himself up for the ‘R,’ when the circle the Floomfles had been standing on fell away and they dropped out of sight through the studio floor.
Cal felt a buzzing from beneath him. He looked down, completely ruining the message he’d been trying to write.
The host punched the air in triumph. He gestured to Cal, his eyes blazing darkly.
“Let the Hunt for Reduk Topa begin!”
Twenty-Six
“Wait—” Cal yelped, but his protests were cut short when the floor beneath his feet gave way and he plunged through the floor.
For a moment, there was only a sort of half-darkness.
Then, the hatch above him closed, and there was full darkness.
A moment later, Cal fell out of the tube, flapped his arms in panic, then crash-landed onto a stone floor scattered with something not a million miles away from straw, and something else not a half-dozen miles away from lion shizz.
The first thing he did was scratch the top of his head. There had been an itch there for some time now, and he let out a little groan of satisfaction as he finally killed it dead.
That mission accomplished, he sat up and found himself almost at eye level with the Floomfles. “Oh, thank God, you’re all still alive,” Cal said.
One of the little figures spat in his face. “Murderer!”
“Hey! Cut that out,” Cal warned, pushing the little guy back before he could finish draining his sinuses for an encore performance. “I’m not a murderer. They’ve got the wrong guy!”
“Liar!” hissed another of the Floomfles.
“Deceiver!”
“Charlatan!”
Cal got to his feet. “Fine, believe what you like. You’ll thank me later when I save your lives.”
Now that he was able to move more freely, he noticed that he was wearing a silver-gray bodysuit with orange piping that was doing very little for his figure. The word, ‘Prey,’ had been emblazoned across the front, just in case anyone forgot what his role was in the proceedings.
Cal turned on the spot, ignoring the jibes of the Floomfles as he took in the room. There was a single large window at one end, and a door at the other. The door stood slightly ajar, tempting him to make a run for it.
He checked the window. A two story drop onto grass, maybe more.
Less tempting.
A blinking red light up on his left caught Cal’s eye. One of the floating cameras was there, watching him with its beady electronic gaze. He ignored it for now. It wasn’t the most pressing problem.
The corner of the room nearest the door was lost in a sea of shadow. For a moment, Cal wondered if there might be something useful concealed in there, and then his brain put together all the pieces just as shapes moved in the darkness.
Sloorgs.
They padded from the shadows, testicle-heads wobbling, purple tongues flicking hungrily across their scattergun teeth.
“Shizz! Nobody move,” Cal urged, but the Floomfles were having none of it.
Floomjin, the red-haired Floomfle who’d done the interview, was the first to go, encouraged by a shove in the back from his bearded companion.
“Here I go!” Floomjin hollered, waving his arms above his head in triumph as he raced at the Sloorgs.
Cal could only watch in mute horror as the Floomfle leaped at the largest of the creatures.
“I’m gonna be famous!” Floomjin announced, before a set of Sloorg jaws clamped down on him and his legs fell to the floor.
Silence descended as the other Floomfles stared down at the legs. It was broken by the crunch of Floomjin between the Sloorg’s teeth.
And then, almost unanimously, they erupted into cheers and all rac
ed toward the jaws of death, laughing and whooping as they hurled themselves into the waiting mouths of the monster-dogs.
“No, wait, don’t!” Cal pleaded, but it was too late. The Sloorgs fell upon them at once, clawing and ripping at their little bodies, hungrily devouring them, bones and all.
Only one Floomfle hung back, her head shaking, her pudgy little fingers flexing in and out as her chest heaved in panic.
“Gotta do it. It’s an honor. It’s an honor,” she whispered, steeling herself. “Gotta do it.”
“Yoink!”
Cal caught her by the scruff of the neck and jerked her off the floor. She kicked out at him and grabbed for his fingers. “Hey! Leave me alone, you murderer! I want to be eaten by the Sloorgs.”
“No, you don’t,” Cal told her. “We’re getting out of here.”
The female Floomfle made a few grumbling noises, but didn’t put up too much of a fight.
Cal considered the door. It was still ajar, but the path to it was full of Sloorgs and gristle. Besides, it was too obvious an escape route, and so probably a trap.
Fonk it. The window, then.
He pulled the Floomfle close to his chest. “Do you trust me?” he asked her.
“No! Of course I don’t! You’re a murderous pirate!”
“Well, tough shizz,” Cal said. “Brace yourself.”
He set off at a sprint toward the window, wrapping his arms across the Floomfle and cocooning her against his chest.
Just before he reached the window, he twisted and threw himself backward at the glass.
He wasn’t sure which he’d been dreading more—the hollow thonk that would follow if the glass turned out to be unbreakable, or the crash that would arise if it turned out not to be.
He got the crash, and was both relieved and dismayed to find himself tumbling through the open air toward the ground below.
Opening his arms, Cal grabbed the Floomfle by the feet and held her above him. “Now fly,” he urged. “Fly us to safety.”
“What are you talking about?” the Floomfle yelled. “I can’t fly both of us!”
Cal glanced at the woman’s tiny transparent wings. He looked past her, to the window he’d just thrown them through.
“You can’t?”
“No!”
“Well, why the fonk didn’t you say that before I—?”
Cal hit the ground, and what was left of the sentence exited his body through his nose.
As ground went, it wasn’t the worst he could’ve landed on. The grass was moist, the soil below it soft and springy. There were no large rocks, and while several large pieces of broken glass were sticking upright from the grass, he miraculously managed to miss most of them.
One particularly nasty-looking jagged piece snagged his shoulder as he landed, cutting a slit in the bodysuit and drawing a red line across his skin. Nothing major, and his fast-healing ability would have it squared away in no time.
All things considered, he’d gotten off lightly.
A Sloorg’s head appeared from the window three floors above. It twisted and turned this way and that, searching for him. Even at this distance, Cal could hear the snuffling of its nose hole.
“We need to go,” he whispered, easing himself up onto his feet.
“I’m not going anywhere with—”
“Shh! Shut the fonk up,” Cal hissed, clamping a hand over the Floomfle’s mouth. “Do you really want to be eaten by those things? Is that really how you want to bow out? Gnawed on by a sentient testicle?”
The Floomfle stared defiantly at him from behind his hand. Then, some fire inside her died away—or perhaps spluttered into life—and she gave a single shake of her head.
“Good. Then stay quiet,” Cal urged. He looked up at the window again, where the Sloorg was still searching for them.
The building was a tall white tower with The Hunt logo illuminated in red near the top. The only window was the one Cal had jumped through. There was no door, as far as he could tell, reaffirming his instinct that the door out of the room they’d escaped from had been a trap.
Pressing himself against the tower wall, Cal took in his surroundings.
Were it not for the imminent threat of being torn apart by dog-monsters, the area would actually be rather pleasant. The grass was green, the sky was blue, and there was a forest over on the left that could almost have been transplanted straight from Earth.
Across from the forest on Cal’s right was a little lake. A small boat bobbed up and down by a moorings, the soft lapping of the waves against its hull quite soothing, despite the circumstances.
Between the forest and the lake was a path. Lights illuminated along it like stepping stones, each one blinking on for a split second before passing the baton to the next one along. The final light took the form of an arrow that pointed to a sign marked, ‘ZONE ONE. THIS WAY.”
“Guess they want us to go that way,” Cal whispered.
He made for the forest instead, keeping low and sticking close to the tower until there was no choice but to leave its cover.
The clearing between the tower and the forest’s edge was sixty feet, he estimated. He was halfway across it when he heard the Sloorg roar triumphantly. The Floomfle gasped in his arms, and Cal went from a bent-double sneak to an upright sprint, throwing himself toward the trees and the salvation he hoped lay within.
He reached the forest’s edge just as the first of the Sloorgs landed on the grass. He made it six feet into the tangle of branches before one of the trees punched him.
Not whipped at him. Not struck him accidentally. Punched him.
On purpose.
“What the fonk is this now?” he grimaced, staggering as the knotted end of a sturdy branch took another swing at his head.
“Bamtrees, obviously,” said the Floomfle.
“Bamtrees? What the fonk are—?”
BAM. A wooden fist hammered into his jaw.
“Jesus!” he groaned. “Is everything in this place out to kill me?”
“Yes! That’s the whole point!” the Floomfle cried. “Why didn’t you take the path?”
“Because I thought it was a trap!”
“No! It’s the route to the start! You just have to outrun the Sloorgs,” she told him. “You’ve literally just given yourself another obstacle. Duck.”
Cal ducked. A branch whummed across his head. “Well, why didn’t you say something?!”
“You had your hand over my—Sloorg!”
Cal spun in time to see the first of the Sloorgs come bounding into the trees. They seemed to part for it, while closing around Cal as he stumbled on.
“Shizz, shizz, shizz,” he babbled, fighting his way through tangles of twigs and ducking the swinging right-hooks of branches.
Another Sloorg let out a roar as it barged into the forest. Cal glanced back, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The ball-headed dog creatures were weaving easily through the woods, quickly gaining ground. He had fifteen seconds to come up with something clever.
He wasted three seconds saying as many swear words as he could think of, then got down to business.
Trees. Sloorgs. Think.
He patted his chest, on the off-chance that Splurt was deep undercover.
Nope.
Ten seconds. Think.
He could feel the heat of their breath now, smell the blood of the Floomfles, hear the excited grunts ejecting from the closest monster’s cavernous throat.
“Well, this is going to be a disappointing episode,” the Floomfle remarked.
Of course! That was it!
Cal stopped. He turned to face the oncoming Sloorgs, his eyes searching the trees above until he saw what he was looking for.
“What are you doing?” demanded the Floomfle.
Five seconds.
“I give up,” he told the camera. “I don’t want to do this. I quit.”
Three seconds.
“It can go ahead and eat me.”
Two.
Cal resiste
d the urge to jump clear. He stood his ground, eyeballing the camera as the closest Sloorg pounced, jaws wide.
The forest snapped shut around it, pinning it in place just inches from Cal’s face. It hissed and burped in rage.
Cal tried not to show his relief.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he shouted to the camera. “You want a show? I’ll give you a goddam show.”
He gave it something else, too—the finger.
That done, he turned away from the trapped Sloorg and regarded the rest of the forest. Up close, the trees didn’t look much like Earth trees, at all. A canopy of leaves and branches was tangled together high overhead, allowing only the odd beam of light through to the uneven forest floor.
Something moved far above, and Cal’s head was suddenly filled with visions of space squirrels.
“Fonk. OK, how do we get out of here?” he asked with a renewed sense of urgency.
Fonking space squirrels.
The Floomfle rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Have you even watched the show?”
“No,” said Cal. “So, if you could maybe dial down the sass and help me out, there’s a chance we’ll get out of here alive.”
“Preypad.”
Cal frowned. “Huh?”
“In your bag. There’s a Preypad. It’ll show you the way.”
Up until that moment, Cal hadn’t even been aware that he had a bag, much less anything contained within one. He found it slung across his back and, after eventually managing to untangle himself from its straps, he rummaged inside.
The contents of the bag were as follows:
A tiny telescope.
A plastic straw.
A piece of rope, approximately fifteen inches long.
A pouch containing something that might have been yogurt.
A device that was much like a Swiss Army Knife, albeit without the knife part. Where the knife should have been was an extra spoon. (Quite what he was supposed to do with one spoon, much less two, he had no idea. He felt for example that, even with the help of the additional one, he was unlikely to be able to spoon a Sloorg to death, even if they agreed to let him try.)
A circular gadget with a metal back and a glass front, roughly the size of his palm.
Space Team- The Collected Adventures 4 Page 80
