by Nick Pollota
Minutes later, we reached the second level from the top and we were confronted by a line of snarling ice griffins. They were big, but slow, and we blew ‘em apart. But as I slammed my last clip into the hot breech of the M16, our pal Big Bird came silently arching around the mountain only yards off the snowy ground. Trying to attack us from behind eh?
“George!” I shouted firing a short burst that way. “Incoming! Ten o'clock low!”
Spinning about, the plump soldier cut loose with the Masterson. In a steady yammering, the 10mm caseless rounds of HE stitched across the chest of the beast in a series of sharp explosions, scales and feathers spraying outward in bloody geysers. Then a telephone pole size arrow took the thing in one of its many mouths, splitting the snake head apart. Jess and Mindy hosed it with silver bullets while Donaher held off the army of approaching snowmen. Damn. They were coming at us from every direction!
Taking careful aim, I turned the stolen laser pistol on the living nightmare. The scintillating beam snipped off three of its barbed tails and cut a bloody furrow in the burning fur of its belly. Oh, that had to hurt. But despite the wounds, the flying monster came at us again and again, each time only to be repelled at the very last moment by sheer firepower. This thing was harder to get rid of than a Jehovah's Witness!
As the jabberwocky wheeled away into the sky once more, I snapped off a shot at the diving bell, but only managed to vaporize one of the many snowmen standing protectively in front. That settled the matter for me. If they wanted the sphere intact, we just had to blow that sucker to Hell. However, the power gauge on my futuristic weapon was now reading 24%. We were rapidly running out of ammo, options, time and luck.
“How you guys doing?” Donaher shouted, his shotgun booming in counterpoint to the steady chatter of Jessica's machine gun. The spent brass hit the stone stairs to musically bounce away.
“Not good,” Richard grunted, launching another telephone pole. There was a touch of gray at his temples, and even for a wizard he seemed pale.
“Wish we had a second nuke,” George snarled riding his bucking weapon into a tighter pattern. Wings and things were steadily being blown off the flying abomination, but Big Bird seemed to have an endless supply of both limbs and hostility.
“Hot damn, we do!” I cried, slapping my forehead. Still firing, I awkwardly dug about in my shoulder pouch and lifted out the crystal ball bomb from the armory. “This ought to blow it into hamburger!”
“Great!” Mindy cried, releasing an arrow towards the last ice griffin hobbling our way. The blast blew it apart into twinkling shards, and she turned her attention to the snowmen. But one of her quivers was completely empty, and the other was dangerously low. Soon this fight would go hand-to-hand, and that was when we'd start dying.
Lowering the crossbow pistol, Richard seemed to have trouble speaking as he stared at the orb. “Where did you ... how ... You want to throw that at the jabberwocky?” he gagged. “Are you insane? Gimme!"
Grabbing the sphere from my hand, Richard quickly tucked the crossbow into his belt, and awkwardly flicked his pocket lighter. The tiny butane flame danced about wildly in the wind, but the fuse finally caught with a sharp hiss.
“Throw it!” George yelled impatiently, firing the Masterson in short bursts to conserve ammunition.
“No way,” Richard replied smugly, and just stood there happily watching the fuse rapidly shrink. It was already down only inches away from the bomb.
With surprising speed, Father Donaher charged at the wizard to grab the sphere when there was a blinding flash of light from the thing. Bracing myself for death, instead my vision fluttered as if the entire universe was switching through a hundred television channels, no, a hundred realities, in a split second. It was dizzying, but oddly pleasant, then the bizarre effect ceased fast as it began.
Searching my body for any damage, I was seemed to be fine and then realized that all of us were now completely healed. Every scratch and bruise was gone without a trace. Our khaki jumpsuits were whole, clean and pressed with nice creases in the legs. Even our combat boots were polished to a mirror shine the envy of any Marine recruit. Each of us was freshly washed and shaved, and I felt totally revived, brimming with vim and vigor. Yowsa. The laser pistol in my manicured hand registered 100%, my ammo pouch was heavy with clips and new grenades festooned my chest. Even Richard seemed to be recharged, his silver staff pulsating with ripples of fairy energy.
“Sun Bomb,” the wizard explained happily. “It ate a year of our lives, but I don't think anybody would really mind, considering the circumstances.”
So that was what I was supposed to find in the armory! God, I love genies. What swell folk they are. Then a ripping sound came from my haversack and Mindy's intact sword fell out. Springing forward, she caught it an inch from the ground.
“Baby,” she cooed in delight, stroking the razor sharp blade. “Didums miss me?”
“Oh no,” Father Donaher whispered from behind his bristling red moustache. “No, it can't be...”
“Richard, you incredible nincompoop!” Jessica shouted, sending the sentence both vocal and mentally.
Glancing around to see what could possibly be that bad, I damn near had a coronary. The smashed flight of stairs were completely repaired, the crystal warriors charging upwards in waves. The ice griffins were intact again, the snowmen were whiter than white, and now a tremendous igloo bristling with icy needles covered the diving bell. But more importantly, the jabberwocky looked twice as large than before with more wings, more fangs and an expression that could make battleships faint. Hoo boy.
“Sorry,” Richard said sheepishly. “Didn't know it would do them, also.”
Her hair neatly coiled in a dainty coiffure, Mindy turned and kicked the wizard soundly in the butt. “Sorry?” she screamed. “I'll make you sorry, manna-for-brains!”
“Incoming!” George shouted, over the fiery stuttering of the Masterson “High noon!”
Whooping like the ultimate car alarm, the jabberwocky dove straight for us this time, vomiting streams of bluish liquid from its myriad of mouths. Gesturing wildly, Richard erected an ethereal shield that barely managed to deflect the fluid. Shooting off at an angle, the watery substance hit an outcropping of granite which vaporized into wisps of steam.
“How come it didn't do that before?” Jessica demanded dropping a spent clip from the M16 and slamming in a fresh magazine. But pulling the trigger nothing happened. Angrily, she dropped the clip, smacked it against the stock to prime the first round, then shoved it back in and started wildly shooting.
“Must have been weakened from the destruction of the temple,” Richard suggested, launching another telephone pole arrow at the winged wonder, while lightning crackling from the tip of his glowing staff to sweep across the amassed snowmen. Big Bird successfully dodged, the snowmen didn't and exploded like popsicles in a microwave.
“Joseph and Mary! Don't tell me the freaking temple is also repaired?” Father Donaher demanded, firing his shotgun in every direction.
“Hell, I don't know.”
“Lord save us!”
“Amen!” we chorused purely out of reflex.
Diving close, the jabberwocky hissed, screamed, and spit out a barrage of ice spears. The silver slivers impacted everywhere in a saturation bombing. Jessica took a spear in the chest and was knocked off her feet, a bone audibly breaking despite her body armor. I caught an ice shard in the hip and a spear went by my head so close I felt the breeze of its passage and momentarily saw my own distorted reflection.
Frozen shrapnel hit us hard as the rest shattered on the stairway. George got a shiny splinter rammed into his arm, Mindy leapt and twisted through the onslaught undamaged, Donaher was grazed in neck and head, while Richard transformed the deadly debris coming his way into snow and only received a powdery dusting.
Dropping the shotgun, Donaher tore his backpack apart and took a stance with a HAFLA napalm launcher in each hand. Shaking the blood from his face, the good fat
her triggered the weapons simultaneously. On twin columns of flame, the rockets streaked away. The first missed the beast completely, arcing harmlessly off into the distance. But the second hit the monster smack in the gut with grisly results. Every head screamed at the same time as a writhing clump of burning tentacles fell off its mutilated body to expose a bleeding hole of raw flesh. George concentrated his weapon on the open wound, blood spraying as the armor-piercing rounds chewed deep inside the beast.
“Ed, cover me,” Richard ordered, kneeling on the ground. Hastily, he began brushing away the snow and ice to clear some space.
“Cover you?” I snarled spraying the griffins with my laser. Their icy bodies exploding into steam at the touch. Spinning about, I started carving chunks of the staircase away. The crystal warriors tried to dive into the beam, so I stopped double-quick. Too damn many kamikazes around here to suit me. “When I get the chance, I'm going to kill you!”
“Twice!” George added with a snarl, the left arm of his uniform dark with blood.
But Richard did not respond, his nose buried in a book of spells. Pulling out chalk and string he began hastily drawing a pentagram on the cold stone. He was preparing to cast a major spell in the middle of battle? That was insane. But following the angle of his staff, I soon saw the reason why he was frantically at work. White lines were crawling across the azure sky. Moving too fast to see with the naked eye, I could only trace the position of the incoming projectiles by the contrails they left behind. The missiles were early.
Desperate, I raised my wristwatch and then lowered my arm. There was nothing anybody could do now. Without conscious thought, I took Jessica by the hand and she squeezed hard in return as we watched the arrival of the end of our lives.
Like the arrows of Hercules, down came the ICBMs in a precise military cluster. Protectively, the gray cloud moved in trying to block the way, but the missiles punched right through without hindrance.
As the ICBMs cleared the protective layer of clouds, Richard stood and screamed a magic spell, the words of power visible in the air for a shining second before fading away. Instantly, the missiles detonated into a stupendous fireball that became encased in a glowing green globe of magic. For one astonishing moment, the multiple explosions stayed there, suspended in the air. Nobody spoke. Even the rocks seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation.
Then from the bottom of the ethereal globe, there erupted a twisting cone of radioactive flame that spiraled earthward, the very atmosphere annihilated by the passage of the pyrotechnic deathbeam forged from the raw detonation of ten thermonuclear warheads.
The quasi-solid rod of destruction went straight through the jabberwocky, its resilient body exploding into allotropic vapors. Unstoppable, the incredible ray stabbed into the island below, in blinding radiance the repaired ruins of Atlantis were reduced to superheated steam, both the adamantine Dome and magical shields meaning less than vacuum to the starkly indescribable fury of the mauling power ray.
As it winked out, we gasped in relief at the return of normal sight, and the lambent atmosphere closed the horrible rend with a thunderclap that nearly knocked us off the mountain. After a few minutes, we could see again and from this angle there was no sign of the domed city below, or of the jabberwocky, only some luminescent ash floating about in the tortured sky. But then the incinerated particles began coalescing back into a crude animal shape.
Blinking twice, George swallowed his gum. “Its regenerating after that?” he squeaked.
“Richard, honey-sweetie-baby, do something!” I cried, backing away from the terrible sight. “Finish off that mother!”
Resting heavily on his wooden staff, the gray haired mage tried to raise his crossbow pistol and failed. Age lines were deeply etched into his leathery face, the carnation in his lapel reduced to a brown, wilted lump, and as Richard opened his mouth to speak, all of his corn-yellow teeth fell out.
“Rest, buddy, we'll handle this,” I said, drawing the laser and 10mm pistol. “Okay, we're going with the original plan of the slaves ... ah, partisans, and sink this stinking island once and for all. Head for the igloo!”
Sensing our intentions, the horde of snowmen formed a line and locked arms. Oh swell, frozen Ghandis. In spite of our renewed firepower, it would forever to blow a path through those arctic assholes. Time we did not have.
“Toss me your bracelets!” Mindy ordered brusquely.
We hastily complied. Not bothering to put them on, the woman simply stuffed the copper bands into her T-shirt, then lifted off the stairs and vanished.
As we watched, a whirlwind of destruction moved through the snowmen, frosty arms and legs falling off as something hacked them apart like an invisible flying lawnmower. And you know what a bitch those are. In a matter of seconds, the snowmen were gone and there was a clear path to the igloo nestled between a boulder and a flat-top ridge of granite.
“Follow me!” the empty air called.
Ignoring the pain from our assorted wounds, we shambled up the stairway as best we could. The footing was treacherous, but at least all this ice would help reduce the swelling.
Oh hush.
As we reached the dome several hidden snowmen jump into view and we blew them away without pausing our stride. However, the dome was a smooth expanse, sans door or even the standard entrance tunnel. Throwing caution to the wind, I drained the laser and carved off a large chunk of the dome so we could simply walk inside.
Under the snowy shell was the diving bell, its burnished steel hull covered with mystic symbols and lots of Arabic writing. Undogging the water-tight hatch, we swung the portal aside and braced for an attack. But there were no boobytraps or assassins waiting inside, only mounds of sensory equipment. Positioned in the center of the machine maze, covered by a dome of bulletproof Armorlite, was a diorama; a tiny, but exact reproduction of the underground slave city, including the pentagram of wands. Surrounding the model, mounted on a universal support, was a glowing red ceramic circle crossed by a bar bisecting it on an angle. The circle and bar were the international NO symbol. The red aura indicated anti-magic. I now had every answer to the puzzle.
“What is that place?” Donaher asked curiously, brushing back his wild crop of thick curly hair.
I frowned. “Questions can wait for later. First we must cancel the spell, and pronto.”
“Can't. I'm drained,” Richard said smacking his toothless gums. Leaning against the open hatch, the wizard was breathing hard and looked as if he had been dead for a week. Make that two.
“Red,” Jessica murmured, arms wrapped about her chest. “That's anti-magic. It cancels magic, which is why the island has risen.”
Standing guard outside, George angrily shouted. “So zap the anti-magic!”
“With what?” Father Donaher demanded. “Magic and anti-magic will have no effect on anti-magic.”
“How about using some anti-anti-magic-magic?”
Ah, now there's the military mind for you. “Won't work,” I answered.
“Okay, let's try shooting it,” Mindy suggested.
Finally, a good idea. “But from a distance,” I directed, favoring my aching hip. “Let's go!”
Scrambling for distance, we assisted each other down the stairs, shooting any snowman stupid enough to rise from the snowbanks. Hovering above the island, Big Bird was partially reconstructed. Reaching the top landing where we had some combat room, George hosed the diving bell with caseless rounds from the Masterson, blowing the armor off the sphere in ragged chunks and pieces.
Then a javelin thudded into the stone between his boots, as an army of blue skeletons climbed into view over the horizon. The undead soldiers were astride crystal warrior lions and holding the entire contents of the city armory, including the Sword of Revenge. The hellspawn army must have been safe inside the doorway leading to the mountain when the city was destroyed. Aw, crap. The remaining ice griffins took this opportunity to start circling us, and a horde of snowmen rose on every side to move in for the
kill.
Plumber. I should have become a plumber.
“Fire!” I shouted and we hit the diving bell with every working weapon and spell we had.
The armor vanished under our barrage, the machinery ripped apart into sparkling trash, the Armorlite dome shattered, the city was obliterated, and the red of the anti-magic symbol winked out. Instantly, a miniature mushroom cloud formed where the diving bell had been and the entire island shuddered all the down to its foundation. The crystal warriors went motionless, the snowmen crumbled apart, the griffins fainted and I got a feeling in my stomach usually only received in high-speed express elevators.
“We're going down,” Jessica croaked.
There was a squawk and the coalescing jabberwocky polymorphed into a tiny seagull. Probably the poor innocent creature the horrid monster had been altered from in the first place. Whispering a prayer of forgiveness, Father Donaher then blew it apart with the shotgun just to make sure.
“Okay, now we've won,” I stated, dropping the exhausted laser.
All around us the rumbling and shaking got steadily more powerful. Standing on the highest point of the island, we were getting a grand view of the demise of Atlantis. The ocean washing over the outer cliff and sloshing across the garden plains to pour into the rad blasted ruin of the once mighty city. The water erupting into hissing steam at the touch of the molten stone. Higher and higher rushed the tide, the foamy brine rising over the broken Dome and rocky foothills as the devil island returned to its stygian grave. There was nothing else we could do, so we just stood there watching the Atlantic reclaim is dark prize. Would have traded my soul for an inflatable rubber dingy.
Dropping his weapon, George turned to Donaher and extended a hand. “Goodbye, Mike. Been grand knowing you, buddy.” They solemnly shook hands.
