“Move this boulder for me,” Mech said, indicating a large, flattish rock. Miz, who, like Mech, could see perfectly well in the dark, flashed him an indignant look.
“How come I have to…? Know what, forget it,” she said, sighing. She stood up, dusted herself down, then bent and picked up the boulder without any apparent effort. “But listen—”
“They’re about to freeze to death,” said Mech. “Anything else can wait. Put it down there next to them.”
Miz dropped the rock dangerously close to Loren and Cal’s feet. “Don’t see why they couldn’t just have moved closer to it,” she muttered.
“Why?” Mech snapped. “Because…” He hesitated. “Actually, no, that would’ve made sense. My bad.”
There was a bright blue spark from his hands. He bent quickly, and jammed part of the broken blaster pistol against the curved underside of the rock, then set to work taking the second gun apart.
As Mech worked, the lower edge of the rock began to glow a dull orange. A weak heat radiated from it, drawing Loren and Cal to it like moths to a flame.
There was another blue spark, and Mech jammed part of the second gun under the rock on the opposite side. The glow and the heat both increased exponentially, spreading through the boulder until it resembled a solid chunk of densely-packed fire.
“P-power cells?” said Loren, shuffling closer.
“Should buy us a couple of hours,” said Mech. “Maybe more. If this, I don’t know, night or cold snap or whatever lasts much longer… Then you two are going to be in trouble.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Miz.
Mech looked at her and frowned. “Why?”
“Oh, you want to know now?” said Miz. “Now you’re interested in what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past, like, ten minutes.”
“Minute and a half,” Mech corrected. “Tops. And yes. Now I know those two ain’t about to freeze to death, I’m interested. What’s up?”
Miz rolled her tongue around in her mouth, as if considering whether to give him the satisfaction or not. Eventually, she relented, but tutted loudly to make sure everyone knew she wasn’t happy about it. She sniffed the air.
“We’ve got company.”
Mech looked down at the sensor panel on his forearm. There were lights on it. A number of lights.
Quite a large number, at that.
“Oh,” he said.
“Shizz,” he said.
And then, the night came alive around them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cal and Loren’s limited night vision had been hampered by the glow of the boulder, so they saw only shapes closing in around them. Big shapes. Big angry shapes, judging by the animalistic hisses and growls they were making.
Mech swung with a punch, and from the darkness came a sound like splintering bone. Something squealed, but then Mech was suddenly lost beneath a flailing mass of limbs and tails and teeth and torsos.
“Get the fonk off of me!” he snarled, lashing out with a series of crunching backhand strikes. He reached for the dial on his chest, but a thick, prehensile tail wrapped around his arm, holding it in place. Something slashed at him, its fingernails sparking across his metal chest.
Miz launched herself into the shapeless throng, her own claws ripping and tearing and slashing at anything that wasn’t a large aggressive cyborg. This, it turned out, was quite a lot of things, and soon her fur was matted with blood and the occasional chunk of glossy black flesh.
A shadow moved behind Cal and Loren, detaching itself from the darkness and lunging for them, teeth bared. The back of Cal’s coat formed itself into a very long, very sharp spike. The last thing to go through the creature’s head before it died was, “Ooh, shizz.”
Or, more accurately, the last thing to go through its head before it died was a huge metal spike, but, “Ooh, shizz,” was almost certainly a close second.
Cal and Loren both scrambled to their feet. As they were currently conjoined at the shoulder by Splurt, this wasn’t easy, and resulted in Cal making the mistake of briefly leaning on the boulder. His mittens hissed in the sudden heat, before an eye sprouted on the back of each one, and fired him quite an accusing look.
“Sorry,” Cal said, then his head was yanked down as Loren ducked a scything arm or leg or tail.
Drawing her blaster, she turned, dragging Cal with her, and fired a series of shots. The strobe effect of the shots revealed more of the monsters circling the camp. They were all teeth and tails and shiny black exoskeletons that glinted in time with each blaster flash.
“Aliens,” Cal whispered.
“Technically, we’re all aliens,” Loren pointed out. “Depending on who you ask.”
“No, I mean the movie,” said Cal. He staggered in a half-circle as Loren turned and opened fire on another of the creatures. “They look like Alien aliens. Or maybe Aliens aliens. You know?”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” said Loren, blasting at another of the hulking shadow-creatures.
Mech windmilled through half a dozen more, his dial jacked up to give himself extra power. His fists rained like jackhammer blows, smashing skulls, shattering bones, and driving the creatures into a panicked frenzy.
Miz pounced on another of the monsters, knocking it onto its back. Even as it fell, she tore at it with her claws, ripping apart its protective outer shell and gouging deep into the flesh within.
Cal yelped in surprise as Loren spun again, almost pulling him off his feet. “Jesus, a little warning would be nice!”
One of the creatures’ tails knocked the blaster from Loren’s hands, sending it skidding across the rocky ground. A monstrous face suddenly forced itself into Cal’s field of view, its drool-dripping teeth making a valiant attempt to eat his nose off.
Up close, the thing didn’t look all that much like an Alien alien, or an Aliens alien. It might have looked like the Alien 3 alien, but Cal hadn’t seen it, because he’d heard it was terrible, so he couldn’t really comment either way.
Its exoskeleton was like a web-shaped cage over its head, protecting a shriveled raisin of a skull inside. The teeth and jaw were by far the most prominent features of the face, in that order, with the nostril-holes and sunken eyes apparently added in as an afterthought.
Cal’s coat reacted before he did, one arm scything upwards and neatly cleaving the monster in two, from the groin to the head. Cal could only watch, transfixed in mute horror, as the creature fell apart, one half going left, the other dropping to the right.
Cal reached up and gently patted the coat’s fur-lined hood. “Nice job there, you little psycho.”
“They’re running,” Mech announced.
Cal shook a fist into the darkness. “And don’t come back!” he warned.
“Yeah, they went the other way,” said Mech.
“What? Oh, yeah, I know. I was talking to you,” said Cal, shaking his fist in the direction of Mech’s voice again.
Miz sniffed the air again. “They haven’t gone far. And there’s like, other stuff out there, too.”
“A lot of other stuff,” Mech confirmed, looking at his forearm display.
“So, just to recap,” said Loren. “We’ve got a couple of hours of heat, we’re surrounded by monsters, and – oh, yes – we’re trapped in a Hell-dimension. Does that about sum our current situation up?”
“It could be worse,” said Cal.
“How?” Loren asked.
There was silence.
“Give me a minute,” said Cal. “I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”
“I totally should have kept working in that stupid strip joint,” Miz muttered.
“One of us could be an evil doppelganger,” said Cal.
Everyone turned to look at him. “Say what?” said Mech.
“That would be worse. If one of us was some kind of evil impostor, gradually picking the rest of us off, one by one.”
Everyone continued to look at him.
“What? You a
sked how it could be worse. That’d be way worse,” Cal said. “Or, like, if we were all tied to the back of an angry horse. One each, I mean, not one huge horse between the five of us. Or, no, not an angry horse, a really horny hippo.”
Cal nodded. “Yeah, that’d be far worse. So, you know, silver lining, bright side, glass half full, and all that.”
He’d had no idea where the door that Lily had left through had been, but now even less so. He just picked a random patch of ground and stared longingly at it. “I really thought she’d come back, though. I didn’t think she’d just leave us here.”
“Well, she ain’t, and she did,” Mech snapped, then he caught the glares from Loren and Miz and adjusted his tone accordingly. “I mean, you know, sorry. She ain’t coming back, which means we are stuck here, and our problems are just gonna keep mounting up.”
Cal let out a long sigh of disappointment. “You’re right,” he said. “I have to face facts. She stranded us here, and she isn’t going to come and get us.”
“It does look that way,” said Loren, softly.
“It’s probably a good thing I nabbed this, then,” he said, holding up a rectangular box with a series of buttons on the front. “Took it from Number Two when I brushed past him on the way in.”
“Is he the beard guy?” asked Miz. “He’s pretty hot.”
“See!” said Loren. “I know, right?”
Cal tutted. “Uh, hello? This was supposed to be my big moment here. Can we stop talking about that old shizznod and focus on me for a second?”
Mech took a step closer to Cal. The ground trembled.
“Is that the door control?”
“Yep!”
Mech took another step.
“You mean, you’ve had that this whole time?”
“Yep!” said Cal, grinning. In the half-light, he caught the expression on Mech’s face. It was not unlike the expression on Miz’s face, too. He was too close and too side-on to see Loren properly, but he guessed there’d be a similar look going on there, also.
Cal cleared his throat. “I mean, oh! Look what I found. I completely forgot I had this. What a stroke of luck.”
“You had the door control the whole time?” Loren growled. “We could have frozen to death!”
“I thought she’d come back,” said Cal. “I wanted… I guess I wanted to give her a chance to come back for us. For, you know, for me.”
He smirked. “Yeah, that fonking shut you all up, didn’t it?” he said. “Now, how does this thing work?”
Cal pushed a button. A door opened. Unfortunately, it opened beneath him. And, by extension, beneath Loren and Splurt, too. They hung there in the air for a few moments, with Cal wishing, more than anything, that he had a little wooden sign he could hold up with the word ‘Help!’ written on it.
And then, once the laws of physics realized what they were up to, they fell.
There was a flash of white, a tinge of blue, and then nothing but canvas as Cal and Loren landed on an already ramshackle tent, finishing it off completely. Still conjoined, they got to their feet, Cal examining the doohickey more closely, now that he could see it properly.
“Maybe I was holding it sideways or something,” he said, then he yelped as Loren shoulder-barged him aside. “Ow! Will you please stop doing that? Splurt!”
Splurt transformed back into his normal blobby greenness and took up his perch on Cal’s shoulder.
Mech dropped through the fizzing white rectangle in the air, his immense weight shaking the ground as he landed right on the spot where Loren and Cal had been standing. He stepped aside, making room for Miz to fall through. She landed on all-fours, then immediately growled at the alternate Cal Carvers currently fumbling for their weapons.
“Relax, it’s just me, no need to panic,” said Cal, striding forward with practiced confidence. He pointed and smiled at one of the Carvers, as if recognizing a long-lost friend, waved at a couple of others, then headed for the only one of the three pods in the campsite he hadn’t yet been inside.
He tried the handle. Locked.
“Mech, do the honors,” he muttered, turning and waving again at the other Carvers. They stood frozen by uncertainty, their hands resting on their weapons, but not yet drawing them. “I love that jacket,” Cal called, pointing to one of the Carvers. He deliberately picked one who wasn’t wearing a jacket, knowing the resulting few moments of confusion would buy him more time.
Mech punched a fist through the pod’s plastic door and ripped it off. An energy blast streaked out from within, slammed into Mech’s chest, and staggered him back a few paces.
“Whoa, whoa, easy there, kiddo!” said Cal, stepping into the doorway, his hands raised in surrender. “It’s just us.”
“I know it’s you!” Lily growled. She pumped the weapon like a shotgun, and a spent power cell ejected from somewhere near the back. “That’s why I’m shooting!”
She took aim. Cal ducked out of the doorway, pulling Loren aside as Lily opened fire.
“Jesus, that was close,” he whispered, then another blast punched a hole in the plastic wall beside him.
“OK, watch it! Cut it out!” Cal said. “We surrender.”
The gunshots from inside Carver Prime’s pod had helped the other Carvers make their minds up. All their weapons were now drawn - a real mix of high-tech alien stuff, more familiar-looking Earth guns, and a whole range of stabby things.
Other Carvers were rushing out of tents. Cal spotted a few he recognized. Old Man Carver and Chunky Cal were keeping their distance, while Dwarf Cal was hurrying over, dragging an ornate battle-axe behind him.
Cal raised his hands again and shuffled into Lily’s line of fire. “Look, we’re surrendering. You can’t shoot someone who’s surrendering. That’s the law. You know, somewhere. Probably.” He frowned and turned to Mech. “Is it? Or did I make that up?”
Mech nodded. “Basic rules of war,” he said, aiming the words very squarely at Lily.
Lily didn’t lower her shotgun, but didn’t fire, either, so that was a start. “How did you get here?” she demanded. “How did you get back?”
“Well, I kind of hoped you were going to come back for us, and it was all just, you know, a bit of fun designed to teach me a lesson, or something, but… Well, we both know how that worked out.”
He gestured to his pocket. “May I?”
Lily narrowed her eyes, but nodded, just once. Cal reached into his pocket and pulled out the doohickey. “I may have accidentally taken this from Number Two earlier. It looks complicated, all those little buttons, but it’s pretty straightforward, really.”
Lily’s eyes widened when she saw the gadget. The gun lowered a fraction. “You opened a door? You opened a door from the Malwhere?”
“Yep!” said Cal, proudly. “Pretty impressive, huh?”
“And you closed it,” said Lily, her voice becoming a breathless whisper. “Tell me you closed it.”
Cal’s beaming smile dimmed a little. “Hmm?” he said.
“The door to the Malwhere!” Lily barked. “Did you close the door?”
Cal, Loren, Mech and Miz all turned slowly. Behind them, dozens of black, armored shapes dropped through the sky-hatch, tumbling over one another in a heaving frenzy of tails and limbs.
“You know,” Cal croaked. “It is funny you should ask.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The assembled members of the Carver Council stood rooted to the ground in shock as the monsters of the Malwhere untangled themselves and stumbled upright.
The Carvers outnumbered the creatures, but not by many. The creatures’ movements suggested they were currently blinded by the sudden glare of the invisible sun, but that wouldn’t last. If the Carvers were going to strike, they had to do it now. Cal opened his mouth to start shouting instructions, but never got the chance.
“Don’t just stand there, attack!” Lily barked, barging past Cal and rushing towards the unravelling knot of monsters. She snapped her head back to Cal. “And shut the
fonking portal!”
“Right, yes. Good idea,” said Cal. He pushed a button. The portal doubled in size, dropping a dozen more monsters onto the grass. “Shizz. My fault. Sorry.”
He pressed another button. Two more portals opened alongside the first, raining more of the creatures down onto the grass.
“Again, my fault.”
“Gimme that thing,” said Mech, ripping the doohickey from Cal’s hands. He studied it for a moment, then pressed a button. All three of the floating trapdoors fizzled for a moment, then snapped closed.
Lily blasted a hole in one of the creatures, pumped the shotgun, then blasted another. The second monster spun, but didn’t go down until the butt of Lily’s gun smashed into its armored face with a somewhat stomach-churning ka-rack.
“Jesus, she’s going to get herself surrounded,” Cal muttered. He ran after her. “Loren, covering fire, Miz, Mech, do what you do. Splurt, big fist, buddy.”
Lily spun, fired, spun, fired, driving back two of the creatures. Some of the other Carvers had rushed to join the fray, but most were still frozen to the spot in a mixture of terror and bewilderment. They’d never encountered anything like this before. Some of them had never encountered any sort of danger before, let alone a load of armored alien monsters falling from the sky, and they were taking a while to get into the swing of it.
One of the creatures launched itself at Lily. She turned, too late to get her shotgun between her and it. She saw its withered face and over-developed jaws. She caught a glimpse of its teeth and its claws and its raw, burning hatred.
And then, with a boing, an enormous green fist slammed into the beast, sending it hurtling through the air. The fist’s middle finger extended in the direction of the monster, whose mangled limbs meant it now resembled a swatted fly.
“You see that, you ugly fonks?” Cal crowed. “You mess with us, you get fisted!”
He became aware of a number of people all frowning in his direction at once.
Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Page 10
