He was a little bigger, but then he was growing by the second, so he was a little bigger every time she looked up.
“Well, this looks charming,” said Old Man Carver, hobbling through the energy door with the rest of the mob close behind.
Miz ignored him and continued to study Ikumordo. It was still huge, still orange, still a cloud. The sparkly bits floating around inside it were still sparkling, just as they always had been.
But there was something…
“Hey. What we lookin’ at?” asked Mech, stepping up beside her.
“Is it just me, or is there something weird about…?” Miz began, before her head snapped round and her face lit up. “Mech?!” she exclaimed. She threw her arms around him and they hugged. Splurt joined in, wrapping a long tendril around both of them, and squeezing.
After a moment, Miz pulled away and quickly dialed down her enthusiasm. “I mean, like, where did you come from?”
Mech grinned and jabbed a thumb back towards a second energy door that had just appeared. Carver Two and a variety of other Cals were shuffling through it, and some of the Carvers from Miz’s group were hurrying over to greet them.
“Long story. But let’s just say, I have seen some crazy shizz in the past hour or so,” said Mech. He looked Miz up and down, his grin widening. “I thought you was dead,” said Mech. “I thought you got sucked into the Void. I mean, I saw you.”
“Yeah, well. That, like, door or whatever, was right beside me when I fell. I managed to jump through it, then ended up in some, like, forest somewhere with some of those guys. We’ve been portal jumping or, I don’t know, whatever you call it, ever since.”
“Oh? You see any fonked up shizz?”
“Totally,” said Miz. “So weird. I swear, I have no idea how any of these guys have managed to survive for so long. Between all the stuff that wants to kill them, and most of them being, you know, like completely useless?”
“I hear you,” Mech said. “We had to save a bunch from some sheep.”
“What are sheep?” asked Miz.
Mech shrugged. “Fonk knows, but if you ask me, they seem kinda racist.”
Miz gestured up to the sky. “Does it seem different to you?”
Craning his neck back, Mech looked up at the shimmering orange formlessness of Ikumordo. “Bigger. Definitely bigger.”
“No,” said Miz, shaking her head. “I mean, yeah, but it’s not that. There’s something…”
She clicked her fingers. “Wait. It’s not that thing that’s different, it’s the sky. It’s black. It’s been daytime everywhere else, but it’s night time now, and—”
“And where are the stars?” said Mech. “There ain’t no stars.”
“Exactly,” said Miz. A terrible thought struck her. “You think, like, it’s already eaten them?”
Carver Two joined them. “From what we can gather, they were never there,” he said. “Not all universes developed. There are those where only a handful of stars and planets were formed. We use this one as a sort of… safe space, where there is nothing to attack us, or cause us harm.”
Mech pointed upwards.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Except Ikumordo the All Death, obviously,” Two conceded. “But that isn’t usually there.”
Mech and Miz both stared into the darkness for a while, mind-boggled by the emptiness of it all. Pretty soon, though, Miz had had enough.
“OK, so that got boring,” she said, looking away from the empty universe. “You hear anything from Cal?”
“I did,” said Mech. “He’s safe. I think. He wants us to keep that thing busy.”
Miz’s furry brow furrowed. “How are we supposed to do that? It’s up there and we’re down here.”
“I know someone who may be able to help,” said Number Two. “But, well, there’s a possibility that you’re not going to like it.”
A slightly mischievous smirk tugged at his mouth as he turned to Mech. Even with the beard, it was the most Cal-like he had ever looked. “Especially you, I think.”
* * *
Cal opened one eye. Everything was still red, so he closed it again.
Some time passed.
He was alive. At least, he assumed so. He pinched his leg, a little harder than he’d intended. It hurt. If a lifetime of watching Hollywood movies had taught him anything, it had taught him that this meant he was both alive, and not currently dreaming.
He thought this was probably good news, but didn’t want to commit to that conclusion quite yet.
Some more time passed.
“Why do you have your eyes shut?” asked Loren.
So, Loren was alive, too. Good for her.
Cal opened the other eye this time. He thought it probably best to give the first one a break. Loren was looking back over her shoulder at him. Lily was sitting in her chair, gazing ahead at the screen, also alive.
Yay.
The situation was better than he had feared. Everything seemed to be OK. Everything was going fine.
Everything, to quote the soundtrack of Cal’s third favorite movie of all time, was awesome.
Or almost. The screen was a bit of a worry. It was red. No, not red, reds. A crescendo of cherries and crimsons, berries and blush, sangrias and scarlets danced and spiraled across the viewscreen. It was as if someone had taken Beethoven’s Fifth – or possibly the theme to the Lego Movie, it was difficult to tell – and converted each note into a shade of red, before blasting it out through the universe’s most powerful PA system.
The Untitled sailed soundlessly through the noisy colors, as if flying along an impossibly-long tunnel. It was equally possible, however, that the Untitled wasn’t actually moving at all, and that all the ruby redness was somehow washing over it, instead.
“Ooh, that’s pretty,” said Cal. “What is it?”
Loren shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Well, thanks for that,” said Cal. “Really useful to get your input there, Loren.”
He wished Miz were here to helpfully point out that he was being sarcastic, then realized he hadn’t yet broken the news to Loren. Loren and Mizette’s relationship was both complex and simple at the same time. Simple because they both hated each other, yet complex because they very occasionally, when the circumstances were just right, didn’t.
He turned his chair to his daugh— to Lily. Her face was a flickering series of reds and pinks, her eyes mesmerized by the spiral of color.
As Cal watched her, he remembered Disneyworld. Not the bug-infested zombie town it had been on his last visit, but years before. How old was she then? Four? Five, maybe? The look on her face during those fireworks was exactly the same as the one fixed there now.
“Hey, kiddo,” Cal said. He said it softly, but it snapped her out of her trance as if he’d shaken her by the shoulders. He gestured to the screen. “Any ideas?”
“What? Uh. Oh. No. Not really,” Lily admitted. “It’s… I don’t know. A fold in the Void, maybe.”
“Pity Kevin’s down,” said Loren. “He could have run an analysis.”
“What, and then come up totally blank?” said Cal. “It’s fine, I can do that.”
They watched the swirling patterns for a while.
Cal drummed out a beat on his arm rests with his fingers. He made it through the first couple of verses of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You,’ before getting bored.
“So, I kind of had my eyes shut for a while back there. Did we get shot?” he asked. “Could we be dead?”
“No,” said Loren.
“You sure? This could be a tunnel to the afterlife,” said Cal. “Although, I’ll be honest, the color is a little worrying, if so.”
“The missile didn’t hit,” said Loren. “This…” - she gestured vaguely at the screen - “appeared right before impact.”
“OK. That’s a relief. I was five seconds away from confessing all my sins and renouncing Satan,” said Cal. He thought about what Loren had said. “So, what are you saying? This thing saved us? We were rescued
by the color red?”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d put it exactly like that,” said Loren. “But yes. Basically. We were going to be blown up, then this thing pulled us in. Or wrapped around us. Or… I don’t know what it’s doing. Controls are non-responsive, instruments are all down. I… Oh.”
“Good ‘oh’ or bad ‘oh’?” asked Cal.
“The instruments are back,” said Loren, swiping her fingers across a touch screen as lots of little lights illuminated on her console. “Still no control, but I’m getting readouts.”
“What do they say?” asked Lily, before Cal could ask the same thing.
“Uh, that we’re moving, I think,” said Loren. “Wait, there’s some sort of analysis running. Sensors are gathering data.”
“Did you do that?” asked Cal. Loren shook her head. “Then who did?”
Loren’s touch screen changed. “Scan results coming through,” she said. Then: “Uh… OK.”
“What? What’s ‘OK’?” Cal asked. “What does it say? What does the scan tell us?”
Loren smirked. “See for yourself,” she said, tapping her screen. The left third of the main screen changed to show the scan results. To call the analysis concise would be generous. It was five words. Cal read them aloud.
“It’s a big red thing,” he said.
Cal didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Oh, for f— Kevin? Have you been pretending to be dead this whole time?”
The text on screen vanished, then was replaced by more.
No, sir. Was offline. Rerooting systems to compensate for damage. With you in a sec, the text said, before it backspaced most of the sentence so it could correct the typo in ‘rerouting’.
Cal wasn’t entirely convinced, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Good to have you back, buddy,” he said. “Anything you can tell us about this thing – you know, besides size and color, which we’re already up to speed with – would be awesome.”
Will do, came the onscreen reply, then the Untitled decelerated rapidly and the swirling redness became nothing but Voidy black again.
Oh. It’s gone, said the text. Bugger.
“Um, uh, no,” said Loren. “Not gone. Definitely not gone.”
She flipped a switch on her console. The screen changed to show another view of the Void. The redness they had just emerged from was there. It was a tunnel, but wriggling violently like a worm on a hook.
On any other day, it would definitely be the most interesting thing going on, and by quite a large margin. Right now, though, there was something that made even a thrashing dimensional rift-worm fade into the background.
Something big.
Something orange.
Something that filled the Void in several directions, it’s misty, vaporous bulk undulating in a rhythmic pattern as it grew.
For a few brief, panicky moments, Cal’s brain tried to reason that it might not be what Cal thought it was. It could, for example, be…
But that was where it came up short. There was no denying it. No escaping it. There was only one thing this could be.
Ikumordo.
The All Death was here.
The All Death was waiting.
“Oh, well,” said Cal, forcing a smile. “Out of the frying pan…”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mech stood in a busy city plaza, looking around in disbelief.
This was Earth. He knew that. And yet, it was more familiar than any Earth they’d been to before. It felt like a bustling spaceport, with people from a broad range of planets and sectors all going about their business.
Considering that a huge cyborg, and an only-marginally-less-huge wolf-woman, had stepped from a glowing white rectangle in the middle of the plaza - accompanied by a horde of other folks Mech would generously describe as ‘not exactly normal’ (and less generously as ‘a fonkload of weirdoes’) - nobody seemed even the least bit surprised. The pedestrians strolling by barely batted an eyelid as more and more Carvers filed out of the doorway, and instead simply adjusted their route to avoid bumping into anyone.
Ikumordo filled the sky here, too, and while a few people shot it the occasional glance, most of them paid it very little heed.
It felt… modern. No, not modern. Mech shuddered as he thought the words: Space modern. His knowledge of Earth architecture was admittedly limited, but he didn’t think all the smooth curves and pod-like buildings were normal for this part of the galaxy.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Earth, naturally,” said Two, shepherding some of the other Carvers and a couple of ninjas away from the door so that others could come through.
“Yeah, I know. I mean… I don’t know what I mean,” Mech admitted. He gazed up at the smooth glass constructions around them. A couple of sleek yellow cars flew between the towers, scrolling LED signs on the underside of their chassis identifying them as taxi cabs.
A ten-story hologram of a scantily-clad woman gyrated across the face of one of the buildings. Mech watched her until she froze in place, smiling benevolently out at the world like some kindly goddess. The words, ‘Celebrity Dance-Off: USA,’ appeared, followed by some details on where and when to watch it.
It was the ‘where’ part that caught Mech’s attention. His blood ran cold, but as he had barely a teaspoon of the stuff in his entire body, he didn’t really notice.
“What the fonk?” he muttered.
“What’s up?” asked Miz. Mech gestured up to the side of the building.
“Tonight, 8pm, CST – whatever the fonk that means,” Mech read. “Only on Zertex Family.”
“Zertex?” Miz spat. The fur on her collar rose all on its own. She glanced around, suddenly on high-alert. “So… what? Like, Zertex runs Earth in this dimension?”
“Something like that,” said Two. His lips moved silently as he finished a head count. “Right, all here. We seem to have picked up a few more, actually. Still, the more the merrier, I suppose.”
Two turned and began to walk across the plaza, but Mech stepped into his path. “Wait, wait, hold up,” he said. “Zertex?”
“Yes?”
“The Zertex Corporation? The fonking Zertex Corporation?”
“What about it?” asked Two.
Miz joined Mech, forming one of the most terrifying blockades in the history of anywhere. “They’re, like, totally the bad guys.”
Two smiled. “Well, now,” he said. “That really depends on your point of view, doesn’t it? We’re all the ‘bad guys’ in someone else’s story.”
“They’re the bad guys in everyone else’s story,” said Mech. “They want to conquer and take control of the whole fonking galaxy.”
He gestured around them, just as two men in Zertex uniforms strolled around a corner, side by side. “Looks like they’ve got their hooks into Earth.”
Number Two nodded. “Yes. Yes, it does look that way, doesn’t it?” he said. “Although, there’s another way to look at it, too.”
He leaned in closer, placed the back of his hand to his mouth and spoke in a stage-whisper. “What if Earth has got its hooks into Zertex?”
Two winked, pushed his mouth all the way through ‘smile’ and into ‘broad grin’ territory, then stepped past Mech and Miz, and made a bee-line for the officers.
“Come on,” he urged. “This way.”
He marched towards the Zertex men, his staff clunking against the ground with every step. Mech and Miz hesitated, but then set off after him, with the flock of Carvers and company following on behind.
The officers first looked puzzled, then looked concerned as the crowd approached. One of them frantically tried to finish chewing the donut he was eating, before forcing it down with, judging by his expression, quite a painful gulp.
“Hello there!” called Two, beaming through his beard at them. “I wonder if you two gentlemen might tell us where to find the president?”
Mech’s fingers balled into fists. “Sinclair,” he growled.
Two and the Zertex o
fficers all shared a look of confusion. “Who?” said Two.
“Sinclair,” Mech repeated. “President Sinclair.”
“Never heard of him,” said one of the officers.
Mech and Miz exchanged a glance. “Then, like, who’s the president?”
Carver Two opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. He gestured with his staff to the building with the holographic billboard. It was advertising another of Zertex Family’s shows – ‘The Pres Report’. The president himself was currently turning to the camera. Everyone watched as he winked and pointed finger guns out at the viewer.
Miz’s jaw dropped. “O. M. G. Like, seriously?”
“You have got to be fonking kidding me,” Mech groaned.
There, standing fifty feet high, with a grin twelve feet wide, was Cal Carver, president of the galaxy.
* * *
President Cal Carver glided across the courtyard on his hoverscooter, weaving and dodging around a number of imaginary obstacles. His personal advisor – the person he trusted more than almost anyone else in the galaxy – trotted along beside him, trying to keep up and, occasionally, leaping sideways to avoid injury.
“So, what, they just demanded to see me?” said the president. “And you said yes? Don’t people demand to see me every day?”
“These were… different. I thought they were worth meeting. You’ll see why,” the advisor replied. “And, no, not every day. Every few weeks, maybe.”
The president wrinkled his nose. “Every few weeks? Jesus. I thought I was more popular than that.”
“Oh, no, you are. Inexplicably,” said the advisor. “People make requests to see you every day. They… well, let’s just say they request you to do a lot of things. Things that the First Lady wouldn’t be very likely to approve of. But the demands – the actual, ‘We demand to see the president!’ stuff, that’s down to about once every few weeks.”
President Carver smiled as he jumped a make-believe river of lava. “God, I love it when you do the voices. You should have been an actor.”
“Ha! In another life, maybe,” the advisor said. “I mean, if I wasn’t here, who’d help get you dressed in the morning?”
Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy Page 18
