Meritropolis

by Joel Ohman

  Charley tried to brush his concerns aside. He would just have to wait and see what lay in store.

  * * *

  Charley felt like they had been tramping through overgrown shrubbery and tangled vines forever. But he estimated that it was realistically only about four hours. They had seen little in the way of wildlife, and it seemed Grigor was taking a circuitous route. Perhaps they were avoiding what he envisaged to be the denser, darker interior part of the forest.

  Charley had seen something like a snake slither away into the weeds just ahead of his foot, but then he had heard the flutter of wings and he wasn’t sure if it was the snake-creature flying away or some other beast entirely, but he decided to quicken his pace. Snakes gave him the chills—the thought of a flying snake was something Charley was more than happy to put out of his mind.

  “A flying snake?” Sandy said, looking sideways at him and raising her eyebrows. “Cool!”

  “Umm, cool is not the word I would use to describe it—if it really was a flying snake; I didn’t get a good look at it,” Charley said.

  “Ha, don’t tell me that the mighty bion hunter is scared of a little ol’ flying snake now, is he?” Sandy pantomimed an astonished expression. “Why, I’m sure Hank would like to know all about this so that he could make sure and work it into his bion-hunt stories. It would fit in nicely with the way he has made himself the main character, anyway. You’re just a weak sidekick—practically a bystander. And now, you’re scared of snakes!” She laughed good-naturedly.

  “Whatever.” Charley shook his head. “Not just a snake, a flying snake. Not that I like regular snakes, anyway,” he added under his breath.

  “Ha! I’m learning all kinds of new things about you. Good to know there’s something that you’re scared of. I won’t tell Hank, don’t worry.”

  “Did someone say my name?” Hank called over his shoulder from about 20 paces up ahead.

  “No!” Charley shouted, slightly more quickly than he intended.

  “Excuse me! Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds,” Hank grumbled, stomping farther ahead to keep up with Hector, Lila, Armen, and Grigor, who were investigating some brightly colored plants beside the path.

  Charley avoided Sandy’s eyes and said nothing in reaction to Hank’s comment. He couldn’t help but think of Abigail’s kiss in the alleyway, and he quickly pushed the thought from his mind. After a few paces, once he knew he was out of earshot of the others, he took a deep breath. “So, why did you come down to help me in the Tower?” He continued quickly. “I mean, believe me, I’m grateful because you saved my bacon with that doctor and his spray …” He stopped and patted his pack. “Which I have right here with me, by the way.”

  Sandy smiled. “Nice! Just don’t slosh any of that stuff on me by accident.” She shook her head. “Well, the reason I helped you is because you needed it—you seriously needed it.”

  “Thanks,” Charley said with a wry smile.

  “No, I mean, your half-baked plan definitely needed some help.” She paused and gave him a quick smile before her face grew serious. “But I wanted to help too.” She looked away from Charley and stared ahead at the horizon. “When I saw you try to save that little girl from the gates that day—I wanted that to be me.” Her voice grew soft. “I knew—I knew that someone had to do something, but I didn’t do a thing to help her. Even after seeing you—I did nothing.” She looked searchingly into Charley’s eyes. “I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”

  Charley pursed his lips and nodded his understanding.

  “Do you think what we do even matters, though?” Sandy asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe we can hurt the System or save a girl or whatever, but, really—does any of what we do even matter?” Sandy’s face had grown ashen.

  Charley rubbed his jawline and said with conviction, “It matters to me. The things I do or don’t do live on with me—they become a part of me. They are me, in a way. I also refuse to believe that a God exists that doesn’t care. If there is no God, then everything is permitted. But, if there is a God, and He created us all, then everyone matters: Low Scores, High Scores, everyone, right?”

  “I guess so …”

  “I’m not sure of a lot, but I do know that the System is wrong—it’s evil, and I can’t just stand by and do nothing. I couldn’t live with myself, you know?”

  “Yes, the System is evil. That much we know.” Sandy’s voice tightened, her pace increased, and her speech grew clipped. “We have to do something—we have to fight it. Even if no one else will.”

  Charley remembered Sandy’s old boyfriend with the low Score and wondered if she was thinking about him now. “Even if no one else will,” Charley repeated, overcome with a sense of permanency from those words, which reverberated within him. He knew that there was no turning back for them now.

  He spoke softly. “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

  Sandy looked at him and smiled, breaking the seriousness of the moment. “You need some new material. Always quoting Dante, huh? Is that all they ever had you read in your high-Score class down below?”

  He grinned in return. “We read some of everything, trust me. All I did down there was read.”

  “Me too.” She motioned toward the dark recesses of the forest. “The world’s a little different up here now than back when all those old books were written, huh?”

  He bobbed his head back and forth. “Yeah, in some ways. Dante didn’t have flying snakes, after all.” He mimed a mock shiver and then continued. “But in a lot of ways it’s the same old story—men in power do unspeakable things to those weaker. Call it the System; call it whatever you want.”

  “Right. So revolution it is, then.” The way she said it was flippant, but the way she looked at Charley made him glad she was on his side.

  * * *

  “We’re here!”

  Charley heard Grigor call from up ahead. He and Sandy looked at each other and trotted to catch up with the rest of the group.

  This stretch of the path was mired in muck. Filthy, slimy greenish-brown goo that sucked at Charley’s boots and made him feel both trapped and unstable at the same time.

  “Well, I can’t say that this is how I imagined the river looking …” Sandy looked underwhelmed.

  “Yeah. Me, either,” Charley replied.

  Catching up to the others, Charley looked out over the still water and saw that it was covered in greenish-yellow algae.

  “I thought that this was a river, not a swamp!” Hank exclaimed, eyeing Grigor as he rifled through his great pack for some time. All eyes turned to Grigor, but he just continued to search his pack, seeming not to hear their complaints.

  “Ah, here it is!” Grigor turned toward them and thrust out a skinny little spear that could be retracted and collapsed in on itself for easy packing.

  “What’s that for?” Hector and Lila asked.

  “This is how we catch our dinner,” Grigor answered with a mysterious smile. “This is much easier and quicker than whittling a spear from a branch, although that will work, too.”

  “Dare I ask what’s for dinner?” Sandy said, raising an eyebrow and leaning her weight on her back foot.

  “We are having my favorite!” Grigor twirled his little spear and did an excited little hop, the exuberance of the movement a strange yet endearing contrast between his great size and his sheer joy at getting to eat something he loved. “We are having gobster!”

  “Gobster?” Sandy replied, turning with the rest of the group to look at Hector and Lila.

  But the twins looked at one another and then shrugged, embarrassed they didn’t know. “Umm, I’m not sure what that is—some kind of lobster animal combination?” Hector offered.

  “Yes! It’s a goose–lobster animal combination, and this is why we are camping here tonight. The boat is just around the bend where the water clears up and starts flowing
a little better, but this area of stagnant muck is perfect for gobster hunting,” Grigor said, beaming.

  “Because lobsters, and gobsters too, I guess, are waste-eaters,” Hector said.

  “Yes!” The description had done nothing to dampen Grigor’s glee.

  Hank chortled at the expression on Lila’s face. “Yum, yum, yum!”

  “Okay, Armen, Hector, and Lila, please gather up enough firewood for the night and then build our fire right over here.” Grigor gestured up the bank. “I’ll catch a few gobsters right now to show Charley, Hank, and Sandy how it’s done and then I’ll run over to the boat and grab some supplies for our campsite.”

  Grigor walked over to the bank and stepped right into the water. The algae clung to his shins as he waded out about ten feet. Turning toward them, he motioned to the others to follow him in. Charley cautiously stepped in, followed by Hank and then Sandy. The water was so murky that he could barely see his boots, even though the water only came up to his knees. Surprisingly, he felt himself relax; the cool water that rushed into his boots felt superb on his feet after a long day of hiking. He wrinkled up his toes and then stretched them out, watching Grigor crouch over the water ahead of them.

  “So, you can get fancy and lay traps and do all kinds of things to catch gobsters, and, really, they all work pretty well. But the quickest and simplest way to catch one is just to start wading out into an area like this and wait for them to scurry over and latch onto you.” Grigor guffawed at their expressions. “They can’t hurt you—not all that much anyway; they’re too small. Not unless you hop in barefoot, that is.” Charley unconsciously tightened his toes inside his boots

  Hank straightened his shoulders and then looked over at Charley and Sandy with an exaggerated look of calm.

  “I think I’ve got some coming right now!” Grigor said, shuffling his feet and looking like he would almost burst with excitement. “Yep! Get ready, here they come!”

  Holding his spear in one hand and a large rock in the other, Grigor began to spear fat, shiny-shelled creatures and then expertly twirled them up toward his other hand, where he gave them a good solid crack with the rock and flipped them onto the bank. After his pile of gobsters quickly grew to a dozen, he shuffled over to his students, and tossed the spear and rock to Hank. “Here you go—give it a try! See if you guys can get another couple dozen between you by the time I get back from the boat and get our campsite all set up. Trust me, when it’s time to eat, you’ll be glad you did.” Grigor trundled up the bank, leaving Hank holding the spear hesitantly while Charley and Sandy watched.

  “Well, start shuffling your feet, Hank,” Sandy said helpfully.

  “I know, I know,” Hank said, moving his feet back and forth, peering intently into the murky water.

  “Ah—ooh! Okay! Yep, here they are!” Hank began to furiously stab at the river, churning up little waves of green foam that slopped up and down against his thighs. He triumphantly jerked a gobster out of the water and then whacked it sharply with the rock. “It definitely looks like a lobster—a really weird lobster with a duck bill, I guess.” He held it up to his face and squinted at it. He jerked it away when its claw suddenly snapped at his nose. He gave it another solid bang with the rock and then flung it at Grigor’s pile on the bank.

  They each took a turn catching a dozen or so of the creatures. Charley was surprised to discover that catching gobsters was actually pretty fun, except for the part where he almost fell in the muck when the first one latched onto him. When the pile of gobsters was the size of a small hill, Sandy said, “I think we probably have enough, even if Grigor wants to eat about twenty of these. We should head back. Plus, it will be dark soon.”

  “Let me just get one more. I want to catch a big fat one.” Hank waded out a little farther into the water.

  “Just hurry it up and then we can be done,” Sandy said, looking nervous at the depth Hank had walked to.

  Charley wasn’t straying too far from the bank himself. His fear of snakes was irrational to some degree, but some horrid snake combination might still be lurking out there. The last thing he needed was some kind of mutant water snake to glide straight for him. He was positive there had to be more than gobsters in these murky waters.

  A thought struck him: if gobsters were waste eaters and they congregated right here, then there must be a lot of waste. But what could be generating all that waste?

  Disgusted and horrified in equal measure, Charley slowly backed out of the water.

  Sandy glanced at him questioningly.

  Charley tried to downplay his concern. “I’m just tired of shuffling around in poop from who knows what kind of animals and hoping that only gobsters latch onto me.”

  “Fair enough. Now that you mention it, I’m getting out, too. It was kind of fun, though.”

  “Yeah, I need to dry off now. These better taste as good as advertised.” He turned toward Hank and called out, “Hank, let’s go!”

  Just then Charley saw something ripple in the water. Something much bigger than any gobster.

  Sandy also saw the shape gliding toward Hank and began to shout and wave her hands. “Hank! Hank! Watch out!”

  “What?” Hank turned and bent his head toward them, still unseeing.

  Charley pointed to Hank’s left and yelled out, “Right there, you idiot! Something’s coming toward you!”

  Hank spotted the shadow moving nearer to him and chucked the gobster-cracking rock in his hand directly at it, an instantaneous reaction that Charley thought would probably come back to bite him—possibly literally.

  The rock plunked into the water just to the right of the shape. It swerved and then maneuvered back on course toward Hank, seemingly picking up speed.

  “I don’t think that was the brightest idea,” Sandy called out.

  “Shut up!” Hank yelled, beginning to shuffle through the muck toward the bank, all the while looking over his shoulder at the incoming dark shape.

  “What is that thing?” Hector called out from just behind them. Hector, Lila, and Armen crowded together, pointing at the now-churning water behind Hank.

  “You tell me!” Hank shouted, now looking more annoyed than scared and facing the group. “The water’s barely four feet deep. It can’t be anything I can’t handle.” Despite his boast, he was picking up speed as he shuffled through the water.

  “You better hope it’s not some kind of gator,” Lila said, clasping her hands together. “I would hurry up if I were you.”

  Then the shape rose up from the water.

  “That’s no gator …” Armen moaned.

  Hank turned back to face the shape and froze. “What the—?”

  The creature was long and pale with dead-looking eyes and a mouth that yawned open at Hank, revealing spiky teeth.

  At the sight of that albino snake creature, Charley stumbled backward along the bank. He needed to get as far away from that thing as he could.

  “Whoa, it’s a manateel!” Hector called out, with a little more excitement than Charley thought was warranted. This thing looked like it was going to try to swallow Hank whole, after all.

  “A manatee–eel?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes!” Lila replied.

  Hank broke out of his trance. “So, um, what do I do? It’s just looking at me …”

  “Use your spear!” Armen called out.

  Hank moved his spear from one hand to the other, and the manateel’s chalk-white head bobbed back and forth, following the movement of the blade.

  “I don’t know. I don’t like this …” Hank said, attempting to angle his spear for a good throw but looking instead like some kind of very hesitant snake charmer.

  Sandy looked at Charley and inclined her head toward Hank and raised her eyebrows. Charley quickly shook his head, fighting the urge to scurry even farther up the bank. But Sandy’s look was persistent.

  Charley sighed. Reluctantly, he stepped back into the water.

  “When I call out, start moving back toward the
bank again as quick as you can,” Charley yelled to Hank.

  “Okay, okay. What are you going to do?” Hank asked.

  “Just wait a second.” Charley shuffled his feet, hoping to attract more gobsters.

  “Umm, hurry it up, whatever you are doing. I don’t like the way this thing is looking at me.”

  “You must have stuck your foot into its home—they live in pits in the muck, but they are usually night creatures, I think,” Lila said.

  “I told him that he was going out too far,” Sandy mumbled under her breath.

  Finally, Charley felt a few gobsters latch onto his boots. He cringed as he thought through the next step. He didn’t have the spear, so instead he reached his hand into the water and grabbed what he hoped was the back of a gobster, just behind its claws.

  “Now!” Charley yelled, as he pitched the slimy gobster right at the manateel’s head.

  The throw went wide by just a few inches to the left, but the manateel snapped out and caught it in the air, crunching down on the gobster before sucking it down its gullet with a great slurping sound.

  Hank shuffled backward furiously, as fast as the muck would allow him to move. “Throw more! Throw more!” he screamed out.

  Charley bent down to grab more gobsters, one after another, and pitched them as fast as he could, directly at the water monster. One gobster latched onto his finger with its little bill, and Charley howled in pain. He flicked his arm out like a whipsaw and sent the offending gobster spinning toward the manateel’s spiky teeth. Charley felt a little better about his throbbing finger after the manateel bit down into the gobster with a satisfying chomp.

  Hank half-waded, half-fell right down next to him, and they both climbed quickly back onto the bank. The manateel’s dead-eyed stare followed them briefly. It slowly sunk back into the water when no more gobsters were forthcoming.

  “Umm, thanks,” Hank said to Charley.

  “My pleasure,” Charley said with a snort.

  “I just didn’t want to hurt it. You know, if Grigor didn’t want us to, or something …” Hank trailed off lamely.

  “Why, I wouldn’t have minded one bit.” They all turned around to see Grigor standing at the top of the bank. “Manateel are delicious! Not as delicious as gobsters, of course, but still good. Now let’s eat!”