Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

  Not long into her bath, the water became murky with coagulated blood and rotted chunks of flesh. That was an unpleasant surprise she’d leave for the next occupant of this manor, as Katherine had no intention of leaving behind a magical pitcher of endless water. That sort of thing could come in handy.

  After she scrubbed as much zombie gore off of her body as she could, she dried off with some of the worst interpretations of blue jeans, got dressed, and gathered together a few changes of clothes, her bottle of bath salts, and the silver pitcher, and packed them into her backpack.

  Katherine’s departure wasn’t a sentimental one. She didn’t look back at Millard’s keep as she flew back toward the city. Her short bat neck didn’t allow it. Not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention to herself, she flew back to town in her normal bat form. Her belongings were absorbed into her body during the transformation.

  The Collapsed Sewer District was easy to spot from the air. None of the city was particularly flashy by her modern standards, but the CSD stuck out like a burn scar on an otherwise hairy chest.

  The Whore’s Head Inn was still alive with drunken, noisy idiots. She wasn’t ready to go back in there. Not yet. Part of the reason she’d gone out on her zombie-punching rampage in the first place was that she’d grown tired of hearing all the Twilight jokes. Her annoyance was only compounded by her discovery that, having no bloodstream, she was unable to join them in getting drunk. The beer, the harder stuff – What were they calling that? Rock Piss or something? –it all tasted the same to her. It was a dull, flat taste she could only describe as not blood. Eternal life just got a hell of a lot longer.

  Katherine flew to a nearby sycamore tree and found a branch high enough to keep an eye on the inn, but with enough leaf-cover to keep herself hidden. Standing up was awkward. She was top-heavy and had to brace herself up against the trunk with her wing in order to stay upright. She sighed. Everything sucked.

  “Having a rough night, are we, Miss Katherine?” said an unexpected British voice.

  What the fuck? Katherine turned to her left. Julian’s big, black bird friend was sharing her branch.

  Judging that the branch would hold her weight, she morphed back into her standard, half-elf vampire form. The bird could only understand her if she spoke in a British accent, so she did her best.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Real bats hang upside down,” said the bird.

  Katherine nodded. “Good point. What are you doing hiding out in this tree?”

  “Just keeping an eye on my master.” He turned toward the inn. “Making sure he keeps out of trouble.”

  Katherine followed the bird’s gaze and spotted Julian walking hurriedly from the far side of the building. Someone else was walking around from the front side, on a course to intersect his.

  “Oh great,” said Katherine. “Is that the skank Tim’s got the hots for? Did she get a boob job?”

  “Boob job, M’lady?”

  “Shut up for a second. What’s going on here?”

  After a little bit of flirty talk, Julian grabbed Stacy by the arm.

  “Whoo,” said Katherine. “Boy, you better watch that shit. You try to grab me like that, and that’ll be the last thing you – Oh, snap!”

  Stacy turned the tables on Julian, shoved him up against the wall of the building, and pressed her body and face against his.

  “Good heavens,” said the bird. He swayed on the branch and had to flap his wings a little to keep from falling over. “I’m all overcome with a wave of emotions which I don’t understand. What’s she doing to him?”

  “I believe that’s what your people call snogging.” Katherine had hooked up with an English tourist in NOLA a couple of years back, and she picked up a few colorful expressions.

  “Is she regurgitating food into his mouth?”

  “Ew, I hope not.”

  When Stacy finally stepped back from Julian, the bird regained his composure. “I must say, I’m glad that’s over. I felt lightheaded, and tingly around the cloaca.”

  “I really don’t need to know that.”

  “The sun will be up before long, Miss,” said the bird. “Perhaps it’s time you should be getting inside?”

  Katherine hopped down from her branch. “I’m not going inside.” She sat down on the ground.

  The bird puffed and fluttered his feathers. “But, Miss Katherine,—”

  “Shush,” said Katherine. “I need to concentrate.” She focused her mind on vermin. The site of a sewer collapse should be crawling with just what she needed. She closed her eyes and waited for the sound of a squeaking army of walking blood bags. What she heard instead was a scream.

  “RATS!” The voice came from behind the far side of the building. A squat, naked man followed shortly after, his boobs bouncing with each step, and… Was his junk tucked back? No, on second thought, this was clearly a woman with a bushy brown beard.“Jesus Christmas, they’re everywhere!” He almost sounded like…

  “Come back!” said a tall man in leather armor from the chest up. Below that, he was struggling to pull up a pair of pants as he stumbled after the bearded woman. “It’s just a couple of rats. Come on, Dennis!”

  Dennis? Holy shit! Were these two the cop and the pedo? Had they just been fucking? That’s hilarious.

  More screams followed, these even more horrified than Dennis’s had been.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “My eyes!”

  “Put some clothes on!”

  If Katherine didn’t want the rats to give away her position, she had to act fast. She grabbed the first couple that arrived and bit their heads off. Just as she was about to suck the life-juice out of them, she spotted what must have been the granddaddy of all rats. It was almost as big as her brother. She dropped the rat in her right hand and pointed at the big one.

  “You, come here. The rest of you, fuck off.”

  The congregation of rats scattered back out into the alleys and sewers where they’d come from. The big rat approached Katherine and lay down obediently before her.

  Katherine sucked the blood out of the rat in her left hand, then tossed the body aside as she focused on her prize.

  “Roll over.”

  The rat rolled over, exposing its belly, sparsely covered in grey bristly fur. The neck appeared to be the least furry part of it.

  Katherine picked up the rat with both hands, bared her fangs, and tore into its throat. It put up a brief struggle, but she held it firm and greedily gulped its life down her throat. By the time the blood stopped pouring out of its neck, requiring Katherine to squeeze and suck for more, she’d had enough anyway. She set the rat corpse down and lay on her back.

  Julian’s bird was still up on the branch, looking down at her. “Feeling better now?”

  “Much,” said Katherine. “Sorry you had to see that.”

  “It’s quite all right, M’lady. Are you going to eat the eyes?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it.”

  “Do you mind, then?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  The bird flew down, plucked the rat’s left eye out, and slurped up the trail of nerves and veins that followed it.

  Katherine wanted to tell the bird how disgusting that looked, but figured her own display didn’t leave a whole lot of room for criticism. She just turned her head away as he went after the other eye. Merely hearing it made it no less disgusting.

  “Miss Katherine,” said the bird after the slurping stopped. “A word about the impending sunrise and your sleeping arrangements?”

  Katherine picked up the bloodless, eyeless giant rat, held it up against the tree trunk, and punched it in the head until she felt its skull crunch.

  “Or not,” said the bird, stepping back slowly. “I suppose I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

  “Wait,” said Katherine. “I’m going to need your help.”

  “I don’t know how I could possibly –”

  Katherine dropped to her hands and
knees, face to face with Ravenus.

  “M’lady?”Ravenus sounded uncomfortable. “Are we about to do snogging?”

  “Ha!” Katherine grinned and rolled her eyes. “Keep dreaming, bird.” She closed her eyes and concentrated.

  When she opened them again, she was in her giant wolf form. She sniffed the earth. It was rich and moist. It would do nicely. She chose a spot and started shoveling into the ground with her massive forepaws. Within a few minutes, she had a nice big bowl-shaped hole, about three feet in diameter and four feet deep at the center. Satisfied, she morphed back into her default form.

  Katherine removed a pair of not-blue-jeans out of her bag and tossed it into the hole. She strapped on the backpack so that it would be absorbed into her when she transformed again.

  “I need you to bury me.”

  Ravenus looked at the hole. “In there?”

  “Yes,” said Katherine. “And I need you to keep this between you and me. Don’t tell anyone where I am.”

  “I won’t lie to my master.”

  “Okay, fine. But you don’t have to go volunteering the information either.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Katherine, this hole doesn’t look very accommodating. How flexible are you?”

  Katherine smiled at him. “Silly bird.” She kissed the tips of her fingers and gave him a light slap on the cheek. “If you have to tell Julian, make sure and tell him not to tell Tim. At least not until sundown tomorrow.” She morphed into her normal bat form and hopped into the hole. Once she had gotten herself snugly inside the pants, she looked up at the bird and squeaked.

  The sky was just beginning to lighten as the bird shoved wing-loads of moist dirt on top of her. The thought of being buried alive had alwaysgiven Katherine the willies, but now that it was actually happening, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was the most at peace she’d felt all day.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey!” said a familiar voice. “Hey! Come on, man. Get up.”

  Tim ignored it.

  “Don’t you roll over on me.Rise and shine, bucko!” The slapping and kicking was more difficult to ignore.

  Tim opened his eyes and swatted Frank’s hand away. “Chill out, dude. I’m up. Why’s everything got to be at the crack of dawn with you?”

  “You went to sleep at the crack of dawn,” said Frank. “Right now is the crack of mid-afternoon, and we’ve got some brainstorming to do.” He held out a mug. “Drink this.”

  “Brainstorming?” said Rhonda, carrying some dirty breakfast dishes behind the bar. “With this group? My forecast is mostly cloudy with slim chance of brain.”

  Cooper yawned and scratched his balls under his loincloth. He looked about as rough as Tim felt. “Fucking hell. Can somebody go and put a dick in her mouth?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Frank. “You two lovebirds knock that shit off. We’ve got a real shot at getting out of here, and we need to focus.”

  “Is this supposed to be coffee?” asked Tim. “It tastes like river sludge. It’s not even hot.”

  “It was hot when I started trying to wake your sorry ass up.”

  Tim closed his eyes and choked back the rest of the lukewarm liquid. “Start without me. I’ve got to take a piss.”

  As he got to his feet, his blurry vision sharpened on Stacy. She was sitting at a table next to Julian and smiling down at Tim.

  “Charming.”

  “Sorry,” said Tim. “I mean I’ve got to take a leak.”

  “Oh, that’s much better.”

  Tim set his empty mug down on Stacy’s table and stumbled outside through the unfinished section of wall that most everyone was using as a door. It was probably a good place to put one.

  He eyed the outhouse as he walked past. If he caught one whiff of it, he’d puke for sure. Puking while pissing was no easy task if you didn’t want to be soaked with at least one of the two, and he didn’t think his bladder could hold out much longer. Better to water the tree.

  Pulling Tim Jr. out for a bit of fresh air, he aimed at a knob in the tree trunk that he hadn’t yet reached. His tank was full. Today could be the day.

  “Pardon me, sir.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Tim looked up.

  Ravenus was perched on a branch, looking down at him. “Apologies, sir. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Well you startled the shit out of me!”

  “You know I can’t understand you when you talk like that.”

  Tim bottled his frustration. “Hi-ho, cheerio, pip-pip! What the fuck do you want?”

  “Umm…” said Ravenus, like he was choosing his words carefully. “What, exactly, are you doing here?”

  “Well blimey, guvnor. I thought I might squirt me ol’ trouser snake on this here tree trunk. Now be a good chap and turn the fuck around. I can’t concentrate with you looking at me.”

  “Does it have to be here, sir?”

  “I piss here all the time.”

  “Do you?”

  “Dude, what the hell is wrong with you? Give a bloke some privacy, hey?”

  Ravenus lowered his head. “Very well, sir.” He turned around.

  Tim considered taking aim at Ravenus, but his stream would never reach that high. He focused on his original goal, and soaked his target knob with his initial blast.

  “Aaaaahhhhh,” Tim sighed as what felt like half of his body weight darkened the tree trunk. “Now that’s how you start a day.”

  The stream flowed down the trunk, pooling at the base of the tree before meandering onto a patch of freshly-turned earth, where it seeped into the loosened soil.

  What was that? Was someone starting a garden here? Why would –“Holy shit!”

  Beyond the urine soaked patch of earth, an emaciated dire rat stared at him through empty eye sockets. Its dead body was suspended in a threatening pose inside some dying bushes. Its mouth hung open, showing off its spiny, needle-like teeth.

  “Jesus Christ, Ravenus!” said Tim. He could see the thing was dead, but he still had the memory of those teeth raking through his flesh, scraping against his bones. “Why did you have to –”

  It was too much. He dropped to his knees and threw up all over the upturned patch of earth. Since he’d drunk much more than he’d eaten, most of what came out of him was liquid, and seeped into the ground to mingle with his piss, but a few solid chunks stayed on top. Hopefully, a mixture of recycled booze and stomach acid was nutritious for seeds.

  “Are you quite done, sir?”Ravenus sounded uncharacteristically stern.

  Tim hopped to his feet and pointed up at the bird. “Don’t you take that tone with me, you eyeball gobbling freak. What do you expect a person to do when they see...” He couldn’t bear to look at the thing again, so he pointed blindly in its general direction. “…that?”

  “I didn’t… It wasn’t…”Ravenus flapped his wings and ruffled his feathers before settling down. “I’m very sorry, sir.”

  “You’d better stick to smaller prey. I was nearly killed by dire rats. It looks like you got lucky with a skinny one, but those things are dangerous.”

  The experience had not been pleasant, but Tim walked back to the Whore’s Head Inn with a much clearer head. His hands were sticky with vomity mud, and his knees were stained with piss-soaked soil, but at least he could think straight.

  “But what makes you so sure he’s a first level scrub?” asked Tony the Elf. “For all we know, he could be a twentieth level wizard.”

  Tim climbed onto a table, then onto a crossbeam in the gap of unfinished wall he’d walked in through, to get a better look at the crowd.

  Julian stood in front of the bar, the inn’s residents gathered in a semicircle around him. Cooper was behind the bar, near the cellar door. When he spotted Tim, he looked down and said something to whoever was standing next to him, most likely Dave, as the person was too short for Tim to see.

  “We all started at level one, right?” said Julian.

  Tony the Elf rolled his eyes. “That was his decisio
n. What’s so hard about writing Level 20 on a character sheet?”

  “He didn’t have a character sheet,” said Julian. “He didn’t plan this out. He just threw the dice to avoid falling to his death.”

  “Besides,” said Stuart, the monk who had helped them confront Millard the vampire,“if he were a twentieth level wizard, don’t you think he’d have paid us a visit by now?”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” said Tony the Elf.“Maybe he’s staying away because he’s afraid of facing all of us together.”

  “Bullshit!” said a voice that Tim couldn’t identify.

  “Why not?” Tony the Elf addressed Frank. “That’s how we faced down Eric. We stick together and defend the Whore’s Head.”

  Frank shook his head. His little gnome fists were balled up in frustration. “Eric was no twentieth level wizard. I agree with Julian. If we sit here and wait for him, we’re going to regret it.We’ve got the dice, and he’s the only one who can use them.He’s going to come after us sooner or later, and he has knowledge of this world that can help him grow very powerful very quickly.”

  “What about the gnome?” said Tony the Elf. He was sounding more and more desperate. “Mr. Goosewiggles?”

  “Professor Goosewaddle,” Julian corrected him.

  “Whatever. Can’t he figure out how to work the dice? We could all just go home and ditch Mordred here.”

  “He already told us that the magic involved was more powerful than anything he’d ever seen.”

  “He knew enough to recognize how they were bonded to Mordred, didn’t he? Maybe he just needs to study them more. Do some reverse engineering?”

  “No,” said Frank. “If the professor thought he could do it, he wouldn’t have dismissed the idea so quickly. He’s a gnome. We’re curious by nature. Anyway, you don’t need to be a computer programmer to be able to recognize the on/off switch on the monitor. We need Mordred, and we’ve got something he wants. Our only chance is to get to him before he’s so powerful that he doesn’t have to bargain with us.”