The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  "Yeah, I’ll say," Riley replied. "I only have one more of those vials, and I plan on using it on myself if I ever need it..."

  Jason looked into the distance. "So ... the alpha retreated?"

  "Yeah. That fruker's definitely smarter than the others. That’s the second time we’ve seen it flee."

  Jason heard a squishing sound from their side and looked over to see a large slime slowly crawling toward them from the canyon wall. The shadows of the corridor they were in were growing long...

  "It’s getting late," Jason said, looking up at the yellow sky. The strange, maze-like shapes in the clouds were increasing in contrast, looking even weirder than before, now with darker furrows running through the canary-yellow stratosphere.

  "Looks that way," Riley replied. "Let’s get out of here."

  Jason tried again to open a horizontal rift under the body of the dead minotaur female, but once again, he opened a vertical one instead, like before. Riley rolled his eyes as he and Gliath set to moving the body into the garage with the two other hulking, furry corpses.

  "I hope you have a hose in here like Jason 113 did," Riley shouted above the sputtering noise as they stepped through the rift together, navigating across the big monster bodies.

  Jason released the rift and it collapsed with a pop, leaving the Reality Rifters in considerably less light and a very quiet garage.

  It felt great to be home.

  "I do," Jason replied. "There’s drainage under the processing station. My dad used to butcher deer and elk and stuff here. He’d just wash it all down there afterwards. The garage in Jason 113’s house was the same? His dad was also a hunter and had the same setup?"

  "Yeah."

  "What about Jason 47? Is that the Jason from before 113 that you worked for?"

  Riley nodded, carefully avoiding the puddles of blood as he opened the door into the house, taking off his rifles and duster jacket as he went. Jason followed. He was about to ask Riley what they were going to do about the three monstrous corpses in the garage when he figured out the answer for himself. As soon as he and Riley were out of the way, Gliath started manhandling one of the bodies, pulling out his big kukri and the power scalpel they’d bought from Dave’s back in the Market...

  Jason saw that it was evening on Earth. He pulled two beers out of the fridge, opened them, and gave one to Riley, who was already lounging in the living room on the couch. Zelda appeared from beside the TV, giving Jason a quick meow then darting out into the garage.

  She must have smelled the blood.

  "Thanks," the soldier said, taking the beer and enjoying a long swig.

  "I feel like..." Jason said, "I should help Gliath? Did you say that he does all of the processing?"

  Riley nodded. "He does. He’s good at it and enjoys it. He’ll have those hides off pretty quickly—considering that they’re huge minotaurs—hosed down, and ready to bring to the Market. Then, he’ll fill your fridge and freezer full of meat. I guess we’ll bring what's left of the bodies to the Wilderlands for disposal."

  "Minotaur meat?"

  "Just like cow," Riley said. "It’s great. You have cow here, right? Cow burgers?"

  "Hamburgers, yeah," Jason replied with a smile. "I never realized that monster hunting would involve bodies and ... I guess getting meat from them sometimes, huh? I did hunt dinosaurs when I needed to back in the Wilderlands. Cooking up a leg from an ostrich dinosaur saved my life, I think," Jason said, thinking, staring down at his cold beer. "I was starving there for a long time..."

  "I bet," Riley said. "Ostrich dinosaur, huh? Now that you have the OCS, you can scan them and figure out what you were looking at."

  Jason looked down at the Omniversal Cosmic Scanner. Riley was right. He could figure out what those ‘mini-rexes’ were; what their proper dinosaur names were.

  "Anyway, that’s cool that we’ll have so much meat," Jason said.

  "We need it, too," the soldier replied. "Gliath eats a lot of meat."

  Riley wasn’t kidding about the leopardwere’s work. The Krulax warrior was truly gifted.

  A few hours after they'd returned home for the night, Gliath had processed those three minotaur corpses, carefully stacking up three thick, cleaned hides almost the size of blankets on one of the stainless steel tables in the garage. He then stuffed Jason’s fridge and freezer as full of meat as possible; all wrapped up in paper, zip lock bags, and grocery bags—whatever was available. The leopardwere had a hearty meal of what must have been perhaps ten pounds of raw meat after that, then, they all started talking about relocating the remains.

  Jason was equally horrified and touched by the cuteness of seeing his little white cat up on a stainless steel table in the garage, calmly eating pieces of raw minotaur meat that Gliath had given her.

  "You need to figure out how to move through the third dimension," Riley repeated. "Otherwise, Gliath and I will have to carry those fruking things all the way down to the permanent rift in the backyard. Either that, or find your way to u312 with the infinity crystal from the garage!"

  "I’m trying!" Jason stammered. And he was. Sitting in the garage with the smell of blood and musk, he was alternating between staring at the concrete floor under one cleaned, skinned, and deboned body of a male minotaur—imagining a rift opening like a big, fiery hole under it—and the coordinates on his OCS of the spot of grass just outside the invisible rift to the Wilderlands down the hill from his backyard.

  First, Jason tried to just move the carcass through third dimensional space. If he could rift it to where the permanent rift to the Wilderlands was in the back, then it'd be easy to go to the wyvern's cave from there. He checked the sliders and settings again and again, and grasped around in his head for that thing that he flexed, but try as he did, Jason just couldn’t make it connect.

  Then, he spent some time holding the infinity crystal in front of him, trying to open the same portal under that body directly to the wyvern’s cavern in the other world from the garage. That would be traveling directly through the ninth dimension ... he thought. Jason could almost do it—he could feel the flexing—but whatever it was he was trying to move was just too damned heavy...

  "Damn it, Jason!" Riley said with a frown, crossing his arms over his armored chest. "You’ve got to figure this shet out. I do not appreciate getting blood on my armor to carry these heavy fruking bodies when we’ve got a fruking Jason Leaper here who can’t rift!"

  "Sorry, Riley!" Jason replied, feeling flush with embarrassment and frazzled with frustration. "I can almost get to the Wilderlands from here with the focus key. Maybe if I just try for a little while longer..."

  "Forget it," the soldier said, going for the hose. He turned on the water. "We’ve got to get these bodies out of the way and get the hides back to the Market and get some sleep, all in time to get back to Maze World by morning."

  Riley hosed off the dead bodies again to remove as much blood and viscera as possible. Then he and Gliath carried them one by one out the garage’s side exit next to Zelda’s cat door while Jason kept watch outside. Without all of the meat (there was still a good bit of meat on the corpses, but Jason’s fridge could only hold so much), the bodies were probably a lot lighter, but they still must have been way too heavy for Jason to move by himself. The cybernetic soldier and leopardwere carried all three red and ragged corpses down to where the permanent rift stood waiting, invisible to the naked eye in the back. Then Gliath carried the huge plastic trashcan full of sloppy and sliding minotaur guts down the slope. That nasty tote full of slippery innards must have weighed a freaking ton—figuratively, at least.

  When the house was locked up tight and the three Reality Rifters stood in the sloppy, muddy snowmelt behind Jason’s backyard among the dead bodies—their rifles strapped to their backs—Jason easily opened the portal to the wyvern's cave with his focus key and stepped through...

  The dark and hot cavern smelled like rotting death and snake shit. Jason remembered it well. It was the same—hopefully st
ill wyvern-free now. The Earth man led the way, pulling out his flashlight and shining the LED around the fetid, black space as Riley and Gliath carried the first body through. Riley grunted, coming through the portal after him.

  As Jason’s eyes started to adjust and he saw the blue twinkling of infinity crystals glowing and rippling around him in the darkness, the man sensed something else familiar, barely audible over the sputtering roar of the fiery, orange rift.

  Jason heard an echoing yip of surprise followed the howls of cannibals inside the cave...

  Chapter 16

  "Shit! Cannibals!" Jason cried, sweeping his jacket on his right side out of the way.

  He drew his new Glock 26—it felt just like his old Glock 26—and brought his flashlight up to illuminate the edges of the cavern.

  "Two of em, Jason!" Riley shouted over the noise of the roaring rift. Jason flashed his light around the dark space, pausing to look back and see the soldier and Gliath hefting a glistening red corpse through the rift and onto the cave floor. Riley pointed with his bearded chin. "Up by the exit!"

  Jason spun, automatically bringing his pistol and light up together to operate the weapon with his right hand and allow his left to provide support and illumination. He’d practiced the move so many times at the range that he didn’t even have to think about it. Jason's spot of white light landed on one of the grimy, reptilian humanoids that had given Jason so much trouble back when he was stuck on this world before. Its dark eyes glittered in the light.

  The cannibal immediately charged at Jason through the dark. It was a male wearing a loincloth of what was probably dinosaur skin, its arms and legs dusky and glinting with fine scales in the bright LED light. Its face stretched in rage and surprise. The savage's eyes were angry and its mouth was wide, showing tiny fang-like teeth as it howled, sprinting, hefting a stone axe in one hand...

  Jason put his tritium front sight on the creature’s center mass. He rapidly squeezed the trigger twice and the double pop of the pistol smacked his eardrums painfully. The Glock's muzzle flash was blinding in the darkness and—for an instant—Jason couldn't see his result. The cannibal shrieked in pain then stumbled. Its fierce momentum brought it running past Jason with lurching steps where it crashed into a pile of old dinosaur bones.

  Immediately bringing his light and pistol back up, Jason hunted for the other savage, spotting it quickly. He fired twice again at the incoming cannibal’s chest as it hissed, bared its teeth, and charged like a madman, flailing its arms through the air.

  The second cannibal collapsed like a sack of rocks, landing with a clatter against a massive shoulder blade and partial spine with vertebra as thick as coffee cans. The fallen creature screamed. It wailed and thrashed. Jason shone his light and cautiously approached through the caked dirt and carcasses. He saw that the cannibal had impaled itself on a dinosaur's rib or something lodged in the dried mud. With its arms and legs flailing and thrashing all over, the cannibal shrieked again and again, filling Jason’s pounding ears with its keen cry.

  "Jason!" Riley shouted suddenly. "The rift!"

  He looked back and heard a flutter like a flag whipping around in heavy wind. The rift was shuddering and Jason realized that he’d been distracted and almost lost control...

  Feeling that flexing part inside of him—the mysterious piece of his brain that could open portals—Jason strengthened his hold on the rift and its wavering stopped. The interdimensional gateway stood bright and loud again, spinning and shooting sputtering sparks and orange flames all around it in the dark, stinking cave.

  The impaled cannibal howled and shrieked in agony. Jason approached, looking down into its ghoulish face and its beady black eyes for anything he could sympathize with; any sort of soul that would allow Jason compassion. Instead, Jason merely felt like he was looking down at a mean, wounded animal.

  He shot the cannibal in the head.

  Damn, Jason thought, grimacing from the piercing pain in his right ear. All of this gunfire is gonna make me deaf!

  After that moment of chaos, the only sound that remained now was the roaring and spitting of the rift. It looked like Riley and Gliath were moving the third body through. Holding his flashlight with his teeth, Jason reached down to his left side under his jacket, pulled his extra pistol magazine, then swapped the mags of his Glock, topping off. He put the partially-depleted magazine back onto his belt.

  "You never know..." he said to himself.

  The last thing to come through the sputtering gateway was Jason’s old tub trashcan, now full of slithery minotaur guts. It probably weighed a hundred pounds or more. Gliath carried the can through the rift as if it was no heavier to the leopardwere than carrying a few bags of groceries were to Jason.

  "Okay!" Riley shouted over the noise. "Done! Let it go!"

  Jason released his hold on the rift and it crumpled into a small, spinning fireball before snuffing out entirely with a pop. They were all thrust into darkness and relative quiet. Jason heard dripping in the dark and realized that it was either the minotaur bodies, or—more likely—the freshly-dead cannibals. The constant drone of bugs whispered to Jason from outside and he could barely hear the bird-like sounds and trills of small dinosaurs down in the valley.

  "We’re not just gonna leave the bodies right there, are we?" Jason asked, breaking the silence. "I expect we’ll be coming back here from time to time."

  "Eh," Riley replied. Jason shined his light over just in time to see the soldier shrug then smirk. "So move em outside with your rifting, then..."

  Jason groaned. He couldn’t tell if Riley was fucking with him or truly indifferent...

  "Let’s take a look outside first," Jason replied. "I need coordinates for a drop-zone, right?"

  "Sure," the soldier replied then gave Gliath a light jab with his elbow. "Come on."

  Jason led the way through the mess of rotten carcasses to the wide-but-low tunnel that would lead them outside. How much time had passed here since the wyvern's death? They'd been back in town for a few days then went to the Market, then home again, then into Maze World. If about two weeks had passed earlier when Jason was gone from his Earth for a little more than a single day, then perhaps ... a few months had passed here in the meantime...?

  "I guess it’s been at least two months, huh?" Jason asked, carefully navigating the tunnel, leading with his flashlight and Glock 26. Riley and Gliath followed, apparently not impeded by the darkness at all. Neither of those two used lights. As they all approached the bright light at the end of the tunnel that would lead to the valley full of dinosaurs, Jason heard the meaty click-click of Riley chambering a .45-70 government round into his lever action rifle.

  "Two months seems about right, I reckon," Riley said. "Maybe three."

  Jason carefully stepped out into the hot sunshine. The air of the Wilderlands was warm and humid, but being out in the open was infinitely better than being drowned by the muggy stench of the wyvern's cave. Maybe the Reality Rifters could build a base here if they could clear out all of those corpses and make the cavern a hell of a lot cleaner. This world did have its uses, after all: gold, all of the dinosaur meat they could eat, infinity crystals, and, of course—as Riley called it—the vitality element. This whole place had a regenerative effect that had been strong enough to reverse the permanent damage in Jason’s right knee from his crippling injury fifteen years ago. And that was after he'd survived here for two weeks!

  A dinosaur spa, Jason thought, smiling as he looked out over the valley stretching from north to south. He let his eyes wander across the eastern forest and up into the ridge. Jason wondered whether or not another creature—an Ettercap-type-thing or otherwise—had already taken possession of his 'spider cave' up the hill.

  Cannibals sprinted back and forth down the slope from the cavern’s entrance, stopping to gawk at the three of them with wide eyes and open mouths. Their clumsy feet rustled through the underbrush. They hooted and hollered, lingering around the area of the sacrificial slab—the pla
ce where the savages used to offer dinosaur meat to the wyvern in a symbiotic exchange for fire. Of course, there was no wyvern anymore. It was deader than shit...

  Jason’s eyes crawled over the huge, very-rotten corpses down the incline in the valley. There was the wyvern, not far from where Riley had killed it. Back when they'd pushed the bleeding beast off of Jason, then rolled it down the slope. There was also the massive, fallen Tyrannosaurus Rex—Jason's Dreadwraith—now hardly more than a husk of huge bones and thick, ragged dark skin and black feathers. Even now, Jason could see tiny raptors and other scavenging dinosaurs scampering around the large carcasses, fighting over whatever was left.

  "Wow!" Jason said. "I didn’t expect this place to be very different than before, but that wyvern and T-Rex are really decomposed and picked apart."

  "Fruking nature," Riley replied with a grim nod, then a smirk. "She'll eventually turn us all to dust." He took a big breath of fresh air. "So let’s find a good spot to dump the bodies."

  Gliath made a sudden grumbling growl and both Jason and Riley looked back at the tall leopardwere. He stood lean and sleek in the sun, his black fur shining. The panther-man watched the running cannibals with his yellowish-green eyes, his face impassive. Then, he shook his feline head. The Krulax’s tail whipped from one side to the other harshly, and he stared down across the valley.

  "What?" Jason asked.

  "What’s the matter, pal?" Riley added.

  "It is a waste of meat," he rumbled.

  Riley smirked and reached up, scratching behind one of Gliath’s ears. The leopardwere turned his big head into the gesture and partially closed his eyes. His whipping, black tail calmed down. "We have a lot of meat, Gliath. There’s no more room! Don’t worry. We’ll get more. We need to find the fridge..."

  For a moment, Jason almost asked what Riley meant by that, but instead, focused on finding a good spot to bookmark. With Riley and Gliath as an escort, he walked down the scrabbly gravel slope toward the valley then strode through the tall grasses. He felt weird and uneasy not having his cane with him. That cane was a lifesaver the last time he was here. It was so useful for deterring small raptors that were too aggressive in their curiosity about what Jason tasted like. Now, the man was walking with a pistol and a flashlight ... and his Rigby rifle on his back.