STRANGER WORLD

by Jack Castle

  “What are you doing?” the first Leftenant shrieked. “Are you mad? This is the only way!”

  Still holding fast, but her grip becoming weaker by the second the bloody Leftenant said, “No, sister. This isn’t the only way. Have you learned nothing in your time with them?”

  “You are clearly malfunctioning, sister,” the Beta said, spitting out her last word. “Now, let… me… go!” And with that said, she broke free of the Alpha’s grasp.

  Weak, the Leftenant stumbled backward onto the gangplank between both ships. She would’ve fallen overboard were it not for the railing, which she leaned heavily upon now. She looked back at George, who was too stunned to move. When she returned her gaze to her Beta-self she could see the Beta was removing her pistol once more.

  Pistol raised, Beta stepped forward, aimed at her face and said, “Good-bye, sister. And please do me the courtesy of staying dead this time.”

  Before she could fire, however, the Leftenant lunged forward with her last ounce of strength and grabbed her Beta self’s wrist. As they grappled over the weapon, balancing precariously over the gangplank, the Beta fired the gun twice. The shots fired harmlessly in the air.

  “You’re weak, sister,” her Beta-self spat. She kneed herself several times in the gut, causing her to double over.

  The Leftenant still refused to let go but her grip loosened enough so her Beta-self could maneuver the aim of her gun. Once the barrel was pointed at her midsection, Beta fired four more times into her abdomen.

  The Leftenant spun in the air and landed face first on the gangplank near its edge.

  George and Maddie could only watch in horror and confusion as the perfectly-formed Leftenant stepped over the bloody Leftenant, aimed her pistol at the back of the Leftenant’s head, and shrilled, “This time I will make certain you stay deactivated!”

  Ignoring the perfectly formed Leftenant, the bloody Leftenant locked eyes with George and said, “I’m sorry, George. This is the only way to save Maddie. To save you both.” With that said, the Leftenant closed her eyes and the lights of the Dauntless blinked several times before winking out completely.

  Seeing this, the Beta Leftenant cried out, “Stop! What are you doing?”

  George heard a loud tearing of metal reverberating across the deck and pulled Maddie off the gangplank as the gangplank tore free and the H.M.A.S. Dauntless vanished from sight and simply …fell away.

  George wasn’t entirely sure what happened but he was fairly certain the wounded Leftenant had saved them from her doppelgänger. Regardless, with the Dauntless gone they now had no way off Lady Wellington’s hover barge.

  “Which way?” Maddie asked him, almost sounding like his little girl once more.

  “Back the way we came,” George commanded, but when they turned back toward the hallway they saw Cheeves fighting mightily with over a dozen Gatherers. Despite his valiant and beast-like efforts he was soon overpowered.

  George turned back toward the railing where the Dauntless had fallen away. He and Maddie heard a loud CLANGING sound and suddenly several hovering gunboats armed to the teeth with more Faceless-Nazis rose up in the place of the Dauntless. Lady Wellington was leaning on the railing of the nearest of them.

  No longer echoing over the speakers she shouted over the wind, “It’s not too late, Mister George. You don’t have to die today. You can still go free. All my queen wants is the girl!”

  George was surprised to learn that even someone as powerful as Lady Wellington had someone to answer to.

  Turning toward his faux-daughter he said, “I’m sorry, Maddie. We’re not going to make it.”

  “Even though you have fulfilled your purpose, you are not going to die today, George Stapleton.”

  Maddie held up her stuffie in her hand. She stared at it for a moment and then, as if by magic, or her sheer will, the stuffie blurred, became fluttering material, like a thousand tiny little black and grey locusts. After a few seconds of this it reformed into a sleek-looking laser pistol. She stood up ramrod straight and fired three times.

  Three Faceless Nazis on the nearest gun boat now had circular burn marks still smoldering in their foreheads. A few seconds later, they toppled over the railing and fell below.

  Maddie knelt back down as a barrage of return fire peppered the crates around them.

  “Purpose,” George shouted. “What do you mean, what purpose?”

  Maddie thought about this for a second, as if deciding something, and then turned toward him. “Your purpose, George Stapleton, was to teach me how to be human. And you have fulfilled that purpose.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Maddie tilted her chin the way a small bird might as she recalled a memory. “What is the meaning of love?”

  Before George could answer two Faceless-Nazis appeared. Maddie shot one but the other slapped the pistol out of Maddie’s hands. George leapt in front of her and bareknuckle punched the Faceless-Nazi three times in the head. The trooper’s head jerked from each of the blows but to George it was like hitting steel, and he was pretty sure he broke a few bones in the process. The trooper quickly recovered and backhanded George so hard it sent him crashing into several boxes.

  George rose to his feet, but the trooper raised his rifle and fired. The first round missed, the second passed neatly through this shoulder, and the third through his abdomen. George stood for a moment longer before his knees buckled and he collapsed to the deck mortally wounded.

  Seeing this, Maddie moved with impossible speed. She kicked the assailant in his knee, snapping it sideways at an odd angle. The Nazi crumpled to the deck. Faster than his eyes could follow, Maddie climbed up the kneeling Nazi while striking him at the same time. She wrapped her small knees around his neck and somehow managed to flip the Nazi roughly to the ground. When another Nazi arrived she easily dispatched him as quickly as she had the first, and in an uncanny feat of strength, actually lifted the Nazi high over her head and flung him into several more advancing troopers, knocking them all to the deck.

  George feebly raised himself to his knees. He was bleeding profusely from his wounds. He struggled to stand. A wave of dizziness caused him to fall back down. The troopers Maddie attacked were stunned, some weren’t moving. It was a noble effort, but more assailants were coming on board from the docked ships. They now were surrounded by at least fifty or sixty assailants. Dying didn’t bother him. Leaving Maddie, this Maddie, alone, without him, killed him far more than any amount of bullets ever could.

  “Drop your weapon!” Lady Wellington commanded. “You’re surrounded! “

  Breathing heavily, George rasped, “There’s too many of them.” With Herculean effort he rose to his feet, his clothes turning more crimson by the second.

  As though finishing their thoughts the Lady Wellington bellowed, “Even if you had somehow escaped, we would have never, ever stopped chasing you.”

  Maddie rushed to his side and helped him stay on his feet.

  Ignoring Lady Wellington, Maddie asked, in that same robotic voice again, that was hers but not hers, “George, you once told Maddie,” she paused, collected herself, “and you once told me, the meaning of love was putting the needs of others before yourself. That was the true meaning of love. And to love, that is the true meaning of what it is to be human.” Her words were still mechanical but somehow, there was emotion behind them. “Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right, Maddie. I know you’re not really my daughter. I know that now. But you’re still my baby-girl.” Tears streamed down his face. “Do you understand? That’s why I have to save you.”

  “So, you do love me?”

  “Yes, and no matter what happens, you will always be my baby-girl, just as my own daughter was.”

  “I understand. But you’re wrong. It’s why I have to save you.”

  Maddie stepped closer to one of the crates, laid her hands on it, and just as she had turned her German shepherd stuffie into a sleek laser pistol earlier, she materialized somet
hing new at her feet. Although obviously futuristic, George could tell what it was. It was a bomb. And it was ticking backward from ten seconds.

  Maddie tilted her head to the side again. In response, one of the barges that had docked with them suddenly fired up its engines, broke free of its moorings and turned upside down. Several of the Nazis screamed as they fell to their deaths.

  “She’s reactivating!” Lady Wellington screamed, even as her own gunboat’s engines fired up at full burn. “Shoot her, shoot her now!” she commanded. But the command came too late, for her gunboat jetted away and George watched as it flew straight up into the air, her Ladyship all the while clinging to the handrail screaming for her life. About a hundred feet above the hover barge it stalled in the air and nosed back down. It was falling back toward the hover barge like an anti-aircraft missile.

  Now only five seconds remained on the bomb’s timer.

  “Good-bye, George Stapleton. I may not have truly been your daughter, but I hope this shows you that I love you, too.”

  Maddie stood up with the laser pistol again and fired several times causing everyone to scramble for cover. In the same breath she grabbed George swiftly by his clothes.

  “Maddie, what are you doing?” he started to say but with the same inhuman strength she had demonstrated earlier, she flung him high into the air, easily clearing him over the ship’s railing.

  Two seconds remained.

  As George flew backward through the air, away from the hover barge, he could see Maddie one last time. He felt as though he were a dying man being pulled toward heaven. She gazed back at him, a sad smile upon her face. Several machine gun bullets then sliced neatly through her body but she didn’t seem to care.

  The bomb finished its countdown and exploded about the same time the gunboat carrying the wailing Lady Wellington slammed into the hover barge. The explosion engulfed Maddie first and then the entire ship, along with the Lady Wellington and her crew.

  And George fell to his death.

  For the second time in as many days.

  And he just didn’t give a damn.

  Epilogue

  “The Lamppost Man”

  Squeak-it… Squeak-it… Squeak-it.

  Pulling a large red wagon, the Lamppost Man rode his oversized tricycle down a desolate desert highway.

  He stopped in the middle of the road, dismounted, and put the kickstand down. He then removed a gold stopwatch from his vest pocket, opened it and checked the time. Smiling he said aloud, to no one in particular (for no one else was around for hundreds of miles), “Right on time.” He snapped the pocket watch closed and returned it to his vest pocket. He then removed an antique lace parasol from his tricycle and opened it to shield himself from the sun.

  The Lamppost Man strode over to the edge of the pavement and stopped. In a very precise manner, he marched eleven paces to the west kicking up the desert sand as he went. Stopping abruptly, he closed his parasol, (a raggedy thing that had seen better days), and stuck it into the sand by its tip.

  He jumped slightly at the sound of a chirping bird. The Lamppost Man carefully removed a very small, robotic-looking, metal bluebird from his pocket. With the same care one might handle a real bird he perched it upon his forearm like a falconer about to launch a bird of prey.

  Speaking to the metallic bird he simply said, “Hello.”

  “Do you have the girl?” The voice on the other end of the line had zero accent and spoke in a direct, yet polite manner.

  “No, I’m afraid not, but I will be bringing you a consolation prize, post haste.”

  The pause lasted long enough for the Lamppost Man to spy a distant bird, or maybe it was a pterodactyl from the nearby pterodactyl farm.

  “That’s very disappointing.” Another pause. “What about the doctor?”

  The Lamppost Man frowned. He was growing tired of this interruption. After all, he did have a job to do. “Unless you would like to use an eye dropper I’d say the good doctor finally got her wish. We won’t be having any more fun with her anytime soon.”

  “And the Dauntless?”

  The Lamppost Man bit his lower lip and tilted his head slightly to the side before answering. “My contract was very specific. It said nothing about the Dauntless. But if you must know I can only assume it was also destroyed in the explosion.”

  “Understood.”

  The Lamppost Man stared at the bird that simply stared back with its beak still open indicating the line had not gone dead. Raising his eyebrows in question and waiting patiently, nothing more was forthcoming. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another matter to attend to.” He pinched the bird’s beak closed between thumb and forefinger, severing the connection, and carefully placed the bird back in his coat pocket. He reopened his parasol and waited patiently, all the while staring straight ahead. Growing impatient, he checked his pocket once more. Noting the time he said, “Ah. Any moment now.”

  A few seconds later, a chunk of flaming metal struck the ground nearby like a falling meteor. This was soon followed by several other chunks of glowing wreckage, of various sizes, which rained down around him without actually hitting him. Again without looking up, the Lamppost Man took a purposeful step to one side.

  SHHHROOO-UMP!

  This was the sound George Stapleton’s body made when it struck the ground next to him. He died instantly.

  “Right on time,” the Lamppost Man said, closing his pocket watch. Patting his vest he repeated, only a little quieter, “Right on time.”

  Kneeling over him he said, “My, my, my, my. This is starting to become an old habit, George. You really must learn how to fly. I’m not sure how many times we can keep doing this. This may very well be your last.”

  With a strength that seemed far beyond his physical capabilities the Lamppost Man easily dragged George’s body back to the wagon hitched to his tricycle and loaded him inside. He returned his parasol to its place, kicked the kickstand, and mounted his bike.

  Squeak-it, Squeak-it, Squeak-it.

  As he resumed his journey down the lonely desert highway, in the distance behind him Lady Wellington’s barge crashed silently to the earth. The Lamppost Man stopped his forward momentum and seconds later the sound and wind from the shockwave soon reached him tousling his hair and clothes.

  Once it passed he continued his trek.

  Squeak-it, Squeak-it, Squeak-it.

  A large rectangular swath of pavement suddenly opened up before him like a gaping mouth ready to receive. The Lamppost Man didn’t seem to be surprised by this in the least and simply pedaled into the gaping hole and down the gently-sloped ramp.

  Squeak-it, Squeak-it, Squeak-it.

  The Lamppost Man and the fresh corpse of George Stapleton soon vanished into the darkness below. The mouth closed and the pavement returned to its original form as though it had never been there; as though it had been nothing but a dream.

  Here’s a sneak peek for the next new novel by real life adventurer Jack Castle.

  STRANGER REALM

  Prologue

  “The Zombie-Pirate King”

  Two undead crewmembers dragged a lump of badly beaten flesh down a set of rotten, creaking stairs; A most unnatural mist creeped down the stairwell behind them like a wedding train trailing behind a bride. The lower parts of each crewmember’s trousers were soaked with algae from slogging through the fetid swamp water surrounding their lair outside. And yet, the captive between them seemed untouched, as though the very swamp wanted nothing to do with the impetuous imp between them.

  The soulless deckhands dropped the smartly-dressed man before the darkened throne of the Zombie-Pirate King. It pleased the king to see the imp this way, bound by wrist manacles and leg irons; all of which were interconnected by heavy chains to a thick metal band around his waist.

  The king leaned forward on his throne. As he emerged from the shadows, his figure took shape—the most noticeable feature was the phosphorus orbs he had for eyes dripping with a glowing green haze wh
enever he moved. He wore a long, worn, and tattered red coat and his bejeweled hands were as skeletal as his face was gaunt. Perhaps most peculiar was the shrunken heads interwoven within his black and smoke-grey beard--and legend had it, that if one stared at their faces long enough, one might even see them blink, for the victims were still alive. Like any pirate Captain worth his salt, the Zombie-Pirate King had a wooden peg leg but in place of a talking parrot he carried around a skull with equally glowing-green orbs for eyes.

  “Lamppost Man,” the Zombie-Pirate King growled, his voice betraying his vehemence. “You Netherworld scum. I’m going to grind your bones into powder beneath the heel of my boot.”

  The Lamppost Man weakly raised his head and gazed around at the dark, dank interior of the lair around him. The King now saw the ramshackle shipwreck through the imp’s eyes: A torn pirate flag tacked to the wall behind him with rusty swords, cobwebs adorning every surface, leafy vines creeping in through every crack from the putrid swamp surrounding them. The treasure chest spilling with gold coins and precious jewels did little to offset the grim setting. The Lamppost Man’s eyes skimmed over the crew who had fared no better: drowned seamen with decaying flesh who appeared as they had only just recently risen from their watery graves. One zombie-pirate wearing an eyepatch drank from a bottle of rum, its contents seeping out of his lower stomach. The Lamppost Man then raised his head all the way to where feral bats hung from the topmost spars of the wrecked ship. Yes, the ship, the crew, had all surely seen better days.

  “Well?” the Zombie-Pirate King demanded.

  A frail grin flashed across the Lamppost Man’s face. “I simply love what you’ve done with the place.”

  In an icy voice, the Zombie-Pirate King bellowed to his crew, “Boys, I say we tear the imp asunder!”

  The crew thundered their approval.

  As the echo of their reply died down, the Lamppost Man simply lowered his head back down toward him, smiled smugly and asked quietly, “Do you know why they call me the Lamppost Man?”