by Ben Bequer
I was expecting a bullet to take me out, but instead the red targeting designator whizzed past me, to something beyond Zundergrub; the brightly lit Telluric Device. Zundergrub smiled as I rushed to grab him, but he was moving already, and the bullet fired. I didn’t hear the crack of the shot for another second, but I saw its victim. Near Doctor Retcon, his daughter’s back exploded with crimson, and she collapsed on the floor in a heap.
I roared in a charge, almost getting to Zundergrub when he slipped into a shadow, disappearing from sight for the moment, leaving me with handful of empty air.
I ran towards Retcon, who was reaching for his fallen child, a look of disbelief crossing his face.
Retcon knelt at his daughter’s side, rolling her over and revealing the horrible, gory wound on her chest. Her face was still and peaceful, but for a slight trickle of blood from her nose. Sharpshooter’s bullet had killed her instantly.
“It was Zundergrub,” I started but Retcon’s face was a mask of horror, speckled with his child’s lifeblood. He wept, his open eyes spilling tears and gazing into mine. Dr. Retcon looked down at his daughter’s corpse, and back at me, crying softly, and then shook his head as he tenderly closed her eyelids. His hand settled on her forehead and his tears spilled on her face.
“My baby,” he whimpered.
“We’ve been betrayed,” I pleaded, but I saw a strange look slowly forming on his face, the same madness crossing over him that had enveloped me moments earlier, a rage that nothing could slake or stem. Nothing could satisfy the murderous power that welled inside him. His face grew stern, clenched, and he regarded me again.
“They want a monster,” he snarled. “Then I shall give them one.”
He stood and turned back to his machine, the robots oblivious to the drama unfolding behind them. I reached over and grabbed his shoulder.
“You have to listen to me. This is what Zundergrub wants,” but he turned and struck me so fast all I saw was a blur. I flew through the sky, crashing into the tough concrete walls, almost fifty feet away, and sliding to the ground, covered in bits of the wall.
“THEY WANT A MONSTER AND I SHALL GIVE THEM ONE!” He howled madly, and then switched the device. The energy spilling upward suddenly stopped, reversed, and fired down at the ground. The floors of the structure, of Hashima Island were nothing compared to the channeled power of the Telluric energy of the Retcon device. Raw energy poured down onto the face of the planet, speeded along by the forces of gravity. Retcon himself stepped into the device and fed his rage and power into the device.
Instead of saving the planet, he now intended to destroy it.
I looked at Apogee, who was in tears herself.
“Dale,” she cried. “We have to stop him!”
But before I could do anything, even scream a desperate warning, Zundergrub appeared again, standing right behind Apogee with Shivver’s dagger raised high.
Chapter 29
I screamed her name as Zundergrub stabbed deep into her back. Apogee grimaced, her body twisting unnaturally, and fell to her knees. He cackled with delight and held up Shivver’s bloody knife, letting me see the weapon coated with her blood. She reached to grab Zundergrub, but he was gone, swallowed again by the shadows.
The ground shook as the Telluric energy broke through, tearing the foundations at the base of the Retcon building, revealing the twisted iron works and ripping through the rocky island below. More and more, the ground gave way beneath us, leaving a gaping maw to the center of the chamber. The floor was now an angled slide down to the crack, to a precipice down to the surface of the Earth. The Tesla device was held aloft by a spiderweb-like network of twisted and wrought metal that had avoided the punishing destruction of energy. Retcon himself was in the midst of the device, using his amazing powers to channel the energy downward, instead of protecting the planet from the alien species, he was destroying it with the very energy he had devised to save it.
Apogee lost her footing slipping on her blood, careening down towards her death. I dove and grabbed her, pulling her close. My right hand reaching for her back above the kidney and coming back caked with her blood. Her expression was strained and her back muscles twitched in complaint from the devastating injury.
I’m not a doctor, but I know quite a bit of human anatomy. Enough to know that the wound wasn’t instantly fatal, but the amount of blood she was losing was staggering. The stab had pierced her lung, collapsing it, and her breathing became rapid and nervous, which was actually a good sign with a punctured lung. I pulled her back, away from the crashed open pit and closer to the walls of the building, as the huge gate slammed closed. I saw Zundergrub standing at the console, only a few feet from us, still smiling.
“I want nothing to interrupt us,” he said, almost seductively and walked closer.
Apogee’s breathing was slowing, as was her pulse. There was so much blood. She wheezed, grabbing me as if I could provide more air.
“Mirage,” she gargled, her mouth moist with her own blood.
And Zundergrub still approached, riding a column of shadow-like tentacles that carried him aloft like an octopus over a coral bed
“I saw him before the explosion,” I told her laying her down gently.
“He can heal...” she coughed.
“He’s outside, Madelyne.”
Then the doctor was upon us and I stood to face him, standing between him and Apogee.
“No one will save her, Blackjack,” he spat lunging forward with speed I couldn’t believe. I hurled myself aside, but he didn’t relent, with a cross slash I back-pedaled from, then another surging stab that tore through my shirt.
I swung at him, but he dropped to the floor, disappearing into the shadows beneath him. Expecting him to come behind me, I was ready with a single punch to end the whole thing, but he shot back up from where he had disappeared and jabbed his dagger right at my face. I recoiled from the slash and felt the piercing agony as blood splashed down my face. My world exploded in white and crimson, but as I flinched, my arm caught Zundergrub across the face as he moved in to finish me. Flying back from the blow toward the gaping pit, he crashed into a twisted metal column, which saved him from a nasty fall.
I stumbled back, trying to stem the bleeding. He had caught me beside my right eye and the downward slash had opened up my cheek down to my jaw. Blood fountained from the wound, and my eye was blinded by all the crimson.
Zundergrub composed himself and moved away from the chasm behind him. He looked over at me, struggling with the heavy blood flow, and cackled, “Just a scratch, Blackjack. Next time I will cut your bloody throat.
My problem now was the blood that seeped was unabated. I couldn’t fight like this, and Zundergrub was only getting started. I had a chance if I got to him, if I could put my hands on him, but I had to stop the bleeding.
I reached down into my boot and dug into a compartment for a small vial of fluid. It was glop sealant I kept in the odd chance I would need to seal a doorway behind me. One of the dozens of trinkets and junk I carried “just in case.” I pulled the stopped on the 10cc vial and poured it on my wound, starting below the eye.
If the stab itself was a racking agony, almost too much to bear, this was a hundred times worse. The chemical was highly toxic causing pain enough to make a woman mid-labor empathize. I screamed and fell to my knees, but had no time to check if it had worked, Zundergrub was on me that very instant.
I could barely see, my vision stained with blood and tears of pain, but I didn’t wait for him to attack. I swung with all my might. He easily avoided the life-ending blow and slashed again, this time at my mid-section. But my punch, powerful as it was, was a feint for a quickly reversing backfist. Zundergrub’s dagger found a home, scraping my ribs and cutting into my thick belt, but he was forced to backpedal or lose his head, so the wound was but a scratch, a painful, blood-staining scratch.
He actually faced me off, confident that his martial skills, while diminished by age, were greater than whatever
fighting style I might have. He was certain that he could move faster than I, and smiled, waving Shivver’s dagger in my face in taunting fashion.
I took a second to study the weapon, because it was doing something peculiar. Apogee and my blood slowly soaked in, as if it was absorbing the fluids into the blade.
“Too bad we had to scar such a handsome face,” He said motioning to his cheek with the dagger.
Then he slashed out, faster than lightning, catching my forearm before I could flinch back. It was only a scrape but he must have caught a vein because a thick stream of blood flowed almost instantly. He was slowly going to cut me to pieces until I couldn’t stand anymore. Then he would slit my throat and finish Apogee, all the while having a first-row seat to the end of humanity.
I had to stop him; I had to figure something out.
I looked at the weapon again and this time I noticed something else. The blade was fat and wide, with a slight curvature, and Zundergrub held it underhanded. It had no channels to release blood in case you stabbed someone. I could only notice that because the blade was now pristine, having absorbed all the blood that coated it. The importance of those channels was paramount; it meant it was only a slashing weapon. Most combat daggers intended for stabbing, like bayonets or stiletto had a thin indentation down the length of the blade in order to release pressure when they penetrated deep into an enemy’s body. Lacking these channels, a weapon would stick in a target, kept in place by the body’s internal pressure, and I knew Zundergrub wasn’t strong enough to pull it out.
So all I had to do was get him to stab me.
A brilliant plan, made all the more difficult by the fact that he was perfectly content with slashing me with a dozen tiny cuts to bleed me out.
He moved in, not giving me much of a chance to think of a plan, and I jabbed at his face. As he neared, he dissolved into darkness, avoiding my blow. Zundergrub reappeared again to my left, slashing across so quickly that I couldn’t escape his blow. I moved laterally, away from him, and threw up my left hand to keep him off me, but his slash caught me across the palm, again drawing more blood.
But I noticed something else. When he did his ‘shadow-port’ thing, he reappeared in the same relative facing, so he had to turn to reacquire me. That was probably the reason he didn’t port behind me, in fear of giving me his back. I also noticed there was a slight delay between the moment he reappeared and his next action. It was as if it took him a half a second to regain his bearings, disoriented.
One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to beat him by sitting back. He would shadow dance around me slashing away. The problem was that he was porting all over me when I went forward. And his shadow-step move was so fast, I couldn’t react fast enough.
Maybe that was it. Don’t react. Act.
I charged forward, readying a combo of blows. He ported, swallowed up by darkness, and I threw a jab with my left to where I thought he would appear without even looking. This time he appeared to my right so I had guessed wrong, but I flailed out my right arm and caught some fabric. I swung his fragile form in front of me, lifting him up, and he had no other recourse, but to stab downward. I timed it perfectly, bringing up my forearm in the way of his motion, and caught the dagger right through the fleshy part of the muscle.
I screamed in pain, letting him go, and fell to my knees. He twisted the weapon, my blood now staining his hand and coat red, and laughed.
“A little more pain, Blackjack,” Zundergrub spat. “It will all be over soon enough.”
Then he tugged the weapon and it held fast to my arm.
It was my turn to smile, ripping my arm back away from his grasp and leaving him weaponless. I roared as I pulled the dagger out, and held the bloody weapon in my hand. I threw the dagger, sending it soaring across the chamber.
“Oops!” I said and jumped at him.
Zundergrub dove away, but I caught a handful of his dirty lab coat, and pulled him closer to me.
“Children save me!” he shrieked and his army of shadow imps appeared out of nowhere. In an instant a thousand clawed hands and teeth tore at me, swarming and overwhelming me. I kept my grip on the man’s coat, but the imps tore at the hem, ripping him free while pinning me in place.
I tried to swing, but it was like trying to beat off a swarm of piranha. Some of the demonic imps were large, enough for me to grab and crush, but most were tiny, an annoyance mostly, but enough to keep me in place, tearing at my skin and clothes. Beyond them, I could barely see Zundergrub approaching Apogee.
And in his hands was the dagger again.
I had only thrown it across the chamber, nowhere far enough for him to retrieve it using his teleportation powers. He knelt beside her, and dipped the tip of his index finger into the pool of blood where she lay. I roared, scaring some of the imps, but Zundergrub made another imp appear. A massive red demon I hadn’t seen before.
“Get your hands off her,” I roared, coming free of the swarm and making slow progress to her.
Zundergrub regarded her as one would a child, then reached back with the dagger and stabbed her again. She doubled over, howling in pain with what remaining strength she had, holding her new wound in her abdomen. Apogee’s hands came up in defense, weak attempts to push him off, but he used his left hand to try to clear her arms for another stab.
A powerful red hand pawed at me, grabbing through the throng of black imps, and reaching for my midsection, slowing my motion towards Apogee. I roared in frustration and rage, turning and punching the beast. I hit it squarely in the chest, and it flew across the damaged structure, crashing into the ruined metal beams and almost falling through the huge hole.
Zundergrub saw me break free, and come running at him at full speed. He had plenty of time to escape into his shadow world, but he looked at me, his face calm and composed, and instead of avoiding me, he stabbed Apogee once more, leaving the weapon jutting from her stomach.
She screamed as I reached Zundergrub, ripping him off her and slamming his frail frame into the massive wall behind. I felt his chest cavity partially give with a snapping of bone and cartilage, and he screamed in pain as I pinned him into the wall.
“You idiot,” I roared. “Retcon is going to kill everything in the planet.”
He coughed and dug his hands into my chest. “Good,” he managed and we both noticed a pounding on the other side of the wall. The remaining heroes were trying to break in, but the walls were so strong that even Epic, Captain Miraculous and Superdynamic’s greatest blows were barely audible.
It distracted me long enough for Zundergrub to fade into the shadows beneath us, leaving me gripping only his lab coat. Behind me his red imp neared, only now it was gargantuan, and still growing.
“Nothing can stop it now,” Zundergrub cackled from the nothing. “Humanity will be washed from this world, like a grain of sand on a wave.”
I dodged a sweeping blow that left a long trio of scratches on the wall from the beast’s massive claws, but it reached down with its other hand and grabbed me.
“And you’re right, Blackjack,” he continued. “You’re right. Most life will die.”
The creature threw me across the room, far from Apogee, where I bounced off a metal beam and slammed into the hard wall. It didn’t let up, lashing out at me with its tail, pounding me at the wall again.
“But Earth will replenish itself. At first it will only be single-celled organisms, but life will return, freed of humanity’s deadly touch.”
As I came to my feet, it loomed over me, crouched above me and readying a massive bite that would end my life.
“Not if I can help it,” I managed, and caught the beast’s locking jaws as they closed around my frame. Between my blood and the creature’s spittle, keeping hold proved difficult. With one hand, I gripped a huge canine on the upper jaw and with the other I grasped the gap between two teeth on the opposing mandible. The red imp exerted incredible pressure on its jaw, and I felt myself getting enveloped by its mouth. Its noxious breath
was a heinous mixture of burned flesh, flaming charcoal and death.
I could see the fleshy membranes fluctuating inside its mouth with each breath and I knew it was struggling with me. But big and strong as it was, and injured as I was, it was only a matter of time until my grip slipped.
“No,” I snarled, refusing to be a meal to Zundergrub’s construct.
The jaw’s natural motion was to snap closed, so I strained to push the beast away far enough that when they clamped shut I was out of range. Then I threw a punch with all my strength at the creature’s face, catching it under the jaw and smashing its face into a pulp. The blow was so powerful that it hurled the beast backwards in the air, like if it was made of papier-mâché. It sailed into the Telluric energy field around the machine, as Retcon channeled the force the machine released upward into an arc around him and down to the planet.
It fizzled, popped, and exploded in a bright flash of light, emitting a harrowing scream as it faded from existence as if it had hit an oversized bug zapper.
I fell to my knees, spent, tired and covered in blood. I had fought the Sentinels, Epic, and now Zundergrub and his monsters. I had been fighting for hours it seemed, and the exhaustion was overtaking me. My mouth was parched and knees weak, my heart pounded in my chest. And I had lost a lot of blood. The smaller scratches had clotted up somewhat, but my face was a mess, and blood still trickled down my cheek and neck.
“I think I can help, Blackjack,” said a small voice near me.
“Huh?” I all I managed, my breathing was so heavy. “Mr. Haha?”
“Yes,” he replied, as a metallic tendril travelled up my arm toward my torso. I reached down to fight it, but Haha went around my grasp and up my shoulder to my head. The tendril reached my ear and deposited something inside. I panicked, fearing that Haha was in league with Zundergrub and dug at my ear to tear out whatever he had put there.
