by Aaron Crash
However, with Nauzea in him, Blaze liked the pain more than he’d ever admit. Panashoat tried sucking in the hydrogen, drinking it, but it wasn’t enough. It was like giving an overeater a liquid diet: drink enough smoothies and you would literally kill for a saltine cracker.
Blaze found his ax, now dead under the ocean, and he pried it out of Panashoat’s hand. Blaze didn’t try to ignite the blades, no, the All-Pig wasn’t going to be cut down like a simple demon. The important part of this maneuver was that Blaze found the thing’s hand. The tentacles gripped his wrist, and that was fine, he and Panashoat buddied up close.
Blaze lifted the demon king’s hand to his skeletal, snapping maw. Yeah, the gunny put the demon’s hand in its own mouth. The teeth bit into the metal of the hand and kept on chewing. Blaze was hurting, but he’d been hurting all of his life.
Arlo, that bastard, had been right. The pain of his childhood hurt far more than being hammered apart by an ocean of highly compressed astrophysics crap.
Panashoat, in the face of this pain, could do nothing but eat to escape it.
Blaze felt the tentacles torn loose as the teeth chewed down Panashoat’s arm. Blaze helped get the angle right so Panashoat ate through his elbow and started up his upper arm. Blaze wrenched the Etrusca armor apart, so he could feed the All-Pig his own entire left arm.
And still that skeleton snapped, wanting more, drinking in liquid hydrogen even as he started on his right hand. Blaze snapped that limb off as well, and like once you start on a row of Oreos, damn but you have to eat the whole thing.
And if you lose it, if you found suddenly you’ve eaten one row of Oreos or Girl Scout thin mints or Chips Ahoy, you’re gonna eat two, three, four. Feeling in the absolute darkness of the liquid hydrogen, Blaze found a foot and bent Panashoat’s head down to start on it, then through the knee, then through the yummy thigh like it was a turkey leg. Yeah, instead of skin, there was metal, and there was no real meat, only bone, but still, Panashoat was gulping himself down as if he were covered in buffalo wing sauce.
And once started, those teeth wouldn’t stop. His belly wanted more, and Blaze helped him fold the metal structure of his belly up and into the mouth. Blaze had to keep his hands away from the skull’s mouth or else he’d lose fingers.
It was like feeding branches into a woodchipper. Those teeth gnawing and chomping and gnashing and smashing and biting. Tentacles took over to pull every last bit of the body into the pig skull until the skull itself became the food.
And though it was too dark for Blaze to see, he was pretty sure that somehow, defying physics and biology, the skull ate itself. Teeth reached to bite through bone until the teeth were left, and then one tooth took another and another until appetite itself was left, and if you have an appetite without a body, it was like having a table without chairs. You got dick.
And thus ended the All-Pig’s reign. And thus is the nature of evil. In the end, evil devours itself.
Blaze floated alone above Jupiter’s rocky metal core. It hurt, being there, and he knew he was dying, shrinking, so far away from Elle now. It hurt. But he could handle the pain.
McCook, Daddy Crayton, Arlo whipping Blaze in front of Little Angelo on his crutches, his sister Cynthia, that pain now had meaning.
While Panashoat had eaten himself to escape the agony, Blaze had taken it like the simple man he was.
I didn’t lose this fight, Arlo, Blaze thought. That was your fear, so long ago, that I’d lose this fight with Panashoat. Well, you bastard, you were wrong, and you were right.
He knew that Arlo and Granny had already fled from the fight. Their bit was over. And they’d returned to the desert where they first met. They’d fight, fuck, fight some more, and Arlo would storm off, but he was done drinking. Arlo had had his last Barf Baby. Not Granny, though, not yet.
Blaze knew their true identities, what they were, and their experiences with deserts and messiahs. He also knew all about Raziel, who was an angel.
Fuck yeah! If the universe has demons, it has angels, but we can ignore the angels most of the time. Like a calico cat on the street, it was a cat, whatever.
Evil had to be showy to be taken seriously. Good was simple, and yeah, ignore it, but then you ignored the good parts of life. Which were ridiculously simple, at times furry, and liked to purr. Or tasted like a really good street burrito, or felt like a cigar on your lips, or smelled like a lady ready for a night of love.
Arlo and Granny weren’t angels. However, they’d grown up talking to them. And then both became gods to a certain extent as heroes from stories often do. Bigger than life, impossible to kill, they’d become symbols that transcended time and space.
Blaze was losing his power, shrinking, and that was all right. He could die. He could be done with the pain that living brings. Odds were he couldn’t get out of the liquid hydrogen ocean anyway before he became Human again.
Nauzea rose up, one more time, to convince him to suffer and to die, and he laughed at her. Fuck you, Nauzea. You can rejoice in the agony. I’m gonna live and laugh and eat chorizo, smoke cigars, and kiss my vampire girlfriend.
Yeah, and then he thought about Cali. A possible threesome? That was worth living for. That was worth a quick swim. Blaze got his feet on the core of the planet and sent himself spiraling upward until he broke free from the liquid hydrogen. He soared up through the atmosphere and out of the clouds and into space until he was flying back to where the Etrusca creatures had destroyed most of the ships.
Wrecked Meelah explorers floated dead.
Wasp drones drifted lifeless through space. Their Vespula control ships had been eaten away and drifted like round hunks of Swiss cheese through space. And still, the Etrusca creatures clustered around it. They were everywhere, on ships, wiggling through space, eating through corpses turning to bloody ice in the open space.
The Marcus Aurelius, Denning’s flagship, was now three hunks of metal covered in Etrusca crustaceans. Big metal whales with alien faces swam among the wreckage followed by schools of metal grouper. Sunlight from the distant sun glinted off their metallic bodies.
Those sea creatures had been bacteria on the backside of Panashoat. They’d been the leftovers of the demon civilization, like trichinosis or hepatitis E or whatever. Some wound up on planets. Humans, the Phasmida, the Meelah, all might’ve been the descendants of the alien bacteria. Humans came from the sea, yeah?
But while the sea creatures had at one point given life to planets, now they dealt out death.
Only one ship, the Adamant, was left, and it was packed with people. All the survivors had fled there.
The Lizzie Borden drifted dead in space. No life there.
In the bubble of an Onyx shield, floating toward the event horizon of the Onyx Gate, was Blaze’s family: Elle, Ling, Fernando, Trina in her vampire form, and Cali, with her bracelets closed. Fernando had done it again—cast the shield spell to keep them alive and to keep Elle pushing her magic into Blaze.
But both were spent.
Blaze had become Human again. He triggered his helmet and drifted close. Comms and his combat display were working. “How much time do we have?” he asked.
“Two minutes,” Elle said. She blinked. “Nauzea? Is she still in you?”
Blaze laughed. “No, exit only baby. She tried to convince me of a bunch of shit, but like you said, I’m a simple man, a cliché, and I ain’t got time for all that stupid pinche drama.”
“Have we heard from Bill?” Blaze asked.
Fernando clicked. “He won’t stop crying. Lizzie is dead.”
Bad news.
And the Onyx Gate started to shrink.
As did Fernando’s shield.
They only had seconds left.
THIRTY-FOUR_
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“Elle,” Blaze said. “You have enough mojo to hit the Lizzie with a heal spell?”
She laughed. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t heal a ship. It’s not organic.”
“Nei
ther was I during that last fight,” the gunny said. “Just hit her with the last bit of your magic.” He checked her Onyx levels, and she was low, but at least she wasn’t in god mode anymore. Her VHI was a hundred percent and not errored out.
“If I cast the heal spell,” Elle said, “and Fernando’s shield fails, those lobsters are going to clip us to pieces.”
“Let’s risk it,” Blaze said. “I’m feeling lucky.”
“I’m not,” Ling put in. “In that last fight, I wasn’t very useful. But let’s risk it anyway.”
Elle flung out another piece of honeycomb. It went through Fernando’s shield and exploded near the Lizzie Borden. The pieces of wax spackled the hull and the blue-fire engines ignited and sent the Lizzie soaring up to them.
Fernando’s shields failed. Etrusca sea creatures shot toward them, pinchers and claws and antennae reaching for them. But the Lizzie did her cargo bay scoop maneuver and they all found themselves, once again, in a tangled-up mess on the floor of Lizzie’s cargo bay.
Bill clicked.
Fernando translated. “Bill hates you all! But he wants to kiss you! You brought Lizzie back to life!”
“Never mind that. Lizzie, fire that pinche Onyx torpedo! Now!” Blaze ordered. All of them were up in a flash, running toward the bridge.
The gunny switched his view to watch the magic torpedo soaring toward the red-tinged black hole, growing smaller.
When they burst through the doors and onto the bridge, Lizzie created a 3-D hologram of the event. “Hhhello, my friends! I hhhave been brought back from the brink! Thank you, Elle, for hhhealing me.”
“Don’t mention it, baby,” Elle murmured. “Estimated time of impact?”
Lizzie responded, “Three, two, one.”
They watched as the special Onyx torpedo disappeared into the depths of the Onyx Gate.
There was a flash of crimson light and then…nothing. The Onyx Gate continued to pour energy out into the universe even as it shrunk. It would shrink away and then appear on the other side of the universe.
No, they had to close it, now.
A voice buzzed through static and gunfire. This one had a lisp, and Blaze knew why. His sister had pulled out the poor guy’s teeth. “Gunny, we’re thurrounded and we might not make it. I’m tho thorry we were late to the party. I tried to rally all possible IPC forces but the executive team thtuck to the party line, tho we had to outfit the Meelah explorers with weapons. While I didn’t bring as many thhips as I wanted, I hope we did some good.”
“You did just fine, Denning,” Blaze said. “You were the cavalry. We’re still breathing because of you.”
“Blaze!” Ambassador Randi came on comms. She sounded desperate. “The survivors, the few of us left, we made it onto the Adamant, but the creatures, they’re everywhere. We can’t hold out.”
“Thhe’s right,” the IPC security director agreed.
“Randi, Denning, we’re working on it,” Blaze said.
Elle growled, “If we close the Onyx Gate, there’s a good chance those goddamn creepy crawlies will lose their power. Then again, it might explode and destroy the Earth.”
“Lizzie, take us into the gate,” Blaze ordered. They had to risk it. Earth was probably already screwed since losing massive objects in the solar system would’ve surely messed up her orbit.
Trina and Cali exchanged glances. Both nodded at the other.
The gunny knew what they were thinking. “No, girls, we’re all going down together.”
“Initiating Trina Threesome,” Lizzie said through comms.
While that sounded really pinche cool, Blaze knew the truth. The threesome was Lizzie, Trina, and Cali.
Elle couldn’t utter a word. Cali wolfed out and leapt on Elle, but instead of ripping her apart, the werewolf licked her face, once, softly. A whining sound came from deep within her furry body.
The Onyx witch was surprised, even shocked, at the show of affection from the monstrous murder machine. Then she realized what it meant.
“No,” Elle whispered.
Lizzie turned the window into a door, but kept the environment sealed with an energy shield.
Cali flung Elle out into space.
Her suit closed, so she was safe, but then plasma blasts from Lizzie’s guns pushed her away. And took care of any Etrusca crustaceans who came close to hurting her.
Ling tried to whirl away, but Trina was faster and stronger. The vampire tossed the Meelah out next.
Fernando raced toward the door, but Cali bounded across the room, caught the Clicker doctor in her jaws, and then raced back to spit him through the transformed front of the ship. His body passed through the energy field.
Blaze was left alone, facing down a vampire and a werewolf.
“No,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
Cali growled, her yellow eyes flaring. Somehow, probably with Lizzie’s help, she wasn’t a killing machine, but a precise tool the three were using to get them off the Lizzie Borden.
“Blaze,” Lizzie said, “you’ve done enough. Trina, Cali, and I are creatures of evil. I can’t do the spellwork to close the gate, and I need two people to help me. All three of us were meant to close the Onyx Gate together. Live life, my friend. Go and live life.”
Trina transformed into a Human, walked over, and took Blaze’s hand. “Please, we don’t have much time. Please do this for me.”
Blaze felt tears fill his eyes. This tough Irish vampire, this unbelievable woman, was going to follow through on the promise she’d made the first time she’d seen the demons at work in the universe. Blaze took her in his arms and kissed her, one last time.
Bill burst onto the bridge, clicking his weeping sounds because he knew what was going on. He charged across the room, going for special controls that were only on the bridge.
Before he could sabotage Trina’s threesome plans, Blaze caught the Clicker engineer, and he pulled Bill out into space.
Once clear, the Lizzie sped away, racing into the heart of the Onyx Gate.
The shields glowed blue as they hit the red Onyx energy gushing into the galaxy. The blue-fire engines grew brighter, and when the blue mixed with the red, it turned a bright purple that got brighter, brighter, brighter, until the Onyx Gate was a purple waterfall of particles and power.
And that purple supernovaed into a blinding light. When the purple light hit the Etrusca crustaceans on the Adamant, they went limp and floated off into the space.
Elle caught Blaze’s hand. She was already holding Ling’s. Bill and Fernando clutched each other. And they all watched as the Onyx Gate closed, sealed forever by the Lizzie Borden, a demon-possessed ship piloted by an Irish vampire and a shy Mormon werewolf.
“It’s over,” Elle whispered, tears streaming down her face. “They’re gone.”
Bill screamed out in heartbroken Human, “Lizzzziiiiieeeee!”
And damn, if that didn’t bring another tear to the gunny’s eye.
THIRTY-FIVE_
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Blaze took in a big breath of air and smelled the cottonwoods and the river and the quiet dirt road—Colobraska dirt roads had a smell, especially on June evenings after a long day of sunshine.
The gunny liked the crunch of the gravel under his boots, the twittering of night birds in the mud on the bank of the river, and the general silence. Nice thing about Earth after most of the people left, it was quiet. It was like Earth remembered the hush before the Humans on her got so pinche noisy.
Being back in McCook felt good. The memories now had meaning to them. And it was a cheap place to live since Blaze and his people were pretty much broke. They’d had to hock their armor and plasma weapons to pay for groceries. Of course, they kept the fusion weapons since those were highly illegal and dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. Now that the Onyx energy no longer flooded into the universe, people would use the star energy to kill each other and not demons.
Both Ambassador Rajanigandha Randhawa and former IPC security direct
or Alvin Denning had given them some money, but working for the Union, Randi didn’t have much cash. Denning was facing formal charges for losing the fleet under his command. Poor guy. Not only was he going to lose his job, he had to reimburse the IPC for their ships. And his dental bills had been pricy. Most likely, he’d end up in the Marshalsea Debtors Prison over on Dublin Prime.
If Blaze and his family weren’t careful, they’d end up there as well.
He’d checked to see if Little Angelo and Cynthia were still in McCook. They weren’t. They’d gone off world with their family a long-ass time ago. Which only made sense. Who wanted to hang out on Earth? He’d been disappointed for a bit, but then he’d learned that the Craytons were still locked up in Florence for various crimes against humanity. It made Blaze feel better.
The gunny was in jeans, boots, and an old Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Seven hundred years old, Skynyrd’s music was experiencing an odd revival, but then that shit was good. Like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, bitches, only with more of a southern rock sound.
He crunched across the gravel parking lot of the Double Deuce, a crappy dive bar. Blaze stopped in the parking lot, looked around, and nombre de Dios, it was like he was back on Hutchinson Prime. The two places seemed identical. But if his fight with the All-Pig could mimic Daddy Crayton’s slugfest, then anything was possible.
Hutchinson Prime was gone. Billions dead. Earth was still around and kicking, billions alive. Thanks to them.
Blaze pushed through the doors and smelled the beer on the floor and the urinals in the john. Elle sat at the bar, exactly where Granny had sat. The place was empty, which wasn’t that big of a surprise. McCook had the population of a ghost town, minus the ghosts.
Corwin Singer served up drinks from his wheelchair. Had a ramp behind the bar. He was a long-haired stringy old man who was nice and left you alone to drink in peace. And he let Blaze smoke in the place if no one else was around.
