The Emerald Burrito of Oz

by Skipp, John; Levinthal, Marc

  And then we got down to business.

  Our forces were arrayed on the battlefield thusly:

  At the very front was our four-member diplomatic party (five, if you considered Toto). It consisted of Dorothy and Scarecrow, acting as negotiators, flanked to either side by Lion and myself.

  Directly behind us was a pretty mean offensive line of fifty top-rank fighters. They were backed by another thirty of equivalent skill, spread out a bit more thinly. Along with the winged monkeys, still perched upon the ramparts, that was pretty much the heart of Ozma's physical defense apparatus.

  Another hundred-and-fifty valiant souls were lined up, three tiers deep, behind. I was pleased to note that the Bunnyberry gang was set up at their forefront, performing inspirational feats of. ..well, precision marching and such. I was also pleased to note that the paper soldiers and cutlery people were there. Along with the mopey Mr. Sampo.

  Behind them were roughly thirty-five stands, set up in a mode of carnival atmospherium. Not just the Burrito, but a dozen other food-vendors (including, to my surprise, two stands offering Big Fun Sandwiches). There were carney-style games of skill and chance, and stands set up for the expressed purpose of just giving away prizes to adversaries who didn't want to fight.

  There were also—so help me God—a half-dozen kissing booths, offering sweet smoocheroos to all conscientious objectors from the opposite camp.

  I found myself wishing that all wars were fought this way.

  By this point, Bhjennigh's army was one football field away; so I was both relieved and terrified when both the cloud and the ranks came to a stop.

  And their diplomatic party stepped forward, into the remaining light. It was our cue.

  We took it.

  I can't even describe how fucking surreal it was to step forward, in that moment; and then to keep stepping forward, one foot after the last, the final yards of distance bleeding away to nothingness. There was no conversation between us; and insofar as I could read from the brittle postures of the advancing party, there t'weren't much yakkin' goin' on there, neither. Whatever remained to be said would be said at the juncture between us.

  At this point, I became aware of a thin, whispy fog that seemed to trail behind them, as if welling up from beneath their feet with every step they took. I looked at my own feet, saw no fog there, had to repress a shudder of supernatural dread. Bhjennigh's magick was really starting to creep me out.

  "Glinda, protect us," I heard Dorothy mutter. It seemed as good a prayer as any, unless you looked up at the cloud. Then the whole notion of Glinda-as-Deity became a somewhat frailer supposition.

  I tried not to give in to the fear.

  There were twenty yards between us now; I estimated a minute or less before we were face to face. It was now possible to clearly see the approaching foursome. I was unsurprised to pick out Rokoko and O'mon, vastly relieved that Skeerak was nowhere in sight. Between the two fighters were Ambassador Hwort and good ol' Xavier Waverly.

  It wasn't until they were almost upon us that I noticed there was something very wrong with their eyes.

  The four of us stopped dead in our tracks. I looked at Scarecrow. He looked at me. Toto let out an unearthly moan, and Dorothy tried to shush him, with little success. She, too, was shaken by the sight before her. Those four dark figures.

  And their coal-black eyes.

  I became aware of a low rumbling sound, like an idling Harley. It was Lion's warning growl. His great back was arched, the hairs standing on end, every muscle beneath tensed for savage attack.

  Almost casually, Scarecrow reached out to stroke his mane. I suspected it was as much for Scarecrow's reassurance as it was for our feline friend.

  The Hollow Man's diplomatic corps came to a stop, less than six feet away. Ambassador Hwort took a single step forward. Dorothy echoed the gesture. The rest of us stood our ground.

  "Dorothy of Oz," the Ambassador said, with a voice that did not sound entirely his own. "You are here as a representative of Ozma, and the Emerald City?"

  "I am here," she said, "to represent myself. Along with the rest of my friends."

  Something shifted in the munchkin's face. Not an expression— from what I could see, he didn't have an expression—but something that moved underneath the mask of flesh. As if his skull itself had subtlely reconfigured, then snapped back into place.

  I found myself searching those lifeless eyes, for something resembling a spark.

  "All the same," he said at last, "you speak for Ozma, in this place. And so you will relay to her this message."

  "Of course," she said.

  "Then tell her," he said, "that your only choice is absolute surrender."

  "Oh, my," she said, and her smile was huge. "Now you're just being silly."

  There was a rumbling in the clouds. I felt it in my bones. No doubt Dorothy felt it as well, but it did not change a thing. I was stunned by how strong she was as she threw back her hair, rolled her shoulders, releasing stress as she gathered up power.

  "CITIZENS OF OZ!" she called out to the blackened hordes beneath the cloud. "AND WELCOME GUESTS! WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO FIGHT WITH YOU!"

  A startling moan erupted from deep within the enemy ranks: the terrible sound of longing, the question mark of hope. Dorothy smiled and held out her arms, as if to embrace them all.

  Then Scarecrow slammed into her from the left.

  And instantly exploded.

  It all happened so fast, I barely saw the black lightning. Just Dorothy and Toto, collapsing at my feet. The billowing blackness, as I turned. Bits of Scarecrow, flying everywhere. Before I had a chance to react, it was over.

  And suddenly, Skeerak was there.

  He had materialized out of the black lightning, in the very spot where Scarecrow died. He materialized swinging, so that his sword was coming toward me before I could fucking blink. I knew a moment of horror so pure that it felt like dying already.

  Then Lion was on him, plowing him back. The blow went out of control. So did everything else. I blinked as the two of them went down in a tangle; and all around me, the air erupted with the howl of war, the thunder-roar of armies racing headlong toward me from either side.

  At my feet, Dorothy was crawling on hands and knees, gathering up pieces of Scarecrow. She reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas, scrambling onto the back of the Presidential limo for a chunk of her husband's skull. I stepped around her, almost tripping over Toto, and brought my axe up to fighting position.

  It took O'mon that long to attack. By that point, I was ready. He slashed. I parried. He slashed again, not as well as I'd expected. There was no smile curling on his lips. There was no kill-twinkle in his eyes. He fought like a man who knew all of the moves, but had learned them from books and instructional vids.

  Which didn't make sense, but I didn't care to sweat it. I just parried, slashed, parried, and then chopped his face in half. The whole encounter took less than forty-five seconds.

  And then they were upon us, in colliding savage waves: Tiger leaping over my head to land on Skeerak's massive shoulders, just as Allalo and his tribemen raced past me, a band of ogres launching breakneck into their swell, weapons flashing, blood splashing like oceanic foam. An ugly gray squat thing came blasting toward Dorothy at roughly cannonball speed. I adopted a batting stance, swung, and popped it like a tic.

  A whole platoon of white-eyed munchkins came surging toward us from the opposite side; and to my relief, they were screaming in terror, throwing their weapons down left and right. "LOOK!" I howled to Dorothy as she stumbled to her feet, nearly tripping over that goddam Toto again.

  She picked up the dog, saw the oncoming munchkins, and began to smile, clutching her handfuls of Scarecrow tightly. "COME ON!" she yelled, then turned and took off, leading the Hollow Man's hordes of deserters back toward Emerald and a big fun sandwich. Thirty, fifty, a hundred ran past me. I wanted to join them, but not everyone was deserting. I saw a sweet little gal getting sliced up from behind. When she f
ell, I jumped forward and hacked her killer into coleslaw.

  The next wave to hit us was substantially worse. It was black-eyed and vicious, chock full o' monsters and former civilians who'd been fully converted by Bhjennigh's evil magick. This included, to my amazement, a batch of what appeared to be American tourists gone horribly wrong. No sooner had I shown some goblin his spleen than I was face-to-face with some Ren fair reject: a gawky guy in a ratcatcher's suit, swinging his cudgel at me.

  I felt a moment of guilt as I opened him up; I might have dated that guy in the seventh grade. But his eyes were like glistening charcoal briquets, a condition that not even death seemed to alter. And the moment he fell, another one was upon me: this one sporting a Hawaiian shirt, swinging his Polaroid by the handle like a mace.

  I cut his arm off, which made him sad. The camera went flying, which made me sad. I would have loved an Instamatic, but it was not meant to be. And, besides, the next guy in line was a tv news anchor I recognized from Fox.

  I was starting to enjoy this a little too much.

  Too bad it couldn't stay that way...

  Ralph just kept on walking, and I just kept following him until we were at the western edge of the city, somewhere I'd never been before, heading for the west gate.

  "HEY!" I yelled to him, trying to keep up, "Hey! Ralph! What are you doing?"

  He wasn't listening then, he was talking up some old guy in a uniform at the gate who looked like Captain Kangaroo. Amazingly enough, the guy flipped a big cartoony lever and the gate came creaking open.

  Ralph trotted out, and I was right there with him. The gate slammed behind us with an unearthly thud. We stood there together in the growing darkness, facing the wide open prairie that stretched out before us.

  Moist cool air fanned up at us from the grass beneath our feet, and a low fog hung up around our ankles.

  "What are you doing?" I asked again, "What are you gonna do—you just gonna run away?"

  But he didn't answer me right away. He pulled a bottle out of his coat and took a big long pull on it. Then he looked at me blurrily and said, "You go back. I gottado somethin an you can't help me. You're still a reasonably good human being. So ged the fuck outahere"

  Then he started whistling, a low warble, followed by a tweet, followed by a keening sweep, followed by something else—a Tarzan yell of whistles.

  And then I saw them—rolling across the plain, now in a V formation, now doing precision doughnuts, horns dopplering across to us in the humid air like they were next to us, and silent—engines still, running on some other motive force, maybe sheer enthusiasm, like dogs barking after a master long remembered but seldom seen. The tires scratched across the sandy ground, and Ralph threw himself into the first humvee, tossed himself through the open window into the driver side, and grabbed the wheel.

  I was beyond thought by then (yes, once again), knew only that I had to follow, that something tied me to this guy, no matter whose side he was on, and to whatever the hell we had to do together, even if he didn't see it that way... I hesitate to say "destiny," but what the fuck—it was my destiny to jump into the second humvee before it could peel off again into the growing darkness.

  And the six hummers swung quickly around the city, within minutes were plowing through the fray, through the growing fog, thudding wetly into veiled, hulking shapes (I prayed they were the bad guys) until off at what looked like the edge of the conflagration, to my amazement, I spotted Ledelei, trapped between one of the green ogres and a black, three-headed snake thing.

  I took hold of the steering wheel, and with some effort, brought the hummer around to head straight for the ogre's backside at about eighty MPH. Just as Ledelei sliced through the first of the snake's heads, I opened the car door, slamming it full-on into the ogre. Glass from the window flew everywhere, and the ogre went down, stunned and bloodied, but not quite dead. I threw the hummer into reverse— it complained, but responded.

  Ledelei looked at me popeyed for a second, stunned, then grabbed me and gave me a big wet kiss on the mouth. My foot was on the brake, holding the humvee back. It was struggling, eager to join its mates, who were far ahead to the northeast.

  I knew where they were headed now.

  Ledelei let go of me, and tumbled over me into the back seat.

  I took my foot off the brake and the hummer peeled out.

  War Journal

  Entry # 10

  I was up to my rectum in dead mimes, Rotarians and ill-fated members of the Lollipop Guild when the humvees blew past, charting a course right through the enemy ranks. I saw Ralph swig on a bottle of grog, then lob the bottle at some mutant's head. Kee-rack! I laughed and cheered.

  Then Lion began to scream.

  I don't know how else to describe the sound. It tore at my ears, raked its nails on my marrow. It was horror engorged with unspeakable pain, beyond feline or human. It was a scream of the soul.

  I fought my way to the left, toward the sound. Other adversaries came. I deflected them, scared them off, cut them down if they stayed. All around us, the fog was thickening, making it harder to get a clear bead. I made out a trio of very large shapes. Two of them were down.

  The other one was Skeerak.

  I had to go around Tiger's prone body to see what Skeerak was actually doing. The sight of it froze my bones. Skeerak had Lion pinned to the ground, and blood was everywhere. But the worst was that one of his arms was inside Lion, buried up to the elbow in the spurting belly wound.

  And spreading out concentrically from the wound, the fur was turning black...

  In that moment, I lost it entirely. Lost all perspective, all sense of mortality. It didn't even matter that I didn't stand a chance. When Lion screamed again, I came at Skeerak with everything I had. The world turned red.

  And then, suddenly, green.

  I felt the glow as much as saw it, enveloping me from behind. It had the same warm glow as the Skyrlla, only more diffuse, its frequency shifted. When it hit, I was in mid-swing, axe headed straight for Skeerak's chest. The monster rose, in counter-swing.

  Our blades went through each other.

  As if that wasn't weird enough, the blades then passed through each of us, as if we were slicing the mist. I went off-balance. So did he. We stared at each other, then swung again.

  His blow, had it actually met my flesh, would have split me apart at the ribs. My blow, had it landed as intended, would have certainly made him flinch. But again, our weapons passed right through each other, then straight through us, without causing a speck of harm.

  My exact thought was Glinda, be praised.

  Then the green light went out again.

  In that moment, I came back to my senses. It took the wind right out of my sails. Like waking up naked in a stranger's bed, with no idea how you got there. Only worse, because the next time Skeerak took a swing, it would probably go right through me again. But this time, it would probably hurt.

  And then I would be dead. And I didn't want to die. The terror welled up in me, shameful and true. My arms felt heavy. My back felt weak. I felt as exhausted as I actually was.

  Skeerak took a lumbering step toward me, then wavered as if confused. For the first time, I realized how much of the blood that covered him was his. Quite a few of his eyes were gone. So were half ofthe plates in his armor. Worst of all, the arm he'd had buried in Lion was snapped off maybe half a foot from the wrist. He'd been goring Lion with his stump. Black shit drooled from the jagged bone.

  So Lion and Tiger had fucked him up. Good. I tried to let this appeal to my optimistic nature. But my adrenalin level had dwindled to zip, leaving me shaking in the subsequent crash. When he took another step toward me, I could barely lift my blade.

  Skeerak towered above me, preparing to strike.

  Then Lion tore his legs off at the knees.

  The scream that came was muffled, metallic, emanating from the trap door in his armored pantaloons. That made it no less satisfying. I barely managed to get out of his way as
he fell; but something primal pumped back into my veins. I found the strength to raise the axe one final time, above my head.

  Then bring it down on his.

  The crunch as his skull caved in was a sound that I felt far more than heard. It raced up my arms, then went thud in my ears. I leaned all of my weight on the handle, not content until I saw brains squeezing out like curds. What little light there was winked out from the eyes that remained on the back of his head.

  Dimly, I was aware of the battle now ending around me: the Hollow Man's forces in grudging retreat, our own boys and girls letting out their victory cries. It was all I could do to drop to my knees and crawl the rest of the way to Lion.

  "It's gonna be okay," I whispered, nestling into his blood-matted fur. His heart was still beating. This was a good thing. I was too tired to cry, so I just snuggled in. Listened to him breathing. Praying to God that the worst was over.

  It wasn't, of course. But, at least for the moment, it felt that way to me.

  There was no cartoon moon in the sky like I'd seen on my first night in Oz. A canopy of blackness hung over the night, and only the faint green glow off the dashboard allowed me to see my hands in front of me. The headlights cut the only holes in the gloom, giving us fleeting glimpses of shrubbery, trees, an occasional startled cow, and not much else.

  Ralph applied his brakes with a howl of red light, and I did the same, and I marvelled at how obedient these machines were. They seemed to crave the attention of a human—after all, it was what they were designed for.

  He got out and came over to us. The window rolled itself down, and Ralph pointed up, at an angle.

  "I gotta get somethin," he said, "Up there."

  Whatever, I thought, suddenly wondering if the humvees could fly under certain circumstances, or what.

  Then he stumbled back into his vehicle, and it started up the dirt road that wound up the side of a mountain. The rest of the herd followed.

  The ride up the mountain was hair-raising: the humvees hugged the sheer edge of the road, and drove inches behind one another. My driver-ed teacher would not have approved. After about ten minutes of this, we reached a clearing. Through the dissipating fog I could spy the shape of a long, flat house, and a feeble light burning inside it.