The Emerald Burrito of Oz

by Skipp, John; Levinthal, Marc

  A guard came out of the gatehouse and eyed us with suspicion. Ralph's humvee pulled to a stop next to the guard, and he and Ralph exchanged words.

  It looked like they knew each other. The guard was not of the giant green variety; he was very much human, and although he appeared to see perfectly well, there was only empty blackness where his eyes were supposed to be: not empty sockets, but a substantive blackness.

  Just when I thought Ralph had talked the guy into letting us through, the guard pointed back away from the gate and motioned for us all to turn around. I guess he knew Ralph alright, but wasn't comfortable with the idea of him coming in without orders from higher up, not to mention bringing in six humvees and two other unidentified people.

  The herd turned precisely, and we headed back away from the gate for a little while. Then we turned back, driving off the paved road, forming a circle while increasing speed, while the guard looked on apprehensively.

  Suddenly, we shot back towards the gate at what felt like a hundred and twenty or thirty miles per hour. Two of the empty humvees ploughed into the guard house, knocking it sideways. The two others hit the fence, smashing down a big section of it. Ralph's humvee slammed into the guard, who skittered bloodily across the ground like a hockey puck. Ours followed in their wake, almost apologetically.

  Entrance denied? No problem.

  Once inside, the herd slowed to a stop long enough for all of us to get out. Ledelei picked up her monster sword off the back seat, and swung it around enthusiastically. I felt for the Magnum that was still stuck down in the enormous pocket of the ogre suit. Ralph had never asked for it back. I was not really anxious to use it again, but I was ready.

  I heard metal crunching, and looked down to see dents uncrinkling and paint scrapes fading before my eyes—just another neat trick the animate humvees had learned in the wild.

  Ralph unloaded one of the mystery bags from his passenger side, hefted it shakily up over his shoulder, and started off in the direction of one of the dishes, without a word. He was weaving a little—it didn't appear that he'd eased off the booze any on the way over. The herd started to move in a circle again, staying close to Ralph.

  Ledelei and I exchanged disbelieving glances, and followed. As we caught up to him, I could see several soldiers come running out of the barracks building.

  The humvees were quick to deal with this new problem. The soldiers, however, were a little slow to catch on, and had only just broken into a run when the first of the hummers plowed into them. In a few seconds they were all road-kill, and the humvees resumed their circling formation.

  Meanwhile, Ralph had started climbing up a ladder on the side of the first dish. It led up to a platform directly under the huge dish itself. By the time we reached him, he'd gotten on to the platform, and pulled the bag off of his shoulder.

  Ralph pulled some stuff out of the bag, and fiddled with it for a few moments. Then he suffered a drunken spazz, during which he managed to tip himself over backwards over the guardrail. He fell flat on his ass, and onto his back—a twenty foot drop that should have broken bones, or killed. But, saved by his drunken rubbery-ness, or maybe a charming quirk of Ozian physics, or both, he got up, groaning, and started running in our direction, waving his hands frantically, motioning to us to run, too.

  We did, until Ralph grabbed hold of both of us and shoved us down flat on the ground. "Cover your heads!" he shouted. An eye-blink passed, and there was a deafening explosion. Hot metal rained down around us.

  When it seemed safe, I turned around and saw a smoking stump where the radio dish had been. No blackness flowed up from it.

  I finally knew what was in the bags.

  We stood speechless while Ralph got up, unsteadily dusting himself off.

  "This all has gotta go down fast," he said, "I may not even make it all the way through before Bjhennigh sends the shitstorm down around my head." He paused to Tarzan-whistle at the herd. "And to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what's gonna happen when and if I do finish the job."

  His humvee, bashed and caked with gore all along the front left bumper, pulled up along side of him. The bumper uncrinkled as I watched. Ralph reached in and grabbed another bag. He hefted it over his shoulder, then reached in and pulled out a pint bottle of Jim Beam. He must have been stashing booze all over the place for most of a decade.

  He twisted the cap off and drank about half of it. "What you two are gonna hafta do," he said, "is go get Nick."

  More news.

  I looked at him wide-eyed, incredulous.

  "Bjhennigh's had him sitting in a dungeon ever since our little mishap on his front lawn."

  He saw my look, and stared back at me resolutely. "Look. You shouldna come anyway. An now you're here. So. You have two choices. One—stand here with your thumb up your ass, and die.

  Two—get into the Fortress, maybe die, maybe get Nick, who is, I guarantee, the only possible help for several miles around." He looked at me sadly, like maybe he was going to cry again. "I'm sorry things happened for ya this way, Gene. You're a good man. Good luck."

  I wanted to protest, but he'd already turned around and started for the second dish. So I just stood there.

  Ledelei grabbed me by my ogre suit and whirled me around.

  "Come on, Gene," she said, "Snap out of it. We don't have time for this bullshit."

  And she also marched away, in the opposite direction, towards the Hollow Man's Fortress. I followed her. What else was I gonna do?

  I caught up with her, and stopped her.

  "Alright," I said, catching my breath, "we're going to get Nick. Great. That's just fucking fantastic. But if we just cruise up the road, we're not going to make it. They must have seen that explosion. Bhennigh's gonna be sending something down this road in the next few minutes."

  She looked up the road, then looked at me. "Okay," she said, "What then?"

  I didn't know, but I also didn't want to look like an idiot. "Well, first, let's get some cover behind that hill." Sounded good. I pointed back over a rise immediately behind me. We jogged over it and crouched down, checking out the terrain.

  Pretty soon, Ledelei pointed back behind us in the direction of the nearest dish. "What's that?"

  I looked. "I don't know," I said.

  I hadn't seen it before from the front, but could now see that there was some kind of black stuff trailing away from each of the dishes, starting from just under where the cloud was pouring out. The stuff covered the back of the bottom half of the structure like ivy, and a thick umbilicus trailed off in the direction of the fortress. "Let's go check it out."

  There were tendrils of it running wild into the soil in all directions, but it appeared that someone had trained some of them to grow together towards the fortress, in a monster jumble like black kudzu, about eight feet in diameter.

  The vine-tangle writhed obscenely over the ground, a slow orgy of obsidian worms, somehow transmitting something awful, powerful. A sheen of anti-energy radiated out from it, catching the sound out of the air around it.

  I clapped my hand near it and the sound was muted and dead.

  Little teardrop shapes skittered over the outer surface, running for a little while, then absorbing back into the vines.

  "I don't know what this does," I said, "but it must be something important."

  "A power source or something? Like for the band amplifiers?"

  "Yeah. Maybe something like that. It looks like it runs right up to the Fortress. Maybe we can follow it down, see if it plugs in. Maybe there's a way in. I don't know. What do you think?" After a second she nodded her agreement. "Yes. We could stay close against it and perhaps they will not see us. Perhaps. Let's go."

  There was a commotion from the direction of the road. We heard an engine, that of a car or small truck, and the sound of running feet. We flattened out on the ground and were silent until well after the noise stopped.

  Ledelei grinned and said, "You told me so."

  "I'm supposed to say that,"
I observed.

  She looked puzzled. "No. Why would you?"

  The terrain stayed much the same as it had been: low rolling hills with a few sickly trees, and pale unwholesome grass, somewhere between dead and alive. It was especially so in the immediate vicinity of the vine tangle, which made me think that being in such close proximity to it probably wasn't doing us much good either.

  After a little while, we found some rusty shovels and little gardening tools. Soon after that, we found a neat stack of bones and skulls. Little ones. Munchkin size.

  After we'd hiked for about fifteen minutes, we heard the sound of Dish Number Two going up, then soon after, more troops on the road, heading in Ralph's direction. I prayed he was as good a soldier as I thought he was, and that the hummers could continue to cover him.

  We were now dangerously close to the Fortress.

  I took a moment to look at this fancy gun Ralph had entrusted me with. I hadn't thought up until then to look to see if there were any bullets in it. I had only fired it once, but I wasn't sure if there was anything else in there, having never looked.

  I gingerly figured out how to flip open the part with the chambers in it. I looked inside and saw six bullet sitting in there. Six. It was full. But I had fired it once, and as far as I knew, no one had touched it except me. Maybe it didn't actually fire the bullets, I thought. Maybe it grew new ones.

  Finally chalking it up "to more weird stuff I didn't understand," I flipped the safety back on, and shoved the gun back down into the ogre pocket.

  The vine-tangle we'd been following skirted the side of a hill for most of the way, then took off across a low, flat field, meeting up with two other tangles, and disappearing into an opening in the side of the fortress. I guessed that three others met on the other side, running from the other three dishes.

  I was expecting a mote, but there was no such thing, just two guard towers at the front and rear of the building, on a wall surrounding the place. I supposed there were two more on the other side. A sentry paced back and forth on each of the towers. We were, so far, able to avoid being seen, but would have to somehow come to terms with covering the last five hundred yards to the wall out in the open. I quietly said as much to Ledelei.

  "Not only that," she whispered, "but where will we go in? We certainly can't just stroll in through the front door. Maybe we can squeeze though with the black stuff?"

  "I don't think so..." I said. The hole looked impossibly small. "Even if there's a little room to squeeze through, what happens if you touch that stuff? I don't want to experiment, thank you."

  She gave me a sharp look. "We may have to try if you want to get the Winkie King free."

  "The Winkie King?" Sounded to me like somebody with a discount winkie wearhouse. I hadn't realized Nick was the king of anything.

  "I'm going to try it," she said. "You can follow if you want to."

  "Wait," I said, "don't be stupid." Then, from out of nowhere, surprising myself, I said, "Wait till they both turn around at the same time."

  Where did I get that from? I was certain I'd seen all this before.

  But that was crazy.

  But, eventually, they both turned around at the same time, and we ran for it, hit the wall and stuck there. Ledelei started inching her way towards the opening where the vines snaked in. I pulled on her arm and held up a finger.

  The place was looking more and more familiar all the time, but I still couldn't figure out why. Maybe something in this place was doing something to my brain. Hell, maybe there was a Mickie sitting in there, a little humunculous slowly possessing me. That was a cheery though. But the fact remained—I knew stuff. And I didn't know why.

  I pulled her in the opposite direction, towards the front of the building. About a third of the way down, there was a section of wall that was a slightly different color than the slate gray surrounding it. I slapped it with my open palm, and the wall section slid inward.

  Just like I knew it would.

  War Journal

  Entry # 12

  I awoke to the lilting strains of Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," carressing the air at a REALLY HIGH VOLUME, from speakers that seemed to be mounted squarely inside of my head. I came up so fast from those dark dreamless depths that I practically got the bends.

  "OW!" I said. It barely cut through the orchestration. I clutched my ears and squeezed my eyes open, cursing the light.

  Then I saw the black cloud.

  My first reaction was to question my awakeness. My second reaction was to question my sanity. I'd already seen more than enough of the fucker to inspire the appropriate awe and terror, but this was ridiculous. In a horrible way. From where I lay, the sky was bisected, like a tropical fish tank splitting water from air. Like there was a wall of glass that began at the easternmost wall of the city, then headed straight up to infinity.

  And against that glass wall—generated by Glinda?—the black cloud squirmed like a living thing. An ameoba, rendered so microscopically huge that you could scan its subatomic undulations. Roiling fierce against the barrier.

  Trying to force its way in.

  I dragged my ass up past my knees, assumed the standing position. The world wobbled slightly, then righted itself. I levelled my gaze on Mikio's Science Club, who were gathered at the edge of the roof. They looked like a Marx Bros./Three Stooges reunion, featuring everyone from Zeppo and Shemp to Curly Joe.

  Was Mikio Groucho, or Moe, or what? He looked more like the late, great Toshiro Mifune, doing his version of the Absent-Minded Professor. He was at the center of the crew, performing wild gesticulations, no doubt squirting out some more of his weird genius.

  As I watched, several associates scurried off to help manifest his latest inspiration. But, of course, I had no idea what they were on about. All I could hear was St. Louie's gravelly benediction, thundering out of my stereo system.

  By now, I was awake enough to appreciate the sentiment. One of the world's sweetest songs, and most perfect recordings, was far more than mere ironic counterpoint; in context, it was a purely Oz-ian gesture of innocence as strength and power as compassion. My pissiness withered of its own accord, as the beauty of the gesture soaked in; and I was grinning by the time I penetrated the throng and wrapped my arms around that lovely boy.

  "Hey," I said, then slipped my tongue between his lips, just long enough to get his dancing.

  "Oh, hi!" he said, then reared in and kissed me back. "It's gettin' grim here, but I think we’re onto something!"

  At which point, the Skyrrla let out a radiance so huge that I felt, more than saw, the blackness recoil. It made my short hairs stand on end, but I liked how it felt: the dreadfulness massively undercut by that warm Skyrrla vibe. And when I looked at Mikio, his features almost washed-out by the brilliance of the surge, I could tell that he felt it, too.

  "Mmmmmm," I said, not wanting to understate it. He smiled, held me close. I sought his neck out, nibbled on it. He made his version of the noise I was making. We took a moment just to bask in the warm glow.

  In that moment, it felt like no harm could come to us. Ever. It was a mighty fine feeling. For that moment, I looked at the cloud like I would look at a monster movie. Safely detached. Vicariously grooving on the special effects. Viewed from that perspective, it really looked pretty cool.

  Directly before us, the cloud had backed up several feet. It began to churn from within, turn oily, as if it were secreting or dredging up lube from somewhere in its innermost depths. There was a swirling in the blackness that began to glisten, then practically drip. No rain cloud, however swollen, had ever exuded such viscosity. As a pure spectator, I was totally impressed.

  Then the slickness began to spread, down the length of the cloud; and, perversely, the farther away from me it went, the more terrified I began to feel.

  "Mikio?" I could hear it in my voice. "Is, um, the Skyrrla making that force field thingee happen?"

  "I don't think so," he said, "but it certainly seems to help."
>
  This was true. All along the rest of the city walls, the cloud was still pressed against that invisible wall of cosmic glass. That's what made its retreat from the Skyrrla plain to see.

  And now I noticed that—where the oil-cloud touched the wall— the air was beginning to sizzle.

  "Oh, fuck," I said, pulling away from Mikio. It didn't feel like a movie any more; and despite the continuing glow of the Skyrrla, I now felt neither confident nor warm.

  "Where are you going?" He could see in my eyes that I was already gone.

  "You guys keep up the good work," I said. "I'm gonna help hold down the fort."

  I thought about giving him a last big hug, but it would've been anticlimactic. Evidently, he felt the same way, too, because he just looked me in the eye, made the solidarity fist, and then blew me a kiss off its knuckles.

  My axe was back by my bedding. I grabbed it on my way out the door, down the stairs, and out into the mad streets of Emerald. What I found there was panic: the genuine, old-fashioned, clutch-your-hair-and-run-around-screaming kind.

  It didn't take long to figure out why.

  From the ground, it looked like large black globules were spitting out from the sizzling rift in the sky. But as they got closer, I could see the wings, a-flap above their misshapen bodies. Before I could suss just what the hell they were supposed to be, one of them zeroed in on me from three hundred feet above.

  The closer it got, the less I liked it.

  The thing had no discernible face. It was roughly the size of a bowling ball, discounting the wings (which had the span of an eagle's) and the tendrils that dangled below it (maybe twice as long as Bob Marley's dreadlocks, at their most extreme).

  It was an oil-black flying jellyfish from Hell.

  And it was one of hundreds, now descending from the sky.