by Joey Ruff
I got in the sedan and Chuck pulled out of the driveway to allow the Renault access. “How are we gonna get through the gate? You think he’ll open for the FBI?”
“We’re on the payroll,” I said. “Ape has a gate code.”
“Ape,” he said. “That’s not his real name, right?”
“No.”
“That’s kinda mean.”
“It’s a term of endearment. And he knows that.”
“If you say so.”
“I’ve known the bloke for twelve years.”
“What’s…wrong with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“All that hair. Does he have some kind of condition?”
“Now who’s being mean?” I said. “I hadn’t even noticed.”
Ape punched in his code on the keypad, and the gate opened. We followed behind him. The property was huge, and the drive was at least a couple miles back to the house – one of the only on the planet longer than Ape’s own. We drove past ponds and bouquets of trees.
We were about halfway down the drive when our car stalled. Ape hadn’t noticed, and the Renault kept going, rounding the next bend and disappearing from sight. Chuck gave the dashboard a confused look as the instrument panel lit up like a Christmas tree. “What the hell?”
“Problem, mate?”
He put the car in park and turned the engine off. After pumping the brake, he tried the key. The engine puttered and hesitated. “I told her to change her freaking oil. Chicks don’t listen, man.”
“Stone, in particular. Try it again.”
He turned the key again, and after a moment’s hesitation, the engine roared to life. Yet, before he could put the thing in gear, I happened to glance in my rearview mirror at the form stomping up the drive behind us.
“Fuck,” I said.
“What?” Chuck glanced behind him. “Is that…from the car lot?”
I nodded. “That’s my troll.”
“Funny, you didn’t seem as acquainted before.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Were you expecting him?”
“Sorta. Didn’t know if he’d show, though.”
“But you thought he might?”
“I’d hoped. It seemed about due to make an appearance. I’m just glad it waited.”
“For what?”
I smiled and opened my door. As I stepped out, I drew the new Five-sevens. The pistols barked immediately. Even though it was still a good hundred yards away and closing, the distance wouldn’t be a problem. Not with these.
The troll swung its metal arm, batting away bullets. I let off another volley, aiming lower, and it staggered as a spurt of milky grey fluid burst from its calf like a popping zit.
The troll threw its head back and roared, charging faster. Twenty yards from us, it stopped before a tree nearly twice its size, wrapped its arms about its trunk and heaved it from the earth, while my bullets sunk into its shoulders, struck against its ribs. It didn’t seem to notice.
Behind me, the car roared to life and Chuck yelled, “We’re good. C’mon!!”
I backed towards the door and continued to fire.
The troll threw the tree, and all I could see was a massive, dark sphere of dirt and roots heading towards us like a wrecking ball.
Chuck hit the gas so hard his tires spun, and I dove into the passenger seat. There was a loud crash behind us, and the front tires jumped off the ground. Dirt showered the car as we shot forward in a sudden surge.
The front end came down, and Chuck spun the wheel in panicked excitement, the car swerving back and forth before righting itself.
“Ohmygod, it hit us,” Chuck said. “How bad is it?”
I turned to look. We’d been in motion, and it was only a glancing blow against the bumper. “It’s fine. Just drive.”
The tree lifted again from the middle of the road, and the troll pounded after us.
Chuck kept stealing glances behind us in the rearview. His eyes were wide and sweat beaded against his brow. “What the fuck is going on?” he said, his voice rising an octave. “It’s shouting at us. What is it saying?”
“How the fuck should I know? I don’t speak troll.”
I rolled my window down.
“What are you gonna do?” he asked.
“Try to slow it down.”
I climbed up onto the window sill, holding on to the inside of the car with my right hand. In my left, I took one of the Five-sevens and aimed. I wasn’t a very good shot with my left – even worse while trying to aim from a car swerving side to side in a sloppy, uneasy motion.
“Shoot it already,” Chuck said.
“Maybe I could if you held the bloody car straight.”
“It’s not me, man. I think it fucked up the suspension or something. I’m trying.”
I squeezed off a couple of rounds, but couldn’t tell if they hit or not. The troll didn’t slow, though. It continued to charge, matching speed with the vehicle.
“Which way do I go?”
I stole a quick glance ahead, noticing how the driveway forked away to the left. When I turned back, the troll was gaining even more.
“Go faster!” I called.
“Can’t. I do above forty it starts rocking harder. Hang on.”
“What…?”
He spun the wheel hard to the left before I could register his warning. My body tensed instinctively as I held on, using my legs to keep me from being tossed from the car. The pistol wriggled free as I flailed around, but I snatched it out of the air with my right hand. I just managed to slide back inside the car as Chuck accelerated, just a bit, leaving the house away to our right as we sped off along the left fork.
“Where the fuck are you going? The house was back there.”
“Oh yeah, sorry. Let me just turn around. Oh, wait, I can’t. There’s a fucking troll on my ass like a hemorrhoid.”
“You managed to keep a much cooler head against the fucking dragon.”
“That was denial,” he said.
As the car settled, I leaned back out the window and managed to fire off a few more rounds. I know at least two connected, but they only managed to infuriate the beast even more. Its charge was unrelenting.
“Shit!” Chuck called.
“What?” I slid back into the cab.
He pointed to the road ahead of us, which ended in a barn-like structure that perched on the edge of a steep cliff. Beyond that, the mighty towering cabin, cranes, and cabling of a large shipping vessel. Beyond those, the open sea.
Chuck screamed and spun his wheel to the side as he braked. A cloud of dust kicked up. I saw the barn approaching rapidly out my window. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and waited for the impact.
It didn’t come.
A minute later, Chuck said. “No fucking way. You can open your eyes.”
I did. The barn-like structure was less than an arm’s length from the car, and I couldn’t open my door. “Cutting it a bit close?”
“Any landing you can walk away from…”
I turned to him and saw the troll bearing down on us through the window over his shoulder. “Get out,” I said.
He spun to see the thing maybe twenty yards out and gaining quick. With the troll to our left and the barn to our right, I turned to the rear of the car and emptied the rest of my magazine through the rear window. I climbed into the backseat, laid on my back, and mule-kicked the back glass. It gave a little.
“Help me,” I said.
Chuck climbed beside me. “One.”
“Two.”
We kicked. The glass gave, and he climbed onto the trunk of the car as the tree’s trunk crashed through the windshield. He rolled onto the ground and out of sight.
A blanket of green branches covered the opening, and leaves fought their way in at me. The limbs might’ve been small, but they were too enmeshed to navigate through.
I heard gunfire.
With a creak, the branches lifted maybe five feet into the air. Without hesitat
ion, I threw myself through the opening, slid across the trunk, and landed in a roll on the grass.
Chuck stood about ten yards out with his FBI-issued Glock. As the forty caliber rounds bounced off the troll’s thick hide, it waved a hand before its face as if swatting at wayward flies.
It saw me when I stood, and the anger flooded back into its eyes. It lifted the tree clear of the sedan and held it above its head while it roared in challenge at me.
“Alright,” I called. “Let’s go.”
I popped a fresh magazine into one Five-seven and drew the other as well, which still held the better part of its ammo.
I fired. The Five-sevens moaned as my fingers tickled their sweet spots, and the troll staggered back a few paces as the armor-piercing rounds ate into it, absorbing into its skin as if into a gelatinous blob. Grey puss – or blood, maybe – oozed and squirted from each bullet hole before the skin closed over it, swallowing the wounds completely.
Chuck appeared at my side. “Doesn’t look like you’re doing much good. Can we outrun it?”
“On foot?”
He looked at the barn beside us. “This is a boathouse. We can get down to the dock.”
I looked at the building and saw the way it teetered on the edge of the cliff as the water broke over the rocks four hundred feet below us.
“It’s the only chance we have,” he said.
“Fine.”
Chuck moved to the door, found it locked, and opened it with his Glock. He kicked the door in and moved into the darkness as I continued to fire at the troll. I backed to the door and then ducked inside.
Out of sight, I heard the troll’s angry roar followed by the thunderous stomping of its advance.
The boathouse was dark, the only light trickling in from the few windows that overlooked the Sound, but even those were blocked out with stacks of boxes, crates, and barrels that smelled like old sardines. I pushed my way through a low-hanging net, green with algae and draped across the ceiling like a war banner. Chuck leaned for a moment against the remnants of an old row boat, his eyes scanning the room, maybe for an escape route, maybe for a weapon. I nudged past him, kicking aside a broken oar as I reloaded.
Apart from the coils of rope and stacks of supplies and forgotten sea relics along the walls, the room was virtually open and empty. Chuck panted as I moved for the staircase that descended to the left. I tossed him one of the five-sevens, and clicked the light on on my own.
“Come on,” I said.
“Can I catch my breath?”
The boathouse shuddered, and I shoved Chuck towards the stairs as the tip of a giant, red shaft penetrated the center of the door, splitting it cleanly in half. The smooth, round head of the mailbox looked almost like the eye of some Cthulhu-type deity, and it jerked to the left as if watching us, following our movements.
Chuck hit the stairs first and nearly tumbled down. I followed on his heels and cast one last look towards the door as the royal mail box hit the wall with a crash and broke through in a shower of splinters. The troll was nearly fifteen feet tall. It wasn’t getting its arse through the door, and it fucking knew it. It was tearing a new entrance.
By the time I made it down the stairs, Chuck had already sprinted across the room to the next flight of stairs. Out of my periphery, I caught sight of the windows and the docked freighter. There was another tearing sound, another loud crash, and then heavy, plodding footsteps echoed on the ceiling above us.
I was halfway across the room when the red torpedo-like shaft tore through the ceiling directly in front of me. It appeared so suddenly and I was moving so fast that I smacked into it. I fell on my arse, but rolled and found my feet.
I looked over at where Chuck had been, but he’d already made his descent. Blood was flowing from my nose, and the room spun, but I staggered forward.
The mailbox pulled up into the ceiling like a retracted periscope and through the hole it left, angry eyes bore down on me. I staggered to the left and spun the gun around, blinding it for a second in the light. The shots hit the wood next to the hole, striking the beastie in the shoulder or knee, maybe, though I was aiming for its face.
It roared, and I realized I couldn’t stay where I was, dizzy or not. I was at the top of the next stairway as it started pulling planks up with its good hand. It was fast, too.
Chuck waited for me at the bottom of the next stairwell. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t fucking stop. This bitch is coming down like Jack’s giant on the beanstalk.”
“Roger that.”
As we turned, I noticed the hole in the middle of the floor that separated us from the stairway on the other side. It looked like water damage had rotted through the planks or maybe termites had beaten us here nearly a decade ago. It was too far to jump and no clear way across.
I shone the light into the chasm, found the room below littered with more debris, an old wooden rocking horse, and some crates that had at one time been loaded full of apples or something but was now just black and pasty.
“We can climb down,” I said. I didn’t wait for his response before getting down on my knees. I swung my legs over the edge and dangled them before swinging over onto a large crate. From there, I dropped to the floor.
“Come on, Chuck,” I called up. “You can do it.”
There was a loud crack and the ceiling above Chuck ripped open. He screamed, dropped to his stomach, and wiggled through the hole.
I watched the freighter through a window as he descended and saw a couple of blokes that had been walking the edge of the ship. They were looking our way, no doubt drawn by the riot of noise the troll was making as it chopped and hacked its way after us.
One of them shouted something and pointed at us. They both lifted their rifles and started shooting. I heard the bullets hit the old wood of the walls around us like…bullets hitting old fucking wood.
“C’mon, Chuck.”
He was dangling from the ceiling and let himself drop into a heap on the floor. I moved to his side and helped him up. We moved to the left wall as more bullets struck.
Before us stood a door, and in the corner next to it, a stairway led down. I reached the wall first and threw my back against the door. Chuck was halfway across when he screamed in pain, dropped, and grabbed his calf.
“Fuck. I’m hit.”
I pulled my pistol and fired blindly through the window as I moved to him. One of the gunmen ducked back behind the rim of the ship and the other spun to the side. I dropped to my knees next to Chuck. He threw an arm over my shoulders.
“Can you walk?”
“I’ll bloody well walk out of here,” he said in what sounded like a bad Scottish brogue.
“You pick an odd time to make fun of me.”
“Really?! It’s from The Highlander.”
“Never seen it.”
I stood, and he hobbled to his feet beside me.
Above us, there was a loud thud.
I brought the pistol up to the door and shot through the handle. The door swung limply inward, and sunlight streamed in on us. Just beyond the door, a strip of grass wound along the curving jags of the cliff wall and an outcropping of rock I remembered from Petrovka’s vision. “There’s a cave up here.”
Behind and above, the troll roared, and Chuck said, “Swyftt, don’t look now.”
I turned to see the troll staring down at us through the gaping hole in the floor. It was breathing heavily, and the corners of its eyes curled in fury.
As we neared the door, I heard a familiar chorus of clicks and stopped just shy of the threshold. Five men in pinstripe suits and fedora hats stood poised across the breadth of the path. Each held an assault rifle with a laser sight, and all five little red beams fluttered from the wooden frame of the door to a generally centralized location on my chest.
“Shit,” I said.
Behind us, there was a loud roar, and the troll leapt down through the opening.
34
As the troll sk
ulked forward, I threw Chuck towards the stairs and dove after him.
Five assault rifles opened fire.
Chuck was at the top of the stairs. “Go!” I said.
He started to descend on his belly, staying low as bullets tore through the walls over our heads.
For a moment, I felt the troll’s eyes on us, heard its furious grunts, and as I backed into the corner, I pulled myself into a sitting position and spun on the creature with my guns drawn.
It was focused on the doorway. Bursts of milky grey exploded from its chest, neck, and shoulders. They must’ve been using some kind of piercing rounds.
The troll put its hand against the top of the doorframe and pushed against the side beam with its metal stump. In a shower of splinters, the wall exploded out.
For a moment, the rifles were muted, replaced with panicked screams, some words in Italian, and a belch of fury as the troll charged.
I couldn’t see what happened, but when the guns sounded again, their reports seemed somehow more desperate. Maybe it was my imagination.
I moved to the bottom of the stairs and found Chuck leaning against the wall and looking at something in the middle of the room.
“There’s a boat here,” he said. “Can we use it for anything?”
It was covered in a tarp and suspended by cables between a square, metal scaffold. In the wall behind it were large double doors that had been bolted shut from the inside.
“For what?” I said. “The cave’s up there.”
“Maybe we can use it to get around the troll?”
I looked back up the stairs as if taking a lay of the land. “I guess it’s worth a shot, mate.”
I removed the tarp while he unbolted the door. The lift was operated with a wench, rather than the more modern, electric ones. As Chuck climbed into the boat, he winced.
“How’s the leg?”
“I’m managing,” he said.
He moved to the steering wheel and fumbled around for the ignition.
“You know what you’re doing?” I asked. I made sure the doors were open far enough and then I climbed in beside him.
“Of course,” he said. “This one isn’t that much different from the one I have.”
“Do any fishing?”
