by D. Sutter
“Just passing through...”
“Oh, don’t play coy, Carbie. Where are you headed?”
Carbie snickered beneath his hood.
The whip snapped over his neck and Carbie could feel the boxes collapse. His head lolled onto one shoulder.
“Havenshaw Crypt, I presume. Seems you won’t be making it there. Even so, I’ve gotten word from my sentinels that Manservant Genesis is back from the shadows...headed for the Dictator’s Ball.”
Colonel Brimstone turned and started towards his elephant. The creature grabbed the eight foot tall man in its trunk and gently placed him on its back.
“Bring him along!” Brimstone ordered.
His ride stomped past the cage, rattling the bars, and Carbie wished he could get his hands on the Colonel. If it was possible, he wouldn’t waste time with a shadow gun per his father’s wishes. He would eliminate the bastard.
Two of his followers ran to the cage and began hooking chains to the bars. He could see the patterns on their skin, red and blue cross-hatching, as if someone’s grandmother had quilted them. Unlike Brimstone, they were short and plump, smaller than Carbie.
They were just within reach. He slid his two square arms through the bars and crushed their wind pipes. Their heads exploded and cotton stuffing blew out from all four ears. The quilted minions collapsed in a craftsy heap. The other followers began to scream and Carbie saw they also carried miniature versions of Brimstone’s flamethrower.
One of the uncontrolled elephants charged for the cage. There was no other choice for Carbie but to curl into a ball. The cage was lifted and thrown into a tree. Carbie heard a loud crack and when he landed, the broken cage scattered around his body. He barely regained his bearings in time to dodge a trampling. The animal went careening into the forest, taking out trees and stomping bushes and saplings into nothing.
Carbie rolled across the sod, coming up in between another passing elephant’s legs. The animal reared in fear and threw the rider from his saddle. The rider was stepped on by the next elephant in line and squished into a pile of stuffing on its sole. Carbie wasn’t quite on his feet when the hail of fire fell upon him from the sky.
His shoulder caught and he dropped to the ground, tossing dirt on the flames. Cardboard being so flammable, he was very lucky to have doused it so fast. The rider spewing fire was Brimstone. The Colonel circled around and was directly upon him. It was odd to see the others continuing on the path unguided, as if Brimstone wanted a piece of Carbie himself. Fire came rushing toward his face and Carbie dove under the elephant. The animal started to spin in circles.
Carbie rolled one nylon sleeve up and sliced his corrugated hand across the elephant’s leg. It was the most painful type of cut, deep and stinging, inflicted by recycled waste. Brimstone’s ride trumpeted and rushed into the trees, but the Colonel executed a beautiful backflip off the animal, landing in a perfect stance.
As the Colonel raised his flamethrower, Carbie pulled his shadow pistol out of its holster. The piece reminded him of his brothers and their mission. He realized Spike was right all along. Turning the Five to shadows was in ineffective. Somehow they always found an escape. Something needed to drastically change.
The fire arced through the woodland air, scorching hanging branches and roasting the dust right out of the sky. Carbie booked toward where the crushed quilted minion, for his flame thrower lay discarded. Heat teased Carbie’s heels. He could feel impending death by incineration.
His thick hand snagged the strap of the weapon and he flipped it into his hands. Pulling the trigger was cathartic. It fulfilled every deep desire. Carbie and Brimstone’s flames connected at the center, but when the fire disbanded and the smoke cleared there stood a much crisper version of Brimstone, charred and blackened. His mustache crumbled off his lip like the crust of overcooked toast.
THE HALL WAS full of the dead. Spike counted thirteen Garys alone packed into the doorframe. He couldn’t imagine what was waiting beyond. With a somersault through the air, he removed four of their heads using each of his pointed limbs as weapons. Putrid blood splashed over the squirming walls and inside of Megamouth’s megaphone. The brother spit frantically, trying to release the acrid liquid, and wound up screaming at the top of his lungs. The reverberation knocked Spike through the Crypt, toppling mummies, trolls, and unidentifiable corpses. It wasn’t his intention to clear a path out of the crypt, but he had nonetheless.
A troll died a second time as it staggered to its feet and one of the bony arms shot out of the wall, tearing its head clean off of its green and warty shoulders.
Before, they weren’t avoiding the walls, but Spike really wanted his head to stay where it was. As they rushed parallel to the wall on the left, the dead stumbled past the support pillars as a mass. The army was closing in. The left turn into the stairwell leading to the surface seemed like an easy accomplishment, but was too good to be true. The dead were packed shoulder to shoulder in the dim and narrow enclosure.
“Uh-oh,” Megamouth said.
For a bunch of supposed dead they sure radiated with excess energy, thought Spike. They clawed pieces off one another, tearing limbs free to make way for their own advance.
Spike rolled his neck. “Looks like it’s time to get to work,” he said.
Megamouth looked dumbfounded, but that was nothing new. He plucked Rufus off his shoulder and placed him lightly on the ground. The loud mouth dug into his suit jacket, pulled out the multi-tool, and placed it in the two inch thing’s outstretched hands.
“No… he’ll take care of it.”
Rufus twisted the tool and rested it on his tiny shoulder, barely able to stand burdened with the weight.
“He can barely hold the thing,” Spike said. “What is he going to do?”
The small man, beast (Spike still wasn’t quite sure what he was or where he came from) mouthed “eat shit” and scuttled toward the stairwell. The tiny creature became a flash of intermittent grey, shooting from corpse to corpse, destroying reanimates in milliseconds. Spike was nearly amazed, but had seen better shows from warriors. Yet, for his size, Rufus had done quite a job. The bodies were piled atop of one another, like rows of fell dominoes.
The only exit was past the rug of corpses. So, they trampled over the stinking and decaying bodies. Spike’s foot dug into an abdomen. He pulled it out covered in rotten tissue and goo. The shockingly active dead were creeping and moaning behind the troupe, easing into the stairwell. Spike reached back, over Megamouth’s shoulder, and stabbed through one half-decomposed eye.
His brother yelped in surprise and the sound waves wafted Spike to the top of the stairs, where he rolled and slammed against the wall. Skeletal hands gripped his entire body. Bony knees and heels pulsed into his back and spine, manipulating his parts in directions they weren’t meant to move. One of his arms twisted in a most unnatural manner, bending his elbow in the reverse direction.
Megamouth lumbered up the stairs just as Spike became wholly confined against the wall of marrow. His younger brother was exceptionally concerned, per the look upon his face, and rightfully so. Megamouth’s thick plastic hands clenched into eight inch squares and he swung a giant right fist into the wall above Spike’s body.
The pin-thin brother closed his eyes as shards of bone rained down. The grip on his right shoulder relieved and he dug his hand into the sodden floor over and over, clawing away from the bones. Wide-eyed Megamouth furrowed his brows in anger and pounded away at the brittle imprisoners. Spike rolled away from the wall and vaulted to his feet. A tiny form charged toward them from the top of the stairs and Spike had a mind to kick the tiny daemon back into the largest Crypt. If only it wasn’t his little brother’s best friend, he thought.
Rufus leapt from the ground and landed on Megamouth’s shoulder. He took a seat on the massive boulder of plastic and whispered into his owner’s ear. Megamouth shook his head intently while nodding.
“He says...no more of them. They sleeping now.”
&nbs
p; Being the skeptic, Spike gazed down the corridor. Sure enough, there was no movement.
“Holy crap,” he whispered under his breath.
The bottom entrance to the crypt was completely blocked by a pile of corpses——wall to wall decomposition.
“Now what we do?” asked Megamouth. “Daddy’s gone. He dead.”
Spike didn’t have a plan. It was true that father was either dead or kidnapped. He supposed the latter to prove true, for if Father Necrocious was dead much more pandemonium would be at hand.
“We have to find out what happened to him,” Spike said, turning to face his brother. “I don’t think he’s dead, but I think Manservant Genesis might be clued in to his location.”
Megamouth cowered. On their last encounter, Manservant cracked his brother’s back down the middle. Spike could still hear the howls of pain when he fell to the ground. In order to reach Manservant they’d have to pass directly through the marketplace, chancing a fight with Lady Moreover and her despicable twin, Porticus Labary. Yet, Spike didn’t know where else to start.
CHAPTER 6
THE ELEPHANT RIDERS pursued him for hours. Carbie hid in tight spaces and climbed vertical cliffs to escape. He incinerated two of the riders with the flamethrower, but was forced to leave it behind while he swam through a lake. It was worth the loss, for despite their riders’ pleas the elephants were reluctant to move into the frigid waters.
It seemed Carbie had escaped when he landed on the opposing shore away from the pursuers, with one of the Flagrant Five (well… now Four) a pile of ashes. However, he forgot one precious reminder. Being made of cardboard was not an attribute conducive for swimming. So, despite his achievement in escaping the prosecution, his body was thoroughly saturated by the heavy water.
He lay on the edge of the lake in a heap on the sand. His arms and legs were soggy and unwilling to give him the needed support. At least while swimming they worked as paddles, though quite sluggish ones. On land he had no sense of structure. He was a pile of shit. With the lack light for drying he realized it could take hours, or even days, until he aired out enough to reform.
The sun had since dropped from the sky, letting a blanket of darkness comfort him. He closed his eyes, hoping his brothers would come to the rescue before the elephant riders could traverse the lake’s circumference. Carbie dreamt of the Crypt, of how he was traveling in the opposite direction with no other choice. He dreamt of seeing his father. It’d been such a stretch deprived of contact.
Long gone were the days when they (meaning the brothers, the mercenaries) roamed the land, uninterrupted. They could no longer subsist by following bounties. Father loved them, but deemed them menaces, took away their freedoms. So what if they killed for a paycheck? They always listened (well, most of the time) when it came down to the Five. For one reason or another father wanted the Five to remain unharmed. Despite his disgust for their roulette wheel of dictatorship, he always ordered the brothers to turn the assholes into shadows instead of murdering them. It was silly. They made the world a terrible place in which to live.
Carbie fell fast asleep. His subconscious gears continued to spin the semantics of the world, but his body didn’t exhibit much activity. Occasionally, the wind would push the water toward his body, further soaking him, but other than that he was still. He was a pile of pasta, soaking in an unnecessary pool, becoming overcooked.
Daylight broke without Carbie opening his eyes. The elephant riders never found him, but without Brimstone they probably became lost within the labyrinthine forest. While he slept away the morning, the bamboo was rustling. Lacking the ability to lift his head, Carbie was unaware that he had landed right outside the jungle.
A furry head poked through the bamboo shoots dressed with a top hat. The two hands spreading the shoots wore silky white gloves.
“Hmmm…” the creature said. “What exactly do we have here?”
He smashed through the branches and landed on the soft ground. Carbie awoke, but could only see the damp mud. His body was lifted and draped limply, as a sagging bag of cardboard, over a hairy shoulder. As the transporter moved away from the water, he could see the bamboo shoots close behind, blocking off the tranquil lake. He knew himself to be in a world of trouble, far worse than that of Brimstone’s.
DESPITE THEIR FATHER’S misplacement everything in the market was running smoothly. The brothers must have arrived at Havenshaw Crypt in time to deflect the hordes of the dead escaping, for all in the market square were alive and vibrant. The multi-colored tents were just as they’d always appeared, full of a variety of wares and goods.
There was luckily no sign of Lady Moreover or Porticus, but their sentinels marched about the market, wearing sneers and wielding their fanged teeth. They were looking for a reason to cause trouble, trying to seduce the vendors into subservience. One of the dog-faced bastards snapped his teeth at a dealer and came away with a swatch of the blue skinned creature’s tissue.
The thing flapped its ears and scaly arms as the guard ripped at its neck. Then, the victim fell behind his wares table, which was covered in oceanic items. The guard selected one of the sale items. The product was alive and kicking its legs as the sentinel held it hostage. He turned in circles, convoking the onlookers.
It barked “You cannot hide such items from our noses. We smell everything. Everything!”
Spike couldn’t help but feel the statement was pointed at him and Megamouth.
The sentinel cracked the creature in half with his hands and chewed on the fat of the legs. “Golden crab is illegal! This salesman will learn his lesson by the hand of Dictator Porticus. If you’re not with him… you’re against him and punishment will be dealt out, pitilessly.”
The loyalist on his soap box looked directly at Spike and growled. They had been spotted, or more likely smelt. The wolven sentinel dropped to all fours. His armor clanged loudly as he ran at the fugitive pair.
Spike uncurled from Megamouth’s waist (they were attempting to remain disguised) and dove at the guard. His metal body clashed with the armor and he bounced like a stray arrow through the market square. His sharp feet stabbed something soft and he wobbled on a horizontal axis. Both of his feet were sticking into the body of an obese Goose merchant.
The bird honked and ran in circles, all the while Spike bounced up and down.
“Holy shit!” it screamed. “I’ve been speared in the chest. Murderer! Murderer!”
The goose flew into the roof of his tent and Spike’s feet came loose. Spike landed in a pool of sticky liquid. The fat, white blood-dripping bird rose into the air and disappeared through a hole it created with its beak. He looked down. A pile of eggs had smashed under his back and ass. Where was some piss wine when you need it, he wondered.
There were screams and panic, things smashed and crashed against each other. Spike stood. Megamouth was tangled with two sentinels, one in a headlock and the other wrapped over his back, gnawing on his brother’s plastic skull. Megamouth slammed his back into one of the tent posts, making the sentinel yelp and the trading posts collapse. Vendors abandoned their tents, leaving the square empty beside the small attacking group of sentinels.
Spike peered down the main aisle of the market. In the center was a giant labyrinth built atop several flights of stairs. The steps wrapped around the sides and ended at the base of the structure. Alleys and tunnels disappeared into the building, pitch black corridors in which one could forever be lost. Several sentinels filed out of the alleys, like a plague of locusts. Spike stretched his arms to full length, making them to resemble fighting sticks.
Megamouth continued to squeeze the sentinel’s head until it literally popped off, rolling beneath one of the tables. Rufus became spooked and slid behind the booger-stained handkerchief in Megamouth’s chest pocket. A brave but very timid fighter, thought Spike.
Leaving his brother to fend for himself, Spike vaulted into the air. He bent his toes, to dull them, and landed atop the nearest tent roof. The sentinels circ
led the tent, waiting for him to drop down; they were snarling. When he didn’t bite, they used his weakness (family) against him, and raided Megamouth.
After a short struggle with the sentinel on his back, the loudspeaker finally punched one giant fist down its throat. The enemies face split from the corner of his lips to the back of his head. Megamouth yanked his hand out, unfazed, and the body of the sentinel crumpled onto the cobblestones. Without a seconds hesitation he turned toward the oncoming forces. The sentinels did not hesitate either, but viciously tore at Megamouth’s suit.
Spike wondered where Rufus was when the time was hot, when Megamouth was in real danger. Then, realized that he was also avoiding the fight, the hypocrite, and Spike was never one to miss combat. Jumping feet first, Spike extended his ten toes into knife-sharp points. One of his legs penetrated a sentinel’s stomach, for the armor only covered their head and shoulders, and the other stabbed through another’s neck. Two of the sentinels were pinned to the ground, whimpering and convulsing, per order of Spike’s pointed feet. He didn’t budge from detaining them.
Since Spike was so thin, the wolven minions couldn’t get a decent grip on any part of his body. He could feel their jaws wrapping around portions, but it never pained him (not that he really felt pain, anyway). A set of jaws finally clung onto his left limb. With an extended right arm, he beat the beast across the nose until it yelped and loosed its jaw.
They were chewing on Spike’s brother, pieces of his suit flying through the air and the sound of teeth on hard plastic ceaseless. Twice Megamouth had rescued him and now Spike needed to save his younger sibling. He jabbed with his longer arm, pushing his fingers into one communal point. The hand penetrated a helmet adorned with an engraving of Porticus Labary and volleyed brain matter into Megamouth’s megaphone.
His brother placed two hands over his mouth, gagging back the urge to vomit. Spike covered his ears. When the sound wave rumbled the marketplace, it shot Spike and all of the sentinels flipping through the air in different directions. The pile of glass vases he landed in shattered into thousands of pieces. He stood instantly in a daze and looked around the square. A few of the dog-faced bastards lay in sight, either unconscious or dead. None were erect.
