by Paul Kidd
A vast beast emerged from behind the wicked little humanoids – a great ragged thing that looked like a monstrous version of the others. It slumped forward, knuckle-walking on its tentacles; even so, it was easily six metres tall at the shoulders, and must have weighed a great many tons. Four or five of the miniature hunters were riding the thing, perched upon its back or clinging to its fur.
The monster moved ponderously forward and walked to the fountain, dipping its fanged muzzle to drink deep. Several of the smaller creatures joined it, while others squabbled, cuffed each other, or kept watch on the ruins. Some had kills hanging from their belts – small creatures hunted down in the rubble. Two of the little monsters fought over one kill, eventually tearing it bloodily in half. Each immediately ate what it had won, skin, bones, guts and all.
One of the little monsters suddenly stiffened. It ran a few steps to stand beside the huge ancient vehicle near the fountain. There were scuff marks on the hull from Kenda clambering aboard. The little creature sniffed at them, then lifted its horned snout to snuffle searchingly at the air.
Throckmorton had led the party well: they were downwind of the group of little hunters and their titanic guardian. The sniffing savage seemed satisfied that all was well. It scuttled back to the others, and was soon squabbling with its companions over the division of a meal.
The creatures drank, then some pointed to the pumpkins. But it seemed meat was what they were after. A leader cuffed the most argumentative of its fellows into line, and the lumbering behemoth was turned to the west, paralleling the distant lake shore. The gaggle of beings moved on, picking up and over some fallen buildings and vanishing off into the gloom.
Slowly, the flying flowers returned. All the little life forms that lived amongst the trees emerged again. Throckmorton silently lifted up off the rooftops – almost invisible amongst the hanging vines. He watched the giant monster as it lumbered away, and then he finally sank back down to join his friends. His tentacles indicated that the coast was clear.
Everyone emerged from under the pumpkin plant. Snapper rode Onan out to the square and looked carefully about, but the local ruins held no new surprises. She cantered back to the others, and signalled everyone to move north towards the lake. They moved onwards, travelling swiftly for the next kilometre until they knew the giant monster was well and truly far behind.
A broad cross street opened out before them. Many, many ancient cars and trucks filled the street on one side, bumper-to bumper – some of them packed together as though they had crashed into one another end to end. There were old bones still inside some of the cars: trees and saplings grew out through the road, and some had grown up beneath old vehicles, actually hoisting them up into the air as they grew. Little plant-animals grew in profusion on the branches, some of them absurdly decorating those vehicles permanently suspended in the air.
A hive of some sort of tiny, glittering insects was suspended in the branches of a tree. Their drone was the only real sound. Somewhere in the distance, a creature hooted softly in the trees. The ancient city seemed absolutely peaceful once more.
Pendleton clambered up to stand atop a pile of tangled cars. Now perched high above the wreckage, Beau looked about, staring off down the great, broad road. The light struck something on a street corner nearby, sparking a brilliant glitter of green. The fox-bird sheltered his eyes then looked more closely. He turned and held up his hands for finger talk.
“Green building.”
Snapper rode forward. Onan, ever agile, hopped up onto an old car, making it creak beneath his weight. They looked to the nearby street corner, where clear green polymer twinkled beneath a shaft of light.
The underground rail station had sported green columns and a green doorway – and so did the shattered building in Padbury. Intrigued, the shark led Onan back down, then scouted for a path across the tangle of ancient vehicles. She found a way past: the largest new trees had jostled an old truck out of place. The riders threaded through the gap, carefully guiding the pack animals as they moved on along the road.
At the corner, the explorers found a vast, wide open space. A broad concrete mall ran to the north – on and on, past clumps of brambles and huge old trees, until it finally reached the lake half a kilometre away. Drowned buildings and a mass of giant lily pads glittered – the lake was clearly only a stone’s throw away.
A great, grand building was outlined with green polymer archways. Tangled vines covered almost the entire façade. A huge sign had been almost smothered by the greenery, but the architecture was quite familiar. Ancient steps led down into dark places far below.
It was a station for the underground railway tunnels.
Beau swung Pendleton about, and positively beamed.
“At least the transport buildings are in good condition! Nothing seems to have been bombed. I believe we may well find our warehouses and chemicals intact.” He waved a hand towards the city at large. “All we need to do is keep an eye out to avoid the locals…”
A long dart almost parted Beau’s fur as it whipped past his head and slammed into a sapling nearby. The dart penetrated clean through the trunk. Another struck Pendleton, skipping from the armoured hide beneath his thick moth fur. The air was suddenly filled with deafening yells and pipping screams as a hundred tentacled pygmy creatures burst up out of the ruins and charged into the square.
Darts arched and whickered through the air. One of the pack animals screamed and fell, pierced through. Snapper stood and opened fire into the closest screaming, yelling horde of little monsters, sending three of them catapulting backwards. The rest seemed terrified of the noise, falling back, ducking madly – but others flung their darts, sending shots raining down to crack into the pavement a few metres short of Snapper and her team.
Two of the giant behemoths were shouldering forward through a tangle of trees and ancient cars. One of them wrenched a car body free from the dirt, and sent it bowling wildly down the square, straight towards the adventurers. Beau dodged Pendleton aside, but Kitterpokkie’s lavender budgerigar reared and flapped its wings. Kitt fell from the saddle and landed sprawling on the ground. The car passed a hairsbreadth overhead and smashed into a tree.
Pygmies leapt out from an ancient shop window and raged towards Kitterpokkie in a swarm, daggers raised to stab and slash. Darts flickered, missing the mantis but slamming through her backpack. One pygmy leapt at her, its dagger hacking down, but the mantis drew her pistol and shot the creature in mid leap. She fired the second barrel, then scrabbled for her plasma gun where it lay just out of reach, tangled in the weeds. The nearest pygmy swarm came at her, shrieking and babbling in blood lust as they ran.
Snapper spurred Onan forward, and the cockatoo screeched out his ear-numbing battle scream. The shark drew her sword and charged straight into the mass of monsters, slamming the big blade down. She scythed through three of the pygmies, with Onan trampling down others, biting and tossing them aside. Snapper cut one dart out of the air as it whirled towards her; another struck her cuirass and lodged, making the shark curse as the weapon drew blood. But she hacked her way through to Kitterpokkie, beheading a pygmy that had grappled the mantis and was trying to stab at her face. Snapper whirled and saw yet more pygmies charging straight at them, along with a lumbering giant who raged forward, mouth open in a roar.
The air suddenly filled with crackling blue light. Kitt fired her plasma rifle, centring it on the giant. The first shot burned fur. The second slammed into the beast and vaporised its head. Still the giant refused to die. The headless body went into a frenzy, blundering wildly through its own ranks, tentacles flailing and smashing pygmies into ruin. Kitt tried to fire into the horde, but her capacitor was empty. Snapper wrenched the dart out of her own side, reached down and hoisted Kitt up off the ground. Onan galloped them to safety, off and away towards the other explorers. Beau covered them, riding Pendleton at the nearest swarm of pursuers. He fired both pistols, bowling pygmies aside. Pendleton lunged forward, bit two of the
survivors in half and seemed to simply eat another whole. Onan sped past the huge moth creature with long darts flickering past, missing him by a finger’s breadth.
“Ride! Ride!”
The pack beasts had stampeded towards the lake, away from the screaming pygmy horde. Throckmorton whirred overhead, firing his crossbow – the bolts lost amongst the onrushing mass of enemies. Kenda was further away, firing his clumsy rifle at the nearest enemies. His mount spun around and around as the man looked for an escape route out of the open square.
He was no true cavalryman, whereas Snapper revelled in the space to manoeuvre. Their mounts were fast – her blade equal to any dozen of the shrieking little monsters. Snapper took a moment to settle Kitterpokkie behind her, and looked across the scene, measuring the number of enemies and the sources of the swarms.
There were two main groups – one coming from the south east, and one from the west. Each group was a swarm of sixty or seventy, all clustered about one of the raging behemoths. Snapper’s carbine had one spare cylinder plus she had six rounds in her revolver. Beau was probably on his last few rounds. Snapper whirled Onan about and cantered him to the centre of the square.
“Throcky – get us a path north!” Snapper waved her bloody sabre to the others. “To the lake! Ride for the lake! And bring the pack animals!”
A screaming pygmy leapt from the ruins near Kenda, stabbing at him with a wicked dagger. Kenda bashed the creature aside, losing his rifle in the process. White with fury, he drew his long sword and rode the creature down, skewering it twice, his face twisted in revulsion. As he twisted home the blade, more shrieking pygmies came running towards him. Darts hissed past, one tearing off his helmet’s cheek guard and cutting a red line across his face. Another careened from the armoured hide of his mount. He turned and galloped for the lake.
Beau seized the reigns of Kitterpokkie’s budgerigar as the bird blundered past. The pygmies were closing in a great screaming rush. Beau and Snapper turned, dragging pack beasts behind them, and rode swiftly away. They raced to join Throckmorton and Kenda, who were both now over at the lake.
Onan sped at an effortless gallop, leaping over ancient rubble and swerving past a crumbling statue. Clinging wildly to Snapper’s back and cursing the shark’s dorsal fin, Kitt fumbled out her sack of black powder bombs and tried to find her lighter.
“We’ve got six bombs and one smoke bomb!”
“Good! I’ve got two bombs in my ammo pouch!” Snapper sent Onan racing off towards the lake. “Keep your head down!”
The pygmies had merged into a scattered, shrieking swarm of darts, fangs and waving tentacles. They covered the square, rampaging forward, but the beetle-horses and riding birds were effortlessly swift. The adventurers galloped fast, pushing through weeds and reeds that grew through the pavement and plunging towards the lake shore.
More pygmies struggled forward along both shores of the lake – two dozen on each side. Snapper was about to ride through, when suddenly she saw more of the great behemoth creatures looming behind the incoming swarms.
A line of old trucks stood in the water, sunk down almost to their rooves. A few hundred metres beyond, the mighty towers rose from the water, surrounded by massive lily pads, each bigger than a house, like giant green rafts. Between the sunken trucks and the lily pads, there was a gap of twenty metres of open water.
One of the titanic tortoise-koi dozed there, between the tower and the tangle of old trucks. As more darts thrummed through the air, Snapper charged forward, up and onto the trucks. Onan’s claws clashed and clattered on the rooves. Throckmorton zoomed along beside her, Pendleton close behind, whilst the pack animals blundered along in a confused mass. Kenda turned his mount around and around back on the shore, sword in hand and looking wild.
“We have to cut through!”
Snapper bellowed from atop the trucks, where Onan was leaping from wreck to wreck.
“Come on, man! Get off the shore!”
Kenda wanted to run, but he looked at Beau, steeled himself, then plunged his mount forward to follow after the others. His beetle-horse staggered as a dart ricocheted from the hard carapace across its rump. Kenda caught up with the others just as Snapper sent Onan leaping out across open water, sailing from the last truck and down onto the hard back of the immense tortoise-koi just beyond.
The tortoise blinked, lifting up a neck that was fully twenty metres long. It surged forward, starting to rise. The others leapt their mounts, dragging pack animals in a mad cascade all about them, landing clumsily upon the vast, tilting back. The tortoise-koi rose up above the surface, water streaming beneath its weedy shell. Irritated at the disturbance, the immense creature surged forward through the lake. A sweep of its long tail sent the old trucks tumbling and scattering to the water, flinging pygmies off into the air.
The air was suddenly choked with an appalling stench as the mega-tortoise released some sort of unholy stink-oil from its rear. Pygmies and giant monsters on the shore fell back, wailing and shouting. Grumbling and muttering, the tortoise moved toward the centre of the lake, striding with huge plods of its trunk-like legs.
The tortoise strode on, away from the shore, past the first of the towers. Small golden fish leapt about in the water, shadowing the tortoise – florid things with wicked little fangs. They seemed to be hunting after creatures disturbed by the tortoise’s movement, and attacked in a single flickering swarm.
Kitt slipped down from Onan’s back and carefully moved up to the edge of the animal’s vast shell. She looked down into the water, then back towards the receding shore. She suddenly felt a great urge to sit down.
Hissing in annoyance, Snapper put a field dressing against her wounded side.
“Well, I found us a way out into the lake.”
Kitt looked up at the tortoise-koi’s head high above.
“Well done. Yes, well done indeed!”
Chapter 14
The mighty tortoise-koi moved with great, plodding steps, wading into the lake with steady speed. Carnivorous goldfish swarmed alongside it, feasting on organisms startled by the giant’s passage. Up on the massive shell, the creature’s motion was a long, steady sway, rocking with a ponderous majesty. The gush and splash of the creature’s vast legs churned the scent of mud and rot upwards from the lake.
Away from the creature’s wake, the lake was astonishingly clear. Here and there, the drowned streets of the ancient city could be seen – broad spaces still littered with ancient car bodies, trucks and trams. The tortoise creature kept to more open spaces, moving slowly towards a forest of titanic lily pads.
The pygmy creatures had been left behind – standing in an angry, vicious mass back at the shore. They feared the water, and seemed far too disorganised to try shadowing their escaped quarry. Already, several groups appeared to be fighting one another. Throckmorton hung back, observing the chaos on the shoreline, then came flying hastily back to find his friends. The tortoises tail still reeked foully, and so Throckmorton fought his way upwind. He drifted back down to the tortoise shell, where Beau reached out to help him cling to Pendleton’s back.
A dart was sticking out of Pendleton’s huge mothy backside. Beau removed the projectile, hurtling it away. Meanwhile, Kitterpokkie attended to Snapper, washing out her wound with some of old Toby’s ‘Cobbleback’s Liche-Water’ and then smearing it with angry bee-mouse royal jelly. The dart had gone through the skin of her waist – painful but decidedly not deadly. Kitterpokkie affixed a bandage, winding it deftly around and around in place. She inspected her work, then hastened off to see to Pendleton. Snapper – bare to the waist – eased back into her shirt and cuirass. Her armour showed dents where it had withstood two other darts, two holes, and three claw slashes from Screamers, and cracked plates from poisoned bones that had been spat at her during the siege. It was high time to send the suit in for repairs…
The damned wounds stung. Snapper thought about Kenda and his painkiller drugs, but then dismissed the idea. It was only a wound,
and whining was for the weak. The shark patted Onan, and the bird caressed her in return. She produced the expected salty cracker, and the bird reached out with one huge foot to hold the crunchy biscuit as he ate.
“Happy birdie!”
Snapper walked gingerly towards the edge of the shell. The rocking motion was far more pronounced at the edges, and she had absolutely no wish to make the acquaintance of the swarms of carnivorous goldfish down below. She stood well back and looked at the city towers a few hundred metres away, inspecting them for damage.
They appeared well preserved. Some even seemed to have lights glimmering deep within, behind the windows. A few had broken windows, while others had vast growths of ivy clinging to the sides. Flying creatures swooped and dived, flying in and out of open windows. The shark pondered, then moved back from the edge of the shell.
Kitterpokkie finished cleaning Pendleton’s wound, although the moth creature seemed utterly unconcerned. The mantis wiped her hands clean and came over to stand beside the others.
“Vipers in paradise!” She looked back towards the shore. “Toby and Samuels never mentioned hostile natives!”
“They never met any.” Snapper settled her sabre at her side, careful not to bump her wound. “Those creatures must be new arrivals. If they were based here, then we would have seen more signs of them: kill sites, tracks, old camp sites. But that city was empty. Peaceful…”
Beau stood planted on his handsome yellow legs and scowled towards the shore.
“Vicious brutes!”
“Feral virus strain.” Snapper frowned. “What the hell were the big ones? Pets? Bodyguards? Degenerate related species?”
Kitt brightened as an inspiration struck. “Or females? The smaller ones might be the male of the species?”
“Yeah, that’s not a visual image I want to explore any further.”
They turned and regarded the skyscrapers nearby. They were a few hundred metres away, across a lagoon filled with immense lily pads.
