Asskickers of the Fantastic

by Jim Stenstrum

  “Jump!” he told a young woman with her toddler standing only a few feet away from Dementia. They held hands and jumped onto the tracks.

  Dementia reached out to try to stop them, but as she did, Danny pulled out the gold machete he had hidden behind his back and sliced down on her arm, cutting it off cleanly at the elbow. She dropped to her knees and looked up at him in anguish. He kicked her hard in the face, and she fell off the platform onto the tracks.

  Tossing the machete away, Danny picked up Dementia’s severed arm with the porticon still attached on it, and rushed down the platform to help Naomi.

  Several yards down the track, Rex saw that Dementia was in trouble, but was too occupied with the people standing catatonically on the tracks to help her. The innocent people on the tracks – nine total – had gotten to their feet and just stood there, completely immobile. Rex tried to move them back toward the platform, but they wouldn’t budge. Finally he started hefting them like sacks of potatoes over his shoulder and carried them to the platform.

  Farther down the platform, Danny helped Naomi back to her feet. She cracked her neck back into place.

  “She broke my neck. That hurt, goddamn it!”

  “We gotta go,” said Danny.

  “I’m going to kill that bitch!”

  “Later. We gotta get out of here.”

  He grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her up the stairs with him. In his other hand, he carried Dementia’s severed arm.

  On the tracks, Dementia was spraying blood from her catastrophic wound. She yanked off the belt of her coat and wrapped it around her severed arm, pulling it tight with her teeth and remaining hand. Then she started grabbing people on the tracks with her one good hand, throwing them back onto the platform as fast as she could. Rex was doing the same thing, coming from the other direction.

  From around the bend, the light from the oncoming train could be seen approaching rapidly. It was the express, and had no intention of stopping. Dementia grabbed the young mother by the arm and flung her back onto the platform, but her child remained frozen, standing very close to the third rail.

  As the fast-moving train bore down on them, both Rex and Dementia rushed toward the toddler. They reached the child at the same time, but it was too late. The train was almost upon them.

  Rex wrapped his arms around Dementia and the child, holding them tightly as the train struck and rolled over them. Commuters on the platform gasped and shrieked as they watched helplessly.

  The train’s emergency brakes screeched loudly, but the train was already a hundred feet down the tunnel before it shuddered to a stop. The commuters on the platform, all of them free now of Danny’s influence, looked down at the tracks. There they saw Rex still holding Dementia and the child, alive and apparently unharmed. The train had passed right through them, as if they were mere shadows.

  Rex picked up the child and handed her to her mother, who was crying tears of joy. Then he helped Dementia, who was shaky due to loss of blood, to the platform. The biker who was pummeling Rex earlier offered a hand and helped him onto the platform.

  Dementia looked at Rex, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “Neat trick. How’d you manage it?” she asked.

  “I wish I knew,” he said.

  Dementia looked around the platform.

  “Where’d they go?”

  Rex looked at the staircase.

  “Up, I think. Can you make it?”

  She held up her bloody stump.

  “You mean this? Hardly worth a Band-Aid.”

  They turned and rushed toward the stairway.

  Meanwhile, on the street, Danny and Naomi emerged from the subway. He was still pulling her by the arm, and she shook him off angrily as they reached their car.

  Two car lengths behind the Stingray, Crayon was still watching the Scooby cartoon from the back seat of the Studebaker. Through the windshield she saw Danny and Naomi appear ahead of her, walking toward their car. Crayon scrunched down, keeping only her eyes above the seat.

  Naomi was about to climb into the Stingray when Danny stopped her. He turned his head toward the Studebaker.

  “Hold on a second,” said Danny, staring at Rex’s car. Crayon was scared now, and ducked out of sight.

  A moment later there was a tap on the side window. She looked up and saw Danny and Naomi smiling at her. He made a turning gesture with his hand, prompting her to roll down the window. She sat up and did as he asked.

  “Crayon, right?” said Danny. “You’re friends with Dementia and… what’s the big guy’s name?”

  “Rex.”

  “Rex. Yeah.” Danny smiled again, as did Naomi.

  “Well, I’m Danny and this is Naomi. We’d really like it if you would come with us.”

  A couple minutes later, Rex and Dementia ran up the steps to the street. The Stingray was gone and there was no sign of Danny or Naomi.

  “We’re too late,” said Dementia.

  Rex turned to look at the Studebaker. The hood had been smashed in, and from the looks of the indentations, caused by Danny’s bare fists. Rex looked inside the car and saw that Crayon was gone. Then he looked at the front seat and saw the steering wheel had been completely ripped out.

  “It’s okay. We can get a cab. I can still track them psychically,” said Dementia.

  Rex shook his head. “Let’s get you home first, and take care of that arm.”

  “There’s no time. Danny has the porticon now. As soon as he figures out how to use it, there will be no stopping him. I’m bound up pretty tight. I’ll be all right.”

  “You sure?”

  “Don’t even think about trying to stop me.”

  “Okay. Let’s kill ‘em fast and go home,” said Rex.

  Dementia walked into the street and hailed a taxi. The first one she saw pulled over, and she and Rex climbed into the back.

  “Go north. Drive as fast as you can,” she told the driver.

  The driver immediately punched the gas and the taxi squealed away.

  Rex looked miserable. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have brought the girl along.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. But I can still locate her.”

  As they drove, Dementia noticed the ID duct-taped to the back of the driver’s seat. It was a photo of Yousef Zarin.

  “Hello, Yousef,” she said.

  “Oh, it is you, miss. Good to see you again. I told my family about your picnic idea. My wife was so pleased. We never do stuff like that anymore.”

  “Glad to hear it, Yousef. Now I want you to go east for a couple miles. I’m looking for an abandoned building. Not sure of the address, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Sure, sure. Are you okay, Miss?”

  “I will be very soon, Yousef.”

  * * *

  On the top floor of the tenement hideaway, in a squalid studio apartment with its windows boarded up, Crayon sat quietly in a chair in the middle of the room as Danny and Naomi talked, trying to determine their next course of action. The girl was deep in a psychic spell, oblivious to her surroundings, so no ropes or bonds were needed to keep her from running away. And considering what Danny and Naomi were planning for her, it was probably best that she couldn’t hear them.

  Danny was sitting at a table, and was using a butter knife to crack the porticon off Dementia’s severed arm. Naomi was looking at an old mirror on the wall, twisting her head in an effort to realign her broken neck.

  “I will kill that bitch,” said Naomi, still steaming over their encounter with Naomi. She turned to look at Danny. “You knew she was going to be there, didn’t you?”

  “I was hoping she’d find us, yeah.”

  “Goddamn it, Danny. You said we were going shopping.”

  “I got what I wanted,” said Danny. “Be patient, baby. We’ll get you that new Larry Vermicelli bag very soon.”

  “Louis Vuitton.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Who was that big guy with Dementia? Was he Apex?” ask
ed Naomi.

  “Don’t think so, but he’s certainly a problem. I couldn’t control his thoughts.”

  There was a cracking noise, probably a bone breaking, and the device came cleanly off the severed arm.

  “Ah. Got it,” said Danny. He picked up the bloody arm and tossed it into a corner, landing atop a heap of shriveled corpses, more of Joey Clawhammer’s gang, piled in the corner.

  Danny inspected the device, turning it over, looking for the control mechanism. Naomi walked over to Crayon and placed her hand on the girl’s head.

  “Get away from her,” said Danny.

  “But I want to eat her.”

  “Not this one. She’s going to be bait.”

  “But I’m hungry. You said we were going to eat our fill at the subway station, and instead we had to run away.”

  “Jesus, Naomi, you’re a bottomless pit.”

  “I have a fast metabolism. I can’t help it.”

  “Look, in two hours, we’re going to be rid of Dementia, along with her pet gorilla. After that, you can eat this girl and anyone else you want.”

  “Okay. I guess I can wait a couple hours.”

  “Great. Now let me get back to figuring this thing out.”

  Naomi paced around the room a bit as Danny examined the device. He found the stud that Dementia pushed when she activated it at the gas station, but it didn’t seem to work when he pressed it.

  “Get away from her,” said Danny, without bothering to turn around.

  Naomi quickly took her hand off Crayon’s head.

  “I just wanted a little taste.”

  “No tasting. Show some self-control, for chrisssake.”

  * * *

  Across town, Yousef’s cab hurtled through side streets at high speed. Rex was tending to Dementia’s wound in the back seat and he called out to the driver.

  “Yousef, do you have a first aid kit?”

  The driver reached into the foot well of the front passenger seat and produced a small, beat up emergency kit. Without slowing the cab, he slid open the plastic barrier that separated the driver from the passengers, and pushed the kit through the gap to Rex.

  Rex pulled apart the hasty tourniquet Dementia had tied around her arm at the subway station, and he cut away more of her sleeve with a pair of scissors he found in the kit. The machete had cut off her arm as neatly as a meat slicer, and he cleaned the wound as well as he could with alcohol and sterile gauze.

  “That train went right through us,” said Dementia. “We should be blood splatters on the subway wall right now.”

  Rex took a bandage roll out of the kit and began to wrap it securely around her stump.

  “I can become unsolid,” he said, “and by touching someone I can make them unsolid as well. I didn’t always have this ability. It came on slowly. I take medicine for it. Otherwise I’d probably disappear altogether.”

  “So, I guess you’re not human either.”

  “I’m half-human. Haven’t figured out what the rest is yet.”

  “That’s why I can’t read your mind.”

  He tapped his forehead. “More likely it’s this steel plate in my head. It helped to stop the Brain Twisters from squeezing my brain like a kitchen sponge. At least, I think it did.”

  He cut off the remaining bandage, and fastened it with adhesive tape. He looked at her face, which was becoming gaunt and pale.

  “When was the last time you had anything to eat?” he asked her.

  “I had a few head of cattle this morning.”

  Rex furrowed his brow, seriously puzzled.

  She smiled. “Long story. I’ll tell you later. You’ll laugh.”

  He frowned even harder.

  “Or maybe not,” she said.

  Chapter 16

  “Maybe if I was a space zombie.”

  Danny extended his arm and aimed the porticon at an exterior wall. He tried to activate the device using sheer willpower, but that wasn’t working. Then he poked at it and jabbed at a couple studs that looked like they might be controls, but that didn’t work either. In fact, the device wasn’t even very well attached to his arm.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I can’t figure out how to work this thing,” said Danny, completely exasperated. “I can’t even get it to stay on my arm. Stupid shit thing is broken.”

  He pulled the gadget off his arm and threw it on the table. Then he walked across the room in a hissy fit and started kicking one of the shriveled corpses in the corner.

  Naomi, who was still hovering hungrily over Crayon, saw Danny’s frustration and decided to give the porticon a try. She picked up the device from the table and snapped it effortlessly onto her forearm.

  “Don’t bother,” said Danny, wrestling a pump shotgun out of the grip of one of the victims on the floor. “It obviously has an unbreakable code – probably coded to Dementia’s DNA.”

  A huge blast erupted from the porticon and nearly hit Danny. A hole tore open the exterior wall and the swirling vortex started swallowing bricks and plaster and a large section of the fire escape outside. Danny leaped back and looked stupidly at Naomi.

  “Holy shit. You figured it out.”

  She touched a stud that turned off the power on the device. The vortex dissolved, leaving a hole in the wall four foot in diameter and creating an instant picture window of the surrounding neighborhood.

  “Dumb ass,” she said. “Your stupid arm is too big. It was made for a woman to operate.”

  “Oh. Well, okay then. You use it. I’ll use this shotgun.”

  Danny pumped the shotgun with one hand, engaging a shell. He flashed a grin at her.

  But Naomi was still anxious. “This is going to work, right, Danny?”

  “Almost home, baby. Once this is over, we can bring down the rest of the Colony. Your mom and dad —”

  “And ‘Nana?”

  “Yes, everybody. This whole goddamn city will be ours.”

  Just then, Danny heard something. He walked over to the brand new hole in the wall and looked outside to the street below.

  “They’re here,” he said, waving over Naomi.

  She joined him at the hole and saw Rex and Dementia climbing out of a taxi near the front of the building. Danny and Naomi smiled at each other, and moved quickly to greet their visitors.

  On the street, Rex and Dementia stood outside the condemned apartment building, sizing up the situation. They looked at the top of the building and saw the newly blasted hole.

  “She’s on the top floor,” said Dementia. “Danny and Naomi are nearby, but they’re on the move.”

  They walked up to the steel front door and saw the remains of the first pizza driver still lying on the steps. Rex looked at Dementia.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  She touched her stump of an arm, which was bleeding through the bandage.

  “Blood loss is slowing me down, but I’ll be okay. Let’s get inside.”

  Rex nodded, and walked effortlessly through the thick metal door. Dementia gasped with amazement as she watched this. A moment later, his hand reached back through the door, snapping his fingers, signaling her to take his hand. She took it and he pulled her through the door.

  Inside, the entryway was filthy and deserted. There were layers of trash and shit and broken glass on the floor, and any valuable furnishings had been stripped from the walls and ceiling. Anything left over was vandalized or scrawled with graffiti.

  In a corner, Dementia saw several dead men in red, white and blue pizza delivery uniforms lying in a heap, all without eyes, all drained of their life force, only their bones and wrinkled skin remaining. Six large pizza boxes lay next to them, not one of them opened.

  More dead men, many wearing combat fatigues, were strewn about the first floor lobby. Bags of dope and spent cartridges were scattered everywhere, and so much blood was splattered on the walls it looked like a paint job had been interrupted while the painters went out to buy more red paint. These boys put up a hell of a fight, th
at’s for sure. They just weren’t equipped to take on monsters from outer space.

  The interior of the building was very dark, the only light coming from outside, filtering between the boards covering most of the windows. Rex could hear the sound of generators running upstairs – obviously to supply electricity to the building – but every light bulb in the place had been purposely broken. They moved ahead cautiously, preparing for the inevitable trap.

  Dementia whispered to Rex. “Naomi is close. Danny is higher up.”

  Rex pulled the crowbar from his coat. Dementia walked ahead a few paces, scouting the way. She pointed to the staircase ahead of them, and he acknowledged.

  They moved quickly up the stairs, being careful not to step on any of the bodies. On the fourth floor the stairway ended, leading to a long, dark hallway, with a lot of doors.

  Dementia kept moving, guiding them by the most direct route possible toward Crayon. The plan was to get the girl to safety first, then kill Danny and Naomi, even if it required taking the building apart brick by brick. More corpses littered the hallway, the bodies drained of energy and dried like human jerky.

  She had reached the far staircase when the elevator Rex was passing suddenly made a ding! sound. He stepped back, gripping his crowbar, preparing to take on whatever stepped out of the car. The doors of the elevator opened, but nothing came out. Dementia stood at the stairway as Rex slowly poked his head around the corner. There were five more corpses inside the elevator, one of them standing zombie-like and pressing the fourth floor button. Then it collapsed to the floor with the other carcasses.

  The next moment, the apartment door directly across from the elevator burst open, and there stood Naomi, aiming the porticon at Rex. She fired at him, and he leaped backward into the elevator, allowing himself to drop through the floor of the car as the blast from the device just missed his head.

  Although Rex had escaped the blast, the concussion had knocked him senseless and he fell helplessly down the shaft. At that same moment, the top half of the elevator car was swallowed by the vortex, along with the cables, and the car dropped after him. Rex was unconscious by the time he hit the cement four floors below, and a second later the elevator car crashed on top of him.