Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
Life reentered Junella's soul like a sucker punch to the throat.
Her eyelids flew open like windowshades. She dragged in a gasping breath. Her arms pistoned her up off the floor and her fingerneedles clattered from her involuntary shuddering.
For most Phobiopolan residents, revival after death is not an unpleasant process. After something quick like a bullet to the brain, there is a flash of ouch, a blink of darkness, then a return to perfect health. But when one's demise is sufficiently prolonged and traumatic (and drawn out even longer than normal by one's incredible stubbornness), the result is a bit of a hangover.
She felt like she was waking up from a year-long dream. Sounds bombarded her ears but held no meaning. She grabbed her head and squeezed, to stop the world revolving around it. Her legs somehow lifted her to standing.
When the fog unspiralled to comprehensible input, she realized the crowd was exploding in raucous approval.
She was a bit surprised. Hadn't she just 86'd one of their guys? Maybe they all thought Nollacero was a pompous little dickhead too. Or it was just the universal thrill to see an unknown challenger unseat the champion. Some of them threw pebbles of imaginite at her, and she sure as heck wasn't too proud to bend over and snatch a few up. Looking down, she could see that her blood had flooded over a vast swath of the floor. Like an ink factory had exploded. 'Yeesh. Baby done made a oopsie.'
She returned her weapon to her hand to lean on it like a crutch. Her innards were still sloshing around like a ship at sea. The men surrounding her pointed and roared and raised their glasses. Though plenty more looked pissed-off. Maybe they'd lost money on bets.
Within the crowd's deafening blare, a familiar voice became distinct. Junella turned around to see a certain arctic hare hollering his head off. Cheeks red, facial features pinched, mouth as wide as a megaphone. And being physically restrained by no less than three other crew members. "...DO YOU HEAR ME!? HOW DARE YOU EVEN LOOK AT ME! YOU CHEATED! YOU DIRTY ROTTEN HONORLESS COWARD, YOU CHEATED!!!"
She cracked her back and reached around to reply, "Yeah, well, that's just something I do. Get used to it."
Nollacero bit down on his lip so hard it nearly bled. The crewmen holding him gave him shoulder-pats of 'There, there. You'll get 'em next time.'
She'd won. It was taking a while for it to sink in, but she'd actually beaten the odds and won the fight. And from the reception she was getting, this might not have been unprecedented, but it sure as shit was uncommon. A grin slowly grew as she soaked in the crowd's sheer volume. Both cheers and boos, they meant the same thing: Junella Brox was on top.
She scanned around, looking for Sulilong. Wondering if the smug cocksucker would be tearing his hair out. To her surprise, when she spotted him still perched above the masses, he looked merely attentive. No expression in his eyes. Just rubbing his chin as if contemplating a chess move.
Her intuition's stinger poked her. Wasn't there someone else here who should have been by her side congratulating her?
'Zinc!'
Junella whirled around, eyes cutting through the mob, seeking any trace of that jerry-rigged noggin. He'd been standing right behind her, ready to fight Nollacero next. Had he run off? She shook her head. Even though she'd known him less than a day, he'd struck her as goalless, but not cowardly. Maybe he was off getting a beer? Taking a piss? Or had they kidnapped him? Already taken him out and buried him while she was-
Oh, there he was! Back behind the front row of spectators. Those two hooded behemoths who'd dragged in the mouse couple were back. They were holding onto Zinc by the shoulders, but he was offering no resistance.
His arms had been unscrewed and taken away. And now his head hung low to his chest as if the spark of life had been removed from him as well.
Junella's breath caught in her throat. Reality began to melt again. Why? WHY!?
She spun back to Sulilong, teeth bared ferally, and pointed her cutlass directly at his face. "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO HIM!?"
Far at the opposite end of the room, the qilin's expression was carved from jade. Coldly inanimate. He took his hand away from his chin and sat up slowly. "You mean, having him 'disarmed'?"
His words were like a frost falling over the room. The crowd's volume fell dead into silence.
Everyone else became wallpaper, leaving the skunk in the circle and the qilin on the throne the only two living souls in the room.
Junella's arm was a cocked arrow. "I won. You said his turn was next. He didn't do anything to you. What is this backstabbin' bullshit?" she demanded.
"I can understand your confusion. Lemme explain." Sulilong crossed his legs and leaned forward. "Y'see, you weren't supposed to win. The test to get in is, I see how long you can hold out against my boy before you, y'know, die. It's a 'How long can you resist the irresistible force?' kinda thing. But you broke the game. And now I have to get rid of you."
"WHAT!?" she screeched, quaking in outrage.
Sulilong shrugged, open-palmed. "I mean, does that make any sense from my perspective? To keep around an employee who's capable of killing my bodyguard?"
She froze solid.
Her anger disintegrated. Her expression went slack and her gaze blanked. She thought she felt her heartbeat stop.
Within that moment, the only thing that existed in her universe was the excruciatingly acute awareness of how monumentally she'd fucked up.
It wasn't even her fault. Was it? Could she have known? And yet his logic made perfect sense. Her mission was to get close enough to eliminate him, and now she'd gone and demonstrated right in front of him that she was skilled enough to do exactly that. The signs were all there. Sulilong did not want equals to his power, he wanted subordinates who would keep their place.
'I've ruined everything,' she thought.
"Foam!" Sulilong called out, snapping his fingers with a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil.
The crew was very much mixed on this. It didn't seem fair. The skunk chick had won, just like she'd said. But when the boss gave an order, you followed it. Or someone else would include you in the same punishment. As before with the male mouse, several henchmen with caulking guns stepped into the circle and began to hose Junella down.
She was still so much in shock it took several seconds to notice. Her slow reaction doomed her. There was something fizzy being sprayed all over her. If she'd reacted instantly, she might have been able to jump out of the way. But the plumber's foam was already beginning to cocoon her.
Junella shrieked without a sound and started struggling for her life. The foam crawled along her body like a huge living fungus. Expanding, hardening, compacting her within itself. Junella punched and kicked against it, but no matter how many times she managed to wrest a limb free, the guns just kept gushing out more of the stuff.
In less than a minute, Junella was encased in a rock-hard pillar, leaving only her head unengulfed.
Sulilong stood up. "I almost want to apologize for this, honestly. You did put on an entertaining match, and it's a rare treat to see Nollacero get his ass kicked. He's so good it almost gets boring watching him win. But I don't want entertainment. I want someone who can consistently repel problems before they become my problems." He cast a very pointed look at his bodyguard.
The hare sobered up damn quick, and replied with a deferential nod. He was being warned. Years of unbroken service meant that they both acknowledged this loss as a fluke. Law of probability. But it was not to become anything more.
Sulilong crossed his arms behind his back, gazing down at Junella as an emperor condemning a gladiator. Gazing without fear into a pair of orange eyes as overflowing with hatred as the flaming rivers of Hell. He graced her with his final words of explanation. "I'm not going to let you become my problem. You're going off into the desert now, both you and your friend. He already said that wherever you go, he goes. So I didn't think I needed to bother asking."
Wary laughter from the crowd. The boss could be bottomlessly cruel, but so long as it wasn't directed at them, it was all good.
The two bulky jailers shoved Zinc into the ring, towards Junella. They were alone in the middle again. Center stage in the spotlight.
Junella looked over to him, having to fight against the foam just to move her neck two inches. The canine looked dead on his feet. Eyes cast downward. Ears drooping. Drops of saliva hung from his slack mouth and made spots on his shirt. He mumbled something.
With her hands pinned in place she couldn't speak, but she managed a 'What was that?' kind of sound.
"I'm sorry," he repeated, not raising his head. "They jumped me. Took my arms. Without them I can't.. I just..." He couldn't even finish.
Among her already-torrential whirlpool of emotions, Junella felt both intense sorrow for him, and a fiery contempt. How could he give up so easily? Even if they were a pair of gutted fish on the chopping block? Even if they had just blown their mission completely, breaking their promise to Lady Crynight and leaving all of Coryza ripe for the plucking?
'I might never see daylight again,' she suddenly thought. 'Never sleep in another bed, never eat another meal, never say one more 'What room am I in this time?' to Mia.'
The horror of these possibilities was too big to face. She recoiled from them in fear, but then grabbed her fear by the neck and kept turning away in defiance. 'NO! Not until the sand's six feet deep above me will I give up! And not even then! I'll dig myself out with my teeth! This slimy, smooth-talking shitball is NOT going to win!!'
But what did she have left to fight with? She was currently Junella The Jolly Termite Mound. Zinc was a wet noodle without his wrenches. 'My gun,' she realized. She'd never actually taken it out since she'd gotten here. They didn't know she had it. Maybe she could blast through the foam. What then? She couldn't hope a single bullet would crack it like an egg and set her free. At most she could make a hole to stick her hand out of.
Sulilong's eyes were keen. They scanned the skunk's expression, following her racing thoughts. Watching hope and despair swap places in a flicker. There was something obscenely enjoyable about this part. Unsettling even to him. It was like holding down a beetle with his finger and witnessing the frantic twitches of its legs as it tried to save its life. But people were so much more interesting than bugs. Because they could understand when their situation was helpless. He could often spot the exact moment when all their increasingly-desperate planning slowed to a halt, reality sunk in, and they fully understood that this was the end of their story.
It was addictive, in a way, to be able to cause another soul to live through that moment. There was really nothing like it.
But Junella was not going to become just another one of the missing. Maybe it was denial of reality. Maybe that was its own form of cowardice. But getting so motherfucking mad that it bent reality to her will had worked before, and she wasn't about to discard her favorite strategy now. If nothing else, the gun would surprise them. She could take a few of them with her on her way down. Go out spiteful. Maybe K.O. that smug bunny again. Maybe it'd startle Zinc enough to get him to cut the mopey bullshit and run for help. She still couldn't believe how easy it'd been to pacify him. For cryin' out loud, even if she'd been the one to lose both her arms, that wouldn't have stopped her from fighting! She glanced down at his legs. 'He's still got those. He could still kick a man in the gumdrops with 'em. And he's not clumsy with them either. I saw him take his whole head apart with his toes before we went to bed last night.'
An unspeakable idea occurred to her.
She didn't just have her revolver. She had something else stored away in her elsewhere. Something volatile and unquantified.
She inhaled. Without her hands she couldn't speak, but she could shape the sound of her exhales into a whisper. Barely audible, but that was fine. It meant that only one furson could hear her. "Zinc... I gotta ask you..."
One ear slightly raised.
Sulilong leaned closer too. He hated not being able to overhear final goodbyes. People often revealed who they truly were in their last moments together.
"Zinc," Junella exhaled. "Have you ever... uncorked a bottle... and drank it with your feet...?"
The canine's expression shifted. His eyebrows creased inwards, confused. "Sure, yeh. But I dunno why you'd ask that now. Of course I been drunk enough to end up in that position a few..."
His head slowly lifted. He turned to face her, eyes suddenly alight and very much awake.
She felt a shiver of hope. He understood. She nodded.
"If you've got any last words, Miss Skunk, how about you share them with the rest of the class!?" Sulilong needled.
She flicked a hateful glance at him, then returned her attention to Zinc. Wordlessly she told him, 'I'm sorry I have to ask you to do this.'
A trace of a smile struggled its way onto his lips. 'Hey, it's worth a shot. Might even be fun.'
"Just like at the bar..." she wheezed. "One..."
Zinc flexed his toes. He didn't know exactly what she had planned, but he'd got the gist. He'd have to be ready for however the hell she was gonna try to pull this off.
"Two..."
Sulilong narrowed his eyes. 'Oh shit. She's got an ace up her sleeve, doesn't she?'
Before he could shout for someone to stop her, Junella finished her countdown. "Three! GO!!"
In that instant between heartbeats, she knew she had to dumbfound her gun into her hand and simultaneously fire it to make room for its sudden existence. It was a ridiculous paradox. One that Junella needed to happen. And while dumbfounding is more difficult the more one consciously thinks about it, life-or-death necessity adds an awful lot of power to the attempt.
The instant she felt the weight of metal creating itself within her palm, her trigger finger squeezed.
Zinc was the only one prepared for the gunshot. In a near-silent room with fantastic acoustics, it startled the piss out of everyone else.
The crowd reflexively flinched, acting as a single superorganism. Zinc saw a crater explode in the foam surrounding his partner, a smoking revolver at its center. He jerked himself back from the shrapnel, but kept his eyes glued. He watched the black vinyl fingers drop the gun. Saw them flex. Saw the flask of drybleed appear in her grip like a magic trick without a wand. He let the momentum of his dodge unbalance him, falling tail-first onto the ballroom floor. But the pain went unnoticed. All his focus was on the flask as it fell from Junella's hand, and another gun took its place.
Sulilong was screaming at the top of his iron lungs for someone to rush in and stop them.
As Junella knew he would. So her finger curled around her trigger again. She hadn't seen where the first bullet went. Didn't care. The second one liberated a crocodile from most of his upper jaw. The recoil kicked her hand back. She let it be her dancing partner. She couldn't move her legs, but her feet were still in contact with the floor. With a wiggle of her toes, she helped the gun's recoil nudge her slightly backwards. Then again. Again. She fired six shots as quick as she could, letting them spin her in a circle.
Bullets flew like killer bees. The crowd broke up and started fleeing from the random fusillade.
Zinc saw none of this. Heard none of the shots. His entire world was that falling flask and his ten talented toes reaching out for it. An inch away from shattering on the hardwood, the weighty glass container fell into his soles, just as cozy as you please. He couldn't help a high-pitched squeal of amazement.
"KILL THEM!!!" Sulilong erupted. "SOMEBODY FUCKING KILL THEM!!!"
But Junella was a one-woman tornado. When her gun clicked empty, she let it fall and mindfucked up another. She had the qilin's minions bumbling over one another in a yelping panic, but it wouldn't last long. She calculated about twenty seconds before someone competent landed a headshot on her. She'd make the most of them, and give Zinc time to get that stuff down his throat.
Hot lead sailed over the canine's head. Still flat on his back, he brought the flask to his mouth like a baby bottle. He ripped out the cork with his teeth and let the red, sludgy contents spill over his muzzle. His tongue darted around, directing it to his gullet. If it tasted like anything, he was too on fire with adrenaline to notice. But it was having an effect already. Deep in the back of his awareness, he knew he was ingesting something WRONG. The burning in his esophagus was not like whiskey, but like something dark and otherworldly tracing its finger through his guts and marking him for damnation.
A few of the more sober henchmen raised their foam-guns up and tried to pin down the whirling dervish taking potshots at their comrades. Junella was severely restricted, but still a skilled marksman. Out of the three goons firing, she put a hole through one's right lung and missed close enough to make another flinch and drop his weapon. Good enough. The third hit her in the back with another gush of foam, but she was already straitjacketed from the neck down. A little extra weight didn't matter.
Zinc's eyes sproinged open. He began to pant heavily. His tongue lapped the neck of the flask, compulsively dragging the last of the drybleed down inside him. Oh sweet lord, he was in for a crazy ride tonight. He could feel tendrils of demonic energy squirming their way into every cell of his flesh and bones. Whatever the fuck was about to happen, it was a pity he couldn't be on the sidelines watching it with a bucket of popcorn.
Sulilong saw the empty flask roll out of the convulsing mutt's footpaws. He stared. 'That can't be...' He'd seen it on Jaziezal's desk just a couple of hours ago. 'They couldn't have.' They couldn't. His jaw fell open. He was paralyzed by the impossibility.
Nollacero followed his primary orders and stuck close to his employer. Let the others handle this shitshow.
Junella shot three more underlings in the back before another, a kangaroo, took a flying leap at her from across the circle and managed to land an impressive dropkick. She felt the world turn sideways. Her little paws wiggled to roll herself over, but there was nothing to kick against but air. Then her cheek was bashed against the floor as the kangaroo gave her a repositioning spin. She felt his massive foot stomp her gun into her hand, shattering her fingers.
"Let's see ya fire that now!" he shouted.
Her hand was a shambles. Oily blood ran down her arm. She tried in vain to dumbfound a gun in her other hand, but her confidence had been knocked off-kilter and she couldn't manage the trick. She'd have to heal or die in order to fire again, and she didn't have time for either.
She watched the kangaroo loom over her. He raised his foot. The sole looked as long as a canoe. "Maybe I'll smash your pumpkin, should I?"
A thing that was no longer a foot shot out and tore his head straight off his ribcage.
The 'roo fountained gore for a moment before crashing to the ground in a twitching ruin. Junella wriggled with all her strength to get a better vantage point of the horrifying thing that all the other henchmen were now gawking at and slowly backing away from.
Zinc pulled himself upright. He seemed a bit taller; at least five feet. And he was bubbling. He had more parts than before. All of his flesh was spreading out, growing like an alien fungus. His bones creaked ear-splittingly as they stretched longer and longer. His metal skullcap melted and drizzled. His chest ballooned outward, thick as a beer barrel. Multiple tails ripped their way out of his jeans. He kept on growing.
Sulilong watched as the mutt expanded in every direction, standing taller even than the silver throne. A bottle of drybleed had to be shared among at least three people or the result was an uncontrolled blimp of moaning, oozing, indistinct bodily bits (which was nevertheless still capable of killing a hell of a lot of scientists and guards). The qilin's throat went dry. "I think one of you really ought to shoot that thing," he husked.
Zinc felt like the epicenter of an earthquake. Ground zero for a nuclear test. Like rivers of lava and electricity were flooding his heart and arteries. And he LOVED it! This energy inside him was evil as fuck, but felt like it had enough juice to power a city. His elongating muzzle split wide in a smile with far too many teeth. His tongue was three feet long, slinging liters of drool in every direction. His vision had become indistinct, since his eyes were bulging past the rims of their wire containers, and extra pupils were budding within. But that was fine. His three nostrils could smell all the souls around him. And it'd be so much fun to grab them and tear them and chew them all up.
Junella reflected that this might have been a bad idea. Zinc had risen up so high his shoulders were pushing one of the chandeliers aside. Every part of him stretched like taffy. A hunching, hulking, colossal nightmare-among-nightmares. His skin strained to hold together its rapidly engorging muscle. Cysts and sores churned beneath his fur like boiling soup. New wrenches were birthed from his shoulder mounts and branched into different configurations, some of them jointed like living fingers. The immense half-mechanical hellhound roared in exultation at its metamorphosis, shaking the walls and knocking tapestries to the floor. Sulilong's crew were either frozen with terror, or fleeing for every available exit.
The qilin finally found his voice. "WHAT AM I PAYING YOU IDIOTS FOR?! DEAL WITH THAT!! KILL IT! KILL IT!! I DON'T FUCKING CARE HOW THE FUCK YOU DO IT, BUT SOMEBODY HAD BETTER GODDAMNED KILL THAT THING BEFORE IT KILLS THE WHOLE REST OF THE FUCKING WORLD FIRST!!!"
If there was any sane mind left in Zinc's horrorhouse of a body, maybe it overheard. Maybe it thought that was a really nice idea. Because now he leaned down towards the remaining crowd, opened his seven nostrils wide, and drew in the scent of their fear. Teardrops of panic; several pairs of wet pants. Zinc grew an erection as big as a charging rhinoceros. Grinning like an untethered suspension bridge, he reached out his Swiss army knife of an arm towards a cluster of men too stricken to move. Maybe he'd bite them all in half. Maybe he'd pull their arms and legs out of their sockets.
Something ignited and flew screaming in flame across the room.
It hit Zinc just below his right pectoral and turned sixty percent of him into pizza sauce.
It rained indoors. Gallons and gallons of glistening scarlet.
Sulilong ducked incoming organic shrapnel. The entire room had been painted red in the blink of an eye. Even the ceiling. The qilin ogled dumbly for a few moments, before turning his head to notice that the bat with the goggles was giggling in pride and showing off his spent grenade launcher. 'Oh right,' he thought.
"I shot him, boss, I shot him!"
The qilin manually wiped the shock off his face (plus a handful of meat juice). "Y-yes you did. A little late on the trigger there, but overall, not bad."
The bat squealed happily to receive such praise.
Scraps of fur and muscle dangled from the chandeliers. Henchmen spat dog blood out of their mouths. Twisted scraps of wrench had impaled the floor like crashed meteorites. And in the epicenter of the carnage stood all that remained of Zinc: an eight-foot-tall pair of mutated legs. A bit of spine poked up from the shredded waistband. Only the humongous, mound-like feet kept the remains standing upright.
Down on the ground, drenched in red, Junella felt all of her hope die again. Her 'hail mary' plan had just been torpedoed. Literally. Zinc, king of the monsters, was dead before he'd killed a single goon. And she was still completely encased in foam with a busted hand. Zinc would probably resurrect in a few moments in his same old much-smaller body. They'd capture him again. And they definitely wouldn't wait around to clean up the place first. They'd march him, and her, straight out to the sand.
'It can't end like this. I won't let it,' she tried to tell herself. But what else was left? Some asshole with a bazooka had put a spectacular end to her one last chance.
She wondered what the sand would feel like. How much would it weigh as it covered her head? She'd be swallowed in blackness. No light. No sight. Would she lose her mind and try to breathe it? Choking as she sucked it in and filled her lungs? Would it be centuries before anyone found her again and dug her up? Would they ever?
Behind her, someone screamed.
Reflexively, she craned her neck towards the sound. From her upside-down vantage point, she could see that one of the chunks of Zinc's exploded corpse still had some teeth in it, and was chomping some guy's foot like a beartrap.
She couldn't stop a giggle. Even in the depths of despair, funny was still funny.
Someone else screamed.
Before she could turn to look at whatever new insanity had just happened, the giant legs shifted their stance. Mere feet away, toes as big as Halloween gourds flexed up and down. Like they were about to play piano.
Junella felt goosebumps prick up along the back of her neck.
'Oh sweet Jesus. Whatever that bottle was doing to him... it ain't finished.'
She braced herself. Maybe she wasn't as good as buried yet.
All around the ballroom, bits of Zinc began to move. Blood bubbled. Hairs pricked up. Metal curled. Sections of intestines swayed like snakes.
Some of the henchmen had managed to escape the ballroom, but a large majority of the crowd remained. They started backing towards the center, away from the blindly flailing body parts. But there was no safe place to hide or run. The RPG had splattered giblets across every single surface of the cathedral-sized room. Around, below, and above. The men bunched up, back to back. Their eyes beheld the blood reviving itself.
Abruptly, the giant legs dropped to their knees. Two of the crew were crushed. From the dripping, meaty hollow in the pelvis, a malformed fetal torso began to grow. Pink flesh with blue veins pulsed below the surface. A mouth tore itself open and a man's scream rang out. A bellow of being born anew. The torso raised its arms, flesh entwined with living steel, and twitched its many-toothed fingers.
Other chunks started showing signs of renewed vitality. All of Zinc was growing again, in a thousand different directions. Drybleed reacted with living souls, infusing them with the fear-thirsting unholy energy of the nightmare world's core essence. And it had found a boundlessly willing vessel in Zinc. Before, Jaziezal's other experiments had ended in failure for one simple reason: the subjects resisted. They felt horror at their changes and fought back to the last of their spirits. There had only been success when some of the test subjects were not changed so far that they lost their sense of self. They could concentrate on power gained instead of appearance lost. But Zinc was special. He had always been happy to go with the flow. Roll with the punches. Let whatever come what may. And he had always loved, loved monster movies.
A six-foot arm grew teeth at the end of its fingers and began chasing henchmen around the room on its centipedal metal feet. A stomach with a horrifying unfinished face lurched back and forth, regurgitating bile. Patches of blood became tiny jellylike canines that ran amok, skittering about and trying to bite ankles. Intestines expanded to the size of anacondas, coiling around and constricting anything they caught. Half a wrench erupted in patches of raw, bleeding flesh, stumbling around on its new organic limbs, clamping repeatedly at the air. An eyeball formed tiny little arms and legs and ran around looking at people.
Hair burst out in bristly patches all over the embryonic mass at the center of the fallen pants. The legs suddenly lurched. There was a horrific noise of meat sliding and bones popping as the pelvis tore itself in half. Each leg began to grow into a whole new individual. The chunk with the already-formed torso began shifting into a humongous feral werewolf, while a face burrowed out of the other's foot and its length grew several new knees to become an unspeakable caterpillar.
Junella could do nothing but watch, and so she did. She was perfectly aware that she was probably seconds away from the very worst death of her life. But she consoled herself with the fact that, hey, at least Sulilong was too.
Speaking of the qilin, he was standing as immobile as Junella. This mess would take weeks if not months to clean up. He didn't even want to imagine the cost. Part of him wanted to just push all this cartoon bullshit away and insist he was dreaming. But he couldn't escape reality so easily. This was actually happening. Some no-name mutt had burst like a party balloon and was now turning into the world's ugliest zoo. In his house. In his fucking home.
His iron hand reached blindly out to where the bat with the goggles was standing. The bat stepped forward, thinking he was going to receive a pat on the head. Instead, Sulilong pushed down and dug in, until the man's head turned into pulp, squirting through his fingers. The body fell all the way down the stairs and landed in a heap, still spasming. That hadn't accomplished a goddamned thing, but it made him feel better.
The qilin noticed that a certain arctic hare had never taken a step away from his place beside the throne, even though he'd had to slice a couple of body horrors in half already. "Hey, Nolly. You wanna, maybe... Let's... Let's just go, okay? Get the hell outta here?"
The hare looked up over his shoulder. "I have no objection to this."
Sulilong nodded. He kicked the dead bat aside. All the exits were currently blocked by anatomical behemoths and men getting ripped to ribbons, but he headed down the stairs nonetheless. His bodyguard could handle it.
Yellow eyes bubbled up out of the central werewolf's skull. Its fur was patterned like Zinc's, but it did not share his form. It was a caricature in every dimension, with a mouth as long as an alligator's, full of so many teeth it flayed its own lips whenever it closed its jaws. It was almost wholly organic, except for ribbons of steel that were woven in and out of its musculature. Its nostrils flared. It smelled Sulilong escaping.
The two giant jailers had been struggling heroically with minor Zinc-critters, but when they saw the biggest monster turn its head towards the boss, they understood their duty. In a kamikaze attack, they both rushed at the mammoth beast. Veins bulged in their arms. They grabbed on tight and squoze with all their strength.
The wereZinc plucked them off like burrs stuck on his pant legs. He looked at them, smiled at their terrified expressions, then rammed both their heads together so hard it impaled their skulls on their spines. Zinc giggled. He tossed the two bodies to either side where they landed like burlap sacks full of mashed potatoes.
It turned its cluster of egg-yolk eyes towards Junella.
'Well, shit, it's gonna eat me,' she thought. She was oddly calm about the idea. At least it beat being buried alive. 'Maybe I can shoot my way out of its guts before too much of me melts.'
But instead, the nightmarish being cocked its head. It seemed to almost have a thought. Then it made a fist as big as a fridge and raised it high in the air. Its shadow fell across the tiny, trapped skunk.
She braced herself.
There was a swoosh of air, then a moment of amazing excruciation as her entire body shattered. But the hardened foam did too.
And when she awoke a second later, clear-headed and in perfect shape, she stretched her legs and realized she was free. She looked down at her hand and flexed it, then back up at the creature.
Saliva trickled from its lips, through the coarse, broom-bristle fur of its chest.
It winked.
Junella's eyebrows went up. She'd been just about to get herself a new sword and gun to defend herself.
The beast jerked its head to the side.
Junella glanced in the same direction and saw Sulilong following nonchalantly behind Nollacero as the hare battled his way towards the hallway.
She looked back up at the towering canine. "Thanks, mutt. I owe ya one."
It chortled, drooled, nodded, and turned back to where the two jailers were beginning to wobble their way back to life again. It definitely wanted to play with them some more.
Nearby was a crater full of foam chunks, black blood, and vinyl shards. Junella bent down and fished her white scarf out of her previous body. Not very white anymore, but it was still important to her. She tossed a dripping end dramatically over her shoulder, filled her hands with weaponry, and made a beeline for Sulilong.
Zinc was everywhere. Little Zincs, midget Zincs, big Zincs, one holy-shit-what-the-fuck-sized Zinc, and they were all having the time of their life. The approximately 325 remixes of him all shared a pooled consciousness, though most didn't possess enough brain power for anything more than emotion and reaction. See someone running; chase; kill; eat; fun. They knew enough not to eat one another, and that was about it. Plus they all kept out of Junella's way as she navigated the thoroughly-ruined ballroom.
A gaggle of itsy-bitsy blood ones stampeded past her. She stepped in a few. From their high-pitched giggles, they didn't seem to mind. The unsquished remainder chased down some of the women to jump on their butts and pull on their hair. Elsewhere, a car-sized disembodied mouth was dragging itself across the floor by its tongue, lapping up blood and turning henchmen into ground round. Another Zinc was a torso with eighteen gangly legs growing out from all sides, and spindly toes that liked to pull people apart. Not all of the Zincs had grown from a specific body part though. Plenty had metastasized from random blobs of muscle, skin, or fat, into bizarrely-proportioned homunculi. Galumphing about nakedly, committing wanton violence. One of them, with a wrench for a head, kept chattering its 'teeth' and walking into walls.
Needless to say, the amount of screaming in the ballroom was incredible. Any remaining survivors were either running in circles or trampling one another to get to the exits. Feral Zincs blocked every passage, just barely on the same wavelength enough to herd the panicked fursons into tightly-packed groups for easy pouncing and devouring. Whenever anyone resurrected, it was only a matter of moments before their next grisly denouement. Arterial sprays bedecked the walls. Bones and brains littered the floor.
Zincs beat people into unconsciousness with their own chewed-off limbs. Zincs burrowed into people's abdomens and ate them alive. Zincs howled at the moon through the stained glass ceiling. Zincs swung from the chandeliers. Zincs found all the remaining party food and alcohol and consumed the lot in five minutes flat.
Junella took her time. Not only because the floor was so ankle-deep in spilled bodily fluids that it'd be really easy to trip and break her nose, but because Sulilong was stuck in traffic.
Backed up between the exit and a massive clot of monsters, he kept close by Nollacero, who was definitely earning his paycheck tonight. That nonexistent sword of his worked like a charm at stacking up dead Zincs. The fact they were all a bit too braindead to dodge helped. Sulilong kept close and merely supervised. Sometimes he'd glance nervously at the hallway door, or look around the ballroom as if imagining how many interior decorators it'd take to return everything to normal.
Of course, his 'normal' ended tonight. Junella's revolver felt good in her hand. Her blade was hungry. Her quarry was watching the end of his parasitic enterprise and didn't realize it.
She got tangled up for a second with a hunchbacked, five-legged Zinc that had gotten its head stuck inside the tortoise's shell. It was blinded, but had plenty to eat, so it was happy. It knocked Junella on her butt, and in the few moments it took to get back on her feet and flick guts off her fingers, the situation with Sulilong changed.
He must have gotten tired of waiting. While Nollacero was still slicing and dicing, the bossman was showing off the strength of that tin body of his by picking up Zincs and literally throwing them out of his way. With both of them working to clear a path, they were at the exit in no time.
Junella took off running. 'I cannot, will not, let him get away. Who knows how many secret passageways he's got outta here? Maybe even a panic room he can hole up in and lock me out of. Fuck that.' The skunk brought all her speed and agility to bear crossing the remaining few hundred feet between them. She vaulted-one handed over a pair of Zincs eating opposite halves of the same henchman. She bullseyed a few slow-looking ones with her revolver, muttering apologies under her breath. Her feet skipped and slid on a patch of the blood munchkins, but she managed to twirl and keep her balance.
The hare and qilin were almost at the door. Junella fired at Sulilong's back. It only put a hole in his suit, not even denting his armored body, but it made him aware of her presence.
He looked back with a glare of supreme irritation. "Nollacero, do your job!!" he brayed.
The hare's ears perked. He'd been focused on dislodging the remaining pair of Siamese Zincs from the doorway. He turned to see what had upset his employer, and his eyes nearly turned red when he caught sight of Junella. A no-look behind the back swing of his hilt sent two canine heads bouncing off the floor. The way ahead was clear. Nollacero motioned for Sulilong to run past, then followed behind, running backwards, glaring eyes locked once again on the skunk that just wouldn't learn.
Junella cleared the dead mutant Zinc with an easy leap. She was smiling now. It was nice to see such perfect hatred on the stuck-up bunny's face. She was looking forward to their rematch.
A handful of Zincs were chasing down escapees in the hallways, but most remained in the ballroom. The few exceptions were mere speedbumps for Sulilong and Nollacero. The qilin didn't mind taking the lead, and smashing the gargoyle canines against the walls to dispatch them. He wanted Nollacero focused on the skunk. Basic strategy: if a hundred people are all trying to kill you, let your best man handle the smart one.
Junella followed their breadcrumb trail of bodies for a short way down the hall behind the ballroom. She came to a wooden door that had been literally bashed off its hinges by someone too impatient to unlock it. Beyond was a warmly lit golden hallway with a high-arched ceiling and burgundy carpet. 'Gotta be his private quarters,' she thought. 'Leave the ugly parts for the help to live in.' She crossed the splintered wood and followed the bloody footprints.
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