Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
PART 5 5
George was carrying everyone along at a lively clop. While having wheels delighted him, their speed and novelty couldn't top two pairs of fine, strong legs. The terrain was enjoyable too. The powder beneath his hooves felt like walking on a soft mattress.
Ash covered everything out here. Deep drifts blanketed every bush and hill in sight. A forest's cloak of cinders. From ground level, Toby could see that the dead trees increased in number further ahead. And something was wrong with them too. Though nothing he could puzzle out without getting a closer look. Hopefully he wouldn't have to. Ugly grey bushes also appeared here and there. Pointy little things. And amongst them darted tiny brown squishy creatures that left stains wherever their tails dragged. They looked more disgusting than dangerous.
The reason Toby could see anything at all was due to Junella's forethought. She'd bought four pairs of anti-ash eyewear in Rippingbean & Woofingbutter's, designed specifically for conditions in Marasmus. They looked exactly like high school shop goggles, and oddly enough, smelt vaguely of peach soda. Toby watched the unsettling scenery pass by with cheek propped on open palm and arm resting on doorframe. Despite everyone's best efforts, the ash was doing its best to coat everything in the interior as thoroughly as the exterior. They'd be sweeping and vacuuming for hours once they were past this place.
Junella swiveled her seat sideways. "Gotta admit Toby, that was some quick thinking."
His mind had been wandering. "Huh? Which part?"
"Going back for Red."
"Oh right! Yes, thank you."
"You saved a lot of people from a lot of misery. Me and Zinc, we probably would've left them," she admitted quietly. "Rescue just wouldn't have occurred to us."
"Might've to me," Zinc grunted.
The rustbeast was not exactly a sprinter, so catching up had been the easy part. Getting his attention without getting flattened had been a little harder. Thankfully, Piffle had spotted Toby's exit and followed. Between the two of them they managed to get Red to halt and listen. The scarlet leviathan was completely fine with the idea of delivering live cargo, hoping that maybe this would spread word among smallones that he was no monster. He agreed to visit Xerostomia another day, and instead take the rescuees onward to the city of Rhinolith. Happily satisfied, Toby and Piffle returned to find the others trying to calm the uncalmable. Many of the vending machine victims had been gone from civilization so long, spoken language was not getting through to them. And when a gargantuan red behemoth appeared, George had to literally corral them like cattle. Gradually though, enough of the erstwhile-snackfoods got the message that Red was here to carry them someplace safe. Plenty of them were still catatonic, but a few returned to reality just enough to help drag others along. Red offered his leg for them to walk up onto, then in batches, transferred them to his back. Piffle was flitting around his head, hugging and kissing him the entire time for his generosity. When all were aboard, the fellowship of the Fearsleigher said a second goodbye and watched their rusty friend gallumph off into the trees.
Toby had surprised himself with how much he'd pitched in. He'd counted heads, spoke persuasively to the befuddled, and even led them up Red's leg-ramp. The feeling of having something to do buoyed his mood to a surprising degree.
The land outside was mostly flat, but with occasional rocky hills that looked like stacks of giant books. Shale, maybe. These mini-mountains were like a giant toddler's attempts at building pyramids. The travelers encountered more and more of them as they drove deeper into the woods.
The trees were growing more densely together too. Bloated trunks with wrinkled obsidian skin, black as night and puffy like bathtub-soaked fingerprints. Their branches rose heavenward, cross-hatching the sky. Toby had noticed sap leaking from cracks in the bark. A dark color, like red wine.
The mood in the car was a soporific fog. Zinc hated that. From the pile he'd retrieved from the hood, he snatched up the bag of snacks. He popped a whole stick of bloodbacon in his mouth and chewed noisily. "Any of us gonna break this bleak routine? Ain't no one's funeral, for chrissakes."
"I just can't think of anything to say," Toby said. "Um... how big is Marasmus? And what are we in for?"
Good, a chance to play tour guide again. Zinc gulped down the salty lump and licked his lips. "Same size as anyplace else around here. And by that I mean, it's as big as you think it's gonna be. Places like this, with no one around to keep 'em under observation, they're like lungs. Expand and contract, expand and contract..." He illustrated by moving his wrenchhands. "At least it's solid ground instead of freeway 'n rope bridges. Numero uno problemo though, it's one of the highest concentrations of nightmares anywhere. Any creeps you saw runnin' around Red's tootsies? Those. Lots of 'em. Though, s'long as we stay in the car, we oughtta be be fine." He mimed a rifle. "Some people come out here to hunt. Over in Rhinolith, they catch critters and drag 'em off for pit battles."
"Like dog fighting?" Toby said, unable to hide a bit of sympathy.
"More like gladiators. Guys hop in the ring against some big ugliness with a thousand teeth. Armed only with bare hands and raw nerve. It's quite a sight to see. And if you've got good betting instincts, you can make a fuckin' fortune."
That sounded a bit too he-man chest-thumping for Piffle.
Zinc tried to list all the local wildlife. "There's cactusyotes 'n terrorbunnies like back in Lumbago. Thankfully nix on biteranodons: no place to roost and the ash makes 'em choke. Hypenas though. Strong as an ox, crazy as a shithouse rat, but real easy to distract. And you've probably seen plenty of poopsquirrels already. Not bitey, but watch your step and check your shoes. I've also come across occasional bonecuddies like George, plus there's ones that are kinda the same but like with elk horns. Those can run you off the road. Umm... am I forgetting any? Oh, right! Snakes! Lotsa those. And them godawful scorpions with the little poison feet and-"
At that exact moment, the world turned violently upside down.
None of them had seen or heard it coming, but as soon as they passed beneath one of the larger rock formations, something very large had pounced on them. It slammed into the Fearsleigher with the force of a freight train, crashing the vehicle end over end. George and his passengers tumbled like sheets in a dryer. Bones snapped. Noses bled. Equipment scattered everywhere.
It all happened too quickly for any of them to process. Prevention had definitely been impossible. But they'd caught a lucky break nonetheless. Before the spinning stopped, the travelers' ears were assaulted with a scream of outraged pain so loud it nearly burst their tympanic membranes. Whatever had tacked the car, it hadn't factored in the skate blades. As the beast rolled with its prey, the curved metal had torn its stomach open in two long red smiles.
The Fearsleigher came to a shuddering crash that sent up a tidal wave of cinders. The car was flat on its lefthand side with all the thrice-repaired windows shattered yet again.
The crash's echo ricocheted through the trees until dissolving. The entire forest was stunned silent, as if every inhabitant were holding their breath.
In the car, there was movement. Followed by gasps and grunts of inarticulate agony.
Toby felt like his insides were drowning. His mouth gulped air like a drunkard gulps booze, but it didn't seem to do him any good. His eyes were shocked wide open. His face was wet with hot, sticky liquid. Something was squirming beneath him. He stared at the door that had magically become the ceiling. Moving so much as an eyelid hurt.
His brain was like a tiny little man running around in a room on fire. He tried to piece together what had happened. Something had flipped the car. He had been in a car accident. That was why everything hurt. The reason he was gasping like a fish was most likely a collapsed lung. He found himself wishing Junella would put a bullet through him as soon as possible.
Junella was currently incapacitated. One of Zinc's wrenches had gone through her sternum. Zinc fared no better: his neck was as bent as an elbow.
Something squirmed again, Toby noticed. Rotating his eyes to see what might be causing it, there was something pink and red and shapeless underneath him. He did not want his head to make sense of what it was seeing.
George had a shattered pelvis, but that hardly merited attention. He was diverted by the sight of the squirming, mewling construct lying where it had landed after its pyrrhic victory. It was gigantic. Nowhere near as large as Red, but still sizable enough to make George recoil. Its momentum had sent it crashing through four or five trees; their exposed roots wiggled and dripped jellylike blood. The creature was curled up on its side like a pillbug, nursing its tummywounds and screaming.
"Please wake up soon, my dear friends. We may have only a short time before it attacks again," George whispered.
Junella snapped to awareness just long enough to realize she was still impaled. A few fading seconds let her process the fact that, until Zinc moved his goddamn carcass off of her, she was doomed to keep dying repeatedly. That kind of thing pissed her off.
Zinc's eyes finally did pop open after his neck uncricked. He took a gasp of air. Saw his partner smeared all over his appendage. Her irritated glare met his own just as she died again. He yanked his wrench out with a sound like a boot coming unstuck from mud. "Sorry, partner!" he yelped when she resurrected again.
"No time for that. Kill those two quick," she hissed, jerking a thumb to the backseat. Not wasting a second more, she contorted herself around to look through the remains of the front windshield.
A red veil was pulling itself over Toby's right eye, dimming the vision like putting it to bed. The pain was icicle fingers digging into his marrow. But then above him an angel with metal arms appeared.
"Icksville. You need this bad, kemosabe."
Zinc clamped his wrench down on Toby's head, squashing it like a grape.
Blackness, then resetting.
Toby came awake. Pain gone, but still haunting him in echoes. Zinc was now busy bashing in Piffle's skull too. Toby looked away, grimacing, and tried to find Doll. He spotted her squashed but whole on the door/floor nearby, and swept her into a desperate hug, more for his own sake than hers. "What the hell hit us!?" he gasped.
"It's big and it's still out there," Junella husked from the front. Aside from her speaking-hand, her muscles were motionless, as if observation alone could pin the beast in place. "Zinc, when you were listing off critters, you forgot to mention convorines."
At the sound of that word, his head snapped around. "You're kidding," he said with deadpan dread.
"Nothing else looks like what I'm looking at right now."
Zinc looked utterly deflated. "Fffffffuck. They usually don't hunt through here. Maybe Gilla's been antagonizing 'em lately."
"All I know is, that thing's delirious with pain right now, focused on its stomach and not us. We got lucky. How're we gonna take advantage of that luck?"
"I am biting through my ropes right now, Madam Brox," came George's hushed voice. "Though I am injured and will require a coup de grâce before I am back in action."
Junella's mind whizzed. A strategy map unfurled before her and she felt a dozen copies of herself swarm around it, tracing every possible path. First priority was the car. They could die a million times and be fine, but if that thing out there pawed the car to pieces trying to get at them, they'd have no ride home. Ergo, get outside and draw it away. Secondly, this thing could resurrect, same as them. Lesser nightmares could be outrun when they did that. She did not want to take chances with this chunky cocksucker. Ergo, aim to wound, not kill. Thirdly, convorines were just about the worst motherfuckers to get in your way. Like a tank with a cobra's reflexes. This would take skill. Ergo, she and Zinc and George should deal damage, Miss Pink should get out there and work her magic annoying it to insanity, and the client should stay with the ship along with that creepy-ass toy.
She relayed these orders briskly. "Piffle, you're on bait duty again. Zinc, George, and I will circle around and hit it with anything we can. We go for the legs. Our goal is crippling it. And Toby?"
His ears perked up.
"Kill George. Then stay here with your head down."
While half of him was relieved, another part felt somehow insulted. "Oh."
She could hear that little whinge of disappointment. "Protect Doll," she ad-libbed.
"Okay," he nodded. At least that felt slightly more useful. He looked at Doll. Her posture gave off an 'I can take care of myself' vibe.
Still keeping her eyes glued on the wounded beast ahead, Junella reached back to wrap her hand around her cutlass. It felt familiar, reliable. The grip was worn down over years of use to fit snugly into her grooves like a zipper. The weight and balance of the curved, hungry blade was soothing. She began crawling slowly forward, out into the drifts of ash and loose soil beside the car. If she was quick, she could get in some tendon slashes before it even knew she was there. And she was always quick.
But then she stopped, and she froze.
The trees were rattling nearby. This close to the ground, she could feel the weight of new footsteps.
A second nightmare emerged from the trees.
This is what Junella Brox saw:
Start with a semi truck. An eighteen-wheeler. From the top half, there is not much difference from any other you'd spot trundling along your local highways. Same snubnose cab with wind scoop and twin shining smokestacks. Same boxy white trailer in back, high and long, sprinkled with rivets and reflectors. From the windshield down is where things get interesting. For every axle, substitute a pair of densely-muscled mustelid legs. Each one bristled with brown fur coarse as wire; the front legs having the longest reach and claws. Finally we come to the face. Four amber eyes in place of headlights. A wide, mottled nose where the hood ornament might be. Just above the bumper stretched a mouth nearly the entire circumference of the cab, filled to capacity with drool-slickened aluminum teeth. The tongue inside was silver, like the animated ambulances. The two breeds were distant kin in fact, but nowhere comparable in terms of size or strength. The approaching convorine was indistinguishable from the one on the ground, but for the painted stripes that ran along their trailers and down each pair of legs: one in silver, one in gold.
She'd hoped that, this far from its usual territory, their attacker was a lost stray. But no. Whether mates, siblings, best buddies, or whatever, these particular monsters were almost always encountered two-by-two. This crucial information had been hovering at the back of her mind, held back by a desperate hope the pattern wouldn't hold true here. Despair clutched Junella's heart like a skeletal fist.
She mentally slapped herself. 'No. Two just means more blood to spill.' This thought warmed her core.
Still, there was no preparing for what the second convorine did then.
It walked over to its wounded twin, sniffing and rumbling with its chrome lips pulled back, gleaming teeth exposed. Then it raised its front paw as high as it could: a wide, flat foot like a polar bear's, with treaded soles and claws of dirty iron. With no hesitation or cry, it brought the paw down upon the other's head, cleaving it into crumpled, bloody shreds.
Junella was dumbstruck. Was this some kind of territorial thing? Had she just witnessed the passing of the torch from one alpha to the next?
Or... no. No. That was not POSSIBLE.
The standing convorine looked down impatiently at the remains of its twin. Then the metal and meat began to stir. The standing one grunted approvingly. Healed of its injuries, the dead one now returned to life and rose.
Transfixed, her open jaw trembled. 'I cannot be seeing this. Holy Fucking Jiminy Cricket Christ, how could any construct know to do that? How could any of them get that smart!?'
Now back to full vigor, the renewed convorine stood up on all its many legs. It faced nose to nose with its ally. They barked guttural sounds at one another, then in unison, tipped their heads to the sky and roared.
Junella watched these two unholy fusions of beast and transportation rear up on their endless legs to howl in each other's faces. Oily spittle flecked their chins. Their trailers creaked as the metal bent like skin. This was a sight that would have rendered most people helpless with babbling terror. But a switch in Junella's brain flipped. She felt her limiters shut down, her common sense and reason flicker out. She was tired of shit like this. Dead tired. All she wanted was to get herself and her client from point A to point B, and this shithole of a world kept throwing things like this at her.
Without a glance back to her companions, she leapt to her feet and ran headlong at the beasts. Both hands on her sword hilt. Her mouth twisted wide in a soundless screech.
The convorines whipped their heads around at the sound of footsteps. Their growling mouths seemed to fill half their heads. The golden one, which had arrived secondly to resurrect its fallen twin, shoved the silver one aside in its zeal to meet this bite-sized running meat soonest.
Junella's orange eyes focused like lasers. She felt every tissue and sinew in her body pulse with heat. Fury. These fucking things had the gall to stand in her way. There would be punishment for that.
The gap between the skunk and truck closed until they were mere feet apart. The gold convorine lifted itself up on its back legs, front paws raised to swat and crush, teeth bared to rip and chew.
Junella had no thoughts in her mind. She was an engine of instinct. Her legs pushed her forward until her blood told them exactly when to stop and plant herself. She raised her cutlass to shoulder height, blade inverted and outward, and braced for impact.
The convorines may have been smart enough to figure out kill-to-revive, but their movements were still as predictable as any other construct. So even as she felt the monster's upper teeth spear into her abdomen and cleave through, Junella felt no pain. Only satisfaction at the fact that the beast's own momentum had driven her sword straight through its nose.
The beast chomped down, bisecting the skunk, then snapped its head back as searing agony pierced its face. Twisting like a centipede, it thrashed sideways and slapped at the place where the stinger was lodged in its nose. This only succeeded in knocking the cutlass sideways through its sensitive mucus membranes, making it howl even louder.
Junella backed away on her hands, ichor gushing from her lower half like cream from a candy egg. Her eyes and her grin were blazing. "You don't know who you're foolin' with! I am not your average prey! I am Junella Fucking Brox!! AND I! AM! A FURNACE!!!"
She put her fist to the side of her head and mindfucked a new cutlass into it. Her mad laugh cut off as a blade sprung into existence through the middle of her brain.
A second later, Junella appeared on her feet standing over the frozen rictus smile of her former body. She wrenched her cutlass out of its head and licked the blade from hilt to tip.
"COME ON!!!"
***
Rewinding the action back a few seconds, everyone in and around the Fearsleigher nearly lost their marbles when Junella ran out into the open. If the plan she'd laid out was still the same, they were implementing it a lot more suddenly than expected.
Zinc stood up inside the front compartment and glanced to Piffle, indicating the sideways door above her: 'pop the hatch'. Piff gestured for Toby to jump into her arms, and the mouse stood in her paws to open the door. Succeeding, he hopped back down to let her pass. She thanked him with a quick cheek-nuzzle, then used her wings to propel her up and out, wincing as the sensitive tips scraped the inside of the car.
Zinc squeezed past into the backseat area. He clapped Toby on the arm. "Sorry if it feels like we're dumping you here, but..." He hesitated to admit it. "I don't even know if I can handle this mess."
Toby appreciated that Zinc had taken the time to make him feel better, even if they were seconds he probably shouldn't have spared. Still, Toby could not stop the flush of hot embarrassment in his cheeks. "I understand," he replied simply.
Wincing, Zinc nodded. "Keep the car safe, eh?" He jumped towards the open door and hauled himself out like doing the iron cross. He looked to Piffle, then jerked his head towards the convorines. He clanked his wrenches twice, then vaulted off the car. Piffle buzzed after him.
As soon as they were out of the way, Toby turned around to check that Doll was allright. She pointed to the backseat, made a gesture like opening it and going inside. "Good idea." Either she'd hunker down in the storage space or fetch weapons for them. Both were good ideas. While Doll did that, Toby crawled over the driver's seat to slither out the front window. Cubes of shattered glass nipped at his palms.
Toby took one look at George and whimpered in sympathy. The stallion had done an amazing job of curving his top half around to chew through his ropes. His bottom half had been no help, since his pelvis was cracked straight down the middle. George's hind legs hung uselessly like two broken broomsticks.
He growled and gnashed through another rope around his ribs. "Assistance please," he asked politely of his master.
"Absolutely." Toby knelt in the ash and placed his palm on George's forehead. "Hope this doesn't hurt."
POW
The skull caved in like a hollow gourd, scattering shrapnel fragments in all directions. For a fleeting instant, Toby saw inside George's cranium. There was something shining there, multicolored and convulsing like a separate living thing. It flashed out of existence like a soap bubble the instant it touched air, but Toby was sure this was the source of George's inner light.
Moments later, the remaining bones shot up as if pulled by a junkyard crane's magnet, reforming into a whole and ready nightmare stallion.
"Many thanks, Sire Toby!" he crowed. With a mighty yank, he broke the last ropes restraining him, then ran off to join the others in teaching manners to the savages.
Toby rolled out of the way as George's hooves thundered past. He spun around to watch him go. By now the battle was really raging.
Toby looked down at the hammer in his hand. Strong, but small. What could he hope to do with it against two gargantuan nightmares? He wanted to help his friends, but a coldly sensible voice told him that they were pros, while he didn't even qualify as a rookie. Any help he tried to offer would most likely hinder. Better to stay with the car as he was told. He should have been overwhelmed with relief to be given an assignment like that.
Instead... why did it feel so awful?
***
Junella was not so foolhardy as to think she could defeat these monsters with one jab. It was only to set the tone. To give them a taste. She stood in the cinders up to her ankles, dripping with her own blood, clutching sword and gun. Staring down the onrushing silver convorine.
Maddened, howling. It was outraged that this tiny thing had hurt its twin. It stampeded towards her.
'Did I offend you?' she thought with glee.
It leapt. The same clumsy pounce the first one had tried. Instead of going for the nose this time, Junella dropped down, rolling sideways, making sure her blade was face up like a shark's fin. A massive foot crashed down upon her. She felt her vinyl crack in a few places, but the convorine came off worse. It yanked its paw away in a gush of motor oil blood, its palm deeply slashed.
'I know all your soft spots, tubby.' Junella grinned a second longer, until she realized it wasn't about to run off squealing. It gave her a glare of rage, then swung its other forepaw around to swat her. She cringed in anticipation of the blow.
Then her face lit up like Christmas when a flash of steel streaked across the sky and two heavy wrenches sunk into the convorine's raised arm.
Zinc didn't have time for witticisms. "YAAAAGH!!!"
The beast screamed even louder.
Meanwhile, the golden one had finally succeeded in dislodging the cutlass from its snout. It was furious. It tried to scent its prey, but the stink of its own blood overlaid everything. And now there were new smells. Metal and bone and... what?
Piffle fell out of the air, rolling into an elbow drop, and landed on its windshield. Or rather, through.
Both of them shrieked. The glass shattered and the hamsterfly landed ungracefully inside the beast's cab. She thrashed around in confusion and disgust. She'd thought that breaking its windshield might blind or confuse it. What she hadn't counted on was what she'd find inside. It was everything you'd normally see inside a truck's interior, but all sculpted out of bare, throbbing flesh. Seats, sun shades, even the steering wheel and shift levers. Everything pulsed with the beast's heartbeat, slick with secretions. Piffle yowled in revulsion and kicked her feet, reaching out for anything to hold onto, but it was like trying to get a solid grip on a plateful of gravy.
The golden convorine bellowed and blew its air horns. Feeling Piffle inside its cab was like having a roach fly up your ear hole. The nightmare flung itself sideways in a roll, pawing at its head, frantically trying to get the invading insect out.
Piffle screamed and choked on a mouthful of cranium fluids. She went spinning upside down, banging hard onto the dash and then the ceiling. Suddenly the cabspace was full of flying claws, tearing at her outfit, ripping her skin. She was blind with panic. Then she felt herself flying. The convorine had hooked a claw into her blouse and flung her out of its cab like a booger. Piffle sailed thirty feet and smashed stomach-first against a tree trunk.
The golden convorine had only a few seconds to scratch around inside its head, trying to expunge the feeling of the tiny creature wallowing around in there. Then an even worse sensation struck its fifth right leg like a lightning bolt.
Gripping his wrenches like giving himself a handshake, Zinc had jumped high and swung down, bashing the bastard's hip in a hammer strike. His doorknockers were twin chopper rotors, slicing through flesh and metal.
The convorine whipped around, lithe as a rattlesnake. Something had given it a hairline fracture and dug two deep clawmarks through its flank. A massive paw swung around to swat the interfering vermin away.
Zinc was launched airborne like Piffle had been. The wind was knocked out of him, but not much worse. He felt the impact, rolled with it, then got his feet under him and stood up. But when he tried to open his eyes, he couldn't. He reached up to feel his face. Neither the ash-goggles or his eyeballs were there. This was bad.
Meanwhile, Junella was running laps around the silver convorine. It tried to follow her, back arched, jaws snapping, saliva splashing, but it was having about as much success as a puppy chasing its tail. The skunk was high as a kite on her own lust for bloodshed. Whenever she could, she aimed her revolver behind her and fired off a few shots. She knew they couldn't cause much damage, but the same held true for constructs as anyone else: get your enemy mad enough and they'll start making stupid mistakes.
Junella was immune to this tendency. Some people conquered it by calming all inner emotion, remaining tranquil as a frozen pond during battle. That was not her style. Hers was to go all the way past anger to an even purer form of fury. A steady, focused core with a searing temper coiled around it. Not simply running amok like a berserker, but grabbing hold of that uncontrollable rage and controlling it anyway through sheer strength of mind. It was the power of determination. Of believing with unshakable faith that you are the center point on which the universe turns, and your will alone decides all outcomes in the cosmos.
Junella ran in circles, ignoring her eyes, putting all her attention behind her. Timing her foe's rhythm. Sensing when it was closest. And then, giving it what it wanted.
The convorine whirled around to make yet another attempt at chomping the skunk, and was startled when the tiny creature suddenly stopped and leapt backwards right into its waiting mouth.
Junella lashed out with her tail, filling the beast's gums with razor-sharp record shards. And at the same time, pumping out a toxic cocktail from her scent glands.
Skunk spray is far from just foul-smelling. It burns. It irritates soft tissues. And not only did the convorine have a mouthful of the stuff, but the fumes were already sinking their putrid fingers into its nose and eyes. Nausea hit instantly. The beast reared back, slapping at its face, gagging out strangled cries. It spat and spat and couldn't make the taste go away. It shuffled backwards, knocking trees out of the ground, trying to escape the musk.
Junella was back on her feet. Her tail had been bitten off entirely, along with a sizable chunk of her rump, but her giddy joy blocked all pain. "Yum yum yum!" she mocked. But she didn't rest on victory. A blinded opponent is an easy target. Limping forward as fast as she could bear, she ran alongside the convorine, slashing repeatedly with her sword. Some hits were tendon-severing gashes, others just skin-deep, but all her swings connected. And she was smart enough to get her ass (what was left of it), out of the way as the enraged monster slapped at the place it thought she was, trying to crush her.
Meanwhile, Piffle was just coming to her senses. She was completely out of breath and wondering who'd come off worse in her tangle with the convorine's cab. Her whole tummy felt like one big bruise. Though thankfully, nothing was broken. She got her hands underneath her to push up and go help Zinc.
"AIIGH!!" Something struck her from behind. A pack of daggers in her back.
She rolled, trying to get away, but the horrible things stayed lodged where they were. To her horror, she realized it was the tree she had fallen against. The branches were closing in on her. Creaking, lurching. Piffle felt a horrible slurping sensation and realized the tips were actually syringes. The tree was drinking her like a mosquito!
Piffle squealed and did her best to roll back and forth. She realized now that the bark did not just look like skin, it was skin. Calloused flesh as black as engine grease. Where the vampiric tree held her down, she could feel her blood pumping in its veins. Piffle beat her wings. She kicked her legs. She punched and pulled.
Then a pair of power tools joined her fight.
Zinc was blind but he could still hear just fine. Piffle's cries were easy to follow. He stumbled across the ashy ground towards her, and the instant he felt something that he knew wasn't her, he flung his wrenches around in a frenzy. He clamped his jaws on anything solid and yanked as hard as he could. Soon hot blood was gushing across his face and chest, and he took that as a good sign. "Fuckin' trees!!" he snarled.
The tree was an especially simpleminded construct, and when it sensed fresh blood, it jumped at the chance to slurp it up, not realizing it was splashing out of its own branches.
A wrenchhand reached down to help Piffle up and she grasped it gratefully. They both skedaddled away from the bleeding tree. "Just in the nick of time, Zinky!"
"Just doin' my job, ma'am," he drawled. "By the by, seen my eyes anywhere?"
"I haven't, but I'll look!" She worried it'd be like spotting a needle in a haystack, but as she gave the battlefield a once-over, she gasped at her good luck. A few yards to her left was an ash pile with three holes, perfectly corresponding to two small spheres and a pair of goggles. She slid for home plate.
"Piffle! Where'd you go!?"
She dug through the ashes till her fingers met two little round squishy things. "Found 'em!" She spat on them to clean them off, then shined them on her sleeve. A moment later she was popping them back into place.
Zinc blinked tin eyelids. "Sweet job, sister! 'Cept you got the left one in the right socket and vice versa."
"Nobody's perfect," she said, juggling them back around. She handed him the goggles too. Then her antennae twitched and her head turned. She drew in breath to scream a warning, but it turned out she didn't need to.
George intercepted the pouncing golden convorine mid-leap.
The truck-construct had heard the chatter of the two prey nearby. For a moment it thought the trees had robbed it of its meal, but then it spotted them standing out in the open. Easy meat! It tensed its back legs, then broke into a sprint.
At the apex of its jump, two charred hooves slammed into it with the force of a tornado. Its driver's side door crumpled inward like a paper cup.
"They are under MY protection!" George scolded.
The convorine swung around and snarled at him, dizzy from pain and confusion. It had no reference for what its senses were telling it. It knew bonecuddies, yes. It killed them sometimes, on instinct, when souls were not around. But none were this color. None made the same chatter as the prey. And none of them ever, ever stood guard over prey.
George bravely placed himself between the semi-beast and his companions. He glared a warning at it, stamping the ground with his hoof.
The convorine's mind was dim. Sharper than many other constructs, but still running on nothing more than essential programming. And within that programming, it could feel a primal loathing towards this subversion of the natural order standing before it. It leapt at George, tooth and claw bared.
The stallion plunged forward, head down, and spewed forth a churning plume of flame.
There was no time to stop its attack. The convorine fell upon the fireball and screamed so loud the trees shook.
George reacted purely on instinct. The humongous beast was upon him, biting down. His flames scorched its tongue and palate, but those terrible teeth pierced his chest and tore away a half-dozen ribs. The convorine slapped and swatted with as many legs as it could, trying to put the fire out. George made jackhammers of his legs, kicking out at anything solid. He heard and felt bonebreaks, but plenty of them were his own.
"Let go of him!!" Zinc yelled. "He's under our protection too!" He swung hard at the convorine, splintering one of its femurs, then bringing around the other wrench to clamp down on its flesh in a tight vice grip.
The beast howled and flung Zinc away with all its strength. Bad move, as a ragged chunk of its own hide went with him.
Zinc flew backwards an impressive distance and shattered his tail when he landed. It hurt like a motherfucker, but through the pain he saw a patch of fur in his clutch. "Hey hey! A coonskin cap for Christmas!"
Piffle was so upset at what this big meanie had done to George and Zinc that she zipped into the air and did a loop-de-loop, concluding with a two-hand punch into its front shoulder.
This merely annoyed the convorine.
"Oh shoot!" she cried out.
It flung George's crumpled remains away and hurled itself directly towards Piffle. No finesse, no claws, it meant to simply squash the pest by slamming its full weight down on top of her.
Piffle scrambled backwards as she watched a tidal wave of flesh and metal crashing towards her. The thing's underside was that of any normal semi-truck, but with a carpet of tawny fur overlaid. She flashed upon a memory. These things had sensitive stomachs.
The golden convorine fell like a collapsing building. And it felt triumph for a moment as it belly-flopped down in the ashy dirt and felt an exoskeleton crunch beneath it.
But a split-second later it felt something far different from triumph.
POW
Its headlight eyes shot wide. Blood gurgled from its throat and sprayed onto the ground. It rolled over in breathtaking excruciation. A giant golden fork had speared right through its driveshaft.
Piffle gasped, astounded she was still alive. Her exoskeleton probably looked like Humpty Dumpty, but it hadn't failed to protect her vitals. And she'd have to remember to thank Toby later. His jackhammer trick had given her the idea. She thought she might call it the Forkaboom.
The golden convorine arched its back, yowling and spitting up blood, desperate to dislodge the horrible shiny thing skewering its underbelly. Sixteen pairs of legs tried to smack the fork away, but a pair of metal hands got to it first.
Zinc ran straight up the thing's crotch and clamped down on the fork's handle. "Excalibur!!" he shouted as he kicked out with his legs. His grip held and the fork came loose. Motor oil plumed from four round fountains in the convorine's chest.
Zinc rolled with his landing, then bounced to his feet, reflexively swinging the fork all around in case the convorine tried to retaliate. Nope. It was squirming sideways, screeching like hell and trying to get as far away as possible.
Dripping head to toe in black blood, Zinc turned to Piffle. "Think ya dropped this."
She slammed into him in a hug. "Thanks for getting it back! We make such a swell team, don't we?"
"You betcher fur."
From over their shoulders came a plaintive shout. "Assistance, please!"
They turned and saw George looking like a tangled-up extension cord.
"Oh Georgie, I'm comin'!" Piffle called out as she ran over with her fork to compassionately decapitate him.
Meanwhile, the silver convorine was squealing with rage and agony as it tried to get to its feet. Its right side was fine, but that horrible black stinkthing had carved up its left legs pretty badly. Some were nicked, some were sliced, some were rendered utterly useless. It bared every last one of its teeth in a scream as it stood up fully. It could no longer run, but it could still go after the rotten little insect that had done this. It could still strike and swat and chew.
Junella was disappointed it wouldn't stay down, but not surprised. This chromed-out cocksucker was proving to be even more durable than she'd feared. Backing up, eyes frozen to the beast, she watched it take a wincing step forward, then draw strength enough from its pain to charge at her.
Junella turned and ran, limping too. They had both hobbled each other. Junella swung in circles, knocking away branches that tried to take a taste of her. She needed enough distance between her and the creature to plan.
If she could get to its back end, she could finish it off. But it would do everything possible to prevent that. It was agile. It moved like a snake. No matter what direction she came at it from, it would lash itself around like a whip to block her path with a wall of silver teeth.
Okay, if around was out, then how about over?
She grinned. Worth a try.
Her ears twitched, keeping track of its location. Looking ahead, she searched for a large enough ash pile. To her left. That one was good.
The silver convorine gurgled in delight when its prey tripped and went sprawling facefirst in ash. It didn't even care that this insect tasted terrible. It would eat it anyway for the pure satisfaction of feeling it struggle and die slowly in its fuel-injected stomach acids.
The fall was intentional, to give the enemy false confidence. The ash was plenty soft enough for her pratfall and her goggles kept her eyes clear. Junella spun herself around, then sprang into a runner's crouch. Adrenaline was numbing the pain all these acrobatics were causing her injured flank, but she knew that couldn't last forever. And she had precious seconds anyway before the convorine's front paws would snatch her up and mash her into its dripping jaws.
Reflections danced in the gleam of the convorine's aluminum teeth. Was the prey frozen in fear? All the better!
'I can fly if I want to,' Junella told herself. Her legs were the tensed timbers of a catapult.
The silver convorine pounced. Pain ripped along its left side, but it would all be worth it once the prey was dead.
Junella kept her eyes open, willing the world to slow down for her. She saw every detail. The swirling ash. The dirt stuck in its paw treads. The chromed throat waiting to welcome her in.
She jumped.
For the flash of an instant, she was weightless. There was no beast below her, just a step ladder. As its nose passed below, her foot came down and touched it. Kicked off. Her other leg swam forward. Touched windshield glass. Kicked off. Her breath was frozen in her throat and her nerves sparkled with electricity.
The convorine's jaws slammed shut like a steel gate, closing on nothing but cinders. Its whole cab shuddered as the beast crashed into the ground, paws flailing, chin scraping dirt. And worst of all, it could feel the prey's footsteps running straight up its face. It tried to buck the awful little insect off, toss it in the air to be caught in its mouth.
But this only helped Junella. Instead of being launched upwards, she shot forwards.
The length of the trailer seemed to stretch out in front of her. A mile. A hundred miles. Sure, she was suspended in thin air above a few thousand pounds of pure hatred, but that was nothing to get all worked up about. She was Junella Fucking Brox. She hit the beast's back running.
As a last ditch effort, the silver convorine tensed its right legs and kicked out hard. Twisting its body. Trying to shake her off sideways.
Junella kept running. When the terrain beneath her changed, she shifted her weight and followed. The convorine's trailer flipped, its side becoming its top, and Junella kept right on like a championship log roller.
Before she knew it, she was at the edge. She hopped gracefully off, spinning her torso mid-fall, filling her hand with the weight of her revolver.
As soon as her eyes saw the latch on the trailer doors, she sent six bullets at it.
The beast bellowed. Its back arched in submissive agony as its doors fell open.
Junella did not waste an instant. Another catlike leap and she was inside.
Its trailer was hollow, like all convorines, but lined with veins and fat. It was as hot as a sauna in here. Her feet sank into the repulsive, moist meat. At the front of the trailer were the vital organs. Caul white. Bile yellow. Blood red.
Jackpot.
She slogged as fast as she could over the slippery, oozing terrain, sparing just a moment to give her enemy some words of wisdom. "You don't know what pain is yet."
The silver convorine stiffened in outright horror. Every one of its kind knew instinctively to keep their back doors guarded. There was no questioning why, so there was no imagining of the consequences. But now it knew. Those hateful footsteps that had been on the outside were now inside! It was in there! And not in the stomach where it belonged, but amongst its living organs! The insect was inside its body with that horrible stinger!
Junella surveyed the pulsing wall of lumpy flesh and grinned like they were bags of gold. Time to open her presents.
Her cutlass soared.
The convorine let out a choked, piercing shriek. Its lips peeled back and its teeth splayed out. There was nothing but blind, dumb panic in its eyes.
Junella remembered her own advice. She was not trying to kill the thing. That would give it a chance to revive. And if it revived with her inside, that would be bad. She might never get out. It was why being caught and eaten by these things was an unacceptable outcome. Because she'd keep coming back to life again and again and again as it tried to digest her. It might never end. But it was not thoughts like that that kept her swinging and slashing at the ripe, plump intestines. It was her own savage, childlike cruelty, harnessed and aimed like a laser. This thing had to pay the price for stepping to Junella Brox.
When she found herself suddenly and violently rotated ninety degrees, that was no impediment. Plenty more squishy things to stab from every angle.
The silver convorine constricted, kicking out with its legs, arching its back. Anything to stop the violation of its body by the hideous stinging insect. Its eyes saw nothing, blanked white by the pain that kept escalating forever.
Junella was nearly drowning. Liquid gizzards sloshed around her feet, ankle deep. She'd done enough irritation now. She felt around with her feet to locate the central cylinder of bone. Time to get to the real work.
The convorine thought it impossible to feel more pain. Then suddenly a burning, stinging mouth was taking dozens of tiny hot bites from its legs. The nerves would light aflame for a few seconds, then die. The beast could feel itself becoming paralyzed, back to front. In desperation it tried to claw forward to escape whatever was eating it. But there was no escape from Junella.
She was standing on its spine. The vertebrae followed along the floor of the trailer, as the ceiling was more akin to a turtle's shell. Her cutlass was back in her hip for now. She was filling both hands with revolvers as fast as she could create them. Thinking nothing, only focusing on the bone beneath as she walked backwards along it like a balance beam, with methodical precision she pumped bullet after bullet into the monster's spine, killing off each calcium axle in turn. The legs slumped uselessly as the nerves were severed.
The nightmare screamed and screamed. Its panic was near-total, but it managed to coax one last bit of strategy out of its brain: cry for help. It tipped back its head and, at maximum volume, wailed.
Across the flattened battlefield where trees were swept aside like loose silverware, the golden convorine heard. But in order to respond, it would have to get rid of the nuisances surrounding it. And they were persistent.
George, Piffle and Zinc circled the creature. Mostly they dodged its chomps and swings, but whenever possible they got in a blow of their own, either from fire, fork, or wrench. It had become a stalemate. Everyone was whiffing more than they hit. A circular dance.
But when the monster heard its twin call for aid, it broke the pattern. Convorines are always born from the soil of Phobiopolis in pairs. Two-by-two. While some constructs did hunt in packs, none were as closely tied. Convorines were like one individual in two bodies. And of course the right hand responds when the left feels pain.
The golden convorine bucked abruptly and, instead of attacking George, simply bulldozed him out of the way. George tried to dodge, but a stocky paw slammed down on his foreleg and shattered it. He tripped and could not stop his foe from stampeding past.
Zinc was caught flat-footed when the beast turned and fled. Then puzzlement changed to ire. "No running in the hallways, mister!" he yelled out, and chased after.
To his side he heard Piffle's buzz. Attagirl. She was soaring ahead, her wings faster than his legs. Her gleaming golden fork was still ready for action. "Javelin, javelin!" he hollered up at her.
"Roger that!" She felt her fork's heft. Too heavy to throw, but maybe she could turn it into a backscratcher instead. Zooming forward like a pink torpedo, she turned her fork tines down, then strafed in low over the convorine's back. It was almost like keying a car.
The beast let out a shriek of outrage at the gouging pain. It had almost reached its needful twin, but programmed loyalties were forgotten in favor of an even simpler, more primitive drive. It swung around in a U-turn, snarling at the pink insect as it dashed away across the sky. It meant to swat her down and chew those wings right off.
Piffle circled back to land with Zinc. He instinctively moved in front to protect her. But she sidestepped, and held her fork out beside his wrenches. Together as one. They spared a single instant to meet each other's glance and understand this.
But despite its boiling rage, the silver convorine had learned. These little bugs liked to go for the soft spots: the stomach, the legs, the face. It was not going to give them another chance to sting. So while it drilled its four eyes into theirs, it made them believe it was locked on a straight line course.
Piffle and Zinc were prepared for a frontal assault, aiming their weapons for the nose and eyes. They were not prepared for the silver convorine to suddenly dig its front claws into the soil and fling the rest of its body around sideways in a whipcrack. There was no time to dodge. The metal ridge of the trailer's top cast a shadow over them.
The convorine crashed down in a sideways tackle and slid fifty feet. The friction gooshed the insects' legs into nothing more than smears.
Zinc and Piffle's hands found each other and held on for the ride.
When the skidding was over, the convorine grunted in satisfaction and rolled back onto its many legs. It could feel warm, sticky blood painting its side. Good. Time enough later to come back and finish. Now it could gallop off and tend to its twin.
The mutt and hamsterfly stared up at the clouds, their expressions slack-jawed and blank. Their top halves had survived unscathed. Their bottom halves on the other hand...
Zinc coughed, tasting copper in his throat. "I can't feel my legs," he gurgled.
Piffle let her head flop towards his. "I don't think we have any."
"Seems 'bout right. Wanna kill each other?"
"Sure. Who's first?"
The silver convorine charged towards its shrieking, panicked double. Only its front six legs still moved. The rest lay flat and dead like empty pelts. The silver construct had no idea what bizarre affliction this was, until it heard the muffled string of firecracker pops coming from inside the other's flank. It growled in disgust at these repulsive insects, and in passing, raked its claws across the other convorines' face for being weak enough to be laid low like this.
The golden convorine whimpered and flinched at the blow. But it would endure anything if its double could just pluck the black stinger from inside.
Junella was making steady progress but was trying not to think about it. Trying not to count the number of vertebrae she'd smashed, nor the ones remaining. A blank mind dumbfounds best. And she had to keep the guns coming. Fifty or so pistols, their barrels hot and smoking, lay in twin lines along her path. It was easier now to let more fall into her hands and pull the triggers once than to waste time firing all six shots. She could stop walking backwards when her feet touched intestine. Until then, she was a bullet dispensing machine. Nothing could break her concentration.
Except for a snarling, chomping muzzle suddenly shoving its way into the back of the truck. It blacked out the sun. Those headlight eyes were turned to high beams, nearly blinding her.
The silver convorine squealed. Nothing could have prepared it for the unspeakable wrongness of its own twin trying to cram itself face-first through its own back doors.
The golden one realized its cab would not fit. But its front legs were longer.
Junella leapt backwards as a hairy battering ram came surging through the exit. 'Jesus, that almost got me!' Her cutlass jumped into her palm, slicing sideways, but the paw was already retracted. She backed up quickly, panic starting to dance inside her mind. She had not counted on this. Constructs did not normally cooperate.
'Yeah, but you've never seen 'em coup de grâce each other either,' she reminded herself.
She raced back through her memories and realized that she'd never actually fought a convorine before. Not directly. She'd seen them. Heard plenty about them. She'd shot at them from the Killcanoe. Hand-to-hand fought constructs of the same size and ferocity. Doubt seized her stomach as she realized she might have jumped headlong into a fight against an opponent she was lacking vital information on. Unswerving certainty in one's victory was only an effective strategy when one was in possession of all necessary facts.
The silver trailer rattled as the golden convorine hauled it up diagonally to get a better angle for its arm. The one who was being hauled squealed miserably.
Junella backed into a corner and readied her sword. She wished she still had her tail; she could've put it out in front of her and filled that bastard's paw with shards. But she didn't dare kill herself to grow it back. In the time it'd take her to regenerate, that paw might reach inside and pluck her out for snacktime.
The golden convorine held its twin's trailer up to peer inside. For a moment, its eyes met those of the cowering insect. Then it reached inside again.
Junella swung blindly. The flashes of sun that slipped past the heavy limb were like a strobe light. More distracting than helpful. She considered whipping up another revolver and pumping lead, but that'd be telling it exactly where she was. Right now the paw was banging back and forth blindly, trying to find its prey by touch alone.
The silver convorine's throat collapsed from all its screams. Its twin's claws were doing more damage to its internal organs than the insect's stinger had. With every ounce of will, it regretted calling for help.
The golden convorine gnashed its teeth, impatience growing. It knew the insect was in there. It had seen the nasty little thing. But the bug kept moving, evading. Golden roared in frustration and began tearing Silver's trailer to shreds to get at the vexing bit of food.
In darkness. Flashes of light. Swipes of heavy iron claws. Junella swung, landing a hit hard enough to split the creature's palm open. But at the cost of her own hand. She screamed, for once glad she was mute. Her sword fell somewhere in the bloody mess below her.
Sunlight flooded in as the golden convorine pulled back its arm, a tiny scrap of grooved flesh snagged on a claw.
Junella did not know if it was chance or if the beast intended her to see, but she had a clear view as it licked up her hand and swallowed it. Maybe it was sending her a message: 'You cut my nose, I eat your fingers.'
The paw suddenly filled the trailer space again, blocking the light. Junella ducked randomly. A claw gouged her back. Pain tried to steal her focus, but she kept her priorities straight. Her sword. She hunkered down in the gushing pillows of flesh and rooted for it, otherwise she'd be defenseless. She felt fluid pouring from her broken wrist like water from a tap. If she didn't end this soon, blood loss would end it for her. Maybe her best chance was to lop off her own head and try to time her resurrection so she came alive just as the convorine was bringing her to its mouth. Maybe she could hack away like a whirlwind at its gums and palate. Maybe she could slice open its throat. Maybe she could try carving through however many layers of flesh and metal surrounded its stomach, trying to beat the clock before she suffocated. Or maybe she was just colossally fucked.
BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTT!!!!!
The paw withdrew and a scream split the forest. The golden convorine lurched sideways to see what had happened to its flank.
Tiny wasps, loud as hell, had stung a hole the size of a trash can lid straight through its trailer.
A few hundred feet away, Toby deLeon, eyes wide and sweat pouring through his hair, hung by the gun grips and gawked in disbelief at what he'd just done.
***
The fight had been going so well.
Shielded by the Fearsleigher, Toby had been lying on his stomach, keeping low, watching it all unfold. His head poked out from the windshield hole. He hoped his white fur would be invisible among the ash. The monsters weren't coming anywhere near the car. Doll was safely tucked away behind the back seat. All he had to do was wait this out.
Except... a worm was turning around inside his guts. His eyes beheld his friends clashing with these titanic monsters, and while silently he cheered for them, it felt like something inside kept shoving his shoulders. Telling him he had to get out there and help.
That voice was insistent. No matter how many times he explained things, it kept demanding. 'We've been over this,' Toby said to himself. 'They are handling this. They are professionals. There is no good reason for me to butt in and screw everything up trying to play hero.'
This was a perfectly rational line of thought, but his gut was not listening. It tugged at him like a toddler in a grocery store begging for candy. It started asking him if maybe he didn't feel a bit of resentment at his comrades for leaving him behind.
'Why!?' he exploded at it. 'Wouldn't you in their place? I know we've been through a lot together, and I've been getting better at helping them, but this is different! We've fought hordes of little things before; those things out there are enormous!!'
Why wasn't he convincing himself?
As he stared out the window, the agony in his gut grew. Like a spinning ball of jagged rock. Something corrosive and icy. He came to realize that the nagging voice in his head kept changing tactics, and as it did, it came closer and closer towards what it really represented. Toby was able to pinpoint it when he saw one of the monsters catch poor George and mangle him into a bow tie.
It hurt to see your friends hurt. Simple as that.
They were in pain, and Toby's ache resonated in sympathy. Despite his lack of experience, he had shown his friends before that he was willing to stand beside them when they fought. He still feared pain and death, but he was willing to take that risk if they were by his side. And even though they were objectively right in telling him to stay with the car, his heart burned with humiliation at the implied assumption he could do nothing to help them.
It came down to a matter of percentage. 'I may not be their equal, but I'm not completely useless either. I'm somewhere in between. And that's more than nothing,' he told himself resolutely.
'Okay. So what are you going to do then?'
He blanked. Realization hit that it was one thing to have the will, another thing to have ideas. He was fresh out of those.
Toby hated himself in multiple ways at that moment.
So he kept still and he kept watching, thinking at a furious pace. For a while, his friends looked like they were holding their own against the multi-legged truckbeasts and he wouldn't need to do anything at all. (Oh, that was a seductive thought. Just forget all your noble soul-searching and sit on your thumbs.) Then suddenly the tide turned. George was knocked aside, struggling to get up. Piffle and Zinc were body-slammed into red smears. Junella was still inside that creature's trailer, and the other one was trying its hardest to dig her out. It looked like a bear with its paw down deep in a hollow tree, questing for honeycombs.
For a minor eternity, Toby struggled to force himself to move. Cowardice and selfishness dragged down his shoulders, but finally the words fell ungracefully from his lips. "Doll, we've got to do something."
His plan had come to him the instant he stopped trying so hard to create one. Toby relayed it to Doll in seconds. She nodded comprehension and he handed her something from his vest. Then he forced himself to not think about what he was doing as he stood up and stepped through the windshield. His single footstep onto the ash sounded loud as a cannon shot. But no one was paying attention to him besides himself.
Apprehension froze him for a moment. Then he saw the monster's arm dip back in again for another sample of his friend.
Toby ran for the gatling gun. The Fearsleigher was tipped on its side, so it would not be easy to use. But Toby had two advantages: he was limber and he didn't weigh much. He jumped up to grab the gun grips and swung the rest of himself up onto the pedals. His first attempt was clumsy, sending his feet kicking at empty air and his chin cracking against the handlebars. But adrenaline can make a furson do incredible things. As if pulling himself up by the seat of his pants, Toby vaulted his keister into place and started pedaling.
'It's just like a bike. You've seen Zinc do this. It's not hard. You can do this.'
He struggled to shift his weight enough to point the gun where he wanted. It kept trying to dip. But Junella needed him to do this, so he did it. When the gun was pointed true, and his feet were mashing the pedals as fast as they could, he fixed his sweaty, skinny little hands on the gun grips and squeezed as hard as he could.
The shudder of the gun coming to life felt like being torn in half.
BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTT!!!!!
He watched hot bolts of fire launch from the barrel. Watched them punch through the side of the beast. And then, best of all, he watched the monster roar in pain and take its attention away from Junella.
Eyes wide, sweat pouring through his hair, Toby hung by the gun grips and gawked in disbelief at what he'd just done.
Of course, he hadn't let himself think too hard about the moment after. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The convorine's head turned towards where the pain had come from. Its eyes met Toby's.
The mouse's heart was a tiny sparrow trying to crash its way through his ribcage.
The golden convorine roared. A long, guttural bellow that Toby took to mean, 'Now you're gonna get it.'
It charged.
Toby's muscles calcified. His body was as immobile as marble. His eyes would not even blink. The monster grew bigger and bigger and bigger.
Its claws gouged ruts in the forest soil as it barreled towards the tiny white insect that had dared to harm it. The ground shook with each footfall. It trampled everything in its path. It was a diesel train, a rocket sled. It lowered its head to ram this little irritant into nothing but a red stain.
The sheer weight of fear was making Toby's vision falter at the edges. His lungs would not work. His brain was trying to force a shutdown. But Toby kept his manual override button mashed down. He willed his eyes to stay open. He kept his limbs rigid, not allowing himself to slump unconscious to the ground, even though it would be so much easier.
Then he had a very bad thought. Why had Junella run out into the open? To take the fight away from the car. Because they were replaceable. The car was not. And Toby had just told this stampeding thing (no, begged it) to come straight over to the car and pound it flat. So if his idea failed, then he would have not only gotten himself killed, he would have also succeeded in stranding his friends in the wilderness.
'Nice going, Toby.'
'All this means is that I can't screw up.'
The convorine was closing in. Its mouth opened impossibly wide. An endless carnival of gleaming teeth.
"DOLL, NOW!!!" Toby screeched.
She had followed his plan. She was directly beneath him, unseen. In her hands was a round white object. Intricately carved. Like an egg.
Hard as she could, she rolled it towards the Convorine.
It saw the tiny movement but paid no attention. It could not cause any harm.
Its mouth was so wide open, Toby saw all the way to the back of its throbbing black throat. He saw the claws reaching out to grab hold of him, saw the tongue that yearned to push him in chunks down that wet hole.
When the ivory bomb was directly beneath the nightmare's underside, it went off.
Blue and silver lightning erupted from the tiny dot. Thunder loud as gunshots. The Convorine's face turned to dismay, then unfathomable agony as a million electric knives leaped up to carve through its body. The bomb sizzled and screamed, burning fur black. The convorine tried to reach underneath to make the horrible thing stop, but lightning seared its palms and turned its muscles to stripped wires.
The lightning flashed in Toby's wide, pink eyes. It was a terrifying sight. Yet a much better one than just a second before.
The convorine constricted. Electric surges yanked on its nerves like a violent puppeteer. Unnatural light danced upon its flesh and feasted on its body. Its eyes were blank, lips pulled back in a rictus, jaws clenched on the verge of shattering.
Toby carefully aimed his gun.
In movies, the hero delivers his witty one-liner with defiance and verve. Toby's was a weak whisper, completely inaudible. But as he stared into the massive nightmare's grimacing face, he was proud of himself that the words came out at all.
"Time for your dental appointment."
BBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRTTT!!!
It wasn't enough to hope the bomb had incapacitated it. Toby was less than nine feet away from a monster that loomed over him even in cowering. He was not going to leave any chance for a counterattack. The gatling gun was aimed squarely at its grille of silver teeth, and at this close range, the bullets punched through like a hurricane destroys a house.
The golden convorine was beyond pain. Its mind was an ocean of black blankness. It felt, but did not register, its teeth being blasted to splinters by a bombardment of flying metal. Motor oil blood erupted in a tidal wave from its mouth. Chunks of tongue went flying.
Toby pummeled the thing's mouth until there wasn't a single intact tooth. Its lower jaw hung in tatters.
Only when he was 100% sure he'd finished the job did he let go of the gun grips. He was panting, greased with sweat, hair hanging in his eyes, and his limbs thrummed painfully from the oscillation of the gun. His ears rang loud as car alarms.
But the forest was silent now, and the monster was still.
Lying on its side, its whole mass quivered as the last flashes of the electrical bomb fired off. Its fur was raised in spikes. From its mouth gushed a flood of black oil. Chrome tooth fragments were swept away on a river of the thing's own blood.
Toby fought to slow his breathing. His arms and legs felt seconds away from crumbling. He still did not move. He had to be sure this thing was finally docile.
Its headlights turned on.
The beams circled drunkenly, searching. Finally, they tilted up towards the small white insect that had done this.
A limitless rage filled them.
The beast roared again. Its voice was drowned in the gurgles of its bloody maw, but still loud enough to shake the branches of the surrounding trees.
Oily saliva splattered Toby head to toe. Panic held him in place a second longer, but he found himself moving pretty damned quick when the back legs of the convorine came to life and tried to shove the rest of the body forward.
It could no longer claw or bite, but it could ram. It turned itself into a sideways bulldozer.
Toby had a microscopic fraction of time in which to drop down from the gun, get his feet beneath him, then scramble out of the way. Instinct grabbed his limbs and forced them to move. He saw Doll. Saw it would take too long to reach down and snatch her up. So he simply kicked her out of harm's way like making a field goal.
He dove for an ash pile as the golden convorine crashed facefirst into the Fearsleigher like a train off its tracks.
The taste of ash was on his tongue. Also blood. He'd landed in the cinders facefirst and split his bottom lip. No time to worry about that. He pushed himself up and to his feet, spitting out the awful taste as he started running.
Running. Where? All around him was open forest. Even with half its legs shocked to uselessness, Toby still did not trust that he was faster than this thing. 'So don't run. Find cover.' The only cover around was the car. Or the rocks.
A natural staircase of slate-grey stone, maybe thirty feet tall. That must have been where the first convorine had pounced from. Toby considered his options. Hide or climb?
He didn't have long to choose. Toby pumped his legs, propelling him away as the convorine hurled its toothless head towards him like a club.
Toby reached the edge of the rocks and braced himself there. The Fearsleigher would have been better cover, but he wasn't about to let their only transportation get destroyed to save his skin. 'No matter how much that sounds like a better choice right now!' He met the convorine's drunken eyes for an instant, then started scrambling upwards.
The convorine grunted, flopped over on its blackened stomach, and tried to drag itself along the ground towards the prey. All its pain had blurred to one singular throb, like the weight of a planet pushing down on its brain. It did not even know why it was continuing to fight. It sought revenge by reflex. It lunged clumsily and its forehead connected with the base of the rockpile, shattering its own windshield.
The impact sent Toby off-balance. He fell, twisted his ankle, and landed in one of those ugly grey bushes he'd seen earlier. Instantly he hissed in pain and flung himself away. Thin, stinging cuts covered his face and arms. Awful thing! Its leaves were like razor blades! And he thought he felt a bubbling, acidic burning beginning within each cut as well.
Thankfully the monster didn't seem to notice where he'd fallen. Double-thankfully, the ash-covered hill looked easy to scale. Just like hauling himself up a gigantic staircase. Toby hopped up and tested his ankle. Angry but not sprained. Good. He braced his stinging arms against the rock and pushed himself upwards again. He risked a glance behind. The monster's wide nose was twitching, searching by smell.
He looked past it and noticed two things that made all his pain and exhaustion lessen. For one, the convorine was ignoring the Fearsleigher completely. Secondly, it was ignoring Doll too. She was lying in an ashpile several feet away. Safe. She looked up and gave a wave to Toby.
He waved back with a little salute.
'There, see? You're not doing so bad.' He kept climbing. He was still overwhelmingly terrified of the beast below, but a momentary flicker of pride made it through.
The cuts from the bush's leaves were starting to feel like tiny linear fires. He didn't even want to know what his face must look like now. He was four steps up from the ground, lifting his leg for number five.
Below him, the monster howled. There was no doubt it had spotted him.
Frantically, it kicked the dirt with its back legs. The bomb had shocked its front half useless, but it tried to steer by biting the ground and pivoting. It was completely maddened now. Berserk. Amok. All it cared about was the little white speck trying to get away up the hill. The convorine kicked and kicked with its back legs, plowing itself facefirst into the rock. No matter. Push harder. Get higher. Get that little insect and make it die.
Toby felt his strength fading. His arms were criss-crossed with hissing pains that felt like an electrified net. Every time he pulled himself up a step, more ash got into the cuts, irritating them further. He looked below. The monster was directly beneath him. Its lower jaw had fallen off its hinges, cast aside in the dirt. More oil and teeth were smeared behind it as the thing relentlessly shoved itself against the rock.
If he fell now, Toby knew that big square head would raise up and simply bash him to smithereens. Like mooshing a bug with a brick.
He turned around, holding tight to the side of the hill. At least there was distance between them. At least he had plenty of space to plant his feet. At least he had time to think. He felt his hammer's weight inside his arm. Was he brave enough to use it? Climb back down, put his paw against that big, soft bullseye of a nose, and jackhammer it right up into the thing's ugly skull?
He shook his head. No. There was a point where bravery became stupidity, and that was it. It did not make him a coward to refuse the idea of getting within arms length of a pain-crazy leviathan. His safest bet was to keep climbing until he was certain he was out of its range.
Then what?
'Wait until your friends come to your rescue, obviously.'
Okay, that made sense. He looked out across the forest and wasn't sure where they were, but surely they'd spot him eventually. Piffle'd probably fly in like a medevac helicopter.
But just in case, he popped his hammer out. Just to feel it in his fist. His fingers slid into the tonguerubber grip oh so comfortably. He did not realize he was cradling it like a teddy bear.
Above him there was a sound. A droning growl.
"More nightmares!?" he wailed. "Dammit, why doesn't it ever END!?" Toby swiveled around, looking up, trying to spot the source of the steadily-increasing whine. It didn't sound organic. He'd thought at first it might be a stray biteranodon. But no, this was an engine's roar.
Stark terror flooded through him like icewater at the thought that maybe the semi truck monsters had pups.
But then, silhouetted against the dimming sun, the sound's source came into view. A great silver circle with fat wheels underneath. An all-terrain UFO.
Its motor squalled as it sailed off the top of the mountain and arced downwards. The bloated black tires clenched at the rock, demanding torque, spitting out chunks of gravel behind them. Toby saw that the silver circle was a ring around the strange vehicle's diameter. Defense on all sides. Fourteen stainless steel guillotine blades.
It was descending upon the convorine like an angel of death.
Toby gaped a moment longer before finding the sense to step aside lest it run him over.
He saw it clearly as it shot past. An ATV. Blue-on-white paintjob, with two towers behind the driver's seat that looked like weapon racks. It bounced hard across the rock staircase, but the rider of this armored steed never flinched a muscle. He was one with his vehicle. Two hands in fingerless gloves were fused to the handlebars. The rider himself looked like a black haystack full of sewing needles.
The convorine looked up and bellowed sheer hatred. The ATV's motor roared right back.
Toby watched as the rider bounced off the rock, sailed through the air, then hit the ground on an intercept course for the convorine's left legs. The fourteen blades glistened in the fading sunlight and oil blood streaked across them. They were mythically sharp, parting the convorine's flesh as easily as they cut through air.
The beast's scream changed in pitch. A louder, pealing cry whose meaning was crystal clear: defeat.
The rider banked the ATV in a tight turn, then came around again to incapacitate the beast's other side. The motor dragged the blades through tendon and muscle, slashing to the bone. Now the creature was as harmless as a cloud.
The golden convorine gave a last gurgling gasp of helpless suffering, then slumped against the rock. It could not move. The insects had won. Its brain swirled with shame and frustration. It wanted to die. If it died it could rise again. It had taken many years to understand this pattern, but now this knowledge could not help. The insects had taken it right to the edge of death and chained it there.
The rider braked his vehicle. He stood up as the engine idled, staring towards the convorine until he was sure it had given up the fight. Then he looked around, quickly, in all directions. He had the jerky movements of a bird or reptile. But with those quills on his head, there was nothing else he could be but a porcupine.
He looked up at Toby, just for a moment. That face was unreadable: two black dots above a white square. The eyes were hidden behind dark goggles. Over the muzzle was a paper surgical mask. Toby was familiar with those. Sometimes his mother had insisted he wear them when they went outside. Toby's stare was as blank as the rider's, not from calmness, but exhaustion.
The rider spared no more time for the mouse. In one smooth motion, he sat back down, gunned the engine, and made a U-turn straight for where the other convorine lay.
His vehicle buzzed past Junella, Zinc, and Piffle, but made a slight detour for George. Before the stallion could introduce himself, the guillotine blades sheared clean through his right legs. George was disconcerted for a moment, then fell over sideways with a thud. The rider barely glanced at what he'd done.
The silver convorine was still paralyzed from Junella's bullets, though also from the sheer violation of what had happened afterwards. There was nothing but fear in its glassy gaze as the rider drove towards it. For a moment, a crash seemed inevitable. Then the rider cut the brakes hard and surfed the momentum, flying off the front of the vehicle and landing with a cat's grace mere feet in front of the convorine's nose.
From a metal sheath on his back, the rider drew his signature weapon: a pair of guillotine blades with handgrips in between, like a double-headed, double-handled axe. In storage, it was folded in half. The rider snapped it open into a rhombus as he swung it around. Looking down into the shivering convorine's eyes, he held the blade out in front of him at arm's length. Pointing with it like the Reaper's cold finger.
Wordlessly he asked, 'Do you want this?'
The convorine shook its metal head, 'No'.
-***-