Because just then, the mega-bull bolted—and suddenly Rick was flying through the blue forest as quickly—and as wildly out of control—as if he were riding on the back of a rocket.
25. COLD FEAR
AT THAT MOMENT Molly woke up and let out a shuddering moan of agony.
The cold had not killed her in her sleep, but it had quietly, steadily, deeply, relentlessly eaten its way into the very heart of her. She was now shaking so violently, she could not control herself. Her hands were cramped like claws and clutched in front of her. Her legs were pulled up nearly to her chest. Her chest felt as if it were clamped in a vise of ice, and filled with ice. She could barely pull air into her lungs, could barely let it out except in stuttering half gasps. She was frozen to her core. It was the shivering and the pain that had brought her awake.
She bit back another moan, trying to keep quiet. Had the killers heard her? They must have. Their camp was so close and their guards were patrolling only yards away, and she couldn’t stop the shuddery sounds from coming out of her.
Lying on the earth, trembling hard, she tried to listen. The woods seemed silent all around her. She tried to turn her head. It wasn’t easy, it felt frozen in place. She tried to look up to see if she could spot the flashlight beams passing back and forth above her. But she saw nothing. Darkness. Thick black branches against a starry sky. That was all.
She coughed thickly. More noise. She went on trembling. She knew she couldn’t lie here like this anymore. She had to start moving. She had to get warm. Yes, they would catch her. Yes, they would torture her. When they were done, they would probably kill her. But she didn’t care. She was just too cold. She had to move. She had to.
It cost her a high price in pain to uncoil her shaking body, to get the frozen limbs in motion. All the strength seemed to have bled out of her arms and legs. Her hands were quivering so violently they seemed to vibrate. It was hard—really hard—to control them, to get them to do what she wanted them to do.
Still, somehow, by force of will, she managed to reach up. To clutch the top of the log behind which she lay hidden. Gasping with pain, with cold, she dragged herself up over the fallen tree. Immediately, she spotted the fire in the clearing a few yards away. It had dwindled down to almost nothing, just a snickering red glow beneath a pile of charred branches. But that was enough for her. The very sight of it made her moan again. Heat. She had to get to it. Had to. She needed heat.
Suddenly, a beam of white light smacked into her. A gruff voice shouted, “There she is! I’ve got her!”
Gripping the log, she turned and saw the killer in the darkness. It was Nosey, the guy whose beezer she had crushed. Lit by the outglow of his own flashlight, his face now looked monstrous. He looked like he had a red hole between his eyes. The eyes themselves seemed huge and white.
“She’s over here!” he shouted. “Wake up! Come on! I’ve got her!”
When he stopped shouting, there was quiet again. No answer from the surrounding woods. The killer and Molly were frozen like that a moment, staring at each other, linked together by the beam of light between them. Under his damaged nose, Nosey’s teeth were bared in a ghoulish grin. Molly could barely keep her grip on the log. She was trembling, weak with cold; helpless.
Slowly, Nosey smiled. “O-o-h,” he said, drawing out the syllable. Cruelty and anticipation warmed his strange voice. “Oh, little girl, you have given us a tough time—a tough time—but you are about to find out—”
Then two things happened very fast, one right after the other. Under the hole in the center of his face, Nosey’s mouth opened in a great round “O”—and then the flashlight beam that had been shining in Molly’s eyes flew up and pointed into the sky.
The next thing Molly knew, the light went out. Confused, freezing, she stared into the dark. The bright flash had blinded her, and now that it was gone she could see nothing. She listened. She could hear nothing. The woods seemed supernaturally quiet.
Had Nosey been a vision—the frightened hallucination of a dying girl? Had he been a dream? Was she still dreaming now?
What little strength there was in her arms gave out. She sank, trembling, against the log. She looked through the trees toward the red embers of the fire in the clearing. She knew she had to get to it, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t move.
Then the woods, the night, the pain, reality itself, began to reel away from her into a spinning distance. She was losing consciousness. Her whole body spasmed violently and she began to slide off the log, tumbling back down toward the earth.
But before she hit, something grabbed her. Hard, powerful hands gripping her shoulders. Fingers pressing painfully into her flesh. Holding her up. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to fight the blackness closing in on her mind. She tried to keep her eyes open, to stare through the swimming obscurity.
She saw a new face. A man. He loomed over her, pressed close to her. A man she had never seen before. A killer, by the look of him. Hard, tough, weather-beaten. Yet, strangely—as Molly thought in her fainting confusion—he did not seem unkind.
“I’ve got you,” he said to her. “You’re gonna be all right now.”
The next thing she knew, she was being lifted up. Lifted into the air. The man was holding her against his chest, carrying her through the darkness. She shuddered uncontrollably in his arms. She leaned her head against him.
“Who . . . who are you?” she only just managed to whisper.
“Victor One,” he said. “Your knight in shining armor.”
“Love those,” said Molly—and she passed out.
26. VELOCITY
RICK HEARD SOMEONE screaming in wild, uncontrollable panic. Slowly, he realized it was himself. That fact frightened him almost as much as the speed of the great mega-bull. Almost. But Rollie was shooting through the trees like a bullet—racing so fast, the blue forest had become one big blue blur on either side of them—and it was full-on terrifying. Up ahead, tree trunks were flashing straight toward Rick’s face. Only at the last minute did the bull manage to swerve past them, before Rick could even think to duck or dodge. Boulders, streams, tangles of vines—one after another, they sprang up in front of him as if out of nowhere—barreled toward him like a runaway train—then vanished as the huge mega-bull somehow adjusted his trajectory without slowing down and managed to avoid a collision by inches.
Rick gripped Rollie’s horns with all his might. He clutched his flanks with his aching legs. He tried to hold on, but the mega-bull’s muscular back rippled and bucked as he ran and, to Rick, it felt almost impossible to stay in the saddle. The speed made Rick’s body feel light, insubstantial. Any minute now, he thought, he would fly off into the air like a dandelion seed and blow away through the branches, never to be seen again.
But that scream of his—that high, crazy, panicking scream that just kept coming out of his mouth—no matter how scared he was, he had to stop that! Guys aren’t allowed to scream like that. It’s in the Guy Rule Book. He clamped his lips shut, gritted his teeth. He fought to keep the noise inside him.
I have to turn . . ., he started to think—but just then, a thick branch came whipping toward his face. He ducked, pressed his cheek against the top of Rollie’s head. He felt the wind in his hair as the branch whipped over him. When he next dared to peek up, the mega-bull had lifted off the ground in a tremendous onrushing leap and was flying over a stream. When the thundering hoofs hit the far bank, the impact nearly jolted Rick into oblivion. He bounced hard against the rough surface of the bull’s hide. But he hung on, and Rollie kept running.
He finally managed to finish his thought: I have to turn him.
He drew a deep breath, fighting off the urge to let out another scream as yet another branch whipped past his forehead, just missing. He dared to take a quick look left and right to determine where he was. He saw the red grass through the trees to his right. Gripping the mega-bull’s huge horns as hard as he could, he wrenched them rightward.
To his absolute astoni
shment, it worked. Rollie’s head turned to the right and then his body turned—as smoothly as a car turns when you spin the wheel—and the mega-bull went on running in the new direction, the direction of the Golden City.
Rick didn’t try to steer much after that. Rollie was racing through the forest faster than a human could think. The mega-bull seemed better able to direct himself past the onrushing obstacles. Rick knew if he tried to do it, he’d crash them into a tree and probably kill them both. Forcing down his urge to take control, Rick lay low on the mega-bull’s back and let him run.
Seconds later they broke out of the woods and were shooting like a flash of light across the Scarlet Plain. Rick breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the forest, away from the oncoming trees and streams and stones. Now there was nothing but open red field and yellow sky in front of him—and the rising skyline of the Golden City in the distance, but coming closer at a speed Rick could never have believed unless he’d seen it for himself.
Rick’s hands hurt from gripping the horns so tightly, but he didn’t loosen his hold on that account, not at all. He hung on, pressed as close to the concrete skin of the mega-bull as he could, and prayed wordlessly that they would not hit a bump that would break his grip and send him flying.
The journey to the Golden City—the journey that Favian had said would take them ninety minutes at least—was finished in three minutes flat. Rollie the Mega-Bull’s speed never slackened, not once. His hooves barely seemed to touch the ground as the red grass whipped at his flanks and the foggy yellow of the sky sailed over him.
Soon, the gleaming golden walls of the city were rising up above them, flashing in the light of day. Tall spired guard towers shot up out of the walls at intervals. In each tower, Rick could see the dark shape of some security bot, watching the horizon for attacks. Behind them, beyond the battlements, the domes and spires and towers of the great city thrust themselves up to the sky.
As he and the mega-bull came closer to the city—and they came closer fast—Rick began to see creatures and vehicles moving in and out of the tall, arched city gates: beasts of Kurodar’s imagination, created to supply his central city with the building materials and energy it needed to fuel the rest of the Realm. There were guards watching them go by. He couldn’t make them out clearly yet, but they were big and had strange shapes and long weapons of some kind strapped to their backs.
Rollie kept running, and Rick was nervous about shifting too much on his back lest he lose his grip. But he did manage to peek up again over the mega-bull’s head. Through the smoke and flames still shooting out of the creature’s eyes and nostrils, he spotted the acres of high red grass that Favian had told him about. A small tug at Rollie’s horns and the creature shifted and headed in that direction.
What now? Rick wondered. How was he going to dismount this thing? If he just jumped off the mega-bull at this speed, he’d be killed. The high grass was coming at him with unfathomable rapidity. Another fifteen seconds or so, and they’d be in the midst of it. Another five seconds after that, and they would shoot out the other side, visible to the guards.
Could he stop Rollie’s headlong rush? He didn’t know, but he was going to have to try. He hated the idea of sitting up, of unbalancing himself and making his perch on the creature even more unstable than it was. But what else could he do?
The high grass came racing toward them. Rick shifted his backside under him and straightened on the back of the mega-bull. Pulling back on the horns with his powerful arms, he murmured in a low steady voice, “Whoa, Rollie! Whoa!”
No one could have been more startled than Rick when the beast beneath him began to slow down. Like a once-wild horse that had accepted the guidance of a rider. The scenery that had been flashing by in smears of bright colors now steadied and cleared and the world around them became real again. A moment later, the high red grass was all around them, brushing at Rick’s arms and face with a strange living warmth that was not like the cool, damp feel of grass at all.
The mega-bull’s rush grew slower—and then slower—as Rick pulled back on his horns. The walls and towers and rising skyline of the Golden City, visible through the grass, grew tremendous. The edge of the field and the sparkling quartz road that wound into the city gates became visible. Another moment and they would break out of the grass onto the road. Then they’d be out in the open, exposed.
Luckily, before that happened, Rollie the Mega-Bull came to a full stop. It was as if he knew what Rick wanted and was willing to obey. He snuffled out some smoke and blinked out a bit of fire and bowed his head and began to nibble peacefully at the roots of the grass. As suddenly as the journey had begun, it ended.
Breathless, Rick tumbled off the creature’s back. Still clutching one horn in one hand, he slid down and down the mega-bull’s flank until his feet touched ground and the grass surrounded him. Finally, he let go of the horn and dropped to his knees. He was exhausted from the wild ride.
“Whew!” he said aloud.
He knelt in the earth, dazed and openmouthed. He turned to look at Rollie. Rollie turned to look at him. They blinked at each other. Then Rollie went back to grazing and Rick just knelt there, shaking his head in wonder at the fact that he was still alive.
At last, when he could, he climbed to his feet. He checked the timer in his palm. One hour and forty-three minutes left. Not a lot, but it would have to be enough. In fact, Rick wasn’t even sure he’d be able to last in here that long.
Standing there like that, he could see very little besides the scarlet grass rising above his head on every side and the yellow sky floating above that. Before him, he could just barely make out the presence of the city walls. He moved toward them, the high grass whispering as he passed through.
Just before he came to the edge of the grass, there was a loud snort behind him. Rick’s heart seized in his chest. He thought Rollie was about to roll himself up into a ball and charge again. But when he looked over his shoulder, the bull only nodded at him, a big heavy bull nod. Then he turned and galloped off amiably through the grass, heading back in the direction of the Blue Wood.
Thanks for the lift, Rollie, Rick thought.
Strange creature. Strange place.
Another moment and the beast was gone. Rick was alone. He continued moving through the grass.
When he reached the spot where the high grass ended, he peeked out. The quartz road ran past him, nearly at his feet. Beyond, maybe fifty yards away, was the city wall and its watchtowers. From here, Rick had to crane his neck to see the massively huge buildings that made the city’s skyline. What a place this was close-up! Who was this Kurodar, anyway? What sort of man imagines something as magnificent as this into being—and then uses it as a way to bring destruction down on the real world?
Well, there was no time to think about it now. The next moment, Rick caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a small cadre of five soldiers marching along the base of the walls. Well, they weren’t soldiers exactly. They were Kurodar’s security bots: the monsters that sprang out of that sick but fertile imagination of his. These were . . . what were they? Long slimy bodies that sometimes slithered along the ground and sometimes waddled on stump-like legs. Whip-like arms and flat, wicked faces with small, emotionless black eyes and huge fangs.
Cobras! They were walking cobras, with spear-like weapons strapped to their backs. And the weapons squirmed—and had eyes—and could watch out behind the Cobra Guards while the Cobras looked ahead.
The sight of these slithery monsters made something thick and sour rise in Rick’s throat. He remembered the Alligator Guards who had patrolled the Sky Dome Fortress. He remembered how he had morphed himself into their alligator shape. It was hard to do. He could hold his concentration at that intensity for only a minute or so. But the thought of reshaping himself into one of these snake men—even for a second—disgusted him. Even with the intensity of mind focus he had used to flash out of Rollie’s way, he didn’t think he would be able to ove
rcome his repulsion and pull it off.
As Rick watched, the wavering, slithering, stump-legged Cobras came to a halt in front of the city wall. Looking more closely, Rick saw there was a panel set in the base of the golden stone there. As the guards took up posts on either side of it, the panel slid open.
Out stepped a large creature, walking upright on two legs. It was something like a man but it was not a man. It was ovoid and its skin was covered in rough brown fur. Its face consisted of beady eyes and an extended snout with sharp tusks coming up on either side. It was dressed in blue overalls, opened in the back to let out its small scraggly tail.
The Boars! Rick realized. These were the Boars that Favian had told him about, the ones who loaded the blimps at the launch docks in the city walls.
Sure enough, as Rick crouched squinting from behind the screen of grass, a pair of smaller piggy men came trundling up the quartz road from the city gate, drawing a cart behind them. There were heavy metal canisters loaded on the cart. As the cart approached the Cobra Guards, a motion at the open panel caught Rick’s attention. He saw a gray blimp-shaped rocket being drawn nose-first through the launch gate.
As Rick turned, he saw other carts being drawn to other launch doors where there were other Boars and more Cobra Guards with their living spears. The blimps were being prepared for the coming of the great WarCraft.
Maybe if I can change myself into a Boar . . ., Rick thought.
Just then—just as he thought that—a shadow fell across the sky. The temperature dropped and the air began to snap and shimmer as if charged with electricity.
Rick turned his eyes from the commotion and lifted them to the sky, where cloud-like splashes of lavender were beginning to spread over the yellow surface.