Jazz, Monster Collector in:
Ultimatums by the Bagful
season one, episode eight
RyFT Brand
Copyright 2011
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to
persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
JAZZ, Monster Collector
Season One: Earth’s Lament
RyFT Brand
Episode-8: Ultimatums by the Bagful
Paleo, as in old, like prehistorically old, and bear, as in big, nasty, and apparently hungry—I guess you could call me a snack.
I was flat on my back, sliding feet first toward the gnashing, fanged jaws, and my MacDaddy revolver, my most trusty of weapons, had fallen somewhere in the rocky crevasses that made up the crags.
Unable to stop the slide, my only other option was to give in to gravity’s harsh pull. Just as the meaty part of my thigh came in range, the huge beast snapped its jaws closed. I pulled my legs as tightly to my chest as my padded, leather battle clothes would allow, and narrowly avoided him taking a chunk from my tempting drumstick. He was fast, way faster then me, but I had brains and experience. The bear set its front paws on the rock and bit at my prone posterior. I set my hands to either side of my head, kicked my legs forward and pressed off the boulder beneath me, springing myself to my feet on top of the bear. I grabbed one of the bony protuberances that stuck from its massive shoulders like a stalagmite and settled my balance. But the beast reared up on its hind legs and twisted around, taking a snap at my tempting legs.
“Scrud!” It missed me, but only because the sudden move had unintentionally catapulted me into the air. “Ahhhh!” For a moment I was flying, arms and legs flailing, looking for a soft spot to land. But the crags were all rock and ruin.
“Oomph!” I landed hard on a wide wedge of rock, grunting with the pain, then rolled and dropped between two, smooth gray boulders. I was on my side, wedged in place. My left arm was pinched between my chest and the rock, and my right leg, and the gash in my side that Uncle had only just glued back together, was giving me some serious discomfort. But I needed to get up and fast.
I searched the rocks for a finger hold with my one free hand, but the surfaces were virtually smooth.
I smelled it in a nick of time and yanked my arm out of range of its rabid, snarling bite. It roared, louder than I could properly describe, and bit again and again at me. Its teeth snapped together, and wretched drool ran from its fuming mouth and soaked my jacket, but the narrow space between the rocks was keeping it just out of range, which only fanned the fire of its rage.
I had a good blaze of my own burning. In this case, the bony protuberances on the paleo bear’s head and shoulders were helping keep it off of me, but its tiny brain wasn’t able to see the futileness of its attack, and the dammed thing’s breath reeked something terrible. I’d had enough. The next time it bit between the rocks, I jammed a finger in one of its eyes.
It reared up, yowled, and fell out of sight. Despite my desperate predicament, I found myself chuckling. All the hours spent watching the three stooges with my pop had finally paid off.
But I had like maybe a second at the most to act. With as much effort as I could muster, I gripped a small depression in the rock with two fingers and pulled as hard as I could. I managed to move about an inch, then stopped, my fingers burning with the strain.
I dropped back. “Scrud!” I was wedged tight, my heavy rucksack wasn’t helping matters any.
This time I didn’t smell it coming. It leapt over me, straddling the two boulders that held me, and began, with a great, deep growl, an attempt to pry the rocks apart.
Push away, nimrod. The crags were nothing but boulders, thousands of them, lapped together as tightly as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. And the two that had me wedged were particularly large, a paleo bear, even one as big as this one, couldn’t possibly budge them.
That’s when I felt myself drop, ever so slightly, further down. Well I’ll be damned; I must have made the thing really mad, because it was actually moving the rocks.
Damned aside, I’d be crushed if I didn’t get out of there before the straining beast slipped, or gave up, and the rocks rolled back into place.
The beast was pushing as hard as it could. Its massive muscles bulged and shook. It closed its eyes, lifted its chin and, with a straining growl, pushed even harder. As I felt a little more pressure ease off, I let my knees bend until my boots touched earth. I started pushing with my feet and pulling with my free arm, but I was still too tightly wedged.
The creature pushed for all it was worth and roared with the effort. I heard a grinding of stone and I slid a little further down. That’s when I noticed that its nails were slipping on the smooth stone. I was out of time.
“Ugggh.” Ignoring the pain, I managed to pull my left arm through and down and reached until I felt something to push against. Then I, with a great effort of my own, got myself upright. The gash on my side was burning and felt wet—I was bleeding again.
But the bear saw that I was free. I had micro seconds to act, but I was already moving.
I leapt, pushing one boot off the boulder to my right, then the other boot against the one to my left, scaling the rocks as quickly as I could. The bear roared its disapproval, but seemed either too stupid to let go, or was now stuck itself by the pressure between the rocks. Either way it was good for me.
As I ascended the rocks I drew the long, fixed blade knife from my boot. I lunged and drove the blade into the beast’s belly. It yelped and sprang away from me, lost its footing, and topped off its perch.
But the recoiling rocks caught me off guard. My feet went out from under me and I toppled backward over the opposite side.
Out of my line of sight, the beast was making a terrible noise; a mix of pain and insane anger. My little knife wasn’t going to help me against this foe. I quickly thought through my arsenal, debating whether a properly placed chili-pepper bomb might be used to send a large bolder rolling in the beast’s direction.
In the very same instant I realized that the howling had ceased, I saw the monster charging, full speed, around the rock, teeth bared and waves rolling across its massive back muscles.
Instinct, and long hours of practice, kicked in. I drew the zoom stick, my tazer-rang, from its sheath on my right leg, unfolding it as I drew my hand back—with a chirp and a flash of blue light it let me know it was charged. Then I threw.
The beast was so close when my weapon struck that the boomerang hadn’t gained much momentum, but it was fully charged. It nailed the beast square in the eyes, just below its bony, plated brow. Mallow-charged sparks leapt out and covered the creature like a very high voltage electric net. The beast reared up, but made no sound as the powerful current had its muscles locked. It tipped over backward, and, stiff as the rocks surrounding it, smashed to the ground.
The charge ended and the beast lay panting and whining, its huge body twitching involuntarily. Its eyes were full of pupil and tears; its black tongue hung from its jaws and lay on a rock.
“Hum,” I said, nodding with satisfaction. I didn’t think the zoom-stick’s charge would have been sufficient to incapacitate a paleo bear.
I set a hand to my side and felt wet through my battle jacket. When I looked my hand was dabbled with blood. Apparently I’d reopened the wound Boss Geeter’s goon had given me. But I needed to finish this.
I strode over. The bear’s eyes didn’t move. It was still whining and twitching like it had a bad case of nano-fleas. I picked up the zoom-stick and c
hecked the storage cells; still over half a charge. I folded it, slid it in its sheath, and drew my knife. With the beast laying prone at my feet, a slit throat was the fastest way to finish this.
I spun the handle, laying the blade, sharp edge out, against my forearm for the cut—paleos have very thick hides and laying the blade back would give me the needed leverage. I grabbed its head by its bony brow, lifted the creature’s chin, and drew my knife arm back, but something shimmered in a cleft of all the course black hair. I flipped the blade back out and cut a small chunk from its flank. The creature made a small whimper.
I stepped away and, with a sharp tug, tore something from the hunk of pelt. It was small, the size of my thumbnail, and, what wasn’t scorched, was opaque, like a crystal, but this was perfectly rectangular and as thin as a dime except for two dozen sharp metal prongs that had held it to the beast’s hide. It looked