1
Morning dawned warm and clear, with not a single cloud to blot the blue of the sky. Everyone had rested well despite fretting as they settled down to sleep that their anxieties about the following day would keep them awake. So fretting, they had all dozed off.
They ate breakfast in silence. Then, after Maggie treated Dagmar’s shoulder-wound—the only injury from their battle in Happyvale that still required attention—they set off on the last leg of their journey.
Before they had gone more than a mile, they began to see evidence they were in the Marauders’ territory: Trampled foliage, hoof-prints, empty chewing tobacco tins, a shoebox containing locks of hair, a splintered wooden shield.
“We’re almost there,” Dagmar said in a soft voice as she stopped to stare at a heap of burnt books, their pages reduced to brittle black flakes. She sounded scared, but also amazed, as if unable to believe she had actually come this far.
Maggie wondered if Dagmar were having second thoughts about confronting the Marauders, so she said, “You could stay here, if you wish.”
Dagmar shot her an angry glance. “No, I do not wish. I will do exactly what I set out to do.”
Head held high, she brushed past Maggie and marched off after the others.
Maggie watched her with concern. This really wasn’t the best place for an eleven-year-old girl. But could anyone dissuade her from her task at this point? If she had come this far, she would almost certainly go the rest of the way, even if it was only to her doom.
Then again, Dagmar had the protection of a god with claws sharp enough to gut a rhino. And she had the rest of the group to watch out for her, too. But what if that wasn’t enough? They didn’t know all of the Marauders or their capabilities, and more worryingly, the impending confrontation would occur in the Marauders’ own lair, which would give the Marauders the advantage. And then there was the Marauders’ mysterious leader, about whom virtually nothing was known. Anyone who could inspire the loyalty of a band of criminals and psychopaths and keep them united and organized had to be someone either incredibly powerful or incredibly intelligent. Or, worse, both.
Over the next two hours the horse-tracks grew more numerous and well-defined, and the trash reached epidemic proportions. Graffiti appeared with increasing frequency until every available surface—tree trunks, rocks, the sides of a burned-out armored vehicle—was covered with profanity and belligerent slogans and crude pictures of genitalia.
“We have arrived in the region I passed through on my way east,” Freud said. “As I said before, I did not see any actual settlements to which I might direct you, so my guidance must unfortunately end here.”
“You have done well,” Adam said. “Thank you.”
After ten minutes of walking in a direction slightly north of Freud’s original route, they came upon a wide dirt path covered in hoof-prints.
Kukalukl sniffed the path and said, “This is it. They’ve used this path recently. Probably sometime last night.”
They followed the path northwest, staying just within the shelter of the woods so that if anyone appeared, they could quickly duck out of sight.
Soon the trees thinned out enough for them to see glimpses of a gray building up ahead.
They slunk forward and after another minute came to the edge of the woods. They peeked out from behind a screen of branches and bushes at what lay beyond.
After descending a short slope, the dirt path met up with a crumbling asphalt road that ran north-south. To the south the road vanished around a bend a quarter of a mile away. To the north it extended for about three hundred feet, crossed a creek via a short rusting bridge, continued on for another hundred feet, then came to a gateway in a chain-link fence topped with razor-wire. A guardhouse, through the grime-bleared windows of which two figures could be seen sitting, stood in front of the fence on the western side of the road. The original gate had been taken down and was now propped against the inside of the fence to the west of the guardhouse. In its place a line of plywood boards with nails driven through them had been laid across the road, points up.
Beyond the fence, the road ballooned into a huge parking lot that fronted a far-flung network of interconnected buildings, among which were several enormous hangars. On a stretch of withered brown grass between the parking lot and the foremost building, which was clearly the main office, stood a sign that read, “Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems.”
Every wall in sight bore more of the same rude graffiti they had been seeing all day. The largest graffito extended across the front of the main office in black letters five feet high and declared: “Marauders Rule!” In the parking lot, a few dozen smashed and burned automobiles sat like black islands amid a sea of garbage and horse droppings.
“I wish we had binoculars,” said Granite, squinting at the guardhouse. He had already whisked off his civilian clothes, pulled on his cowl, and slipped on his gloves and cape. He was ready for some heavy-duty super-heroing. “It’d be nice to see who’s in there, and how many there are.”
“Before we do anything,” said Adam, “we should make a circuit of the complex. That way we can get an idea of its size and also see if we can discover anything of value. For all we know, there might be unprotected entrances somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, but you’re right: We should do a little reconnaissance before anything else.”
After stowing all unnecessary items in the heart of a thicket of shrubs—stealth and swiftness were paramount now; cookware and the like would just slow them down and risk making noise—they retreated fifty feet into the woods and bore north. They had to retreat even farther when they came to the creek, for crossing it that close to Yoyodyne would bring them into view of the guardhouse. Luckily the creek bent south not far to the east, and there they waded across it, then headed back northwest until they could once again see the walls of Yoyodyne through the trees.
Twenty minutes later, with the front of the complex far behind them, Kukalukl and Freud stopped simultaneously.
“Do you hear that?” said Kukalukl.
“That is precisely what I was about to say,” Freud said.
Adam listened. Off in the distance were voices and metallic clanks and clatters.
“It’s coming from Yoyodyne,” said Granite.
Maggie crept to the very edge of the line of tall bushes that shielded them from view from Yoyodyne and looked out through a narrow gap.
“See anything?” whispered Granite.
For a moment she didn’t respond. Then, without turning around, she beckoned them to come and see.
They did, each of them finding a small gap in the bushes they could peep out of.
The chain-link fence that surrounded the complex was directly on the other side of the bushes, and through its mesh they had a view of a trio of hangars that jutted like piers from the side of the complex. The corrugated steel door of the middle hangar was open, and a peculiar car had been wheeled out onto the tarmac in front of the hangar, about two hundred feet from where Adam and the others stood.
The car was long and low and made of unpainted metal, its front tapering almost to a point, its rear thick and boxy and almost entirely taken up by a wire cage containing a blocky engine with a yellow-and-black radiation symbol on its side. The whole contraption had a rough, unfinished look, like something cobbled together in an eccentric inventor’s home workshop.
Five Marauders stood deep in discussion next to the car. One of them, a tall man in a black trench coat and a plastic owl mask, held a fat booklet. A sixth Marauder, his back to Adam and the others, squatted at the rear of the car and examined the engine.
After a moment, the man in the owl mask said something to the Marauder squatting beside the engine.
The squatter stood up, revealing himself to be Tricky Dick, and said something with a shrug. Then he waited while the others consulted the booklet.
“Do you recognize that contraption?” Adam asked Granite.
“Nope. It looks like some kind of pro
totype jet-car or something, but I can’t really say for sure. They’re probably trying to figure how to get it running.”
Adam grunted. “Let them tinker. We must move on.”
They did. Ten minutes later they reached the northeast corner of Yoyodyne and got their first look at the back of the complex. There, sequestered from view from the road, stood a cluster of dingy, factory-like buildings, their metal sides rusty and soot-streaked. One of them had collapsed, and half buried in the girders and heaps of plaster stood several massive objects that might have been turbines, as well as an industrial metal vat with a staircase winding up around it and a walkway encircling its top. A crusty green substance covered its sides as if it had overflowed at some point. A faint haze of steam rose from its interior.
Here at the rear of the complex, they could no longer follow the fence, for it stood at the top of a wooded slope too steep to climb. They had to walk along the base of the slope, about twenty feet back from the fence and the edge of the woods.
After five minutes of walking they came to a halt. A three‑foot-wide metal pipe extended from the slope to their left. From its end a milky, pale-green liquid dripped slowly and steadily into a ten-foot-wide pool that stretched from the bottom of the slope beneath the pipe to the depths of the woods due north.
But a pool of what? The viscous green fluid shone here and there with rainbow colors like an oil slick, every plant within ten feet of it was dead, and the stench rising from it made everyone gag. It smelled as if someone had mixed raw sewage with several dozen industrial chemicals.
Across the pool of ooze was a clearing, on the south side of which stood a mound of twenty-foot-long logs and on the north a wooden shack, a row of corroded metal barrels, and a rusty riding mower. The bare dirt in the clearing was littered with footprints, most of them centering on the pile of logs, which looked as if they had been cut within the last month or two.
“Ugh, can we hurry up?” said Dagmar. It was hard to understand her because she had cupped her hands over her nose and mouth.
“Yes,” Adam said. “We should hurry up. The Marauders clearly frequent this area, so we mustn’t tarry.”
A half-submerged log lay across the pool at its narrowest point. It had clearly been meant to be used as a bridge, but the log looked so rotten and spongy everyone was afraid it would either fall apart like wet bread the moment anyone set foot on it, or simply lack the density to support anyone’s full body weight.
Maggie headed north along the edge of the ooze-pool to see if the muck thinned out farther away from the pipe, but the opposite was true: After three hundred feet, it widened into a vast fetid lagoon in which dead trees stood like fence-posts in a flooded field.
“It is impassable,” she said when she returned. “We shall have to try the log.”
Adam stepped forward. “I will go first.”
“Not if you have a brain, you won’t,” Kukalukl said.
Adam glared at him, jaw clenching so hard its ends bulged like eggs beneath his skin. He wanted to grab the obnoxious jaguar, god or not, and squeeze his throat until no more insults would ever come through it.
Then he remembered strangling young William Frankenstein, and his rage vanished, leaving only sick guilt in its wake. Even after all these years of isolation and reflection and, lately, making friends, his first reaction to criticism was anger. Yes, Kukalukl had been unnecessarily rude, but a man—no, a creature—of Adam’s size and strength should always make anger a last resort. Sometimes bettering himself seemed an impossible task.
Still, he knew what Granite would say to that: Something to the effect of, “You sure as heck won’t get anywhere if you don’t at least try.”
He unclenched his jaw and said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are the heaviest of us all. It’s possible that the log will support the weights of those lighter than you, and thus it would make more sense to let those others go first.”
“And if you are correct, it will crumble or sink while I am on it, and I will end up flailing about in that reeking muck.”
“It’s unlikely to sink all at once, which means you’ll be able to hurry across before it goes under completely. But if you go first and that happens, then you will make it across but no one else will.”
Adam considered this for a moment, then nodded. “You are correct.”
“Whoa,” said Dagmar. “I’m the lightest, but there’s no frickin’ way I’m going first.”
“I wouldn’t let you go first anyway,” said Kukalukl. He looked at Maggie. “How much do you weigh?”
Maggie instinctively glanced at Granite, then berated herself for being so concerned about what a man might think of her body.
She cleared her throat and said, “One hundred and fifty pounds. More or less. I haven’t had an opportunity to weigh myself in…well, a long time.”
“I see. And if my back is any judge, I’d say Dagmar weighs around seventy-five pounds. And I weigh about two hundred and ten…”
“And I’m about one seventy,” said Granite. “At least in my flesh form. In my stone form I weigh a lot more than even Adam.”
“What about you?” Kukalukl asked Freud. “You must weigh quite a bit. Why, the weight of your stupidity alone could probably crush a giant.”
“Your childish insults betray a great discomfort with my always-accurate analyses,” Freud said. “At any rate, my weight is three hundred and fifty-two pounds, five ounces.”
“Wow!” said Granite. “That’s pretty heavy.”
“Actually, I am considered light for a robot. Earlier robots were constructed of much heavier materials. In those days, a robot my size would have weighed over five hundred pounds.”
“I am only around three hundred,” said Adam. “It would appear, then, that Freud here is in fact the heaviest among us, and should thus go last.”
“Indeed,” said Kukalukl.
Dagmar eyed Kukalukl with suspicion. “So, uh, who’s going first, then?”
“I am,” he said. Before anyone could reply, he turned and dashed across the log. It sank perhaps a half an inch beneath his weight, but that was all.
Upon arriving on the opposite bank, he whirled around and raced back across. This time the log didn’t sink at all.
He lay down on the ground next to Dagmar and said, “Get on my back. I will carry you across.”
“Um…” She cast a dubious glance at the log.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It will hold both our weights. I could tell as I crossed it.”
Still looking concerned, she climbed up on his back and lay flat atop him with her arms wrapped around his neck, her eyes squeezed shut, and her nose buried in his fur. Without waiting for anything else, Kukalukl crossed the log once again, this time a little more slowly than before. The log sank a few millimeters, and halfway across a small piece gave way beneath his paw with a squelching sound and plopped into the ooze. So sure-footed was he, though, that he didn’t even break stride.
Maggie crossed next, one arm held out for balance, the other pinching her nostrils shut. The log didn’t sink in the slightest.
Granite, in his human form, went next. Again, the log remained immobile.
That left Adam and Freud. Adam stared at the log a moment, then turned to the robot.
“Are you sure you want to go last?” he asked.
“It is satisfactory. If you are concerned, please be advised that submersion in that odiferous admixture of liquids will not damage me at all. My casing is water-tight, and I do not breathe or require outside energy as humans do. Thus, I can exist underwater, or under-ooze as the case may be, for an indefinite period.”
“That is good, then. Though if you do end up submerged it might prove difficult to pull you out.”
“Fear not. There is almost certainly a way out somewhere.”
“All right.”
Adam took a deep breath and stepped onto the log. It immediately sank an inch and a half, leaving only a narrow strip si
x inches wide above the ooze. The sudden motion of its sinking threw him off balance, and he had to extend his arms to steady himself. Once steadied, he walked slowly across with no further problems.
When Freud stepped onto the log, it descended with a glup until it was entirely submerged and visible only as a wavering phantom under the ooze. The top half of Freud’s metal feet were likewise submerged, but he didn’t seem to care. He crossed faster than everyone else except Kukalukl, his sense of balance being precisely calibrated and immune to second-guessing.
Just before Freud reached the halfway point, Kukalukl, who had padded forward to investigate the objects in the clearing, suddenly froze, his ears cocked back.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“What is it?” said Granite.
But then he heard it, too—a high-pitched mechanical whine that he knew all too well: the sound of the Annihilator’s jetpack.
“Oh, crud,” Granite said.
It was impossible to tell where the sound was coming from. The presence of all the trees and of the large, echo-generating buildings nearby distorted the sound so much that not even Kukalukl’s predator’s senses could determine its point of origin.
Then the Annihilator flew into view above the treetops a few hundred feet to the west. He was headed toward Yoyodyne and didn’t appear to have seen them.
“Stay very still,” said Kukalukl. “Any movement might—oh, piss.”
While Kukalukl had been speaking, the Annihilator idly glanced over and spotted the group. In his surprise he wobbled a bit in mid-air, then veered sharply toward them, his right arm and its wrist blaster extended.
“What is happening?” said Freud as he stepped onto the western bank. Adam stood directly in front of him, blocking his view of the Annihilator. “Is he coming? I cannot see with you—”
The Annihilator fired off a barrage of laser blasts. Most of the shots hit the earth, sending up showers of dirt. One grazed Kukalukl’s right foreleg as he moved in front of Dagmar to protect her. Another blew a hole in the side of the riding mower with a flat metallic plank. Another struck the side of the shed, making the whole structure shudder.
Then one hit Adam in the right shoulder and sent him staggering backward. He smashed into Freud, who toppled into the ooze with a great splash that sent the noisome fluid spraying Adam and the shore around him.
At that point everyone scattered, racing for the closest shelter. Granite grabbed Maggie and pulled her against the east side of the shed, out of sight of the Annihilator. Ignoring the pain in his leg, Kukalukl gripped Dagmar’s shirt between his teeth and yanked her behind the pile of logs. Adam dove into the bushes to his right. A moment later a series of laser blasts shredded the foliage where he had disappeared.
The Annihilator paused, hovering directly above the center of the clearing. He looked to his left at the shed, then to his right at the pile of logs, then ahead and to his left at the bushes into which Adam had disappeared.
He turned toward the shed, arm raised, blaster ready.
After ducking out of sight, Granite and Maggie had slipped around to the rear of the shed, and now Granite took Maggie’s arm and nodded at the woods.
“Go,” he said. “Hide. You’re no match for him. Heck, I don’t think any of us are a match for him except me. In my stone form, I’m pretty much invulnerable to his lasers and rockets. The rest of you would just get cut to ribbons or blown to bits.”
“But—”
“There’s no time to debate it. Just get to safety. I won’t be able to fight him if I’m worrying about everyone else. Especially you.”
One side of her mouth crept up into a smile.
“It sounds as if you have taken a fancy to me.”
He grinned. “Well…yeah.”
“Then it may please you to know that the feeling is mutual.”
She planted a swift kiss on the corner of his mouth.
“I will do as you ask, but be careful. I shall be very cross if you allow yourself to be injured.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She gave him a nod, then dashed into the trees.
The whine of the Annihilator’s jetpack grew louder as he flew down the east side of the shed, advancing toward its rear.
“I know you’re there, you superheroic pile of shit,” he said in his tinny speaker-transmitted voice. “What’re you doing hiding like this? You turned all chicken?”
“Not at all,” Granite said behind the Annihilator.
The Annihilator spun around in mid-air as smoothly and swiftly as a weather-vane turning in a high wind.
While the Annihilator had been moving down the east side of the shed toward its rear, Granite had raced up along its west side to its front, transforming into stone as he went. Now he stood at the shed’s southeast corner, one of the metal barrels hefted above his head. He hurled it at the Annihilator.
The Annihilator flew straight up, but not quite fast enough to avoid the barrel. It clanged into his shins, sending him wobbling away over the top of the shed with a loud cry of “Shit!”
At the same time, claxons started honking in and around Yoyodyne. Doors banged. Men shouted.
Granite ran toward the rear of the shed, hoping to catch up with the Annihilator and take him down before the rest of the Marauders arrived. It looked like their plan to stealthily infiltrate the base was kaput. Instead they were facing a big knock-down, drag-out fight. Which was no big deal to him; he was used to stuff like this, and more importantly, he was nigh‑invulnerable. But most of the others—Maggie, Dagmar, even Adam—were much too vulnerable for his liking.
As he reached the rear of the shed, Granite heard the Annihilator’s jetpack shut off somewhere on the shed’s west side. Had he landed? If so, that was unusual. The Annihilator preferred to stay airborne against a more powerful opponent like Granite. Maybe the barrel had damaged his gyros or something.
When Granite stepped around to the west side of the shed, he found the Annihilator standing ten feet away, one arm raised and pointed at him. Granite started to laugh, thinking that the Annihilator intended to shoot him with his wrist-blaster—the old fool might as well be blowing paper straw wrappers at Granite’s stony hide—but then he realized the Annihilator wasn’t pointing his wrist-blaster at all. He was pointing some kind of high-tech gun…
The Annihilator fired. Granite felt something strike him hard in the chest and heard a sharp tink that sounded like a mountaineer driving a piton into a rock-face.
“What…” He looked down. A metal object the size and shape of a fountain pen protruded from the center of his chest. A small red light at its tip blinked rapidly.
“Found a few new toys to play with after the Cataclysm,” cried the Annihilator as he dove for cover behind the row of barrels. “It’s called an adamantium-tipped mini-shell, fuckhead!”
As Granite grabbed the metal rod, intending to yank it out, it exploded.
The force of the explosion flattened the shed and blew the metal barrels and the Annihilator halfway across the clearing. The worst damage, though, came from the chunks of organic stone that flew in every direction like bullets. The foliage directly behind the shed dissolved in a rain of green confetti. Gaping holes appeared in the sides of the logs, exposing the smooth pale wood within, and thick splinters and chunks of bark showered down on Kukalukl and Dagmar, who lay huddled behind them.
Adam, who had started to advance through the foliage toward the battle between Granite and the Annihilator, felt his skin punctured and torn in dozens of places as tiny rocks hit him like grapeshot. A larger rock the size of a doorknob passed so close to his head he felt the breeze of its passage on his ear.
Not far away, Maggie, who despite Granite’s orders had gone only about two hundred feet into the woods and then turned around and crept back toward the clearing, froze when the explosion lit up the clearing and turned the trees ahead of her into silhouettes. An instant later a flea-sized shard of organic stone grazed her cheek, leaving a thin line acro
ss it that quickly filled with blood. Another shard, this one a wedge about six inches long, ricocheted off a tree-trunk to her left, leaving behind a deep gouge, and then thudded to the ground at her feet. She squatted and looked at it, not even aware of the blood that was beginning to trickle down her cheek. It looked like a chunk of regular stone, but she knew it wasn’t.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She shook her head back and forth in denial. Several strands of hair struck her blood-streaked cheek and stuck there. “No.”
Adam, too, realized what had happened, and burst from the trees, calling, “Granite! Bob!”
But Granite had been reduced to what could only be called a pile of rubble. By some quirk of the explosion, he was intact from the shoulders up, a hideous bust. But beneath and around the bust were only chunks of stone, most no larger than a baseball. Clouds of gray smoke floated over the scene like listless ghosts.
“Bob!” Adam raced forward, barely registering the shell‑shocked Annihilator, who was struggling to climb out from underneath the heap of barrels he had found himself under.
When Adam reached Granite, his vision was blurry with tears and his ears were still ringing from the explosion, so it took him a moment to realize that Granite’s face was moving and that he was talking.
“You’re alive!” he cried, gripping the “bust” by its cracked, crumbling shoulders.
Granite’s eyes roved back and forth across Adam’s face, apparently unable to fix on one spot for more than a moment.
“Not…for much longer,” Granite said. He winced as if struck by great pain. “Boy, I…I sure walked right into that one, duh-didn’t I?”
“We can fix you,” Adam said, his desire for this to be true so strong that it seemed for a moment it was true. “We can—we can piece you back together or—or—”
Granite gave him a rueful smile. “You know that’s not…not true.”
“But—”
“Take care of Maggie. She’s a great girl. I wish…” That rueful smile flashed again, followed by another wince of pain. “Just remember one thing—a hero’s a hero even if everyone calls him a villain. It’s a guy’s actions that count, not…not the labels.”
He gasped and his head started to drop backward. Had he been a normal man, his head would have lolled brokenly; instead, as his head descended, his stone body lost its pliability and turned hard and stiff like real stone. As this happened he choked out three final words: “Be…a…hero…” Then there was a faint sound like ice cracking, and all animation left the stone, leaving him nothing more than a shattered statue.
“No!” Adam roared, rage quickly replacing grief. Rage was easier. Rage was a way of putting off dealing with things.
He shot to his feet and whirled around to face the Annihilator, who had just finished dragging himself out from under the heap of barrels.
“Don’t—” the Annihilator said and started to raise the gun he had shot Granite with, but it was too late. Adam had already leaped with his long, strong legs, covering the ten feet between them as if it were a single step.
Adam slammed into the Annihilator and pinned him to the ground with one knee on his abdomen. The Annihilator tried to raise the gun again, but Adam smacked it out of his hand. It spun away and vanished into the pool of ooze with a thick blup.
“Wretched little man!” snarled Adam. He drove one huge fist into the Annihilator’s helmet. It emitted a dull clonk, and inside it the Annihilator made a noise like “Guh.” Adam hit him with his other fist. This time one of the helmet’s sharp corners dug a furrow in his knuckle, but his fury was so great he didn’t even notice.
“Fuck!” screamed the Annihilator. “Stop it!”
Adam ignored him and continued pounding on the helmet, a never-ending stream of screams and curses pouring from his throat. His absorption in pounding the crap out of the Annihilator, as well as all the noise he was making, prevented him from seeing or hearing the approach of a group of Marauders from the west. At the head of this group raced the Grottle, shovel in hand, a crazed, homicidal grin on its yellow face.
Maggie saw them, though. After the explosion, she had made her way back toward the clearing, dreading the awful sight she knew awaited her there. When the trees parted and the clearing came into view, she first saw Adam leaping upon the Annihilator, then her eyes fell upon Granite’s head and shoulders resting atop the pile of rubble that had been his body.
She drew in a breath, though whether to sob or to scream or to offer Granite’s remains some sad last words she never got a chance to discover, for just then the Grottle came racing into the clearing.
“Adam!” she shouted.
He didn’t hear her. He just continued pummeling the Annihilator. The Grottle skidded to a halt behind him and raised the shovel, ready to lop off Adam’s head.
Maggie snatched a rock from the ground—a piece of Granite, she saw with sorrow, though she was sure he would approve of how she planned to use it—and hurled it at the Grottle at the exact moment it started to bring the shovel down.
As she watched the rock sail toward its target, she thought for sure that she had thrown it too late or too wide, that she had failed and could now only watch helplessly as Adam met his doom.
But no, it struck the Grottle in the side of the neck. The Grottle’s resultant flinch threw the shovel off course: Instead of decapitating Adam, its flat edge whacked him in the side of the head hard enough to knock him unconscious. He collapsed atop the likewise unconscious Annihilator.
Lips drawn back in a silent snarl, the Grottle turned, saw Maggie, and pointed its shovel at her.
Skippy and Oscar, who had just zipped into the clearing on their hoverboards, saw where the Grottle was pointing and hooked a sharp left straight toward Maggie.
“Leave the cooz to us!” Oscar said with a leer as they zoomed toward her. “We owe her one.” He and his partner pulled out long knives that glinted silver in the sun.
Maggie spun around and ran.
Meanwhile half a dozen more Marauders streamed into the clearing and stopped in a semicircle around the Grottle as it pulled Adam’s limp body off the Annihilator so it could decapitate Adam without injuring its fellow Marauder. The Grottle raised its shovel. The Marauders cheered, eyes bright with blood-lust.
With a growl, Kukalukl streaked down from the top of the log-pile and smashed into the Grottle, knocking it to the dirt. Kukalukl clamped his teeth on the Grottle’s left arm and raked his claws down the Grottle’s belly and thighs. Green blood poured from the gashes and pooled in the dirt.
The Grottle just grinned. As it tried to pull its arm from Kukalukl’s teeth, it used its free hand to punch Kukalukl in the face again and again and again. Soon blood was pouring from the jaguar’s ear and nose and mouth, his left eye had a reddish cast, and some of his fangs had fallen out and lay on the ground like bloody white thorns. Instead of letting go, Kukalukl bit down harder than ever, bit until his teeth were buried to the gums in the Grottle’s flesh and his mouth was filled with green blood that tasted strangely of lead.
Only then did he jerk his head back, narrowly avoiding the Grottle’s umpteenth punch. He did not, however, open his mouth as he did so, and a large chunk of the Grottle’s flesh came away in his mouth with a wet ripping sound. Before the Grottle could react, Kukalukl spat out the chunk of flesh and clamped his fangs on the Grottle’s arm once more. Now glaring with mute rage, the Grottle curled its lips back from its blotchy teeth and resumed punching the side of Kukalukl’s face.
Till now the other Marauders had been content merely to cheer the Grottle on. Now, however, with the clock ticking and the outcome of the battle still uncertain, Tricky Dick decided to sway things in his fellow Marauder’s favor. As Kukalukl dug his claws deep into the Grottle’s left thigh, ready to kick backward hard enough to slit the Grottle’s leg open right down to the muscle, Tricky Dick darted forward and kicked the jaguar square in the ribs. It threw Kukalukl off-balance for only a second, but a second was all the Grottle neede
d to hurl the big cat off his chest.
By the time the Grottle shot to his feet, Kukalukl had already righted himself and now stood crouched and ready to pounce. Tricky Dick crept up behind him and got ready to kick him in the haunches, hoping to distract him long enough for the Grottle to make its move. It worked, but not in the way he had intended, for Kukalukl heard him approaching and, planting his forepaws firmly in dirt, lashed backward with his hindpaws, his long claws fully extended.
There was a tearing sound as the claws tore through Dick’s shirt and belly, followed by a slick slithery sound and a thud as greasy loops of his intestines tumbled out of his torso and onto the ground.
“That…that’s not mine, man!” shrieked Dick. “I’m not fuckin’ dead! I’m…I’m…” With that, he sank to the ground, dead.
By then the Grottle had sprung forward to take advantage of Kukalukl’s momentary distraction. The angle was wrong for decapitation, so instead it swung its shovel like a golfer teeing off and struck the underside of Kukalukl’s chin with the flat side.
Kukalukl flew up and back, blood and broken fangs shooting from his mouth, and landed atop the slimy heap of Tricky Dick’s intestines. As soon as the Grottle saw where Kukalukl was going land, it leaped so as to land in the same spot a fraction of a second after Kukalukl did.
Kukalukl saw the Grottle coming but was too off-balance to twist out of the way in time, so five hundred pounds of Grottle slammed into his chest. His ribcage shattered. Blood geysered from his mouth.
As the Marauders whooped and cheered, the Grottle raised its shovel in both hands, pointed end down, like a vampire slayer about to stake a vampire, and drove it straight into Kukalukl’s neck with a thick wet shuck.
“No!” screamed Dagmar, who had been peeking out from behind the pile of logs despite Kukalukl’s orders to stay out of sight.
She raced forward to help Kukalukl, but Droke grabbed her arm and pulled her to him in a bear hug. She screamed and punched and kicked at his leathery skin, but it did no good. He only grinned at her blows, revealing his thick fangs.
Kukalukl’s forepaws scrabbled at the handle of the shovel as the Grottle placed one foot upon the blade’s back edge and pushed it farther and farther into the jaguar’s throat. Blood bubbled out around the blade and puddled on the ground. Kukalukl’s scrabbles degenerated into spasms, then feeble twitches.
The Grottle gave one final push and with a crack the shovel tore through the vertebrae and the skin on the back of the neck, and Kukalukl’s head tumbled to the side.
Dagmar screamed and screamed, her red face streaked with tears and snot. She wriggled to break free of Droke’s grasp, but Droke squeezed his arms tighter and tighter around her chest until her screams trailed off into gasps and wheezes.
The Grottle pulled the shovel from the gory mess on the ground and turned to Adam’s limp form. Grinning, it raised the shovel.
“Hold on!” said the Annihilator. During the battle he had regained consciousness and struggled to his feet, grunting and muttering profanities all the while. Now he stood upright, palm held out.
The Grottle stopped, frowning. It looked from Adam to the Annihilator to Adam again like a hungry dog who isn’t being allowed to eat the food in his bowl.
The Annihilator switched off the speaker on his helmet, turned away from the crowd in the clearing, and held a conversation with someone on a private channel. At one point he glanced over his shoulder at the others, then at the woods, then shook his head.
Throughout it all, Dagmar watched him and the other Marauders—more had entered the clearing after the melee started and over a dozen of them now stood there waiting for the Annihilator to finish his conversation—her eyes sometimes filling with hatred, sometimes with disgust, but most of all with despair, as if she knew the mission was over and they had failed, and now the Marauders could do whatever they wanted. She did not, however, look at Kukalukl’s still, bloody form. If she did, she would start screaming again and probably wouldn’t stop until she went mad. “I will always stand by you,” he had said. And that was how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Finally the Annihilator turned back to the others and switched his helmet speaker back on.
“M wants ‘em. Tie up the big guy and blindfold both him and the girl. We’re gonna lock ‘em up for now.”
He looked around the clearing. “Dump the bodies in the gunk,” he said, gesturing at the ooze. “Especially the big cat. I doubt he can heal from something like this, but I don’t want to take any chances. If he can, the gunk should dissolve his flesh faster than it can grow back. That stuff’ll strip the grease off a wop.”
“Vhat about de udder vun?” asked Klaus von Klaus. “De twin girl.”
The Annihilator looked out at the woods. “Skippy and Oscar went after her. They should get the job done. But just in case, why don’t you stay here and keep an eye out for her in case she manages to dodge ‘em and returns to the clearing.”
“Vhy me?” whined Klaus.
“‘Cause you brought it up,” he said.
“Sheisse.”
“Now everyone get to work!”
They started rolling the corpses into the ooze. Schweeliski grabbed the bust of Granite and was about to throw it in along with everything else when the Annihilator snatched it from his hands.
“Not that one,” he said. “I want that one for myself. That’s my trophy. It’s—”
“You’re all going to die,” said Dagmar.
The Annihilator turned to her. “What did you say?”
She flashed a smile so cold and hateful that a few Marauders stirred uncomfortably and looked away. “I said, ‘You’re all going to die.’ You don’t think you can do what you did and go unpunished, do you?”
The Annihilator chuckled. “And how are we going to die, exactly? You gonna drown us in your tears?”
“You haven’t caught us all yet, have you? And I escaped from you once before, didn’t I? You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
He snorted in contempt. “I’m dealing with a couple of beaten-down losers from the look of it.” To Droke he said, “Gag her. I don’t want to hear any more of her shit.”
The Annihilator turned away and gazed into the woods. Despite his bravado, doubt gnawed his mind. The little girl was right: They hadn’t caught them all yet. And Skippy and Oscar were taking too long. They should have been back already. What the hell was keeping them?