1
After a hurried breakfast of salt pork and dry Count Chocula, they loaded up the mules and entered the forest beyond the castle.
The land sloped gently downward as they headed west. The air was warm and redolent of flora both familiar and unfamiliar. Birds peeped or croaked or gibbered maniacally from the trees. Small animals rustled away through the underbrush at the group’s approach.
Sometime around noon, when the sun was at its zenith, its rays shining straight down through the foliage like the trunks of phantom trees, Adam, who was in the lead at that point, fell back until he was walking alongside Freud
“Do you recognize any of this?” Adam said.
“Not specifically,” Freud said, “though given the general composition of the flora, this is almost certainly the same forest I passed through on my way east. Barring any significant variation in the thickness of the forest, we should exit it tomorrow afternoon.”
“What lies on the other side of the forest?”
“A large valley with a river at the bottom. Beyond that is another forest. And beyond that, a long stretch of grassy hills. Very scenic, if one enjoys that sort of thing.”
“Did you encounter anything unusual or potentially dangerous between here and the valley?”
“No. This particular stretch of my journey was singularly uneventful. But since we are traversing a different portion of the forest, I can make no promises.”
Adam nodded and quickened his pace to return to the head of the line. Freud matched his speed, staying alongside him. Adam looked at the robot, eyebrows raised questioningly.
“Would you care to talk?” Freud said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Talk.”
“About what?”
“About you. Your feelings. Your thoughts. Given your story last night, I suspect that you have certain psychological issues which talk therapy could help remedy.”
“I would prefer not to discuss such matters.” He strode faster in an attempt to leave Freud behind.
“I understand, of course,” said Freud, the servos in his legs whirring as he matched Adam’s pace. Adam strode even faster, it having not yet occurred to him that though he possessed superhuman endurance and would take hours to tire, Freud was a robot and thus did not tire at all. “It is indeed daunting to bare the inner aspects of one’s character. Doing so, however, not only unburdens one’s mind of dark and weighty matters, but aids in self-knowledge. And it is only by understanding ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses and hidden mental processes, that true personal growth becomes possible.”
Freud paused as if expecting a response, but Adam simply kept walking, his watery yellow eyes locked on an invisible point dead ahead.
“For example” Freud went on, “you appear to have some rather substantial abandonment issues that—”
Adam glared at Freud. “I can take you apart with my bare hands, you know.”
“You wouldn’t!” said Maggie, who had been listening to this exchange with amusement till now. “You know he is the only one of us familiar with this region. We cannot afford to dispense with him.”
“I know, I know. And I am sure he knows too—knows that he can annoy me all he likes without fear of reprisal.”
“I am not trying to annoy you, my good man,” said Freud. “I am trying to help you.”
“I am not interested in your help, except insofar as you can help us find the Marauders. I cannot believe that this practice of psychoanalysis is a genuine science. It seems silly and childish.”
“On the contrary,” said Freud. “It is steeped in science, its conclusions and methods having been based upon direct personal observation and a large database of case studies.”
“If I may jump in here,” Bob said. “Where I’m from, psychoanalysis has been around for about seventy years, and although everyone credits it with contributing a lot to the field of psychology, it’s not really seen as very useful anymore. Much better theories and techniques have been developed since it came on the scene.”
“I am quite aware of that. In my own era, where psychoanalysis is tens of thousands of years old, it is seen as a quaint curiosity from psychology’s infancy—a major advance for its time, but no longer of any real relevance.”
“But if that’s true,” said Maggie, “if everyone from your time regards it as such, how can you put so much stock in it?”
“Because I have been programmed to do so.”
“Can you not change your programming?”
“Certainly not. But then, neither can you, for what else are your instincts and elementary thought processes but a form of genetic programming? You can change those no more than I can change mine.”
“But…does it not bother you that you adhere to such an antiquated system of thought?”
“It is my peers who regard it as antiquated. I maintain that it is still perfectly relevant to all beings with brains.”
“But that’s only because you’re programmed to think that!” Bob said.
“Correct.”
“Gah!” Bob spread his arms wide and looked heavenward, as if in search of divine guidance. Maggie giggled.
While they had been talking, bruise-colored clouds had rolled in from the north, and now lightning flashed in the distance. A few seconds later thunder rumbled. A chill breeze swept through the trees, raising goose-bumps on the flesh-and-blood members of the group.
Bob looked up at the clouds, eyes slitted against the rising wind.
“This is gonna be a bad one,” he said.
As if to underscore this comment, a lightning bolt arced down into the woods about a mile away. Thunder banged almost simultaneously.
“We had best find shelter,” said Adam.
No one disagreed. Storms in this post-Cataclysm world could be severe, with lightning deaths in the hundreds, flash floods that wiped entire towns from the map, and hail the size of hamsters.
They hurried forward, scanning the trees on every side for a cave, a shack, an abandoned wagon—anything that might provide even partial cover.
Five minutes later the rain started, only a few fat drops at first but quickly worsening to a nearly blinding downpour. With the exception of Freud, whose casing was water-tight, everyone scrambled to get their raingear out of their packs and onto their bodies. It didn’t help much; the gusting wind flung rainspray under hats, hoods, and hems.
Lightning struck again, this time half a mile to the south, and as the boom of thunder rolled away through the forest, they heard the crack and crash of a tree falling.
Freud stopped and pointed at something to the northwest.
“If you require shelter, there is a structure of some kind in a large clearing about a quarter of a mile away.”
The others looked in the direction he was pointing.
“Where?” Bob said. “I can’t see a darn thing.”
“Of course not,” Freud said. “My optical sensors are superior to those of any human.”
“Fortunately I am no human,” Adam said. “I can see it, barely, through the trees over there. It appears to be a low, white building.”
“Well, what’re we waiting for?” Bob said, striding off toward the building. “Let’s go!”
The building turned out to be a sprawling, one-storey structure with no windows and only one visible door, which was made of metal and painted brown. A sign on the wall next to the door read “Main Entrance.” Chunks of asphalt—probably all that remained of a parking lot or a driveway—littered the grass in front of the building. Between these chunks and the edge of the clearing stood a large white sign with black letters that read “Research Lab B.”
“B?” Bob said, looking around. There were no other buildings in sight. “Where’s A?”
“Probably yet another casualty of the Cataclysm,” said Maggie.
The brown door was unlocked, so they went in, Adam having to stoop to do so. Fortunately the ceiling inside was high enough for him to stand upright, though just barely; had
he risen up on tip-toes, his head would have dislodged ceiling panels.
They were in a reception area with institutional white walls and a white tile floor. A curved white counter stood off to their right. Behind it a wheeled chair lay on its side. A computer, its monitor dark, sat on a shelf on the receptionist’s side of the counter along with sundry papers and office supplies. Two doors—one to their right, one straight ahead—led deeper into the building.
Bob tried the light switch on the wall beside the door, but as expected, the overhead fluorescents remained dark. Working quickly in the gloomy light from outside, Maggie tethered the mules to the inner doorknob, while Adam unhooked two lanterns from the mounds of gear on the mules’ backs and lit them. Bob likewise lit his.
“I miss our atomic flashlights,” Maggie said, wrinkling her nose at the stench of burning oil. Now that outside light was unnecessary, she shut the door. Immediately a gust of wind drove rain against the door so hard it sounded as if someone had pelted the metal with pebbles.
“Actually, the lanterns are unnecessary,” Freud said.
“What do you mean?” Adam said.
“My presence obviates the need for lanterns. Watch.”
With a faint click, rays of orange light shone from his eyes like twin flashlight beams.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Bob said.
“I am equipped with a variety of useful features.”
“Well, I appreciate the offer, but those beams are a little too focused. With lanterns, we can light up the whole room. Besides, it’s probably not a bad idea if we each have our own individual light. In this world, you can never be too careful.”
“I agree,” Maggie said.
One of the mules let out a loud snort and stomped its hooves hard enough to crack a tile. The other mule made a series of huffing noises and threw its head about.
“They’re awfully skittish all of a sudden,” Bob said.
“The thunder must have frightened them” Maggie said.
“Perhaps,” said Adam. He sniffed the air and then frowned. “But something smells…off in here.”
Maggie sniffed the air too, then shook her head. “All I detect is the burning oil. What does it smell like?”
“It is hard to say,” he said. “It reminds me a little of raw eggs, of all things.”
Meanwhile, Bob, who had been examining the papers behind the desk, said, “Here we go.” He held up a sheet of paper and pointed at the letterhead. “This is the Blue Mesa Research Facility. Still no clue what they did here, though.”
“Should we explore the building?” asked Maggie. “Or should we wait out the rain right here?”
“I suggest waiting,” said Adam. “There is something I do not like about this place.”
“I would like to report that my sensors are detecting particles of unidentifiable organic material in the air,” Freud said.
“What kind of material?” Bob said. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
“I do not believe so. The particles are not living organisms. They are merely bio-debris, much like dust derived from skin flakes. They do, however, suggest the presence of a life-form that is not in my data base.”
“But this appears to have been a human-run facility,” said Adam.
“Correct.”
Bob heaved a sigh. “Great. This is probably one of those government facilities where they were doing exotic tests of some kind—breeding mutant monsters or opening wormholes to other dimensions. And no doubt the experiment went horribly wrong and unleashed hideous beasts on the unsuspecting scientists. That’s what always happens in places like this.”
“How very reassuring,” Maggie muttered.
A flash of blue-white light lit up the cracks around the brown door. A millisecond later a cannonade of thunder shook the building so hard that one of the wheels on the overturned office chair moved enough to produce a faint squeak.
As the thunder faded, a mechanical throb grew audible from the depths of the building. Moments later, the fluorescent lights emitted a low hum and a faint wavering glow, while the computer monitor emitted a faint staticky crackle, and screen turned a lighter shade of gray.
“Holy cow!” Bob said. “This place has a generator that still works! Listen.”
The throb grew erratic, then died. The fluorescents and the monitor died with it, leaving them once again with only the light from their lanterns and Freud’s eye-beams
“Dang,” said Granite. “It’s not working right, but still, it’s working! The first electricity I’ve seen since in over ten years! We should check it out. There might be fuel we can use. And in a place like this there’re bound to be plenty of other things that’ll come in handy.”
Adam shook his head. “What of your earlier concerns about monsters and worms and the like? Freud made it clear that unknown and possibly hostile life-forms dwell here. I say we stay where we are and be on our way once the storm passes.”
“I don’t like this place either. But there might be guns. And medicine.”
Adam opened his mouth to say no again, then snapped it shut and glanced at Maggie.
“I think we should look around,” she said. “But only if we stick together.”
“Definitely,” Bob said. “Splitting up always ends badly.”
“Are you sure about this?” Adam asked Maggie. “It could be dangerous.”
“I am hardly incapable of protecting myself,” she said. “I know how to use a wide variety of weapons, including my own two hands. Besides, I will be in the company of an eight-foot-tall, nearly immortal being with superhuman strength and endurance, a man who can turn into stone, and a robot. If, despite all that, I will still be in danger, then so will all of you. So I ask you: Are you sure you want to go? After all, it could be dangerous.”
She said these last two sentences with a gently mocking smile. Adam gave her an amused smile right back and said, “As always, you present an irrefutable argument.”
“Let us proceed then,” said Maggie.
“Um, I just had a thought,” said Granite. It wasn’t “Bob” now, for while Maggie and Adam had been talking, he had stripped down to his Granite costume in preparation for the search of the facility. If creepy science-spawned monsters did indeed dwell here, he wanted to have his game-face on. “Maybe we should leave someone here in case something comes after the mules. I mean, we could go through one of these doors, and something else could come out of the other one while we’re gone and steal the poor things. Or eat them.”
“Maybe Freud could stay—”
“No,” said Adam. “We might require his fine sensory apparatus to alert us to things the rest of us would miss.”
“Well, I’m not staying behind.” She folded her hands across her chest with finality.
“Look,” said Granite, “I’ll stay if—”
“No,” said Adam. “We might need your knowledge of the technology here.” He sighed. “I think we shall have to take our chances and leave the beasts behind. And if some unholy creature should slaughter them, then it can be sure we will pay it back in kind.”
He strode to the door opposite the entrance and threw it open. No monsters lurked on the other side. Instead, the lantern-light revealed a bland institutional corridor stretching away into darkness.
They headed down the corridor—Adam first, then Maggie, then Granite, then Freud. Wooden doors passed by on either side, most of them bearing small signs—“Dr. Gooden,” “Monitor Room,” “Briefing Room.” After two hundred feet, a corridor branched off on the right. A large sign on the wall next to it read “Restrooms/Locker Rooms/HES Charging Station.”
“Forget that,” Granite said. “I wonder where the actual laboratory is.”
“I am more concerned with the location of the medicine and fuel,” Adam said.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find ‘em.”
The corridor ended in a T-junction. They looked down each arm of the T. More doors. More white walls. More white tile floors…
/> And a man’s corpse sprawled in front of an open door halfway down the left arm.
“Yep, science does it again,” Granite said.
They approached the body cautiously, concerned that whatever had killed the man might still be nearby. The man had been middle-aged, thin, and almost completely bald, and he wore glasses and a white lab coat. His flesh was dry and shriveled, as though desiccated. His lips were cracked and split and had pulled away from his mouth so much it looked as if he were showing his teeth to a dentist. His eyeballs had collapsed and fallen into their sockets. Dried clumps of a whitish substance clung to his skin and clothes. On the other side of the open doorway a concrete staircase descended into darkness.
Granite crouched and examined the body.
“Hey, check this out,” he said.
Adam and Maggie knelt beside him and looked where he was pointing. The body’s skin was covered with tiny holes as if someone had driven hundreds of pins into it.
“Do you recognize these marks?” Maggie asked Granite.
“I’ve never seen anything like them.”
While they studied the body, Freud stepped into the open doorway, stood there in silence for a moment, then turned back to the others.
“It may interest you to know,” he said, “that my phonic receptors detect faint sounds from below.”
Adam stood up. “What kind of sounds?”
“It is hard to say. If pressed, I suppose I would have to characterize them as furtive shuffles.”
“So they are presumably sounds made by living beings.”
“Most likely. In addition, the concentrations of that odd organic matter I mentioned earlier are thicker in the stairwell than anywhere else we have visited.”
Adam joined Freud in the doorway and sniffed the air.
“The smell is a thousand times worse here, too,” he said.
Curious, Maggie and Granite stood up and sniffed the air rising from the black depths. Their faces crumpled in disgust.
“What is that?” said Maggie, stepping away from the doorway.
“Nothing good, I bet,” Granite said. The smell reminded him more of semen than of raw eggs, but he wasn’t about to say that in front of a lady.
“I do not think we should go down there,” Adam said. “We know nothing of the nature of the death of this man here, and given the vast assortment of dangerous creatures we have encountered since the Cataclysm, I think—”
In the distance there was a thick, gargling moan, like that of a dying man with a throat full of mud. The sound echoed along the dark corridors, making it difficult to tell exactly where it came from.
“What the heck is that?” said Granite, turning to stone almost without thinking about it. Alas, given the eerie nature of the sound and the horror-movie atmosphere of this place, his stone-form didn’t make him feel much safer.
“I believe that something is approaching us from the direction we came,” said Freud. “I detect more of those furtive shuffles proceeding toward us down the hallway that connects this hallway with the reception area.”
“Lovely,” Adam said.
A second moan rose up from the darkness at the bottom of the stairwell, apparently in answer to the first. Seconds later it was joined by dozens more, making it sound as if the lab’s lower level were packed with an asylum’s-worth of lobotomized men and women drowning in their own phlegm.
“How many of them are there?” Maggie said, drawing her dagger.
“I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t smash and slice our way through,” Granite said, trying to sound braver than he felt. Though he was made of organic stone and could hurl a Buick a block and a half, he still got spooked sometimes. Not that feeling spooked would prevent him from fighting and doing all he could to get them out of here, of course. He was a hero. He had chosen to be a hero. And he had learned long ago that one of the things that made you a hero was refusing to give in to your fears.
“Going downstairs is definitely out of the question,” he said, “so our choices are to either keep going down the corridor and hope we find another exit, or go back the way we came and try to get past the one down there.”
“The latter choice is the wisest,” said Adam. “Continuing down the corridor would take us farther west, and there were no doors on the west side of the lobby.”
“Agreed,” said Maggie.
They headed back the way they had come, Granite first, then Adam, then Maggie, with Freud trailing last, saying, “Hold on a moment, don’t I get a vote?”
“The majority’s already carried the motion,” Granite said.
They stopped just short of the T-junction. Granite motioned for the others to stay put, then took a deep breath and leaped around the corner, cape flapping dramatically. He landed in a crouch, fists and jaw clenched, ready for anything.
His face went slack with surprise. He straightened up. “What is that?” he said.
The others joined him. Maggie stifled a gasp at the sight of the creature shambling toward them. Freud said, “How odd.” Adam’s upper lip curled back in revulsion.
At first glance it appeared to be a faintly luminous, roughly humanoid mass of translucent silvery-white jelly. But a closer look revealed that inside the jelly was a man—or more likely the corpse of a man, given that his skin had the same shriveled look as that of the corpse they had found earlier. This man, too, wore a white lab coat, with a gray suit underneath. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were glazed and half closed. The jelly covering him was over three inches thick in places, and every now and then sections of it oozed languidly, thinning here, thickening there, as if seeking some perfect parasitic equilibrium. The jelly-man advanced in a jerky, stiff-legged shuffle, sliding its feet forward without lifting them from the floor. Its arms hung limp at its sides as if it had forgotten how to use them. The raw-egg/semen smell filled the corridor.
“None of you recognize this variety of creature?” said Adam.
“No,” Granite said. “I mean, it kinda reminds me of a zombie from a horror movie. But that doesn’t account for the gunk covering it.”
“What do we do?” said Maggie. “Can we fight it?”
“Let us find out,” said Adam. He strode forward.
The moment he started moving, the jelly-zombie stopped and let out a long, low moan. The jelly covering the man’s mouth spun in an inward-turning spiral and sank away like a whirlpool down the man’s throat, leaving the open mouth completely exposed. With the muffling jelly out of the way, the moan grew louder and shriller, though the gargling quality remained.
When Adam was barely an arm’s-length from the zombie, its moan abruptly ceased and jelly geysered from its throat.
“Ah!” cried Adam as the viscous gunk spattered his chest and arms. He shook his arms in an effort to fling it off, but it stuck like glue. After a second the individual gobs started gliding about on his skin and clothes. When two gobs met they merged into a single mass, and when those larger masses met, they too merged, and so on and so on until it became clear that the blobs of jelly were joining together to form a coating like the one on the zombie.
Maggie started to rush to Adam’s aid. Granite grabbed her shoulder.
“Don’t,” he said. “Let me. I’m stone, remember? It might not be able to hurt me. Besides, no offense, but I doubt a knife’s gonna do much good against this thing.”
She stepped back with obvious reluctance.
Granite raced forward. Ignoring the zombie, which hadn’t moved since it disgorged its jelly-vomit, he tried to grab hold of one of the jellies on Adam’s chest. It divided into several smaller jellies, which slipped between his fingers then recombined a few inches away. He tried again and again, with no better success.
“Geez, it’s like trying to pick up spilled mercury,” he said.
As he tried once more, the jelly-zombie lurched forward and tried to shamble past him, its sights now set on Maggie.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Granite said. He snagged it around the neck w
ith the crook of his elbow and slammed it to its back on the floor. He watched it for a few seconds, ready to strike it down again if it tried to get up, but it just rocked about, waving its arms and legs like an overturned beetle. Satisfied it was no longer a threat, he returned to helping Adam, who had set down his lantern and then pulled off his cloak and shirt to get at the jellies that had slipped underneath. His face was tight with pain.
“It feels as if they are puncturing my flesh with tiny needles,” Adam said through gritted teeth as he pawed futilely at a jelly on his upper chest.
“That would explain those holes on the corpse we saw,” Granite said. “It must attach itself to its host with some kind of wiry cilia.”
“Save the scientific analysis for later.”
“But analyzing it might help us understand its weaknesses,” said Granite. “For instance, why have these things remained in here when they could easily slither out through the cracks around the entry door?”
Adam scowled as he continued tearing at the jelly on his chest. “Am I supposed to answer?”
“No, but maybe they can’t abide light. Their luminosity reminds me of deep-sea fish and other things that never see the sun. Maybe the sun’ll kill these things.”
“Or perhaps the reason they have not escaped is simple stupidity. If we take them outside, we might be unleashing them upon the world.”
“Maybe.”
Meanwhile, twenty feet away at the T-junction, Freud said, “Oh, no.”
“What is it now?” Maggie asked, barely paying the robot any attention. Her eyes were fixed on the zombie Granite had knocked to the floor. Its jelly coating was slowly oozing off it and pooling across the floor. Was it dying? Or was it detaching itself from the compromised host body? She opened her mouth to shout a warning to Granite and Adam, but Freud’s next words shot the idea right out of her mind.
“More of those creatures are approaching from the stairwell.”
“What?” She turned. Neither the light from her lantern nor Freud’s eye-beams extended all the way to the basement door, but they didn’t need to: The jelly gave off its own dim luminescence, making the dozen humanoid shapes shuffling toward her and Freud all too visible. She heard a bang down the other arm of the T and whirled around. Another half-dozen zombies were emerging from another doorway about a hundred feet down that arm.
She spun back toward Granite and Adam to alert them to the zombies’ approach, then froze. The jelly-zombie Granite had knocked down was no longer a jelly-zombie. Now it was just a desiccated corpse like the one at the top of the basement stairs. The jelly, now free of its host, was gliding across the floor toward Maggie like a giant amoeba.
Freud strode forward and interposed himself between Maggie and the jelly. When it reached his inorganic feet, it flowed around them like water flowing around a rock in the middle of a river. He slammed a foot down on the jelly. The portion of the jelly under his foot slithered out along the crevices in his rubberized treads.
“Ah,” he said. “I suppose I should have foreseen that.”
Maggie stared at the rapidly approaching jelly in horror, realizing she had nowhere to run and no one to help her. Then she felt something warm bump her thigh and she looked down. It was the lantern. The burning lantern.
With a savage cry, she hurled it at the jelly. It struck the jelly dead center and exploded, spraying burning oil in every direction. Trapped in the heart of the blaze, the jelly bubbled and hissed like a pat of butter in a frying pan. Within seconds most of it had been reduced to a black crust on the floor.
“There are more zombies coming!” she shouted to Granite and Adam.
“More?” Granite said.
Maggie nodded. “From both directions. We must flee.”
“How will you get through the fire?” Adam asked.
It was a good question. The flames stretched all the way across the corridor, and their tops licked the air four feet above the floor, forming a seemingly impenetrable wall between her and the others.
“Since my casing is fire-proof,” Freud said, “I would suggest I carry you across, but I fear I cannot move fast enough to do so without risking your getting burned.”
“Maybe not, but I can,” Granite said, setting his lantern on the floor. He removed his cape, balled it up, and tossed it over the top of the fire. It flumped down next to Maggie. Then he calmly walked through the flames.
He looked back at Adam. “Get close to the fire. Maybe the heat or light or whatever will make the jellies get off of you.”
While Granite wrapped his cape around Maggie’s head, Adam approached the fire. When he got close enough to feel the waves of heat pulsing across his flesh, the jellies on the front of his body shuddered violently. The sharp pains caused by their cilia digging into his skin suddenly ceased, and as fast as startled cats the jellies darted around to Adam’s back, where they immediately began jabbing their cilia into his skin again.
“They simply moved to a less inimical location,” he said.
“Get outside,” Granite said as he hurriedly tightened Maggie’s cloak around her so it wouldn’t hang down too much. The two groups of zombies were only twenty feet away.
“Are you sure?” Adam said.
“No, but I can’t think of anything better, short of you jumping into the fire. I’ll bet money these things don’t like sunlight.”
“But the sun is not out,” Maggie said, her voice thick and muffled beneath Granite’s cape. “It’s raining.”
“It was. The rain stopped about five minutes ago. The sun might’ve come out by now. Even if it hasn’t, I suspect even gray cloudy daylight’ll weaken those things.”
Adam considered this for a moment, then snatched his cloak, shirt, and lantern off the floor and loped away toward the entrance.
As Granite checked the cape one last time, he detected faint movement out of the corner of his eye. The zombie at the head of the group that had come from the basement stood barely ten feet away now. It seemed reluctant to get any closer, probably because of the fire. Still, the jelly over its mouth had started that whirlpool motion. Given the force with which the first zombie had expelled the jelly, Granite suspected the spray could easily travel ten feet. While it posed no threat to him, the jelly would no doubt ooze through the folds in the cape to get to Maggie. They had to leave now and hope the cape was secure enough to protect her from the fire.
He slung Maggie over his shoulder, took a deep breath, and leaped through the fire. Maggie briefly felt intense heat wash over her body, then it was gone and there was a flesh-numbing jounce as Granite landed on the other side of the fire.
Behind them came a pattering noise that reminded Granite of the sound the rain had made hitting the metal door earlier.
“How revolting,” Freud said.
Granite glanced back. The zombie had tried to spray them through the flames, but Freud had stepped in front of the zombie, taking the blast of jelly square in the chest. Now a dozen mini-jellies darted back and forth across his casing in search of flesh to cling to.
“This is simply unacceptable,” Freud said. He stepped into the fire, stood there a moment while the mini-jellies burned to ash, then stepped back out.
Granite grabbed his lantern with one hand while holding Maggie steady on his shoulder with the other and sprinted down the corridor. His and Maggie’s shadow—a long, spidery shape cast by the fire and Freud’s orange eye-beams—danced along the floor ahead of them.
“Hurry up,” he called back at Freud, who was following at a stiff, jerky trot.
“I was not made to run,” Freud said.
“You can put me down now,” Maggie protested, barely audible beneath the cape.
“Not till we’re outside,” Granite said.
Granite turned the corner and saw daylight up ahead. The brown door stood open. The mules, still tethered to the knob, snorted in alarm as he brushed past them and out the door. He set Maggie down on the grass and whisked off the cape. The sheen of sweat on her fa
ce quickly dried in the wonderful rain-cooled breeze as she gulped down fresh air.
Freud emerged from the building behind them.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “This is unexpected!”
Wondering what he was talking about, Maggie looked around. The first thing she saw was Adam sitting on the grass twenty feet to their right. He appeared none the worse for wear and was surrounded by a ring of dead jelly that the daylight had reduced to a fine grayish crust.
The second thing, which was what everyone else was looking at, was a pair of figures who stood next to the Research Lab B sign. One was a young blonde girl, around eleven years old, clad in a dirty pink T-shirt, blue jeans with holes in the knees, and a pair of Keds held together with duct tape. Tucked under her arm was a rolled-up raincoat still dripping from the recent rain, and on her back was an overstuffed navy-blue backpack with red piping.
The second figure was a black jaguar.
“Um,” Granite cleared his throat. “Can we help you?”
The blonde girl tilted her head back and regarded them down the length of her nose.
“I am Dagmar,” she said, “the queen of this land.” She paused, as if expecting comments or bowing to ensue. When none did, she continued: “My companion is Kukalukl. We will be joining you on your quest to find the Marauders.”
There was a long silence.
Finally Maggie managed a smile. “‘Kukalukl’?” she said in the most pleasant, conversational manner she could contrive; she wasn’t in the mood for another fight or even a minor argument at the moment. “That’s an unusual name for a pet. Where did you come across it?”
Dagmar opened her mouth to respond, but the jaguar cut her off: “She heard it from me, cretin. And just so you know, the last person who referred to me as a pet is currently working her way through my small intestine.”
Chapter 4
The Field of Colored Cubes