Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening (6 page)

           
Finding nothing, Jeac paws at the ground around him until his hands grasp the
edge of a metallic surface. He reaches down and flails his left arm around. He
strikes a round object with his fingertips. The obnoxious sound he hears causes
him to realize, by way of echolocation, that he’s on a mountain of old rusted
cars.

           
He lowers his chest over the edge and turns his head slightly. He sees a dim
light coming from far off in the distance.

           
“Strange that so many cars are perfectly aligned to from this tunnel,” he
thinks.

           
He takes a deep breath, grasps the edge with his meaty hands, and lowers
himself down into the padded seat of the first car. He proceeds cautiously down
the ever gently-sloping car tunnel.

           
All of a sudden the tunnel drops off and Jeac loses (and breaks) his wind. The
dwarf flails his arms like spaghetti and drops quickly into the unknown depths
of the dark depths of the darkness below. It’s dark and deep down there in the
dark depths.

           
He falls until he slams into a large, meaty-looking angular trough. A pink
sphincter sprays red juices onto the slide. Tumbling ass-over-tea kettle,
Jeac’s heart jumps through his chest with every thump. Fear overcomes him. His
eyes widen and he scrambles for something to hold onto. It is for naught.

           
Jeac swivels backwards. Now sliding head first he covers his dirt-caked face
and shoots out of the end of the trough. He crashes into a large, crunchy mound
of something.

           
The light Jeac saw in the car tunnel seeps in from outside the broken flesh of
the Sharkano. His eyes adjust and he sees that he’s crashed into a mountain of
bones. Next to him rests his trusty battle axe.

           
“Food and light!” he exclaims. “And my axe!”

           
Jeac struggles to his feet as bones shift, fall beneath him, and drop and
splash into the pool of pink-red goo from the sphincter trough.

           
He swings his axe over his shoulder. His feet catch on bones with every step.
Looking around he sees nothing but the thick flesh-walls of the Sharkano.

           
“I should probably follow the light.”

           
Climbing up the enormous bone pile, he makes his way towards the light. Bones
rattle and fall and he trips several times on his way to the hole in the wall.
To his surprise, it’s too narrow for him to squeeze through. He thrusts his
fists with explosive force into the broken flesh and starts tearing it apart so
he can fit through. Chunks of shark meat fly left and right as he works at the
wall. He becomes curious as to what it tastes like. He crams some into his face
and begins chewing.

           
Finally, the hole is big enough for him to step inside. Much to his dismay, he
sees that the light isn’t from the outside, but from a gas lamp someone has set
on the ground on the other side of the hole.

           
He’s greeted by a scream from above. The echo fractures his ear drum and he
jerks his head violently in the direction of the sound. Chewed up shark chunks
dribble from his mouth and onto the ground.

           
He hears the scream again but it sounds extremely far away and the distance it
travels to reach his ears make it sound like a whisper.

           
“Who’s there!?” Jeac yells and nervously hops around. “I mustn’t lose it down
here. I need to get back to the surface of Chandaka.”

           
Jeac’s legs pound heavily into the squishy ground as he sprints towards the
sound. The further down the dwarf ventures the more he hears nothing. The
screams have stopped and the sound couldn’t have been coming from the Sharkano.
Sharks do not make any sound.

           
As he rounds a meaty corner, he sees the reason the screams have stopped and
quickly crouches (he stands) behind a pile of bones. Mini-sharks! Patrolling
the stomach of the Sharkano and sporting gray tuxedos. Between them lies the
shredded corpse of a rare blue mongeasel (half mongoose, half weasel).

           
“Sweet falcons of flaming clam land!” Jeac shouts.

           
The two sharks closest to his position hear him and look over as he rockets his
head down (he doesn’t) beneath the bone wall.

           
The sentries begin slapping their tuxedo-garbed fins together to make the
sounds required to draw the attention of their carnivorous sea brethren. Every
shark in the vicinity turns to look at the bone pile, but sees nothing because
Jeac’s height keeps them just below their line of sight.

           
“Now is my chance!”

           
Jeac rushes out from behind the bone pile and throws his fat body against two
sentries and knocks them over.

           
“Knuckle up, fat fins!” he shouts as he jumps to his feet.

           
The sharks, still lying on the ground, start flailing their fins around in a
circular motion. Jeac dodges every attempt made by the sharks.

           
“You’ll have to do better than that!”

           
One of the sharks grabs Jeac from behind and puts him in a full nelson while
the other sharks lay mean hooks into his gut.

           
“Bastardos!” Jeac yells. Spit flies from his bloody lips.

           
Jeac manages to kick his metallic kicks up into the sharks face. He breaks
loose from the hold of his other attacker. He kicks the fin-feet out from
underneath his former tormentor and quickly reaches down and twists the sharks
head off of his body. He holds the head aloft and lets the blood drain down his
gullet before slamming the head down over his own dome. A mighty new helm it
makes.

           
He turns, wipes blood from his lips with his dirty beard and smiles.

           
“I’m getting hungry, friends.”

           
He pulls his axe from his back and prepares to fight for his life.

           
The twenty remaining sharks stare at him with their soulless, beady eyes and
then flex their fins. As they do, razor sharp blades sprout out along the
edges. The sharks swing their fins like drunken madmen swinging foreign weapons
and with about as much accuracy. As they rush Jeac’s position, most of them
horribly disfigure themselves or their fellows.

           
“They’ve done all the work for me!” Jeac laughs.

           
As the last shark standing swims furiously towards him, Jeac brings his razor
dull axe down into the sharks head. After hours of hacking through bone and
flesh, he finally separates the shark into two ready to eat pieces. Jeac’s
blood is at a boil. He devours the shark in minutes. His vision a red blur, he
sprints his way through the Sharkano’s digestive tract, slaughtering every fish
in his way.

           
Upon reaching the ass end of the great beast, Jeac hacks a hole in the wall and
begins worming his way out onto the surface.

           
The Sharkano punches at his own ass to get the dwarf out, but Jeac isn’t having
any of the Sharkano’s shit.

           
His body halfway out of his axe-made escape hole, he begins punching hand holds
into the side of the shark beasts’ massive buttock. He climbs towards its back.
Every step the Sharkano takes threatens to throw Jeac off to his death.

           
As Jeac mauls his way up, Sharkano spews tiny sharks from his mouth that shred
their way down his surface towards the dwarf. The great beast cries out in pain
and it slams itself into the sand.

           
“Agh. Damn it all!” Jeac yells.

           
Jeac loses his grip for a moment and starts falling away from the now
accelerating Sharkano. Like a flash of lightning he pulls his axe from the
strap at his back and catches it on the beasts’ flesh.

           
The mini-sharks, unable to hold on with anything but their mouths, drop off of
their master and into the sands of the desert below. Their attack continues as
they leap from the sand like dolphins or that guy you know named Wade. Whenever
they draw near and jump within range, Jeac punches them in the nose. They
explode into red mist that paints the side of the Sharkano.

           
Speed steadily increasing, the Sharkano begins crashing through the ruins of
long destroyed cities. Jeac tilts his head and feels debris that would
otherwise knock him off ricocheting from atop his cartilage-based helm.

           
“At least the smaller sharks can’t keep up anymore,” he thinks.

           
In all actuality, Jeac has punched every last shark into oblivion and both he
and the Sharkano are completely red. A long trail of blood stains the desert
behind them and stretches far off into the distance where it blends in color
with one of the twelve setting suns.

           
Turbulence subsiding, Jeac carefully stands and finds his balance. He pulls his
axe from the blue flesh and cautiously moves towards the giant fin that’s
acting as a stabilizer. He reaches it and starts hacking like a lumberjack. He
hacks until it’s felled like a tree and watches as it tumbles down the side of
the shark and sticks, point first into the sand.

           
The sand, blurring from speed only moments before, begins to retake a granular
texture. The Sharkano slows to a stop. The blood spurting and trickling from
the massive wound where its fin once stood is weakening it. Once it stops
completely, Jeac begins the trek towards the head of the great monster. It
takes a full forty minutes.

           
Once he’s there he uses his axe to dig away the top of the sharks head in what
can only be described as the largest scalping imaginable. Jeac stands for a
moment and considers sewing the shark flesh into his beard but dismisses the
idea when he imagines the weight of the meat pulling him off the side of the
C.D.P.D tower to his death.

           
He kicks the large circular head-chunk off the Sharkano with such force that it
leaves the atmosphere and flies into space where it explodes. He jumps down
into the craterous hole the flesh previously occupied and stands atop the
skull. He raises his axe high into the air.

           
“For the tower,” he whispers.

           
He brings the axe down with such a mighty force that the entire head splits in
two and the skull shatters. Brains spill out like a wave and take him with
them. As he rides the parietal lobe, he punches downward and laughs as he sees
the body of his great foe twitch.

           
After gorging himself on most of the remains of the Sharkano, Jeac gathers the
left-overs and starts sewing together a makeshift vehicle. He dubs it the
‘Shark-marine’ on account of how it resembles both shark and submarine and
travels below the sand. The bearded one climbs inside his meatship and heads
straight back to the tower to report to Armando about his findings, still
unsure of what exactly he has found.

           
Also, one of the twelve suns explodes for some reason.

Chapter 14

           
Ranch Dressing is crouched on the other side of a sand dune as the giant mass
of shark careens by. He is flexing his toe-claws when Water Baby, having just
saved Jeac’s life, arrives next to him and moistens the sand.

           
“That’s about all we can do for him now,” the liquid apparition gurgles softly.

           
Ranch growls and stands. He walks in quick strides away from the dune. Water
Baby follows him, her puddle pushed by some unseen force as she streams her way
around the feet of the velociraptor.

           
“Where are you going, Ranch?” she asks. “Don’t you want to see Jeac succeed?”

           
“I don’t need to witness the act to know what will become of that great beast.
There are few creatures of that magnitude left on this planet. I won’t watch
another become extinct.”

           
He doesn’t hate Jeac, but he resents him. Ranch remembers, by way of sepia tone
flashback, when he was Alfonzo’s mount and how that yellow bastard would tell
him that Jeac was the beginning of the end. He’d served both Jeac and Alfonzo
faithfully for as long as he could maintain the façade.

           
Ranch is more than just a simple mount. Sure, he was forced to retire when
Alfonzo bio-engineered that stupid banana mobile, but it was different with
Jeac. Ranch left because he’d learned of the horrible truth. Both horrible
truths.

           
He didn’t know how to act when he found out about A&A’s plan at first. He
considered confronting them about it, but backed away from that decision when
he remembered that both father and son share a passion for pointless violence.

So he waited. He waited a fort night
until finally a Ronin delivered file was passed onto Jeac’s desk. Jeac can’t
read for shit unless the text is written in ancient hieroglyphics, so the task
of deciphering the files contents was given to Ranch.

He tilted his head at an angle over
the paper and scanned the words, excitedly, with one yellow cat-like eye. The
file was filled with incriminating evidence. Armando and Alfonzo were
maintaining a great lie. What he read in that file caused him to hate Jeac and
the masters who’d written it. But in addition to that, information about a case
the two were unsure of was tucked away. A translucent blue infant had been
kidnapped and taken from the fifth city by a rogue A.M.M.D member and a pack of
wild lizard men from beyond the dunes.

Ranch was glad at that moment that no
one knew just what that blue infant was. There were no races on Chandaka that
fit that particular description, save one. And that one race had been destroyed
over a century ago. It was the ocean. It had to be.

He thought a while about what the
A.M.M.D might want with the last drop of the ocean on the planet and why a
machine would think to hire gross green barbarians to aid it, so he took his
leave of Jeac’s office and headed to the only library in the entire tower.
Small, about the size of a broom closet, it contained three large books that
chronicled the history of the planet.

He grabbed one, flipped to the index,
and jabbed his sharp claw into the page. He scrapped down the words until he
found what he was looking for. Lizard rituals. They planned on sacrificing the
ocean to the suns to create the ultimate precipitation; one that would flood
the world and re-invigorate all of Chandaka’s life. But what were the chances of
that ever working? What if the water didn’t evaporate and form a rain cloud?
What if it simply ceased to exist?

Ranch Dressing wasn’t willing to take
that chance. He grasped the book in his teeth and flung it across the room,
destroying it. Both the book and the room. Just to be clear.

Of course when he relayed the
information to Jeac it sounded a lot different. He looked up and growled at his
master. Something along the lines of “some machine and a tribe of lizards have
kidnapped an infant!”

They ascended to the top of the
tower, without jurisdictional permits, and rescued the last of the water. Well,
Ranch did anyway. As he glided out into the desert from the towers peak, he
felt a sloshing in the canteen on the side of his saddle. Upon landing, he pulled
the saddle off with his mouth and unscrewed the cap. Water Baby had made its
way into the container during the battle.

“And that’s how we made it here,”
Ranch thinks.

Of course, lots of other shit
happened after they left the battle (see chapter 4), but that’s irrelevant.

Ranch and Water Baby walk in the
opposite direction of the tower for hours, even as Jeac is making his way back
towards the lone standing pillar of civilization on the planet. Their mission
is perilous, but Ranch has decided he needs to see for certain whether or not
the contents of that file are completely accurate. He needs to see if the edges
of the world are gone.

After several hours, the duo stops
and makes camp. It’s not a difficult affair. Ranch sweeps mounds of sand into a
circle and Water Baby sprays a girthy froth all over the place. The moist sand
shapes easily into a large castle, complete with bed chambers and dungeon. They
re-create this palace numerous times on their way to the edge.

The journey is long, but Ranch never
lacks hydration. Though, he often remarks about how wrong it feels to be
drinking from a sentient life form.

“Not long ago,” Water Baby reminds
him, “all life swam and drank from my froth.”

It’s a line that never ceases to
cease the raptors lapping tongue.

One day, as the eleven suns are
simultaneously rising and setting, they cross the final dune. There is a
lemonade stand there for some reason. A man in a suit with a red tie offers
them empty glasses and transcends our mortal realm.

Dry, cracked rock, stretches
out before them. Then there is nothing. No light, no warmth. Only the cold
black endlessness of space. Ranch and Water have reached the edge of the world.
They watch as what grains of sand remain on the surface float gently off into
space. The file is correct.

Chapter 15

Alfonzo and Armando walk casually up
the crowded street from the elevator. Street vendors are everywhere. Though
they’d usually stop random citizens in an attempt to sell their wares, they
don’t even look at the police duo as they pass.

Litter drifts around the black
concrete street and neon lights illuminate the windows of most of the nearby
buildings. There is a surprising amount of shadow for a place with so much
light.

Father and son round a corner onto a
street lined with strung-up street lights and stare down at the multi-level
city. All seven levels as well lit as the most dingy restaurant conceived.
Maybe a pizza place with a cast of characters and arcade games that caters to
children, but has food that tastes like cardboard. Nowhere specific. You might
have been there.

“I’m going to be honest, dad,”
Armando says to his father. “For as long as I’ve been chief… I’ve never been up
here. Never been to the Ronin offices. Have you? How will I know where this
place is?”

Alfonzo blinks, still trying to
adjust to the low light of the city.

“Follow the silence,” he says.
“That’s what I was told by Mu when he and his people first came to Chandaka.
Street vendors are loud. So are most citizens. The Ronin don’t make any more
noise than necessary… So follow the silence and you’ll find them.”

They stand in the street and try to
discern noise from not. Alfonzo gives up after a moment because he has no
actual ears and because it’s scientifically impossible to explain how a banana
would hear anyway. I’m just going to say nano-machines and cybernetic
augmentations.

His son has better luck and begins
walking toward an alleyway with hardly any light at all. The only source of
light is an ominous deep red neon sign that says “Not At All A Hideout.”

As they step into the alley and walk
towards it, the sign appears to drift away from them. They give chase but it
continues to move away. After several moments they hear laughter and are
blinded by flood lights that quickly fade to reveal that they’ve been chasing
the sign on a treadmill. A shirtless Ronin, covered in tattoos and drinking a
synthetic waffle shake, stands on a balcony above them.

“Mu,” grumbles Alfonzo. “Pranks? Is
this what you’ve been spending department funds on?”

“Alfonzo, my old friend,” Mu replies.
“What you see before you is constructed of scrap. Your corrupt department funds
have no place here, where honor or whatever reigns.”

Mu’s hand rests at the hilt of his
katana. Alfonzo’s yellow fingers twitch slowly near the butts of his two guns.

“Have you tried the cream cheese?” Mu
asks.

“The cream cheese…” says Armando. “Is
made of people.”

“Enough nonsense,” Alfonzo says.
“Cream cheese doesn’t reconstruct the fallen towers, nor kill the bastard that
felled them in the first place.”

“Of course it does, you yellow
bastard,” Mu says. “Cream cheese is a tool for every occasion, but it isn’t a
tool to be used to smite one who might not have truly committed the crime. I’ve
told you countless times that I don’t believe Jeac caused the current state of
the world. You never listen-“

“I never listen,” interjects the
banana, “because I witnessed the crime firsthand!”

The Ronin leader paces back and forth
atop the balcony, his hand occasionally brushing the lever that would
reactivate the treadmill and send the duo backwards at an unknowable speed. He
stops, presses a button, and throws the lever. They don’t move backwards away
from the sign, however. The treadmill drags them slowly forward as the red
symbol flickers and the wall around it shakes. The sign and the wall it rests
on are pulled up and back, out of sight. Again, floodlight blinds them.

“Why have you come, Alfonzo and son?”
Mu asks. “I know it is not to berate me about department spending. There is a
yearly financial meeting for that.”

Mu’s hand rests on the rail of a
downwardly spiraling stair as he descends. The light grows dim again and
Alfonzo and Armando can see that the room they stand in is a waiting room. Red
couches rest at ninety degree angles on either side of the conveyer belt entryway
and between those couches are fish tanks filled with beta fish skeletons and
bloody water and that pair of socks you lost that one time along with all your
dreams.

“We came because we believe one of
your men might be leaking information about a certain project to an outside
source,” Armando says. “We won’t tolerate that.”

“Hm. An interesting accusation,” Mu
says. “Have you any evidence that this event has occurred?”

“Well, the file containing
information crucial to the overall planning I was keeping on my desk is
missing,” says Armando. “Besides, we’re the police. We don’t need evidence.”

“You see, Alfonzo? Your son has lost
the file in his disorganized mess of an office. Nothing more. Should you turn
that place over I’m sure you’ll find the file you’re looking for. Don’t you
have a button that flips the whole room anyway? Now go. Stop pestering me.”

Alfonzo’s hands tightly grip Yellow
Fury and Gold Justice. He respects Mu, but he’s never been one to tolerate his
mind games. Or actual games. Bananas suck at games. He glances at his son who
is also reaching for his guns.

“Don’t pretend like I can’t see you
drawing weapons on me,” Mu says. “I’m staring directly at you.”

The Ronin grasps the hilt of his
sword.

“You would immediately resort to violence
as the best possible course of action upon inability to maintain civil
discussion?” Mu asks. “So be it. I refuse to be the first to draw, but should
you attack me I think you’ll find yourselves rather shorter after this
prolonged encounter of physical aggression.”

Mu smirks and steps into a fighting
stance, his hands resting on his sword.

Alfonzo looks to his son and his grip
loosens. His guns don’t feel quite right.

“Son, maybe we’d be better off trying
diplomacy this time.”

“What? After all that tough talk
earlier? After you so aptly demonstrated such a kill-em-all mentality? You’re
backing down? No! We can’t let some little man with an over-sized butter knife
get in our way, dad! We’re B. Nanas, dammit. We’re the master of this tower!”

Armando pulls both his shotguns over
his shoulder and pulls the triggers. Nothing happens. His rage subsides and
confusion takes its place. When he looks at the barrels of his guns an orange
line shimmers across both and the weapons slide neatly apart and fall to the
floor.

“W-what the h-hell just h-happened?”
He asks. “You never even drew your blade!”