Untitled (27 page)

    And then, alas, there was T'wah Sampo: the only guy from Oz I ever dated who turned out to be a total jerk. Not a rarity on Earth, but here it took me by surprise. Little winkie motherfucker asked me out, told remarkable stories that all turned out to be lies, tried to get me so high that I couldn't resist him, tried to muscle me down when I did resist him, and then whimpered like a sissy when I kicked his sorry ass.

    "Hey, Sampo," I said. He looked up and jumped, and his face turned white. I was all for that. "You sure you're on the right fucking side here, buddy? I think the forces of evil are gathering over there." I pointed at the approaching army.

    He halfass tried to laugh it off, but his memory of me dribbling him down the street seemed remarkably fresh when I looked into his eyes.

    Whatever. I had bigger fsh to fry—come to think of it, they didn't come much smaller—so I moseyed over to Dorothy and the front line chain of command. Many hugs were exchanged, all of them good.

And then we got down to business.

Our forces were arrayed on the battlefeld thusly:

    At the very front was our four-member diplomatic party (fve, if you considered Toto). It consisted of Dorothy and Scarecrow, acting as negotiators, fanked to either side by Lion and myself.

    Directly behind us was a pretty mean offensive line of ffty toprank fghters. They were backed by another thirty of equivalent skill, spread out a bit more thinly. Along with the winged monkeys, still perched upon the ramparts, that was pretty much the heart of Ozma's physical defense apparatus.

    Another hundred-and-ffty valiant souls were lined up, three tiers deep, behind. I was pleased to note that the Bunnyberry gang was set up at their forefront, performing inspirational feets of...well, precision marching and such. I was also pleased to note that the paper soldiers and cutlery people were there. Along with the mopey Mr. Sampo.

    Behind them were roughly thirty-fve stands, set up in a mode of carnival atmospherium. Not just the Burrito, but a dozen other food-vendors (including, to my surprise, two stands offering Big Fun Sandwiches). There were carney-style games of skill and chance, and stands set up for the expressed purpose of just giving away prizes to adversaries who didn't want to fght.

    There were also—so help me God—a half-dozen kissing booths, offering sweet smoocheroos to all conscientious objectors from the opposite camp.

    I found myself wishing that all wars were fought this way.

     By this point, Bhjennigh's army was one football feld away; so I was both relieved and terrifed when both the cloud and the ranks came to a stop.

    And their diplomatic party stepped forward, into the remaining light. It was our cue.

    We took it.

    At this point, I became aware of a thin, whispy fog that seemed to trail behind them, as if welling up from beneath their feet with every step they took. I looked at my own feet, saw no fog there, had to repress a shudder of supernatural dread. Bhjennigh's magick was really starting to creep me out.

    "Glinda, protect us," I heard Dorothy mutter. It seemed as good a prayer as any, unless you looked up at the cloud. Then the whole notion of Glinda-as-Deity became a somewhat frailer supposition.

    I tried not to give in to the fear.

    There were twenty yards between us now; I estimated a minute or less before we were face to face. It was now possible to clearly see the approaching foursome. I was unsurprised to pick out Rokoko and O'mon, vastly relieved that Skeerak was nowhere in sight. Between the two fghters were Ambassador Hwort and good ol' Xavier Waverly.

    It wasn't until they were almost upon us that I noticed there was something very wrong with their eyes.

    The four of us stopped dead in our tracks. I looked at Scarecrow. He looked at me. Toto let out an unearthly moan, and Dorothy tried to shush him, with little success. She, too, was shaken by the sight before her. Those four dark fgures.

     And their coal-black eyes.

    I became aware of a low rumbling sound, like an idling Harley. It was Lion's warning growl. His great back was arched, the hairs standing on end, every muscle beneath tensed for savage attack.

    Almost casually, Scarecrow reached out to stroke his mane. I suspected it was as much for Scarecrow's reassurance as it was for our feline friend.

    The Hollow Man's diplomatic corps came to a stop, less than six feet away. Ambassador Hwort took a single step forward. Dorothy echoed the gesture. The rest of us stood our ground.

    "Dorothy of Oz," the Ambassador said, with a voice that did not sound entirely his own. "You are here as a representative of Ozma, and the Emerald City?"

    "I am here," she said, "to represent myself. Along with the rest of my friends."

    Something shifted in the munchkin's face. Not an expression— from what I could see, he didn't have an expression—but something that moved underneath the mask of fesh. As if his skull itself had subtlely reconfgured, then snapped back into place.

    I found myself searching those lifeless eyes, for something resembling a spark.

    "All the same," he said at last, "you speak for Ozma, in this place. And so you will relay to her this message."

    "Of course," she said.

    "Then tell her," he said, "that your only choice is absolute surrender."

    "Oh, my," she said, and her smile was huge. "Now you're just being silly."

    There was a rumbling in the clouds. I felt it in my bones. No doubt Dorothy felt it as well, but it did not change a thing. I was stunned by how strong she was as she threw back her hair, rolled her shoulders, releasing stress as she gathered up power.

    "CITIZENS OF OZ!" she called out to the blackened hordes beneath the cloud. "AND WELCOME GUESTS! WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO FIGHT WITH YOU!"

    A startling moan erupted from deep within the enemy ranks: the terrible sound of longing, the question mark of hope. Dorothy smiled and held out her arms, as if to embrace them all.

    Then Scarecrow slammed into her from the left.

     And instantly exploded.

    It all happened so fast, I barely saw the black lightning. Just Dorothy and Toto, collapsing at my feet. The billowing blackness, as I turned. Bits of Scarecrow, fying everywhere. Before I had a chance to react, it was over.

    And suddenly, Skeerak was there.

    He had materialized out of the black lightning, in the very spot where Scarecrow died. He materialized swinging, so that his sword was coming toward me before I could fucking blink. I knew a moment of horror so pure that it felt like dying already.

    Then Lion was on him, plowing him back. The blow went out of control. So did everything else. I blinked as the two of them went down in a tangle; and all around me, the air erupted with the howl of war, the thunder-roar of armies racing headlong toward me from either side.

    At my feet, Dorothy was crawling on hands and knees, gathering up pieces of Scarecrow. She reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas, scrambling onto the back of the Presidential limo for a chunk of her husband's skull. I stepped around her, almost tripping over Toto, and brought my axe up to fghting position.

    It took O'mon that long to attack. By that point, I was ready. He slashed. I parried. He slashed again, not as well as I'd expected. There was no smile curling on his lips. There was no kill-twinkle in his eyes. He fought like a man who knew all of the moves, but had learned them from books and instructional vids.

    Which didn't make sense, but I didn't care to sweat it. I just parried, slashed, parried, and then chopped his face in half. The whole encounter took less than forty-fve seconds.

    And then they were upon us, in colliding savage waves: Tiger leaping over my head to land on Skeerak's massive shoulders, just as Allalo and his tribemen raced past me, a band of ogres launching breakneck into their swell, weapons fashing, blood splashing like oceanic foam. An ugly gray squat thing came blasting toward Dorothy at roughly cannonball speed. I adopted a batting stance, swung, and popped it like a tic.

    A whole platoon of white-eyed munchkins came surging toward us from the opposite side; and to my relief, they were screaming in terror, throwing their weapons down left and right. "LOOK!" I howled to Dorothy as she stumbled to her feet, nearly tripping over that goddam Toto again.

    She picked up the dog, saw the oncoming munchkins, and began to smile, clutching her handfuls of Scarecrow tightly. "COME ON!" she yelled, then turned and took off, leading the Hollow Man's hordes of deserters back toward Emerald and a big fun sandwich. Thirty, ffty, a hundred ran past me. I wanted to join them, but not everyone was deserting. I saw a sweet little gal getting sliced up from behind. When she fell, I jumped forward and hacked her killer into coleslaw.

    The next wave to hit us was substantially worse. It was blackeyed and vicious, chock full o' monsters and former civilians who'd been fully converted by Bhjennigh's evil magick. This included, to my amazement, a batch of what appeared to be American tourists gone horribly wrong. No sooner had I shown some goblin his spleen than I was face-to-face with some Ren fair reject: a gawky guy in a ratcatcher's suit, swinging his cudgel at me.

    I felt a moment of guilt as I opened him up; I might have dated that guy in the seventh grade. But his eyes were like glistening charcoal briquets, a condition that not even death seemed to alter. And the moment he fell, another one was upon me: this one sporting a Hawaian shirt, swinging his Polaroid by the handle like a mace.

    I cut his arm off, which made him sad. The camera went fying, which made me sad. I would have loved an Instamatic, but it was not meant to be. And, besides, the next guy in line was a tv news anchor I recognized from Fox.

    I was starting to enjoy this a little too much.

    Too bad it couldn't stay that way...

Ralph just kept on walking, and I just kept following him until we were at the western edge of the city, somewhere I'd never been before, heading for the west gate.

    "HEY!" I yelled to him, trying to keep up, "Hey! Ralph! What are you doing?"

    He wasn't listening then, he was talking up some old guy in a uniform at the gate who looked like Captain Kangaroo. Amazingly enough, the guy fipped a big cartoony lever and the gate came creaking open.

    Ralph trotted out, and I was right there with him. The gate slammed behind us with an unearthly thud. We stood there together in the growing darkness, facing the wide open prarie that stretched out before us.

    Moist cool air fanned up at us from the grass beneath our feet, and a low fog hung up around our ankles.

    "What are you doing?" I asked again, "What are you gonna do—you just gonna run away?"

    But he didn't answer me right away. He pulled a bottle out of his coat and took a big long pull on it. Then he looked at me blurrily and said, "You go back. I gottado somethin an you can't help me. You're still a reasonably good human being. So ged the fuck outahere."

    Then he started whistling, a low warble, followed by a tweet, followed by a keening sweep, followed by something else—a Tarzan yell of whistles.

    And then I saw them—rolling across the plain, now in a V formation, now doing precision doughnuts, horns dopplering across to us in the humid air like they were next to us, and silent—engines still, running on some other motive force, maybe sheer enthusiasm, like dogs barking after a master long remembered but seldom seen. The tires scratched across the sandy ground, and Ralph threw himself into the frst humvee, tossed himself throught the open window into the driver side, and grabbed the wheel.

    I was beyond thought by then (yes, once again), knew only that I had to follow, that something tied me to this guy, no matter whose side he was on, and to whatever the hell we had to do together, even if he didn't see it that way... I hesitate to say "destiny," but what the fuck—it was my destiny to jump into the second humvee before it could peel off again into the growing darkness.

    And the six hummers swung quickly around the city, within minutes were plowing through the fray, through the growing fog, thudding wetly into veiled, hulking shapes (I prayed they were the bad guys) until off at what looked like the edge of the confagration, to my amazement, I spotted Ledelei, trapped between one of the green ogres and a black, three-headed snake thing.

    I took hold of the steering wheel, and with some effort, brought the hummer around to head straight for the ogre's backside at about eighty MPH. Just as Ledelei sliced through the frst of the snake's heads, I opened the car door, slamming it full-on into the ogre. Glass from the window few everywhere, and the ogre went down, stunned and bloodied, but not quite dead. I threw the hummer into reverse— it complained, but responded.

    Ledelei looked at me popeyed for a second, stunned, then grabbed me and gave me a big wet kiss on the mouth. My foot was on the brake, holding the humvee back. It was struggling, eager to join its mates, who were far ahead to the northeast.

     I knew where they were headed now.

    Ledelei let go of me, and tumbled over me into the back seat.

    I took my foot off the brake and the hummer peeled out.