Untitled (31 page)

    "I don't think so," he said, "but it certainly seems to help."

    This was true. All along the rest of the city walls, the cloud was still pressed against that invisible wall of cosmic glass. That's what made its retreat from the Skyrrla plain to see.

    And now I noticed that—where the oil-cloud touched the wall— the air was beginning to sizzle.

    "Oh, fuck," I said, pulling away from Mikio. It didn't feel like a movie any more; and despite the continuing glow of the Skyrrla, I now felt neither confdent nor warm.

    "Where are you going?" He could see in my eyes that I was already gone.

    "You guys keep up the good work," I said. "I'm gonna help hold down the fort."

    I thought about giving him a last big hug, but it would've been anticlimactic. Evidently, he felt the same way, too, because he just looked me in the eye, made the solidarity fst, and then blew me a kiss off its knuckles.

    My axe was back by my bedding. I grabbed it on my way out the door, down the stairs, and out into the mad streets of Emerald. What I found there was panic: the genuine, old-fashioned, clutch-your-hairand-run-around-screaming kind.

    It didn't take long to fgure out why.

    From the ground, it looked like large black globules were spitting out from the sizzling rift in the sky. But as they got closer, I could see the wings, a-fap above their misshapen bodies. Before I could suss just what the hell they were supposed to be, one of them zeroed in on me from three hundred feet above.

    The closer it got, the less I liked it.

     The thing had no discernible face. It was roughly the size of a bowling ball, discounting the wings (which had the span of an eagle's) and the tendrils that dangled below it (maybe twice as long as Bob Marley's dreadlocks, at their most extreme).

    It was an oil-black fying jellyfsh from Hell.

    And it was one of hundreds, now descending from the sky.

    I waited till the one with my name on it was close enough to

swat, which I did, using the fat of the axe. The thing hit the wall and went splut. Very juicy; and wherever it sluiced, smoke came out of the stone.

    I was extra-glad I hadn't opted to cleave it, gotten splotched by that shit in mid-air. I was also pleased that they went down so easy. Things you can't kill are a pain in the ass.

    Nonetheless, people were diving for shelter, and I couldn't say I blamed them. I found myself backing toward the nearest doorway as I took out two, then three of the fuckers; by the time three more descended on me en masse, I ducked inside and let them smush against the door.

    So good. They were stupid, too. Kamikaze blobs from Bhjennigh, just dropping out of the sky. If they started hovering around, laying in wait, I'd have thought they were a whole lot scarier. But still...

    Outside the door, somebody screamed: not in fear, but agony. The sound was close, but as I followed it with my ears, I became aware of other, more distant screams. They seemed to be coming from everywhere. Which meant that lots of people were probably dying.

    I turned around, taking stock of my sanctuary—a cozy little apartment, done up in gillikin style—and was surprised to fnd myself far from alone. Perhaps a dozen wee people were huddled against the back wall, silently staring. Most of them were children. I didn't recognize them, nor did they seem to recognize me. Or maybe we were all just in shock.

    "It's okay," I said. "Is this your place?" They nodded yes, pretty much as one. "Well, thanks for letting me in. Are you all okay?"

    They nodded yes, then began to cry.

    It took a minute to establish that some of their relatives were still out there, as well as god only knew how many people they loved. I knew the feeling well. I was worried about everybody. It occured to me that, short of Mikio and his pals, I didn't know where anyone was, much less how they were doing. I hadn't seen Dorothy since the battle; I had no idea what was left of Scarecrow; I didn't know if Lion had lived or died. Not to mention poor old Gene...

    And what of Ozma? What if she fell? What if this was only the beginning of the end? I thought of Glinda, up in her tower. At least it was contained. But what if something worse was coming, already

fghting its way inside?

    And then, like a dolt snapping back from stupidity, my thoughts returned to Mikio. Yeah, I knew where he was, and that was nice. But where was he?

    
Oh, just up on the rooftop: essentially defenseless, and totally
exposed...

    There was a sturdy little wooden table near the door, on a center stand. The top was just slightly bigger than the average shield. Or umbrella, for that matter. Because I needed it to function as both, it was my new favorite piece of furniture. "Excuse me," I said, "but if I can use this, I could maybe help to save everybody's lives."

    They liked that idea, so they cleared off the table and I tipped the table over and chopped off the top, leaving about six inches on the stand I could use as a handle. It worked pretty well. I thanked them, promised I'd get them another if I survived, and then went out the door: table over my head, axe in the other hand, racing back in the direction of Mikio's building.

    Almost immediately, something went sploosh and sizzled on my nice tabletop. So the things were still at it. I kept my head down and ran. Another jellyfsh caromed off the slowly-dissolving table and blew up on the fagstones to the left of my feet. I dodged the acid muck, rounded the corner to Mikio's block.

    So far, so good. I hazarded an upward glance, checking the rooftop situation. Against the wall of darkness, I could faintly detect that defant glowing green. "Oh, YAY!" I cried out, like a warrior Pinky.

    And then the black lightning returned.

All I could think of, again, was "what the fuck am I doing here?" A couple of weeks ago I was in Aron's, drinking a cup of coffee and sorting through used DVD's, and now I'm in a wicked warlock's fortress, attempting to actually locate and go to the dungeon of the fortress, so I can free the actual Tinman, King of the Winkies.

    The hallway we found ourselves in was dank, cold—the walls sweated and stinky torches hung along the corridor, providing what dim light there was.

    Since I pulled my little magic trick, Ledelei had been looking at me suspiciously, as if she wasn't sure what side I was on anymore. I could tell that this whole excursion into the heart of darkness was starting to mess with her mind.

    "What?" I whispered at her, fnally, exasperated. "What do you want me to say? I don't know how I knew that. It freaks me out, too. There's something going on that I don't understand..."

    She was giving me that look that people give you when they think you're absolutely lying, and I had that look that you give people when they think you're lying and they've almost got you convinced that you really are lying. Which makes them even more convinced that you're lying.

    "Come on," I said, "this is ridiculous. If I was with them, why would I have gone through all of this? Really. This is pointless. Let's just get Nick. It's around this corner—right, two lefts, and down a staircase."

    I did a double take worthy of Larry Fine, and she smirked and shook her head. "Whatever." She said. "Gene, I am not an idiot. Be careful. I don't know if you are the enemy or what, but I am ready to kick your ass when the time comes."

    That was a fne how-do-you-do. A few hours ago, we were rolling around naked, and now she was going to kick my ass. And I didn't doubt for a minute that she could.

    "Jeez. Let's just fnd the guy and get out of here."

    I looked down the corridor, and I knew that around the next bend there was a stairwell that spiraled up, with a door to a balcony about halfway up.

    This was getting spooky. I was about to attribute it, once again, to normal Oz high weirdness, and just use it, when I fashed on where I had seen all this before. I slapped my forehead, and would have laughed out loud if not for the dire circumstances:

    
The whole set-up of the fortress was straight out of one of my
favorite games: Dread III. I mean, I hadn't played it for a long time
. Actually, it was my favorite when I was about twelve or thirteen. But I was starting to remember, bigtime. This was LEVEL THREE: THE CRUCIBLE, where you go up the stairway and have to shoot about three dozen zombies-with-chainsaws. I couldn't believe it: Bjhennigh a computer game junkie. I guess it went along with everything else, though.

    When I told Ledelei, she eased up a little bit. I could tell she wanted to believe me, and was trying really hard.

    "I've heard of these games. Little worlds seen though the glass window of the computing machine. Shooting and clicking. Sounds very stupid."

    "No, they're fun. Really. I'll let you play one when we get back to Emerald. If we get back to Emerald. If it's still there."

    I warned her to watch out, and we hefted our weapons, because I wasn't sure how much authenticity Bjhennigh was going for. I was certainly glad when we passed the frst stairway without hearing any groans or chainsaws revving up. But after we'd padded down the hallway a few dozen steps, there were footsteps and metal rattlings from further down the corridor, and we spent a few terrifying minutes pressed against the wall, waiting for whoever it was to either come our way or move on. The sounds diminished, and we moved on towards the dungeon staircase.

    We made it there without incident, and moved cautiously down it, like a couple of cats stalking a pigeon, winding down and down along it into the growing darkness. Slowly, slowly, peeking with excruciating care around each bend.

    I imagined every few seconds that something hideous was just below, waiting to grab and devour us.

    You couldn't blame me. That's what happens in Dread III. I must have reloaded this part of PART THREE: THE CRUCIBLE about forty thousand times due to getting devoured by brain-vampires in the dark on that very staircase.

    But the brain-vampires weren't haunting this version of the game, fortunately. I thought maybe the low turn-out of evil monsters was due to their being in front of the Emerald City, preparing to rape and pillage and set up little tea-cup rides and T-shirt booths.

    Our luck didn't last, though. The ambient light began to increase, and we could see a torch hanging next to a huge door at the bottom of the stairs. The dungeon door had one big old smelly green ogre standing in front of it. His fnger was stuck up his nose, and he was concentrating deeply on whatever obstruction was eluding his probing digit.

    I started to turn towards Ledelei, I guess to somehow gauge how she felt about these new circumstances and how we might deal with them, but while I was in mid turn, she sprinted down the rest of the staircase, and whacked the ogre's elbow up and into his head, hard.

    His fnger went up into his sinus cavity and stuck there, and while he moaned in pain like something out of Eraserhead meets the Three Stooges, struggling to pull his wedged fnger out, she slit his throat neatly, with a quick swipe of her monster sword. After a minute or so the ogre stopped running and fopping around, and I came the rest of the way down the stairs.

    "Very creative," I said quietly, as she removed the keys to the door from the giant's carcass. "Where do you people learn this stuff?" I asked, grabbing the torch out of its holder on the wall. "I thought this was a peaced-out utopia most of the time."

    "Gene, you have a lot to learn." she said, working the key in the lock. "This place has much magic, true. Much freedom. Much goodness. But with it there is wildness, chaos. Bad things happen here as well. Terrible things. We choose, much of the time, to not talk about them. Or to couch their existence in cheerful words.

    "Many of us hope the bad things will never happen. But we are ready. Always vigilant. The people of your world seem never to recall the horrors of the past. Never to learn. But here, we do. Maybe it's because we live so much longer here, I don't know. I've said enough, now. Let's get Nick Chopper."

    And with a click, the great door opened, and we walked through it, into the gloom of the dungeon.

    And the stench.

    Along the walls, down a long, narrow corridor, hanging in chains, were dozens of corpses, in various states of decay. Some of them were normal size, though most of them were clearly Munchkins. They all wore Aushwitz-style black and white striped uniforms. We hurried by them, mostly because we were trying to get clear of the stink. But maybe also because we were afraid some of them might still be alive.

    Finally, we came to the end of the passageway. There was a door there, with another lock to undo. Ledelei found the right key after the third or fourth try, and the hinges groaned as we pushed the door open.

    It was hard to see in there, even with the torch. It was a big room, and the sound of dripping water reverberated off the stone.

    I heard a muffed screaming from the shadows, like someone struggling in their sleep. My eyes took a little while to adjust to the gloom—and then I saw him in a far corner, under a dripping pipe, a slow trickle of black liquid falling down onto the once-shiny crown of his head. His arms and legs were chained to the wall, and he was covered with a patina of deep red rust wherever the water had been hitting him on his metal parts. Before him, just out of his reach, was his axe, and an old-fashioned oil can. And just beyond that, staring up vacantly at Nick, was the battered, putrid head of Alphonse Guttierrez.

    Nick noticed us, and tried to turn, but only his one lunatic eye moved, and was flled with a sorrowful rage, a certainty that he would die trying to murder the cocksucker that did this to him. For a moment I was more afraid of him than I was of Bjhennigh.