Untitled (28 page)

I was up to my rectum in dead mimes, Rotarians and ill-fated members of the Lollipop Guild when the humvees blew past, charting a course right through the enemy ranks. I saw Ralph swig on a bottle of grog, then lob the bottle at some mutant's head. Kee-rack! I laughed and cheered.

    Then Lion began to scream.

    I don't know how else to describe the sound. It tore at my ears, raked its nails on my marrow. It was horror engorged with unspeakable pain, beyond feline or human. It was a scream of the soul.

    I fought my way to the left, toward the sound. Other adversaries came. I defected them, scared them off, cut them down if they stayed. All around us, the fog was thickening, making it harder to get a clear bead. I made out a trio of very large shapes. Two of them were down.

    The other one was Skeerak.

    I had to go around Tiger's prone body to see what Skeerak was actually doing. The sight of it froze my bones. Skeerak had Lion pinned to the ground, and blood was everywhere. But the worst was that one of his arms was inside Lion, buried up to the elbow in the spurting belly wound.

    And spreading out concentrically from the wound, the fur was turning black...

    In that moment, I lost it entirely. Lost all perspective, all sense of mortality. It didn't even matter that I didn't stand a chance. When Lion screamed again, I came at Skeerak with everything I had. The world turned red.

     And then, suddenly, green.

    I felt the glow as much as saw it, enveloping me from behind. It had the same warm glow as the Skyrlla, only more diffuse, its frequency shifted. When it hit, I was in mid-swing, axe headed straight for Skeerak's chest. The monster rose, in counter-swing.

    Our blades went through each other.

    As if that wasn't weird enough, the blades then passed through each of us, as if we were slicing the mist. I went off-balance. So did he. We stared at each other, then swung again.

    His blow, had it actually met my fesh, would have split me apart at the ribs. My blow, had it landed as intended, would have certainly made him finch. But again, our weapons passed right through each other, then straight through us, without causing a speck of harm.

    My exact thought was Glinda, be praised.

    Then the green light went out again.

    In that moment, I came back to my senses. It took the wind right out of my sails. Like waking up naked in a stranger's bed, with no idea how you got there. Only worse, because the next time Skeerak took a swing, it would probably go right through me again. But this time, it would probably hurt.

    And then I would be dead. And I didn't want to die. The terror welled up in me, shameful and true. My arms felt heavy. My back felt weak. I felt as exhausted as I actually was.

    Skeerak took a lumbering step toward me, then wavered as if confused. For the frst time, I realized how much of the blood that covered him was his. Quite a few of his eyes were gone. So were half of the plates in his armor. Worst of all, the arm he'd had buried in Lion was snapped off maybe half a foot from the wrist. He'd been goring Lion with his stump. Black shit drooled from the jagged bone.

    So Lion and Tiger had fucked him up. Good. I tried to let this appeal to my optimistic nature. But my adrenalin level had dwindled to zip, leaving me shaking in the subsequent crash. When he took another step toward me, I could barely lift my blade.

    Skeerak towered above me, preparing to strike.

    Then Lion tore his legs off at the knees.

    The scream that came was muffed, metallic, emanating from the trap door in his armored pantaloons. That made it no less satisfying. I barely managed to get out of his way as he fell; but something primal pumped back into my veins. I found the strength to raise the axe one fnal time, above my head.

Then bring it down on his.

    The crunch as his skull caved in was a sound that I felt far more than heard. It raced up my arms, then went thud in my ears. I leaned all of my weight on the handle, not content until I saw brains squeezing out like curds. What little light there was winked out from the eyes that remained on the back of his head.

    Dimly, I was aware of the battle now ending around me: the Hollow Man's forces in grudging retreat, our own boys and girls letting out their victory cries. It was all I could do to drop to my knees and crawl the rest of the way to Lion.

    "It's gonna be okay," I whispered, nestling into his blood-matted fur. His heart was still beating. This was a good thing. I was too tired to cry, so I just snuggled in. Listened to him breathing. Praying to God that the worst was over.

    It wasn't, of course. But, at least for the moment, it felt that way to me.

There was no cartoon moon in the sky like I'd seen on my frst night in Oz. A canopy of blackness hung over the night, and only the faint green glow off the dashboard allowed me to see my hands in front of me. The headlights cut the only holes in the gloom, giving us feeting glimpses of shrubbery, trees, an occasional startled cow, and not much else.

     Ralph applied his brakes with a howl of red light, and I did the same, and I marvelled at how obedient these machines were. They seemed to crave the attention of a human—after all, it was what they were designed for.

    He got out and came over to us. The window rolled itself down, and Ralph pointed up, at an angle.

    "I gotta get somethin," he said, "Up there."

    
Whatever, I thought, suddenly wondering if the humvees coul
d fy under certain circumstances, or what.

    Then he stumbled back into his vehicle, and it started up the dirt road that wound up the side of a mountain. The rest of the herd followed.

    The ride up the mountain was hair-raising: the humvees hugged the sheer edge of the road, and drove inches behind one another. My driver-ed teacher would not have approved. After about ten minutes of this, we reached a clearing. Through the dissipating fog I could spy the shape of a long, fat house, and a feeble light burning inside it.

    Ralph jumped out again, and stumbled up to the front door. I followed him, and Ledelei followed me. Ralph pulled up a huge, ornate brass knocker from the center of the door, and slammed it down again, three or four times.

    After a few seconds, an old man with a long, white, soup-stained beard opened the door. He peered out cautiously, holding a candlestick up in front of him.

    "Yeah?"

    "I came to get somethin," Ralph said to the guy.

    "You need what..."

    "I came to get somethin. About twelve years ago. I left it here."

    "Left it here, you say?"

    "Yes."

    The old man looked down at his feet for a second.

    "You Ralph?"

    "Yeah."

    "Well, come in, boy, come in."

    We were all ushered inside, into a long, low room where a large fre burned in a hearth, and a grandmotherly woman sat in a rocker near the freplace, knitting what looked like a sweater. She had a pile of these, already completed, lying on the foor next to her. She smiled sweetly at us.

    "The Three Adepts got tired a long time ago," the old man said to me, apropos of nothing. "They moved on—to where, I can't say, but when they did, Ozma decided to leave the boys and girls in our care, and we been takin care of 'em ever since."

    I nodded my head, said "Is that so?" at appropriate moments, wondering what the hell he was talking about.

    Then he said, "Abadabio somingali tovena, sti nali porenga," and I must have gotten a really weird look on my face that was familiar to Ledelei, because right then, she said something equally incomprehensible, and shoved a fstful of language leaves into my hand.

    A few seconds after I ate those, the old man introduced himself as Sahmamool, but told us to call him Sam, and said that his wife's name was Lahda.

    Lahda looked up for a moment, smiling, then lowered her eyes back to her task and began to rock again.

    Sahmamool beckoned us into the next room, which turned out to be another long, low hallway. He stuck the candlestick out in front of him, and beckoned us some more. Down at the end of the hallway was a large, high door. These people in Oz were incredibly fond of big doors for some reason. Go fgure.

"Useta call em Flatheads, way back when. But now, it's not-—what do you Earthers say? Not 'P.C.' P.C., shit. Them boys' heads always been fat as a table top. Nothin much in 'em. The Adepts tried to give em brains one time. They were all smart as a whip when they had 'em. But they just made a mess of it, like always. Got themselves into a war, started makin' magic. Real good at making messes, these ones.

    "Ozma didn't much care for the war or the magic making. Took 'em off their mountain, took away their brains, brought 'em up here where somebody from Emerald could look in on 'em once in a while." He looked at me, pointed. "I heard one of you Earthers wrote a pretty story about it all one time. Slapped a ridiculous happy ending on there. Heh—least they still have a mountain." He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "Still got a little magic, too."

    There were maybe a hundred of them, men, women and children, all dressed in long shapeless, flthy gowns, in a gigantic room like a gymnasium. They were curled up in various states of sleep, and their snores rose up as one, like a chorus of chainsaws in the distance. They appeared to be examples of a race of humanoids I hadn't seen yet, kind of a cross between the Frankenstein monster and Zippy the Pinhead. They were all completely bald and, starting at just above the eyebrows, their heads were absolutely fat.

    "Now you gotta be quiet," Sahmamool whispered, "they sleep pretty sound, but no use takin chances. One wakes up, they all do."

    We stepped gingerly through the room, following Ralph as he tried to recall exactly where whatever it was he was looking for was.

    "There was a goddam trap door aroun here somewhere," he said, a little too loudly. A few of the Flatheads stirred in their sleep, rolled over and resumed snoring. We all gave him really dirty looks, and Sahmamool waved us over to a particular patch of wall that looked, to me, the same as the rest of the wall.

    "The switch is right here," Sahmamool said, as he set his candlestick down and reached his hands up to perform some hex on the wall. He hesitated in mid-whammy. "Are you sure you need t'do this now?" he asked Ralph, "because this here trap door ain't been oiled in quite some time, it just occurs to me." He looked around at the sleeping giants. "They might make a rukus."

    "Look, Sam," Ralph shot back, "I don' know if you know what's been happenin outside lately, but, yeah, I need ta do this now." Then he looked around nervously through his drunken haze. "I need to. I'll take my chances."

    Ledelei and I stared at each other, deadpan.

    Sahmamool wiggled around like Charles Manson doing a jailcell crazy dance, and a trapdoor of gnarled old wood appeared on the wall where there had been nothing a moment before. It started to tip outward and down, on chains and hinges that had been shut, seemingly, since the beginning of the last ice age.

    It creaked long, and loudly. From behind us, there was a collective groan, like a thousand Boris Karloffs simultaneously finching from the peasant's torches.

    "Oh, shit," said Sahmamool.

    I turned around in time to see the frst oversized turd wizz by my head, slam against the wall and slowly slide to the foor. This was followed by several more, which I, along with everyone else, had distinct trouble dodging. They had pretty good aim, those Flatheads. In no time we were all groaning in disgust as we were pelted with flth, as they scored hit after hit. The Flatheads were shambling towards us, children in tow, finging feces that seemed to be materializing into their hands. The few who didn't possess the remnants of their magic were stopping to squat, producing their projectiles the old-fashioned way.

    The trapdoor took an eternity to fnally make it to where we could all squeeze through it, and away from the gymnasium full of excited Flatheads. We got inside, and all grabbed hold of a rope that was attached to the inside of the door. That sucker was heavy, but we got it shut without too much trouble, just as the Flatheads reached it and started banging on the outside.

    The stench from our clothes and hair was appalling. We looked around us in the feeble light from Sahmamool's candle. The room was of the same rough-hewn wood as the rest of the place, but this hidden chamber was flled with junk: boxes and chairs, and old tables, the usual attic detritus. Everything was choked with dust and cobwebs.

    Ralph started searching around as if nothing had happened, swatting at cobwebs, overturning crates, peering into corners.

    I fashed Sahmamool a look of pure hatred. "You call that a 'rukus'?"

    "Seen worse," he muttered sheepishly from over his candle, shadowed from underneath in the classic scary-story light.

    "I need to bathe," Ledelei said casually.

    "Overhere!"

    Ralph motioned for us to come over to where he was hefting a large canvas sack out of a crate. There were four of them in all, surrounding him on the foor. At his instruction, we each picked one up. They were heavy. Sam had trouble with his, so Ledelei and I each grabbed an end of his bag and lifted it.

    "Issere another way outahere?" Ralph asked Sahmamool.

    Sam looked down for a moment, then fxed Ralph with a serious gaze. "Not that I know. But I only been in here the one other time myself. So..."