Toxicity (17 page)

“Uh,” he panted, as Lumar risked
a glance towards him. The big cat was now standing before him, blood dripping
to the sand, its charge halted. A huge disjointed paw was scratching at the
wound as if trying to stop the flow of blood.

“Kill it!” she screamed. “Fucking
kill it!”

“Uh?”

Svool scrambled to his knees,
then his feet. The cat was blind before him, and it lay down now, both paws
over its eyes, worrying at the wound. Svool glanced across at Lumar, who
whacked a beast with her stick, but went down under a tangle of fur as the
second cat leapt across her back. She vanished under a flying furball. Svool
felt very, very sick.

He charged at the cat, then
pulled back at the last minute, but the beast ignored him. This fuelled his
rage. How dare it!
How dare it ignore his charge! The... the damned furry
critter! The mewling sack of bullying shit! The... the big stupid pussy cat!

Svool moved forward, and stuck
his sword straight through the cat’s eyeball, which popped in a flurry of milky
fluid; he pushed hard, leaning all his body weight into the strike, and
skewered the brain within. The cat screeched, then flopped to its side, all
four legs kicking as its bowels loosened. Then it lay still.

Svool stood up, staggered, then
waved his sword in the air. Yay! He was triumphant!

He was, goddammit, a Hero!

“Hey, Lumar!” he cried, but both
enemy cats were stood over her, and he caught just glimpses of her green flesh.
A terror grabbed his heart in its fist, and his eyes widened, and
oh, my God
of Manna, they’d killed Lumar! They were eating Lumar! And next they’d turn
their attention on him and see that he’d killed their friend and they’d come
for him and eat him as well! What to do? See if Lumar was all right, but of
course she wasn’t all right, look at her, surrounded by fur and teeth and claws
and she’d be all dead and eaten up by now. So the only thing to do is

Run.

Svool ran, arms pumping hard, his
blood-encrusted, jewelled sword in one fist, glittering in the light of the
green sun, but forgotten for the moment as terror took over and cowardice
became his brother; he pumped hard, sprinted, burnt feet forgotten and ignored
as he padded across the sand. He could hear cracking sounds behind him.
Oh
no. They’re eating her! They’re breaking her bones! I don’t believe it! Now,
the horror, I am truly all alone and now more of those horrible cannibals can
take me into the jungle and eat the meat off my genius bones...

Oy! Idiot! What are you doing?

Excuse me?

I said what are you doing,
fuckwit?

I’m sure I don’t understand what
you mean?

You fucking back-stabber, Lumar
saved you, saved your stinking worthless carcass, and here you are hotfooting
it away when you’ve got a fucking sword in one hand and she’s in trouble.

I’m sure she’s already dead, and
I can certainly be of no service to the young lady...

Oh, yeah, that’s convenient, I’m
sure! Convenient that you didn’t check and didn’t even try and help, and now
you’re sprinting across the sand like your arse is on fire and she’s back there
fighting off two huge mauling lion-cats!

Well it has to be said, I am a
rare talent in the Galaxy of Manna, I am a genius, no doubt, a poet prodigal,
and soon to be the finest film star the Quad-Galaxy has ever seen! I do not
desire to die here and now! I desire to be rescued!

Oh, you back-stabbing, turn-coat,
cowardly bastard...

A
whine
cracked across the
sand.

Svool slowed his sprint, but did
not dare turn back.
Oh, my! What could possibly have happened now?

There came twin
thuds
and
the sounds of sprinkling. Followed by a low growl.

“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,”
muttered Svool, reaching the edge of the jungle and leaping full length into
its protective undergrowth. He hit the soft ground in the cool shade, glad to
be out of the baking sun and toxic sand. He lay for a while, panting, wondering
what to do, and how to get himself out of this fix. Then he crawled around on a
carpet of bent ferns and knobbly creepers and crept back to the edge of the
jungle to see what was occurring.

Confusion met his confused gaze.

There was a small cloud of black
smoke on the beach, funnelling upwards as if some ancient diesel engine had
slammed a valve open and was busy burning oil. The cloud perfectly eclipsed the
area where Lumar and the cats had been.

“Uh?”

Various concepts vied for
precedence in Svool’s mind. Missile strike? Spontaneous combustion? Hidden land
mine? None of them seemed probable, although the land mine could be a
possibility...

The sea sighed against the beach,
rolling and, to the naked eye, beautiful despite the hidden loaded toxins
within.

Svool wondered what to do.

A cool breeze blew, and the smoke
started to disperse. Svool was just wondering whether to run for it again, or
to hide under the ferns, when he saw Lumar step from the smoke and stand, hands
on hips, staring across the beach at his hidden location.

“Oh,” said Svool, and stood up.
He gave a wave. Lumar did not wave back.

Then, from the smoke eased the
gliding matt-black tennis-ball body of Zoot, Svoolzard’s PR PopBot, manager,
bodyguard, agent, manager and all round
good egg.

“Now I understand!” He beamed.
Somehow
Zoot had also survived the crash, and eventually had come looking for them
when his circuits came back online, and he’d seen the battle on the beach and
zipped along and zapped the bad cats. Wahey! Well done that PR PopBot!

Feeling buoyed and triumphant,
Svool strode out onto the sand in all his nakedness, and watched as Lumar and
Zoot approached him. Lumar had a long slash from her temple to her jaw, and
another set of triple gashes across both arms, and one very sexy thigh.

“Zoot! You survived! And came
back to help us!” beamed Svool, placing both his hands on his hips and standing
there, tackle out, free and proud and brave now his bodyguard had arrived.

“I did indeed,” said Zoot,
smoothly, bobbing to a halt on a cushion of ions.

“And Lumar! I’m so glad you’ve
not been gobbled up by those nasty cat beasts!”

“You are?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Lumar, her eyes
narrowed, “I saw you stab that cat through the eye, and stagger around drunk on
combat glory; and as the beasts reared above me, my wooden spear the only
barrier between me and gaping gnashing maws, I thought
Svool will save me,
just like I saved him!
Yet through the legs of the attacking, mauling
creatures all I saw was your cherry-red arse fucking off up the beach.”

“Er,” said Svool.

“You left her?” said Zoot. “Left
her to be eaten?”

“No, actually, no, it wasn’t like
that...”

“But you did run off?” said Zoot.

“Er, yes, but I thought she was
already dead!”

“I don’t know how you came to
that conclusion,” snapped Lumar. “You were too busy running the fuck away.”

“Wait, wait,” said Svool, “now,
don’t be like that.” He held out his hands, smiling broadly with friendship and
love and charm. “Come on, you know I would have helped you if I could...”

“Yeah, right, back-stabber.”

Zoot bobbed. “We need to get out
of the sun. We need to get away from all this toxicity; the beach is a chemical
hotspot. My scanners are...
stunned
by the level of pollution. I had to
run three tests. I thought my scanners were faulty at first! This is not a safe
place for two organic meat-sacks.”

“Okay. Which way?” Svool was
still beaming, almost oblivious to the seething rage emanating from Lumar’s
eyes and body-language and snarling lips. She still held her spear, bloodied
and chipped and claw-scarred. She did
not
look like a happy bunny.

“I have detected a settlement of
some kind, twenty kilometres northeast through the jungle. We should be able to
rent passage there to the nearest city - which, according to my database, would
be Organophosphate City. A place less cheery than its name, I assure you.”

“What about my clothes? And
boots?” beamed Svool. He seemed unfeasibly chirpy. As if Zoot’s arrival was the
sudden end to all his problems.

Lumar and Zoot turned to face
Svool. Or at least, Zoot rotated until the flickering lights on his matt-black
casing were pointing in the direction of Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV.

“You could make some?” suggested
Zoot. Then, to Lumar, “Come, my dear, let’s get you into the cool of the
jungle; I need to sterilise and seal your wounds.”

“What a good idea!” beamed Svool.

Lumar and Zoot ignored him, and
moved away under the wavering rubbery palm fronds. Svool followed, beaming like
a happy pup.

~ * ~

IT
WAS EVENING and progress had been slow, mainly due to Svool’s injured feet.
Under Zoot’s instruction, Svool had fashioned wide shoes made of fronds and
twine, but they were still far from comfortable and Svool complained with
every
single fucking footstep.

Zoot suggested making camp for
the night, and as Lumar built a shelter and laid out sleeping mats, Svool was
sent off into the darkening jungle to collect “dried combustible material.”

Svool wandered alone, in the
gloom and lengthening shadows, mumbling and cursing and tripping. He carried an
armful of dead creepers and branches, which although they were definitely
not
wood, were at least something he was sure would burn.

“Not bloody fair, this, a genius
poet of my incredible standing and reputation collecting shitty firewood in the
shitty jungle.” He tossed back his golden curls, which were no longer gleaming
and oiled and beautiful, but instead matted and stained and stuck with twigs
and bits of creeper. The rings on his fingers glittered, but seemed somehow
tarnished under the light of the sinking green sun; like cheap fairground baubles.

“What happened to the honeyed
wine? The endless succulent women willing to wrap their vaginas around my
suckling face? What happened to the drugs - oh, the drugs, I miss the drugs,
hey, I wonder, wonder-wonder if Zoot has some stash stashed away in his little
black casing. Hmm?”

He halted. There had been a
sound, registering on the fringes of his acuity; but he’d missed it, missed its
solidity, like waking from a dream and trying to grasp the wispy tail-end
before it struggled away.

Svool stood, his nakedness
covered by a simple leaf in the shape of a V, his bottom still exposed and red raw
from the kiss of the cannibals’ fire. He wondered what the noise had been. A
stealthy pawfall of another beastcat tigercat? Or maybe the creepy figure of a
hunting cannibal, ready to shoot him with another sleep dart and drag him off
into the jungle to cook and chomp before the others even realised he was
gone...

Svool shivered, and looked
around, and was frightened.

He dropped his collected kindling
and ran, leaf-shoes flapping, back in the direction of their makeshift camp.

He emerged into the clearing. A
small fire was burning, and Lumar, her perfect shelter already complete, had
cut several plates of bark and was cooking some kind of basic nut broth from
ingredients sourced by Zoot.