Whack Job (34 page)
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
“Spiderday”
Spider Day.
The air was different. A slight hallucinogenic tint to everything and a sharpness--an unnamable mint. Otto felt as if his skull was expanding and contracting like a puffer fish. He looked at Durant. If the Marine felt anything he didn’t show it. He was a calmly coiled snake ready to launch.
The view was breathtaking. They were atop a mountain from which they could see endless peaks undulating to the horizon capped with blue snow. The air was frigid. Their boots sank an inch deep in the blue snow even on the sturdy platform, made of a brown material that was neither wood nor plastic. Purple cirrus clouds lay like God’s cursive across the caramel sky.
Otto looked around. They had materialized inside three towers; three cylindrical cairns made of blue stone fused together, each with a golf ball-sized red sphere on top. The cherry on the sundae. Otto looked up at three soaring peaks that dwarfed the one they were on. He had no doubt what he would find at the summits. The sun itself was red. He screwed in his earplugs. Durant did likewise.
Their breath streamed away in purple streaks. The wind wailed like lost souls. Thirty meters across the caldera of the extinct volcano lay a low installation made of blue bricks with a sloping purple roof, the color of the clouds, a sort of ziggurat. Framing the ornate oval door were two enormous black tusks.
The oval door slid open. Twelve spiders spread in front, all twitching, all armed with multiple bladed weapons including spears, swords, and harpoons. Nothing that resembled a gun. They had tumbled from the building in a semi-panic. They looked like a frenetic audio signal, jagged on the top and bottom, constantly shifting up down up down. They looked nervous, if such things could look nervous. They had never been invaded. Never in their wildest imaginations did it occur to them that their prey would boomerang using their own system.
They appeared to be about two meters tall.
For an instant, the wind stopped and all was still beneath a pale and distant ruby-colored sun. In one motion the dozen warriors hoisted their barbs, emitted a sound that scraped like a knife on glass, nails on a blackboard, a wolf pup’s dying screams, every atavistic auditory horror that had haunted mankind’s dreams since the dawn of time.
Otto and Durant held fire until they were at ten meters. Otto turned on the speakers. Sis Boom Ba’s eerie adenoidal voice rolled across the tiny valley like a tidal wave.
May I please have your atencio! My plan is reprehencio!
Lester leveled his ArmaLite .308 and methodically fired, working from left to right, hitting each spider in the center of its body mass. It was as if they had all been sucked into a blender. Those warriors that didn’t die immediately from the gunfire went berserk, their limbs thrashing spasmodically. Otto could hear neither the gunfire nor the chitin cracking as they gyrated themselves to death.
The firefight lasted five seconds. The spiders hadn’t managed to release a single barb. Otto turned off the blaster. He and Durant looked at each other in utter astonishment.
Durant thrust his fist in the air. “BOO-YAH!” He and Otto slammed into each other, embraced and exchanged high-fives.
In three seconds, the smile was gone and Lester had defaulted to semi-catatonic. He looked to Otto. Otto did a three-sixty. They were alone on top of the mountain. But there could be more spiders in the building. He motioned Durant forward. They approached the still open door in a pincer movement. Durant indicated he wanted to roll inside like a grenade and come up shooting. Otto didn’t think that was a good idea.
Detaching one of the miniscule speakers from his shoulder, he placed it in the open doorway and turned it on. He gave it thirty seconds, shut it off and motioned Durant into the building. Durant rolled and came up. Otto followed. The large domed chamber appeared devoid of spiders. Thousands of nodules, each with a dime-sized hole in the middle, studded the walls except for the back wall, which was vertical and carved from the rock face. A rectangular screen with rounded corners, approximately two meters diagonally was tuned to CNN.
A camera was mounted on a tripod on a platform facing several chairs designed for the spider physique. A quarter section of the wall was lined with hairy-looking nests at the base. Sleeping pads. An incandescent globe hovered over the center of the big room. On closer inspection, it hung from an almost invisible spider-web like strand.
Every occupant had rushed out of the building. Evidently, the spiders were not used to strategy. Otto and Durant formed up in front of the screen. It was silent but the news scroll across the bottom was up to speed.
Otto looked at Durant, who mirrored his surprise. “Martial law?”
Durant gestured at the camera with the muzzle of his ArmaLite. “If they can receive broadcasts through that thing…”
“Fuck an A, bob,” Otto said.
Who knew how long they had before others arrived to investigate the silence? Who knew if the spiders would even investigate? The presence of the CNN feed only served to highlight the yawning gap between their cultures and made Otto wonder if it would ever be able to even understand this enemy.
Or whether that was even desirable. He had no wish to get inside their heads.
“It’s going to take me a while to prepare an address,” Otto said. Durant nodded and began to explore the room on his own.
Otto dreaded public speaking. Always had. But it was important that they let the people back home know they had arrived safely with encouraging results. He sat on the edge of the platform and pulled his pen and pad from his pocket. He focused totally on the message he wished to send, unaware of the passage of time.
He looked up. Durant was seated nearby looking at him.
“What?” Otto said.
“Reconnoitered. Lotta shit here we don’t understand but I think I can get those cameras working and the controls appear similar to those on the teleportation device.”
“Okay. Give me a few minutes. See if you can get up top of this thing and take a look around.”
Durant saluted and booted.
Stella collapsed on the sofa in front of her wall-mounted flat screen TV and turned it on. Talking heads debated the feasibility of the new international One World initiative. Was it better for a central authority to deal with worldwide perfidy, or should such decisions be left to hopelessly archaic and jingoistic “nations?”
The screen flickered. A snowstorm. Abruptly, in neon colors, Otto faced the screen in front of an indistinct brown/black background. A snap of electricity hit Stella like a bucket of ice water to the face.
“People of Earth--greetings from Spiderland. This is Otto White, along with Master Sergeant Lester Durant, on the spider home planet. For those of you who don’t know who the spiders are, ask the President. Earth has been invaded by an alien species. It was they who caused spontaneous human combustions. Sgt. Durant and I succeeded in reversing their teleportation device and here we are. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the spiders seem completely unprepared to deal with our weapons. We took this station with zero casualties and twelve spider deaths.
“The bad news is this is an alien culture and our resources are limited. It’s only a matter of time before the natives tumble to our presence and send someone to investigate. We have no idea where we are in relation to the planet. We have no idea where the planet is in relation to the Earth. We…”
Otto tilted back, eyes wide. “Oh shit! Stella I love you! Gotta go!”
The screen went blank.
***
About the Author
Mike Baron is the co-creator of the comic books
Nexus
and
Badger
. He lives with his wife in Colorado.
Many people helped me with this book. Thirty years ago, Franklynn Peterson and Judi K-Turkel tried to teach me how to write. Blake Kellogg encouraged me. As always, Mean Pete Brandvold (www.peterbrandvold.com) was there to guide me through thickets of prose with a machete and a flame thrower. Diggs Brown and Bob Garcia (http://gpsdesign.net/) offered invaluable advice and logistics support. Miguel Cima read the manuscript and made many helpful suggestions. Ellen Jo Baron provided logistics support.
Whack Job
is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is coincidental
***
