Bill 5 - on the Planet of Zombie Vampires (8 page)

“Please,” said Christianson. “I forgot to say please. Sorry. Can I please have one of those wonderful sandwiches?”

“You can have all the okra you want when we get back. Now — watch us eat.”

He did, moaning from time to time when someone belched happily or licked a crumb from their lips. The captain turned his back on the mutineers and scowled at the remaining corpse.

As they ate, Bill also looked over his shoulder at the one remaining mummy. There had been twelve spacesuits on the rack. What had happened to the other nine people?

“Give the dog a munch, Bill,” said Rambette. “Barfer looks like he could use a bite.”

“I tried. He won't eat it. He's on a straight okra diet by choice. He hasn't eaten anything else since that time he overdosed on doughnuts.”

“I heard that!” shouted Blight.

“You heard nothing,” snarled Bruiser.

“I didn't hear anything at all,” volunteered Christianson. “I especially didn't hear anything about doughnuts. Can I have a sandwich? Please?”

“You can have Larry's crusts,” said Moe. “Mister Macho over there always pulls them off.”

“I've been thinking,” said Caine.

“Good for you,” said Bill. “What about?”

“Well, for starters, there's something strange about this place.”

“I'm glad you noticed that,” said Bill. “I would say a room with two dusted mummies and one more about to crumble would qualify as strange in anybody's book.”

“Not only that,” said Caine. “But why are we eating?”

“Because we're hungry,” said Rambette.

“I, too, am hungry,” said Caine. “That in itself is strange. As an android, I am not programmed for hunger unless my batteries need charging or I get low on oil.”

“Maybe you need some volts?” said Bruiser.

“It is not necessary at this time,” said Caine. “I believe something here is affecting our behavior. How else can one explain the fact that we are sitting here eating while our lives are in mortal danger and we're surrounded by mummies, intact or otherwise? It is simply not logical.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Bill.

“First I think I'll have another sandwich,” said Caine, taking one from the pile in the middle of the table.

“You may have something there,” said Rambette, digging into the porkuswine cutlets. “Not only am I hungry, I have a sudden overwhelming desire to wander off alone and do incredible things even in the face of all this danger.”

“Me too,” said Bruiser, helping himself to more food. “But me, I always do stuff like dat.”

“I never do stuff like that,” said Tootsie, “but now I want to do stuff like that. You know: wander around in the dark with frightening things lurking behind every corner. For a professed coward, that's pretty odd behavior. I don't know what's caused our altered states.”

“Maybe it's something in the dust,” said Caine, wiping his finger along the table top and examining it. “It could be that this isn't dust at all, but mind-altering spores.”

“Spores?” asked Larry or Moe, who had switched places around the table so many times Bill had lost track again. “What do you mean, spores?”

“I knew it,” moaned Tootsie, brushing possible spores off her sandwich. “We're being attacked by killer mushrooms and we're all going to die!”

“That's death wish number three in the past twenty minutes, Tootsie,” said Rambette between bites. “You really have a most negative attitude.”

“I'll have to examine these possible spores in my laboratory,” said Caine. “But first I think I'll have just a bite more and then take a little stroll all alone in a strange place.”

“Curly, why don't you and Larry see if you can activate the console,” said Bill. “Maybe there's a logbook in the memory banks that would explain what happened. Or maybe someone kept a written record.”

“Good idea,” agreed Rambette. “I suggest we all split up and search every dark, creepy corner of this place until we find something like that.”

“Wait!” said Tootsie.

“Wait for what?” asked Caine. “Don't tell me you're afraid to go off by yourself and snoop around in dark and dangerous places.”

“It's not that exactly,” said Tootsie.

“Well, what is it?” asked Rambette.

“I'm still hungry,” she said. “Would you please pass me some more?”

Bill got up from the table, stuffed. Barfer had wandered away, presumably in search of okra. Bill picked a door at random, opened it and stepped into a long, dark hallway. Having learned a valuable lesson in survival from Caine, the first thing he did was turn on the lights. They didn't help much. It was still dark and frightening.

Let's see, thought Bill. If I was a diary or something like that — where would I be? Probably in some loathsome corner, snuggled up to a killer mushroom.

Bill's new foot was starting to give him some trouble. Although it had stabilized in size, it was still getting heavier and had to be dragged most of the time. The skin was all wrinkled, ugly, and gray. It belonged on an elephant, not an Imperial Trooper aching for action. No standard-issue boot in the universe would fit the monstrous extremity. But at least its thick sole made footwear unnecessary.

There were slime tracks on the corridor floor and Bill wondered if that was a clue or simply a sign that Barfer had trotted down this very hallway, drooling and slobbering like he always did. He opened a side door at random and peered inside. Another mummy sat at a desk, all sucked dry. That brought the missing number down to eight.

Cautiously, he went inside the room, looking for clues. It was a standard enlisted man's bunk: a cardboard dresser, a closet with a broken door, a contraceptive dispenser on the wall, a bed with a concrete mattress, and a mummy. On the desk was a thick black ledger with STATION'S LOG printed on the cover. In the closet were scratching sounds and the rasp of heavy breathing. The place was crawling with clues.

Heavy breathing?

“Barfer, come out of there,” he called, walking to the closet. “Good dog.”

No answer. More scratching.

“No stupid games and don't give me any trouble, Barfer,” he said, grabbing the edge of the closet door. “I'll find you some okra.”

The instant Bill opened the closet door, Barfer bounded into the room from the hallway, growling and barking. Something small and quick scuttled out of the closet past Bill. Barfer jumped into the air with a yipe. Bill jumped into the air with quick curses on his lips. And when he landed, Bill's elephant foot crashed through the floor.

“You scared me to death,” he shouted at Barfer, who was standing on the bunk with his ears pushed back and all his fur standing on end, growling deep in his chest.

It took a minute for Bill to get his massive foot out of the hole. Then he peered down through the hole he had made into what he hoped was the basement. Wrong.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Over here! Everybody come!”

“Did you find the logbook?” called Caine as the sound of running footsteps filled the hallway.

“That's not all I found,” shouted Bill. “There's something under the station. It's huge! A cavern or some kind of a big empty place.”

“Empty?” asked Rambette, busting into the room with a knife in each hand.

“Well, I guess it's not exactly empty,” said Bill, looking down the dark hole. “Something incredibly loathsome and outstandingly repellent is moving around down there.”

“Boy, that looks pretty kind of awful down there,” said Rambette as they all gathered around Bill's hole. “I can hardly wait to go down into the unknown darkness all by myself and see what's what. Who's got a rope?”

“I found a rope,” said Tootsie. “And some atomic flashlights, too. But let's not be hasty. Maybe we should talk it over and get a plan of action.”

“Smart t'inking,” agreed Bruiser. “Dere could be plenty danger, alien bowbs, down there. Me first 'cause I da best. Me and Slasher, we take care of anything.”

“As science officer, I am the obvious choice for the initial investigation of that repulsive place,” said Caine. “No one else here has the necessary qualifications.”

“Slasher's all da quali'cations I need,” snarled Bruiser.

“You're a botanist, Caine,” said Larry or Moe. “I don't expect we're going to find a bunch of killer tomatoes down there.”

“Maybe we should draw straws,” said Bill.

“That's stupid,” said Tootsie. “Why don't we all go down there?”

“You're on,” said Rambette, moving the mummy out of the way and tying the rope to the desk. “Here I go!”

“I just remembered — something ran out of the closet,” said Bill, taking a flashlight from Tootsie and waiting his turn on the rope. “I really jumped. Barfer didn't like it either.”

“Perhaps it was a space-rodent,” said Caine. “A mutated ship's mouse or a giant fang-rat.”

“No,” said Bill. “It scuttled. Mice don't scuttle, not like that. Rats neither, I think. Whatever it was, it moved fast, too fast to see. But this much — it was positively scuttling.”

“Hey! It's great down here,” called Rambette. “And real threatening like in an alien sort of way.”

“What about us?” Captain Blight whined. “You can't leave Christianson and me collared together like a couple of dogs.”

“Sounds like a winner to me, hounds of a feather bound together,” Tootsie demurred. Then changed her mind. “We'll take the collars off — but only if you come down into the hole with us.”

“Done!” the two officers cried as one, chortling with joy as their restraints were removed.

“I no can wait!” bellowed Bruiser. “Me next. I got to go next. Maybe fight, kill — good stuff!”

“Anybody there?” radioed Uhuru. “This is the Bounty calling whoever's hanging around the radio.”

“Bill here. How's it going?”

“Pretty good,” said Uhuru. “I got the microwave working and I'm cooking up a batch of popcorn right now.”

“Oh — that's really great. You wouldn't maybe like want to tell us how's the rest of the ship?”

“I'm glad you asked. Pretty bad,” said Uhuru. “Problems are coming to a head. I used all the duct tape on the ship trying to fix the toilet. If you find some more in the station, bring it back with you.”

“We'll do that,” said Bill. “But it may be a while. We're kind of busy right now.”

“What's up?”

“Well, for starters, I was attacked.”

“Attacked?” sneered Uhuru. “On a deserted, lifeless planet? What was it, an invasion of the crab monsters? Mushroom people? Fifty-foot women?”

“Knock off the jokes — this is serious business. We're surrounded by dried mummies and there's a big cavern under the station, maybe full of whatever alien horrors killed the people here. We're going down to check it out. Caine thinks I was attacked by a mouse, but I know better.”

“That's crazy,” said Uhuru.

“No, I'm sure it wasn't a mouse.”

“Now I know you're all around the bend,” Uhuru whined intemperately. “You say you got dead people — mummies — scattered all around. Insane combat mice. Next you say you're going into unknown danger for no good reason at all, probably unarmed. That sounds like crazy to me. I wouldn't go down there with anything short of total body armor.”

“We're not exactly unarmed,” said Bill. “Bruiser's got his axe. Rambette said she'd share one or two of her knives with us.”

“That's done it,” said Uhuru. “I'm closing off the ship. Whatever mind disease you all have caught warps any good sense you might have ever had, which in some cases is very little. I don't want to catch it. I got enough trouble with good sense as it is.”

“I feel fine,” said Bill, getting ready to slide down the rope into the ominous cavern.

“That's exactly my point,” said Uhuru. “You're going after some sort of a mummy-making monster with nothing but knives and you feel fine? Sounds fruitcake to me.”

“You stand guard, Barfer,” said Bill, patting the dog on the head, then wiping his hand on his trouser leg, and starting his slide to possible oblivion. The protesting voice on the radio got weaker and then gave out entirely as Bill disappeared through the hole in the floor, Uhuru rattling on about mind-bending diseases getting loose on the ship.

The cavern was immense, an impressive and intimidating grottolike cave of mammoth proportions. It was easily a hundred feet from floor to ceiling. The walls curved upward in a huge and graceful semicircle, lined with evenly spaced ridges. It was like being inside the chest cavity of some giant animal, or wandering around in a leviathan rack of ribs. There seemed to be no end to the cavern, and no beginning; it stretched out into the distance as far as it was possible to see.

Most of the above, however, Bill missed. He was so scared that he kept his eyes closed for the major part of the descent. Rambette helped him off the rope.

“This is a horrendous place,” she said happily. “I've never been in a more terrifying situation. I guess I should be scared, but what I really feel like doing is wandering around and exploring on my own. See you later.”

“What a great idea,” said Caine, and wandered off as well.

“Hey, look at those stalagmites up there!” called Larry or Moe.

“They're stalactites,” said the other clone. “So named on account of they hold on tight.”

“They're called stalagmites because they might fall on you. Everybody knows that, knucklehead.”

“Who you calling knucklehead —”

“Hey — down here,” called Bruiser. “Look at what I found.”

Everybody who hadn't already wandered off on their own toward certain disaster came over to the giant riblike rock that Bruiser was standing on. He was staring down into a shallow pool that seemed to be filled with a translucent lime-green gelatin. There were things underneath the turgid colloid, lots of things.

“Ugh!” grimaced Tootsie. “Those are the most repulsive crawlies I've ever seen. What are they?”

“They look like decayed salamis stood on end,” said a clone. “All leathery and wrinkled, slimily gruesome.”

“Who would plant a field of decayed salamis, knucklehead?” said the other clone. “You can't grow salamis that way.”

“Pods,” said Bill. “They're pods of some sort. I wish Caine was here. Maybe they really are vegetables.”

“T'ink dey good to eat?” asked Bruiser hopefully.

“They might be eggs,” said Tootsie. “They look kind of like wasp eggs, only a lot bigger and more hideous in appearance.”