Reunification (13 page)

Before we could collide, something small
and shiny went sailing over mine head. It landed with a clatter on
the floor between the lizards and I, and then rolled forward
quickly, heading toward the incoming lizard creatures as though
drawn toward them by some mystical power.

I skidded to a halt and watched, with
great uncertainty and trepidation, as the object—which I could now
see was a metal sphere of some sort, though I could not tell for
sure what kind of sphere it was—rolled toward mine enemies. The
lizard creatures stumbled over each other in an attempt to stop,
but it was no use because the tiny sphere rolled in amongst them
before they could come to a halt.

I did wonder what it would do before I
heard Resita behind me shout, “Get these goggles on, quick!”

Before I could ask him what he meant, a
pair of thick, heavy rubber goggles were pulled over mine eyes. The
sudden appearance of these goggles took me by surprise, not helped
by their surprising tightness, which made me feel as though mine
skull was being crushed between the straps. And how dark did the
goggles make mine vision! The hallway did look like midnight now,
which made me wonder for a moment if Resita had cast some sort of
spell on me to make my vision pitch-black.

Then one of Resita's claws gripped my
hand, almost cutting into mine flesh, as he dragged me away from
the lizard creatures, which were now hopping around the sphere and
examining it as if it was some kind of amazing object they had
never seen before. Did make me question their intelligence, for
they seemed to have forgotten all about me now.

“
Come on!” Resita said.
I looked and saw that he wore goggles similar to mine, large,
round, and darkened. “Before the bomb goes off!”

Despite Resita's rather thin body, he
managed to drag me along behind him nonetheless. Though that was
less due to his strength and more due to my own surprise, for I
still did not know what was going on here.

However, I quickly regained mine senses
and, shaking mine head, I said, “Hold on, fowl! What are ye doing?
What did ye mean when ye said—”

Mine words were cut off when a loud
popping noise—like a massive bag of popped corn going off—exploded
in mine ears, followed by the shocked cries and screeches of the
lizard creatures.

Then it was followed, not even one second
later, by a massive burst of light that blinded me, a light which
made even me cry out, even though it did not hurt. Yet I did not
stop or slow down Resita; indeed, I actually picked up speed
without urging, for the sudden light and sounds had startled me
greatly, causing mine heart rate to increase beyond measure, for I
did not wish to be consumed or harmed by the light.

***

Chapter
Six

T
hus, Resita and I dashed down the
hallway, stumbling blindly through the light, whilst the lizard
creatures roared and cried in agony and anger. 'Twas the most
horrible sound I had ever heard from another living creature, for
it sounded like they were being melted to death, or perhaps burning
underneath a lamp hotter than the sun. Methinks I smelled their
burning flesh, which was like roasted chicken, though it could just
as easily have been mine flesh being broiled in the heat of the
bomb.

I wanted to ask Resita what had happened,
but we were both running as fast as we could and I had no breath
with which to utter even one word. I merely ran, ran and ran and
ran, until Resita shouted, “We're almost there!”

There? Where was there? I could see naught
in the bright light, which I now realized was not as bright as it
could have been thanks to the goggles covering mine eyes. I had
thought there was nothing down this way, Resita must have found
some alternative escape route for us.

Without warning, Resita turned to the
right, causing me to nearly trip over myself as I turned to follow.
Then I felt his claw let go of mine arm and heard him shout, “Jump
forward, Apakerec!”

Whilst I still had no idea what was going
on here, I obeyed his command anyway. I leaped forward, like I was
diving into a pool, but rather than hit the floor as I thought, I
found myself sliding down a chute that was shockingly dark after
the brightness of the hallway.

Gah! How dark was this chute! How my
stomach twisted and turned as we went down, down, down! The stench
in this chute was like rat excrement and slime and icky slime clung
to my body as I slid down after Resita. A muddy, slimy goop entered
my mouth when I opened it to shout, causing me to hack and cough as
we fell faster and faster down the chute.

Soon, I could no longer hear the
frightened cries and growls of the lizard creatures. All that mine
ears did hear was the rushing of the wind as Resita and I slid,
plus the hideous squelching of goop under my sliding body.

Then a light appeared up ahead, though
between mine darkened goggles and the slime that stuck to them, I
almost did not recognize it at first. But soon it became obvious
that that was to be our destination, though where this chute
emptied out to, I knew not.

And then we shot out through the light
into what felt like a disgusting swamp. Resita went out first, but
I followed soon after, and crashed into him, sending us both
tumbling through the stink and slime in a confused heap. How awful
it was, tumbling like this! For mine hair and clothes became sticky
with the goop and slime, and I could feel Resita's feathers getting
all over me like parasites!

But then we slammed into something solid
and hard, which not only stopped our progress (thank the Old Gods!)
but also separated us. How, exactly, it did that, I did not
understand, because the collision was so sudden, like a bee's
sudden sting.

Yet the fact now was that I lay in the
slop on my back, my whole body aching from the crash. The goggles
had slipped on my face; my left eye saw a much darker world than
mine right, though the right one was still adjusting to the sudden
change in lighting.

“
Ooooh,” said Resita,
who based on his moaning sounded as if he had broken every bone in
his body. “You know, I don't think I will ever do that
again.”

I lifted mine head to get a better look at
Resita. He lay flat on his back, just as I, though his legs were up
in the air, as if he had fallen from the sky. His yellow feathers
were now covered in a muck and goop that made mine stomach crawl,
even though I was in no right mind to understand what that coating
on him even was.

“
What … did ye do …
exactly?” I said. I spat out some of that foul tasting muck from
mine mouth, banishing it like the toxin it was. “I do not
understand what happened to us.”

“
Well, it was supposed
to be … simple,” said Resita, who sounded as if his vocal chords
had been ripped from his throat. “That bomb I set off? It's what we
Xeeonites call a blind bomb. As the name suggests, it blinds people
by creating a ridiculously bright light. Some models make loud
sounds, too, but most of them just do the light.”

Panting, I said, “Ah, I see. 'Twas like a
miniature sun had exploded in the middle of the room. How did we
not go permanently blind?”

“
The goggles,” said
Resita. He gestured with one chipped claw at his face and then at
mine. “Why else do you think I put those goggles over your eyes? If
I hadn't done that, both of us would have gone completely blind.
It's one of the side effects of the blind bomb.”

“
What a gruesome
thought,” I said with a shudder. “But why did ye come back for me?
I thought ye were going to hide and hope that the monsters did not
find ye.”

“
That
was
the
original plan,” Resita admitted, his chest heaving up and down.
“But I just couldn't stand the idea of letting you die. I mean, we
don't know each other very well, but if you had died, I would have
felt responsible for it.”

“
Ye speak kind words,
Resita, but ye need not worry about I,” I said. “'Twould not have
been your responsibility if I had died, for I had made that choice
on my own and would have been the one to live with the
consequences.”

“
Technically, you would
have
died
with the consequences of that decision,” Resita
remarked. “Anyway, that's not the whole reason I saved you. It's
because I discovered another way out that didn't force us to fight
two dozen of those monsters to escape.”

“
Indeed?” I said. “And
what was that?”

Resita raised one feathery, muck-covered
arm slowly and waved it around. “This is it.”

For the first time since we had crashed
into here, I looked around at mine surroundings. I normally did
this as soon as I entered a new and unfamiliar area; however, my
initial entrance had disoriented all of mine senses, though by now
they had recovered and I could see where we were.

Four tall, solid concrete walls surrounded
us, like we had fallen into a large box. The walls were coated with
more of that disgusting muck, layers so thick I would not even have
known that the walls underneath were concrete if I had not observed
the tops of the walls, which were not covered with the muck.

On each wall was a gaping chute, like the
mouth of a dragon, from which the stinky, awful muck came. Not much
was leaking out of these chutes, but I could tell that all of the
collective gunk and slime down here had come from those chutes, for
there was no other place all of this could have come from.

I sat up, raising my arms, from which the
excrement and goop dripped. It was the most disgusting feeling in
the two worlds, even worse than the time Sir Alart and I had gotten
stuck in the swamps of the Lower Panhandle. How long this stink
would last, I did not know, but I could foresee many months of hard
scrubbing and bathing before I came close to being half as clean as
I was before.

“
What pit of disgusting
grime is this?” I said, looking at Resita, who, like I, was also
sitting up. “'Tis like a pigpen, except pigpens are infinitely
cleaner than this.”

“
That's because this is
…” Resita looked like he was searching hard for the right words.
“This is basically where we Foundation members toss all of our
garbage and other, uh, unwanted things when we're done with them. A
sort of garbage/sewer system hybrid, if you will.”

Some blue candy wrapper, with Xeeonish
words written on it, floated by me. A half-eaten chunk of meat
stuck between two coarse-looking buns also stood out of the muck,
making my stomach churn.

“
Why in the names of the
Old Gods would ye do this?” I asked. I felt hot vomit rise in my
throat before I pushed it down. “This is horrifying. 'Tis like
being condemned to an eternity in a baby's diaper.”

“
Hey, I hate this just
as much as you do,” said Resita, shaking his arms, though that
appeared to do little to make him cleaner. “But it was either this
or we get torn to shreds by those lizard creatures. I'd rather
drink a gallon of sewer water than get ripped apart by those
monsters.”

“
Speak for yourself,
bird,” I said, scowling and wrinkling my nose, which burned as
hotly as if it had been set aflame. “At least if those lizards had
gotten us, we would have gone down fighting. This is simply
disgraceful. If Sir Alart or the rest of my fellow Knights knew of
my current predicament—”

“
Then don't tell them
about it once we get out of here,” said Resita. “But honestly, I
can't believe this. Are you really saying you would have preferred
to
die
than to get a little icky? If all of you Knights are
like this, then I'm shocked you guys are still around.”

“
We Knights are not
suicidal, if that is what ye are implying,” I said. I peeled off
some kind of fruit skin from my shirt and tossed it aside. “We
simply understand that in some instances, it is much better to die
than to suffer this kind of embarrassment. Though I wouldn't expect
ye to understand; clearly, ye know nothing about the depths and
dimensions of honor or the words of the Knight's Code.”

“
Guess I don't,” said
Resita, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I think we're safe here. Those
lizards back there are probably all blind as bats now, and even if
they do figure out where we went, they won't be able to follow us.
None of them can fit in those chutes.”

“
That is good to know
indeed,” I said as I scraped off some of the thick muck on my arms.
“Though if I may ask, why were these chutes designed to be large
enough for us to slip through? Do ye Foundation people regularly
slide down these chutes?”

“
Ha, ha,” said Resita.
“Very funny. But no, I don't know for sure why these chutes are so
big. I think it's supposed to make sure that the pipes don't get
clogged with junk. Whatever the reason, I'd say it worked out quite
well for us, wouldn't you say?”

“
If by 'well' ye mean
'made us dirtier than the filthiest pirate on the Red Sea,' then
yes, it did work very well for us,” I said. I began to stand up to
mine full height. “Anyway, I do not wish to stay in this place any
longer. The stink is as awful as a thousand poisons and my
tolerance for it is rapidly waning.”

Resita, too, rose to his feet, though he
did not look much the better for it, for his feathers were all
messy and his clothes were covered in that gunk. “Yes, I agree. The
sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can find a working shower.
Or better yet, a full-body disinfectant system.”

“
A what?” I
said.

“
A full-body
disinfectant system,” Resita repeated. He looked at me with
concern, like I was one of the slower folks who lived at the
asylums back on Dela. “They're like showers, except that they use
lasers to kill one hundred percent of germs on your body. Don't you
have them on Dela?”