Theme Planet (35 page)

“I wish daddy was here,” said
Toffee, panting, red in the face.

Katrina dragged her onwards. “So
do I,” she said.

And then... the storm began. Not
a storm filled with clouds and rain, and ice, and thunder and lightning. This
was a storm of oil clouds filled with hot groaning steel, with pistons slamming
from the heavens and discharges of static leaping between columns of thundering
steel like some crazy firework or special effects show.

Katrina felt the build-up of oil
in the air. As she ran - yes, now she was running, SARAH a blur up ahead -she
rubbed her thumb against her fingers. The air had felt greasy to begin with,
but now there was a definite residue in the atmosphere, and it stung her eyes a
little and settled on her tongue like acid fallout. Glancing at Molly, she saw
the sheen of oil on the young girl’s face, collecting thickly in her hair like
some crude shampoo. Both girls were whimpering now, sensing the urgency,
sensing the primal terror of their situation. Around them, more pistons
thundered and clattered, their groans and screams filling the air with a
cacophony not unlike Nature’s work; but here, displayed in its full synthetic
glory. The pistons hammered from the sky, faster and faster, falling all around
in what appeared to be a completely random manner. SARAH, up ahead, offered no
help, no solace, no encouragement. She was simply a constant, there to be
followed through the haze of oily atmosphere.

Suddenly, a piston screamed above
them and Katrina yanked the girls aside reflexively. She felt the
whoosh
as a metal wall slammed down just inches from her face, then it groaned a
deafening groan like a dying leviathan, before slowly beginning its ratchet
clank up towards infinity and beyond...

“Bastard,” said Katrina, and
tentatively reached out, touching the retracting piston. She yelped, leaving a
circle of skin on the giant cylinder, and sucked at her oily finger.

“Was it hot?” asked Toffee, eyes
wide in fear.

“Cold,” said Katrina. “Terribly
cold.”

They carried on running, as more
pistons slammed and groaned around them. SARAH had almost disappeared up ahead
now; Katrina’s eyes narrowed and she cursed the Monolith avatar.
Oh yeah?
Sent here to help us, were you, motherfucker? Fat lot of good you are... we
might as well run blindly through this hell-chamber on our own merit, because
we’re not following you and I don’t believe you even know where you’re going!

More pistons slammed close, and
each time Katrina yelped and jerked her girls towards her, as if she could
protect them from these giant pistons, shield them with her fragile bone shell.
Which of course, she couldn’t. If they’d been struck, they would have ended up
as human spam.

They ran.

Pistons fell, like the inside of
some giant, deviant, alien engine...

Which it was.

The internal mechanics of Theme
Planet.

The poisonous underbelly of the
fun.

“When will it ever end?” wailed
Toffee at one point, and Katrina could not answer. She knew not when it would
end, just as she knew not when it had begun. Time had ceased, reality
evaporating into the oil mist. She only knew it was endless, and she was tired
enough to fall, tired enough to give up her life because she could not go on,
and the girls could not go on, and they should surrender, and lay down, and
die...

~ * ~

Katrina opened her
eyes with a jump. A fire burned in a rocky hollow.
Molly and Toffee were both snoring, covered with thin blankets. SARAH sat
across the fire, cross-legged, watching her.

Katrina sat up slowly, groaning. “What
happened?”

“You passed out. I came back for
you, carried you the rest of the way. You nearly made the perimeter.”

Katrina glanced back, but rocky
walls filled her vision. She looked around again, and revelled in a cool breeze
that caressed her face. “We are safe here?”

“You are safe,” said SARAH.

“Thank you. Thank you for
rescuing me. Thank you for saving my children.”

click...

SARAH stood, crossed to Katrina,
placed a finger against her lips. “Shh. Sleep now. You are exhausted. We will
talk... in the morning.”

“We’re not out yet?”

“No. We have a long way to go,”
said SARAH, smiling.

~ * ~

Flames crackled, consuming
wood, except in this place there
were no flames and there was no wood. SARAH closed her eyes and said the
command, and opened them on a different plane, a different place, a different
reality.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I do not know,” she said.

“They can mask it cleverly; they
have become very advanced.”

“Evolved
is what I call it,” said SARAH.

“What do you think of her?”

“She is strong, she has great
courage. She lasted longer than most in that place; and we pushed her harder
than most people could take without snapping. Up here.” She tapped her skull,
and her dark eyes, the dark portals, narrowed. “And that’s what worries me.
That’s what poses yet more questions.”

“And Dexter?”

SARAH smiled then. “Yes. Dexter.
Let’s see if Dexter survives. Then we will talk.”

~ * ~

CHAPTER NINE

IF YOU HAVENT BEEN SICK...

The second oily
green
cat had slunk into the clearing, circling its comrade, both of them hissing.
And... “We’re danjos,” said a soft voice right by Dex’s ear. So close they
could kiss. Dex could smell its oiled body, had become aware of the creature’s
mass
,
its strength and power and killing prowess. The other two danjos watched him.
Dex could sense, almost as if he were in a strange computer game, their
positions, and their feral hatred. Here were creatures bred for
entertainment,
baby, locked up in enclosures with gawping tourists gawping and clicking piccy
pics. For a creature of intelligence, of
majesty,
it was an insult to
their very existence. And when an animal, recreated alien dinosaur,
whatever,
felt insulted to their very core - well, in Dex’s experience, they tended to
lash out. With claws. And fangs. And all things horrible.

Very, very slowly, as slow as an
ice age, Dex turned to look into the danjo’s face. It grinned at him, and a
sliver of sympathy ran through him, invaded every atom, and he gave a shudder.
There was such intelligence there. Such... understanding. And he knew the cold,
quiet, calm gun in his hand was a million miles away... if it wanted to, this
ancient, malevolent alien creature could rip his face off.

“What do you want, Mr Colls?”
said the danjo.

Dex gawped, spittle drooling down
his chin. He licked his lips.
Had it really spoken? Or was he descending
into a drug-crazed, hypertense, psychopathic fucking incident? Where were the
pills? He needed more than a full bottle...

“Er,” he said, words little more
than an exhalation.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Are you telepathic?” he
whispered.

“I can sense your need,” said the
ancient alien predator.

“And what do I need?”

“To find yourself.”

“No.
No.
I need to find my
wife, and my children...”

“That will come later,” whispered
the reptile, and its breath and fangs were so close to Dex he could
taste
it. Its body was close to him, and he saw its claws - huge,
huge
claws -
flexing softly on the jungle vegetation.

“I don’t understand.”

“We rarely do.”

“Stay where you are,” came a
voice, a human voice, carried both through the air and, seemingly, to Dex’s
brain
by some kind of direct communication. “They’re slippery motherfuckers; if
you move, you may lose your head.”

“Wait...” began Dex.

There came a
phuzz
and Dex felt a blast of
superheated air. Beside him, the danjo’s head exploded in a shower of spaghetti
meat, and blood slapped across Dex’s face, across his jacket, soaked him to the
skin. The mass of muscle beside him leant against him for a moment, as if
deflating, then slid slowly sideways and twitched as its bowels released in a
steaming mess. The other two danjos screamed, a high-pitched ululation, and
sprinted to their fallen...
friend?

“No!” screamed Dex, but the laser
slashed across the jungle, dazzlingly bright and dazzlingly deadly. The other
two danjos were cut in half even as they nuzzled at their fallen companion, and
Dex watched weakly, disjointedly, as they slid apart in cross-sections of
muscle and bone and internal organs. The three creatures lay dismembered on the
jungle floor, slowly steaming.

Five provax, wearing khaki,
stepped from the trees carrying military laser weapons. They walked slowly, in
a line, heads turning left and right in synchronisation with their weapons as
they scanned the jungle, looking for more lethal predators. One carried a blip
scanner, which blipped once a second.

Dex, face grim, mouth dry, slowly
climbed to his feet. He released a pent-up breath.
What happened then?
asked his twisted mind as it fell upon itself like a collapsing star.
I don’t
understand.

The five provax stopped, staring
at Dex, and he wondered if he’d have to fight his way out again. He didn’t know
if he still had it in him. He didn’t know if he had the energy, the hatred, or
the drive. And then he pictured Katrina, and Molly, and Toffee, and realised he’d
happily kill every single motherfucker on the planet to get to them.

“How do you feel, sir?” asked one
warden.

Dex blinked. “Shaken,” he
managed.

“It must have been quite an
ordeal,” said another, stepping forward and patting Dex on the arm. “You can be
assured, this sort of thing doesn’t happen on the Theme Planet. You
will
be fully compensated for your experience.”

“Compensated?” Confusion.

“Monetarily speaking,” said
another. “Come, let us escort you to a car. They’ll take you back to your hotel
and you can have a quick discussion with our underwriters. I am sure there will
be a considerable payout for you to, ahh, retain your silence.”

Dex coughed. “Yes. Yes. It’s a
disgrace, actually. I can’t believe this horrific thing happened to me! I need
a strong whiskey.”

“Of course, sir. We will see to
it.”

Dex was helped down various paths,
past more jungle wardens, or alien dinosaur wardens, or
whatever the fuck
they were
until they reached normality, reached safety, reached houses and
estates and flashing lights and people and hotels. Dex felt something small
crumble inside him. Some small part of his soul, given over to despair,
longed
for a return to the normal world. But he couldn’t give in to it. His family
were still gone. Missing.
Taken.
And he would not fucking stand for it.

“Here you go, sir.”

A blanket was wrapped around his
shoulders, and people were talking beyond barricades, and he was taken to a
long low black car. He was given a flask of hot sweet tea. Then the men and
women - the provax? - moved away, talking amongst themselves. Dex saw extensive
paperwork being filled in.
Damn those fucking bureaucrats,
he thought.