-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Nine

And that was how a rather drunk Rufus Blacke found himself leading Recon Unit 1 of the N. H. D. F. V. M. He watched Ox making his way up the hallway ahead of him. I wonder why we don’t call them ‘Weeping Willows’ he pondered briefly? They look sort of like weeping willows, and it sounds so much better than Giant Broccoli.

He glanced back at the rest of his command, and felt…well, his emotions were mixed. He nearly laughed, but on the other hand he was more than a little moved.

Here he was, leading a Giant Broccoli, a hot waitress in a black mini skirt, a twenty-something kid he didn’t even know, an old man with crazy hair and a magic rock, a Royal reptile that was shorter than an emperor penguin, and a ghostlike wraith who was moaning in terror. No military commander in history ever started out like this. Somebody better make a movie out of this when it was all over. And the movie better have a happy ending.

And all he and his little band of warriors had to do was sneak up on an armed band of alien interlopers of unknown origin without knowing where they were or how many of them there were or even what the aliens were trying to do. What could possibly go wrong?

As they turned left at the first side corridor and approached the door leading to Mainstreet, Rufus caught up to Ox.

“Let’s just pop the door open and get a quick peek, okay, Ox?” Rufus had no intention of making this movie into a Bruce Willis Die Hard franchise.

“Yes, Commander,” said Ox solemnly.

Is he sulking or just used to being under orders, Rufus found time to wonder, but that’s all he had time to wonder. Because as soon as his hand hit the panel and the door began to slide to the side he was caught in a small avalanche of horribly foul smelling black sludge.

Oh shit, Rufus thought, and indeed it was.

Just as his feet slipped out from under him and he fell face first into the lumpy goo, a very large two-toed foot kicked him back up into the air. He would have fallen onto his back but Ox caught him with a handful of tentacles, so to speak.

Ox placed Rufus, correct side up, back on the deck and just out of reach of the massive leg and stubby foot that flailed in the air before them.

“It can’t be,” said Rufus. It looked like an elephant’s leg and foot. But only for a moment. Then he began to notice that the foot was too long, and the color, where it was not covered with reeking smears of glop, was not the color of an elephant at all, but a deep burgundy red.

Something huge and impolitely fragrant was blocking the door and Mainstreet beyond.

They had to double back, past Rufus’s room, and follow dejectedly behind the other refugees as they sought a hiding place further from the marauders.

Rufus waved shame-facedly at Ned who brought up the rear of the refugee column. It’s funny, he thought, how words like refugee and marauder had taken on real meaning in so short a time.

The whole mass of living beings reached the next side corridor that would take Rufus’s little band back to Mainstreet.

“You smell like hell, Rufus,” Ned said over his shoulder, followed by a brief wave farewell.

Rufus and Ox again took up positions by a door panel.

“No more surprises,” Rufus told Ox, and walked back to where the Qualm huddled at the rear of the group.

“Qualm,” he said, addressing the translucent being.

“Yes, Rufus,” the Qualm quailed.

“What the hell was that thing in the hallway?” Rufus asked.

“It is a Velox. What humans call a Whalepede.” The wraith sounded desperate to help.

“Is it dangerous? Did it come with them?” Rufus of course meant the raiders.

“Oh no, Rufus, it is just visiting. It was warned not to use the main corridor, but it was frightened by the alarms.” The Qualm seemed to be finished speaking, but suddenly went on. “Everyone I can feel is frightened.”

“You got that right,” Rufus responded. “How long is it? I mean, have we passed the end of it? Does it have a long tail?”

“I have no way of knowing that,” said the Qualm dolefully.

Rufus stepped back to Ox and the door. He put his hand on the panel, and the panel slid open. Nothing came through it but that awful smell, and since Rufus already smelled the same way it didn’t bother him much. He slowly stuck his head out into the wider hallway of Mainstreet. He glanced to the right first. There was the rounded rear end and flailing hind legs of the Whalepede, plugging the corridor like a giant cork. He glanced to the left, and still didn’t see anything.

“You want to buy some pot, Mister?” said a shrill voice at his knees. Rufus jumped and said a bad word.

Standing in the hallway and leaning against the wall beside the door were two juvenile Bats. They were wearing tiny hip-hop urban wannabe bad-dude clothing with lots of fake leather and little buckles and chains.

“What the hell?” sputtered Rufus, not for the first time that day. “Didn’t you hear the alarms, you pintsized, prepubescent little …Bat-asses?”

“Let me handle this, Sir Rufus,” said the Prince regally. He said something to the little Bats in their own skittering language. The two smaller Bats shook and squawked and did some very fast, very low bowing. Then they turned and scrambled away down Mainstreet.

“What did you say?” asked Rufus, curious.

“I told them I would tell their parents,” replied his Highness

This did not seem to require a reply, so for a change, Rufus didn’t.

Rufus crossed Mainstreet first, going carefully through the door and into the short corridor on the other side. He went as far as the first intersection and poked his head around the corner, looking first right, towards the enemy. Then he looked left. Nothing was moving in either direction. He went back to Mainstreet and waved his group forward to join him.

“Ox, scout ahead to the McDonald’s. Go slow and take it easy. No heroics. Try not to be seen,” Arthur told the Xxo.

“Rufus, far be it from me to tell you your job, but a Xxo is not really well suited to not being seen,” pointed out the little Prince.

Rufus had to admit that this was a valid point. He said, “Okay, your Highness, that puts you as our point man, uh, I mean Bat. Ox, you follow him a ways behind. You are the backup in case he runs into trouble. The rest of us will follow, spaced apart. That way, if we get spotted they should only get one or two of us.”

Rufus wasn’t entirely sure what getting ‘got’ would entail, but he was fairly sure it wouldn’t be good. He sent the group forward one at a time, at one minute intervals. When he and the Professor were the last two remaining, he turned to the older man

“I hope you don’t mind me dragging you with us, Professor. I just figured that somehow we could use that crazy memory stone of yours to get some information on who we are up against,” he said by way of explanation.

“Not at all, my boy, I’m quite glad to help. And this is quite exciting, after all.” As he said this, the Professor wrinkled his nose as if to remind Rufus that he was still covered in alien poo.

Rufus said, “I guess I could have asked you some questions back in my room, but I still think we should keep that stone under wraps for now. Maybe the stone is something we humans aren’t supposed to have or use. It sort of scares me.”

“No, no, Rufus, you are quite right. And it wouldn’t have done any good to use the stone yet. I have to see one of the aliens first, or I won’t know what to think about when I touch the stone.” The Professor sounded as if he were discussing a term paper with one of his students.

Rufus hadn’t thought of that, but it did suddenly occur to him that he hadn’t even asked Ned what the enemy raiders look like. Some commander I am, he scolded himself.

“Maybe we can hide you someplace close to the lounge. Then if we can find a Reporter and get it to come with us, we will have a better idea of what we are dealing with.” Rufus was just making it all up as he went along.

The two of them were now walking down the hallway, and they entered the famous fast-food place where the rest of the team waited. The McDonald’s was such a reminder of his home world that Rufus was momentarily disoriented. Only the trays and food wrappers scattered haphazardly about on the floor destroyed the illusion that he was back home. However this evidence of the hasty, even panicked departure of the patrons was enough to shock him back to reality. And where were these patrons now, he wondered?

“Let’s keep going,” he urged Recon 1, as he had now dubbed his partisans.

The McDonald’s was large enough to force the Hub to jog the side corridor into a squared off U shape behind and around it. Rufus had figured it was safer and quicker to pass through the restaurant. He wondered if he should look out the front door so he could see farther down Mainstreet, but that notion quickly died as he glanced in that direction. The view through the two large windows placed on either side of the entryway was a very short view indeed. The window on the right was filled with a giant eyeball. It felt to Rufus as if he were watching a very large screen TV tuned to the Nature Channel just as they were showing an extreme close-up of a frog’s eye. The huge, glistening orb, shot through with many colors, was looking directly at him, and he could see the fear in it.

The other window showed what looked to Rufus to be a row of rounded tombstones planted in pink, wet soil. He slowly realized he was seeing the lower set of teeth in what was obviously an impressively large mouth. “Holy crap,” he said. Then he turned to the Qualm and asked, “Are you sure it’s really stuck?”

“I never said he was stuck, Rufus,” replied the Qualm seriously, “He came out of his quarters when he heard the alarms and the screams. He came down Mainstreet for some distance before he realized he was heading into danger rather than away from it. Now he is too terrified to go forward, and the Velox are not good at going backward.”

“Can this get any worse?” Rufus asked of no one in particular.

“Oh yes, Rufus, because one of the new ones is coming this way.” The Qualm said this in a disturbing whisper.

Rufus knew who the Qualm meant by ‘the new ones’.

“Just great,” Rufus said, with what I can only assume to be sarcasm.