-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Ten

Meanwhile, back in the corridor which led more or less directly from Rufus’s room to the Saloon at the Edge of Everywhere, ‘Recon 2’ was moving slowly in that direction.

Ken Bower, the piano player, was scouting a little ahead of the rest of them. Mof had begun to suspect that perhaps Jimmy and VarnTa might have had a little to drink. In VarnTa’s case, maybe just a little more than a little.

“Just great,” Mof said under his breath, though this took longer for him to say than it took Rufus, who had just said the very same thing in another place. That is because Mof said it in his own language, and the language of the Tarry was not one designed for fast talking.

They were approaching the side door to the saloon.

At that same moment, Ned’s refugees had passed out of the section of corridor that specialized in housing humans. The corridor came to an end, and upon opening the door panel on the wall that blocked their passage, they passed through and found themselves in a maze of large open storage areas broken up by wall sections that made up rooms. These rooms contained old machine shops and workshops as well as spare parts and various bits and pieces of who knows what. There were stacks of extra wall sections and crates and boxes piled about in the open areas, and some various large unfamiliar types of machinery.

“This,” said Ned “could be a very good place to hide.”

Back in the McDonald’s, Rufus stood on a half-eaten filet-o-fish sandwich and watched the wiggly-faced Qualm, trying desperately to figure out what to do next. Things began to happen so quickly that Rufus’s brain couldn’t actually keep up with them. He was left with a series of impressions, like watching TV at five times the normal speed. He had an idea of what was going on, but by the time he had figured out one bit, three more things had already happened. The memories of that part of his life would always be a flickering, high-speed slideshow.

First, the Qualm let out a loud shriek which startled Rufus badly.

“Fear and anger. So much fear. It is all around us,” wailed the Qualm.

“How close is the…?” Rufus began.

“The little Helper-Friend is near, and a human as well. Oh Rufus, they are frightened, but so brave. So brave. But they are fleeing for their lives.” The Qualm was shrieking, making it hard for Rufus to think.

Rufus yelled, “Everybody hide.”

As his little fighting force scrambled to do just that, Rufus stepped to the rear wall of the restaurant. He thought vaguely that he could open the door for a quick peek, but as he approached the wall, the door panel began to slide open. Rufus only had time to register that the door that slid open was not even tall or wide enough for him to walk through without crouching down, when in rushed a human child. She was a beautiful, blonde girl, about 11 or 12 years old.

He had a brief, overwhelming feeling of protectiveness, the ancient urge of the human male to preserve the young of their species. He threw open his arms to hug the girl, to hold her and keep her safe.

The girl stopped in her tracks, eyes wide and wild, obviously terrified. Then her right foot, clad in a tennis shoe, snapped up and connected with Rufus’s crotch in a motion that would have sent a soccer ball flying the length of a soccer field.

Good reflexes, Rufus admitted to himself, just before the pain began.

Rufus let out a whoofing sound and doubled over just in time for Gollum the Scout-Helper to crash headfirst into him. Gollum’s skull turned out to be much thicker and denser than appearances might lead you to believe. Rufus’s skull was not. He actually saw bright lights if not stars, and he fell over backwards, legs in the air, hands to his groin, and his thoughts completely scrambled.

“Oh, sorry, Rufus,” said Gollum politely, “but there is a bad thing chasing us, and….”

The little girl broke in at this point. “You smell like poop,” she said, looking down to where Rufus squirmed in pain.

Rufus had no time for a good come-back.

The girl screamed, “Gollum, watch out.”

She called him Gollum, Rufus pondered.

Gollum spun away, pulling the knife he had gotten from Rufus’s room from the belt that held up his silvery shorts. The British commando dagger gleamed wickedly. That’s a pretty decent knife, Rufus remembered.

Rufus was watching Gollum by staring down the length of his own body and past where his hands still gripped the most painful portion of his anatomy. As Gollum assumed a fighting stance, Rufus noticed that something that looked like a pile of writhing black and yellow snakes was coming in through the door. Pushed ahead of the rest of the mass, held up by one striped snake tail, was a gun of some sort. The business end of the gun waved about for just a moment, and then steadied. It was now aimed directly at the spot where Rufus was holding his hands.

Behind the gun, and rising on a long, thin, striped neck, was a long, thin, striped head with bulging black eyes and a scar of a mouth from which protruded sharp, snaggly teeth.

Rufus had time to think that he really didn’t want to get shot in the crotch, but damn, that thing was ugly.

Gollum never hesitated. He swung the knife at the snaky limb that held the gun. The blade struck the limb. It did not sever it, but it bit deeply, and Rufus saw one large drop of dark purple blood drip to the floor. The blow was enough to send the dangerous end of the gun in a swinging arc, just as the wasp-striped tip of the limb tightened on the triggering mechanism.

The gun spat. There was a very rapid clicking noise followed immediately by a whip-whip-whip sound like wings fluttering, but much faster. Like a helicopter’s blades cutting the air, thought Rufus, but with no engine noise thrown in.

Something chewed up the floor just to Rufus’s side. He rolled away and scrambled to his feet, but now he was facing away from the action. Before he had time to turn back around, he watched floors, tables and chairs, as well as the back wall of the restaurant seem to rip apart as if they were being shredded by invisible weed whackers. Small shards and chunks ripped off of things to flip and fly through the air.

If the gun does that to the tough material of the Hub, Rufus thought, what would it do to flesh and bone?

He spun around, desperate to find out what was happening. His eyes had time to get a quick snapshot of the bizarre scene before him.

The newcomer had made it through the door and uncoiled itself to stand upright. The thing was tall, at least ten feet tall, and very thin. It had two legs and two arms and a long giraffe-like neck topped by the thin head which bulged only slightly from the neck. Its body and limbs were writhing, ripples undulating along them like rubbery waves. At the end of one long, squirming arm the gun was waving around in the air. It made its noises again, and strips and chips of ceiling rained down. Coiled in the end of the other arm was Gollum, also waving around in the air. He was still clutching the knife.

To his right Rufus saw Ox and Candybar and Asa all rush out from behind the counter where they had been hiding, evidently intent on attacking the creature. The Prince had hopped up onto the counter and was raising a war cry.

All of this Rufus took in as a brief impression. Then the floor buckled and a large piece of wall slammed into his back. This combination of events served to toss him into the air, propelling him forward to smack right into the skinny torso of the ferocious looking beast. He wrapped his arms and legs around the squirming trunk and held on for dear life.

As he hung there, Rufus had a terrifying thought. What had happened to the little girl?

Then he heard her voice behind him yelling, “Kick him in the nuts! Kick him in the nuts.”

Is she talking about me, Rufus worried?

At last he realized she was talking about the alien intruder, but he was in no position to take her advice. His head was pressed tightly to the warm, leathery, black and yellow chest of the creature. It was wiggling like a snake. He must have a skeletal structure similar to a snake’s body, came to Rufus’s mind.

Then he realized that he was looking at the alien’s left arm, which was still waving Gollum about like a signal flag. It suddenly whipped back and then forward again, releasing the Scout-Friend who flew through the air and out of Rufus’s sight.

Then Ox crashed into the striped being’s back, wrapping tentacles around the enemy’s body and arms in order to grasp it firmly, and the whole tangle of interwoven life forms toppled over onto the floor with Rufus underneath.

The intruder’s torso, which was only half the diameter of Rufus’s own torso, was bouncing up and down on his chest with ferocious weight. And on his tender groin as well. Rufus began to make a wheezing sound every time the weight crashed back down. He felt like a squeezy-toy being stepped on, and sounded a little like one as well. At last Ox, using both his upper and lower tentacle sets, got a firm grip on the neck and all four limbs of the striped alien. Ox bent nearly into an arch, and planting his unused lower tentacles widely, he lifted the alien off of Rufus and back to a standing position. He quickly used some spare upper tentacles to rip the gun from the creature’s grip and throw it to the floor.

Rufus jumped to his feet rather spryly for a 50 year old man with bruised ribs. He swayed for a moment or two, sucking in air.

With a wrench and a twist, the wasp-striped alien tore his right leg from the grip of Ox’s lower tentacles. Rufus just had time to notice that the creature’s legs, when they reached what on a human would be an ankle, simply split into three toes, two forward facing and one rear facing. Then the foot made out of toes splayed flat, and the leg whipped up as the alien kicked Rufus in the chest. Once again he found himself flying through the air.

I seem to be spending a lot of time off the floor lately, thought Rufus just before he crashed backwards into a table and two chairs and landed in a pile of debris. As he lay on his back, collecting his thoughts and his breath, he happened to look up, which was easy to do from that position. Poised above him was the flat bottom of a huge, dark-red, two-toed foot.

In that strange way that time has of stretching in moments of intense excitement, Rufus had time to string together the following series of thoughts;

Oh, right, the Whalepede.

Maybe he got hit when the gun shot out the front window.

I hope he isn’t hurt too badly.

Oh, that must be what knocked in the wall and buckled the floor and sent me flying into the stripy guy, that huge thrashing leg there.

That huge thrashing leg that is coming down right on top of me!

“Oh, shit,” said Rufus.

I apologize for the word, but that is what he said.

The bottom of the foot was the size of a manhole cover. Rufus just had time to roll out of the way before it came stomping down. He stood as he watched the foot slam down and push against the buckled floor. Out on Mainstreet the giant body of the Whalepede moved forward about five feet, and another of the creature’s many legs appeared at the ripped open corner of the wall.

It’s moving forward, Rufus realized. Parts of the wall that still remained moved towards him, and Rufus also realized that the Hub was attempting to make Mainstreet larger to accommodate the huge beast. Still, that seemed like the least of his worries at the moment. He turned back to the struggle going on at the rear of the restaurant. The bad alien had gotten one of its arms free from Ox’s grip and was using it as a whip to flail at the Xxo.

“Kick him in the nuts,” he heard the girl scream again.

“What the hell,” said Rufus, and taking a few long strides forward, he did exactly that. Not that it looked as if the being had any nuts, at least not where a human would be expected to look for them. There were no clothes to obscure his view and he saw only a smooth joining of the legs. But if this fellow was strong enough to wrestle a Xxo to a standstill, Rufus was willing to try anything. His long right leg delivered his size 15 shoe to the appropriate spot with all of his 225 pounds behind it.

Rufus’s foot immediately began to throb, but the result was both highly effective, and from Rufus’s point of view, immensely satisfying. The creature stiffened and then went completely limp, hanging from Ox’s tentacles like garlands of dead pythons in the strangest Christmas tree of all time.