Blackjack Wayward

Chapter Twelve

Frustrated, tired, and resigned to my fate, I returned the creature’s scream with a challenge of my own and charged him. He was a lot bigger than me, maybe four or five times my weight, and though he was about nine feet tall, the low roof made him hunch on all fours like a gorilla. His skin was patchy and mottled fur, like a hyena, and his face was a grotesque mutation of man and animal, with floppy ears like a hound dog and the vicious fangs of a dire wolf. His arms were the most impressive feature, muscled and massive, his hands and wrists ringed with jutting bones, like jagged daggers.

As we closed on each other, he swung both arms wide, intent on smashing me within his grasp. I left my feet, diving at his head and upper body, but he caught me mid-flight and swatted me down like a bug, slamming me to the deck. The jutting bones rent into my flesh, gouging more than cutting, and though they didn’t dig deep, blood oozed through the ugly wounds. He was slow and ponderous, made even clumsier by the tight conditions, but he stepped back and stomped my back as I tried to get up, pinning me to the deck. I felt the weight of his foot lift for a moment, only to have him stomp again, keeping his feet on me as he gripped the roofing to brace as he pressed me into the metal floor.

I screamed, feeling my chest compressed, tendons, cartilage, and ligaments stretched to their limits, bones popping and shifting under the unearthly pressure. What made it worse was that I was on my stomach, his feet pinning me down, so I couldn’t reach him. I had to overcome this, or my body was soon to fail. I couldn’t breathe and could feel my heart struggling to keep the blood flowing as my torso flattened. The hyena-man must’ve sensed my desperation – I probably reeked of it – and he just pressed harder, wedging his shoulders against the roof to exert maximum pressure.

My vision swam, the room dancing around as I slowly faded from the lack of oxygen. I thought back to Hashima, standing over Epic’s broken body, surrounded by his companions, shocked that I had beaten him, and I couldn’t help but find it funny that my turn had come. Beaten to a pulp by a random mutant I wondered if there would be anything left of me for Zundergrub to gloat over, to torture and play with.

He roared, pressing harder, but in that millisecond when he reared back to press back down on me, I got a sliver of air into my lungs.

Unable to crush me underfoot, he stepped off, picking me up with one hand and rearing back a fist roughly the size of a basketball for the game-ending blow. I blinked a few times, feeling the welcoming rush of air into my lungs, and caught the punch straight in the face. The blow was strong enough to rip me from his grasp and hurl me across the room, embedding me in the metal wall. I sloughed out of wall, the world spinning, and collapsed to the floor. My impact had smashed some piping (I think with my head), which bent outward and spilled superheated gasses over my body.

I screamed, but at the same time I knew that the steam rolling over my back and shoulders was all that saved me from slipping into unconsciousness.

The big guy was satisfied with himself, feeling like he could toy with me awhile before finishing me. He looked over at Claire, who recoiled from his hungry gaze. Hyena gave her a little grin, but then he saw the little guy I had almost torn in two, and his expression hardened. He sauntered over to me, helping me to my feet and grabbed my arms by the wrists.

His wingspan was half again as wide as mine. He lifted me clean off the ground, stretching me apart, trying to break me in two. I could feel his powerful muscles twitching and my tendons and ligaments straining. Our faces were only a few inches from each other, but I couldn’t get to him, to bite his face or do anything to distract him. He twisted his inhuman face into a grotesque mask, intent on avenging his dead companions.

I resisted his effort, but he had the leverage and he had the pure strength to keep my arms apart. I could only use my chest and shoulder muscles whereas he could bear down on me with his full force.

He strained and labored, shifting his grasp several times. The hot steam had covered me with condensation, and his hands were slipping down my arms. Each time he adjusted I was given a brief respite, but he was so strong and I was so weak that it could only end one way.

Then his hand slipped off my slick arm and I dropped to the floor, my right arm released. He tried to grab me again, but my arm had fallen to my side, and I collapsed to my knees, overcome with exhaustion and pain. Hyena-man let go of my other hand and stepped back, letting me fall to the deck. I looked up at him just as he swung his two arms, clenched together in a James Kirk cross-blow. The world became an explosion of light, and I felt my body flying through the air before coming to a crashing rest against a bulkhead.

He thought me beaten and turned his attention to Claire, who shuffled on the ground away from him.

Passing out seemed like a welcome respite, a break from all of the fighting, but somehow I managed to remain conscious. A persistent stabbing pain in my back helped, the product of being wedged part way into the metal wall. I shifted away and slipped out of the Blackjack-sized indentation, falling to my knees on the deck. I caught a glance of my face in the dirty water below the gridwork flooring.

“You done yet?” I said softly, repeating the words of Cool Hand in my dream.

The hyena-man heard my mumbling and turned to see me force my way to my feet. I must have cut a pathetic figure, swollen and unsteady, half naked and almost beaten. But I wasn’t done.

I faked it, straining against every muscle to seem steady, to appear formidable. I hadn’t touched him and I had nothing left in the tank. He was going to walk over here and wipe the floor with me without breaking a sweat, but if I was going down, I was going down fighting.

“Com’ere, you big, ugly f*ck,” I said.

He chuckled and came back at me. Behind him, Claire came to her feet, wrapped in the cloak and affixing the amulet, bracelet, and daggers to herself, but I couldn’t expect any help from her.

My strength was returning, but not fast enough to deal with the big guy, nor with those who were fast approaching down the hall.

“You killed my friends,” the hyena said, with a strange British accent. “I’m going to eat your f*cking brains, mate.”

I don’t know how, or with what strength, but I threw a right cross that spun his head and sent him stumbling back.

“I’m Blackjack,” I said, hoping there was more where that came from, but knowing I was tapped, one blow from dropping for good.

He steeled himself, rubbing his aching jaw. He was more hurt from my punch than I had realized. Maybe he had a glass jaw? Big as he was, I had never heard of the dude so he couldn’t be a famous villain. Could that be his weakness? Not that I could start trading punches with the guy. My only chance lay in full offense.

I threw another punch, a left uppercut that caught him under the chin and rocked his head back, and followed it up with a right hook that sent him stumbling back. The punches felt slow and each shot was a labor, everything strained and screamed with the effort. Shuffling after him, I pressed the advantage, jabbing twice with my left and crossing again with my right. He stumbled again, this time slamming into the vault door, barring the way. Seeing how hard each hit rocked him lit a fire in my belly. I rushed in, eager for more. I threw another left hook that spun his head around, spraying his blood all over my face and chest. Shaking off the pummeling, his arm shot out like a piston, and despite getting my guard up, it felt like being hit by a truck.

“Motherf*cker!” I shouted, firing off punch after punch, feeling a maddening, white-blinding, blood-curdling rage begin to grow. It was fed by the frustration I felt in the aftermath of Hashima, of the punitive reaction and of every injustice they had laid upon me.

My eyes were wide, teeth clenched in an unhinged growl, and I unleashed it all on this poor fool, blow upon blow crushing his face to a shattered mass of blood and bone. It reminded me of pounding on the unbreakable wall on Hashima, except monkey boy’s face had give; his skull was taking the full force of each unbridled blow. I threw twenty punches with each hand, socking his head back and forth, until his bone structure lost integrity, collapsing under my fists. I stepped back as his body slipped to the floor in a bloody heap, and for good measure, I threw one last punch at the massive vault door, indenting the heavy metal, leaving a mark for all time.

“Zundergrub!” I yelled, my strength returned if only for the moment. I could feel the blood pumping through my veins, and I was eager for more. “Where are you, you coward? I’m going to f*cking kill you!”

The sound of my voice was an insane melding of exhaustion, desperation, and rage, and it frightened me. More importantly, it halted the mob of Zundergrub’s cronies that had finally reached us. A few were by the doorway, looking inside, studying the mangled bodies of their companions.

“Don’t any of you want some?” I roared, challenging the newcomers, none of whom answered the call. They were more bewildered than afraid, but of the first bunch to arrive, none of them was eager to face the guy who had crushed the hyena-man.

I shot a glance back at Claire, who was now in her full regalia. Her hands glowed and she mumbled as a sheath of energy formed around her body, trailing dancing sigils and motes of light.

“I’m gonna kill all you f*ckers,” I raged, moving away from her, putting more distance between Claire and the amassing bad guys at the door. Summoning what little strength I had left, I threw myself through the portal as the thing faded out.

There was no transition, or tunnel with magical effects, or anything. It was a blink: one moment in the jail, the next lying on a sandy desert, with Claire standing in front of me.

Where she had been weak and injured before, she was herself now, dressed in black, with a long skirt, low on her hips, a bare midriff, and a tight leather top with long sleeves and a high collar. Her cloak was held by a pair of silver brooches on her shoulders, the cowl casting a foul shadow across her now-pristine face, and tied to her waist was the glowing dagger.

My bravado and strength faded, I smiled at her and passed out.

I had no accurate method to mark the passing of time in this arid, inhospitable land, but judging by my long sleep-then-wake-then-pass-out cycles, it felt like several hours passed by the time I was able to climb onto my knees.

My eyes weren’t adjusting to the brightness of day, even after a long time enduring the desert, so I kept them mostly closed. I felt my way along the sandy ground until I found the shade of a small bush to hide under and lay there while I got my bearings.

I had to be back in the dream, back at Utopia with the mind-job resetting itself into a new paradigm to keep me going, keep my mind busy. The episode with Aryani, my explosive rage, had triggered some sort of reset, presented me with an escape scenario. Everything was a blur, and all my senses were off. My hearing was a permanent howl, and my skin tingled, as if being probed by a thousand needles at once. I felt like one big sprain, and my whole body was wound tight, aching and sore. It was easier not to move, to sit still and let the day pass into night. Keeping me in that semi-vegetative state had an ongoing degenerative effect on my musculature, much like a coma patient’s, but I had no idea how long I had been under.

I was lucky to be alive, to have survived the escape from Utopia, and that had me thinking that they had just reset the system. Hell, it was more like a miracle – one lucky break after another. I mean, what were the realistic probabilities that Zundergrub had hired Black Razor, a former ... friend. I knew Razor was powerful; he had tussled with the likes of Lord Mighty in his day, but the chances that he happened upon me, just like that, were too much. It was the dream, plain and simple. The dream had seen me reject the Shard World experience and moved me along from Fantasyland to Frontierland.

Or had the princess used some sort of magic to throw me off the ship, to protect herself from me? Is this what happened when you took the endless drop into the abyss that was Shard World? Falling that evolved into delusional madness. Then where had Zundergrub come in? Was that part of the dream as well? And Claire? Everything around me appeared so real, despite my dulled senses. I should have no doubt; I should be certain.

I tried to nap, to give my aching head a break from the doubt and uncertainty, but thinking of Aryani made me cringe, remembering our last few moments. My anger had so overwhelmed me that I had lost all reason, almost done the unthinkable. If the mind-prison was designed to keep us busy, then why lead me to rape, why create even the possibility?

But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized they were just facilitating my needs and wants, and freed of any societal pressures, I had lost myself more than ever.

A terrible smell wafted to me, bringing me out of my reverie. While my other senses were failing me, it seemed that my nose was working just fine.

I forced my eyes open, forced them to become accustomed to the heavy sun, using what little saliva I could muster to wipe my eyes of dirt and grime. The desert was windy, and I had to cover my eyes with my arm to keep them free of grit. There was a constant buzzing around me, and I could feel a tickle around my cheek where I’d been shot. A buzzard circled overhead waiting for my inevitable end and the meal to follow. I had no way of knowing if the bird of prey was real or just another hallucination. Hell, I couldn’t actually see the beast, only hear the fluttering of its wings and feel the shade as it broke the sun overhead. For all I knew, it was one of those whale things from Shard World, like the one that had nearly made a meal out of me when we had first arrived, thwarted when Cool Hand Luke had tossed himself atop the beast and beat it to a pulp.

Then again, this was like no desert I had ever seen. I was familiar with Arizona’s Sonora and the deserts north of Los Angeles from my weapon testing a few years back while developing arrows for the Blackjack costume. It was more than just the ambient temperature or oppressive humidity, or even the ground formations and geology. There was a vast emptiness to this place that I hadn’t noticed in my prior visits to desert lands, a feeling of total isolation, as if this land were many thousands of miles wide, far from anything.

And the sun was wrong.

Harsh as this land was, it wasn’t absolutely bare. Spotting the desert floor was an eclectic mixture of brushes and brambles. The ground was a reddish clay which seemed pale when seen at a distance, almost a faded white in the distant horizon.

The one benefit of the wind was that finding the source of the odor easy. I’m not sure why I was so interested in the smell, so foul it could only be carrion. Stupid as it sounds, that smell was real. I was sure my mind couldn’t conjure anything that brutal. It was so strong and offensive, I couldn’t help but head that way. I forced myself onto my feet, hobbling in that direction and stumbling through the desert.

The smell became more pungent the closer I got to the corpse, as did the loud buzzing of flies, and I jumped as a large animal burst from a thicket in a furry blur, too fast to get a decent look. Whatever had died was beneath a cluster of bushes, so I had to reach beneath, grab a pawed limb with brown matted fur, and drag the whole thing out to get a good look at it.

The dead animal was a dog, its midsection split open, spilling out the innards which were dark and coated with dirt and sand. On the top of its head was a massive wound, ringed with black char marks, as if some sort of burning weapon had been used close to one of the eyes. There was something so familiar about the animal, something I couldn’t place. The wound was curious as well, and I couldn’t think of anything that could cause such an injury. The flesh had burned around the wound and the skin and muscle near the temple had exploded outward, causing a two-inch rupture. To the best of my knowledge, a gun didn’t leave that kind of injury, even when fired up close to allow for the burn marks. Whatever had caused them had also melted the skin and fur, leaving cauterized deep muscle exposed.

It had to be Claire, with her magical powers. Maybe a magic missile, but why kill this animal? If she could conjure the power to kill it, she could easily whip up something to scare it out of her way. I guess to answer that, you had to know the woman, and my only experience with her was that she had abandoned me in the moment I needed her the most. She had turned her back on me after I had saved her life. I didn’t know who she was, but it wasn’t hard to know that she deserved to be in Utopia prison.

One thing was for certain: she had headed this way after coming out of the portal. As the sun began to set, I could see a hazy glow in the distance, the glow of artificial lighting. Claire had probably headed toward the settlement and encountered the dog. She’d killed it for murder’s sake, which meant the people where she was headed were in danger.

I turned away from the corpse and headed for the artificial lights as fast as I could, a renewed strength flowing through my battered body. A sense of dread settled on me as I wondered what reserves I had left to battle an evil wizard bitch. This fueled my anger further, because it occurred to me that there was no good reason she couldn’t have helped me fight earlier. How much better off would I be right now had she simply attacked one of those bastards? I got pounded into paste, and for what? So she could traipse through the desert, killing the wildlife?

Then it hit me, and I remembered. I turned back and looked at the dead dog again, noticing the unique shape of its head, the short, powerful stocky body, the light brown coat. There was only one animal like it in the world, and it was unique to one part of the world.

It was a dingo, and I was in the Australian Outback.