Mutation, p.10
Mutation, page 10
part #5 of Remnants Series
The teddy bears had come alive and advanced to the edge of the shelf. They snarled and pawed the ground, searching for a way down the smooth wall.
Inhuman eyes glowed from under the bed. Every so often, a sickly green-skinned hand would reach out from that dark space and snatch wildly into the air.
The Squids were attacking through the floor and the walls adjoining the bathroonn. One of the blasts had gotten Alberto. He was bleeding from his head.
And the Riders were coming. The stairs wouldn't slow them for long.
"Edward, get on the bed," 2Face ordered. "Get everyone who doesn't have a weapon on the bed. Mother is creating these monsters from Billy's childhood fears. The safest place should be under the covers."
Yago sneered. "Good plan. Why doesn't someone turn on the night-light while you're at it."
Edward obeyed immediately. Mo'Steel and Jobs picked up Alberto by the arms and legs and tossed him onto the bed, too. Violet sat on the edge and tucked her feet underneath her legs.
From the hallway, an earsplitting shriek like metal gears grinding together.
The Riders' battle cry,
2Face wanted to run. Her heart was racing, nerves twitching, veins pumping overtime. She could practically feel the adrenaline flow. She took a position to one side of the door. Raised the baseball bat over her head.
Mo'Steel stood a few feet away, pointing a BB gun at the door "I've been waiting for my chance at these guys," he said."Ever since they got Errol."
Jobs crouched behind 2Face, holding a can of shaving cream. 2Face wondered how he got it out of the bathroom without getting zapped by the Squids. She wondered what he thought he was going to do with shaving cream.
Kubrick was there, too. Hovering uncomfortably close behind 2Face. He had no weapon other than his fists, which were poised and ready to strike. 2Face admired his bravery until she remembered he had never seen a Rider before. He wasn't brave. He was naive.
The door crashed inward.
A Rider appeared in the door frame. The door was wide enough for only one at a time. Good. Four of them against one Rider might just be an even fight.
The Rider's hoverboard surged forward — and stopped abruptly, jammed into the door frame, which was only inches, or fractions of inches, too small. The Rider lurched, off-balance.
"Now!" someone yelled.
Mo'Steel opened fire.
Direct hit!
The BBs sprayed into the Rider's rust-colored glossy shell. But the BBs could have been mosquito bites for all the Rider seemed to care.
He jumped off the board and bounded into the middle of the room, covering ten feet in a single leap. For a moment, the Rider paused, glaring with his two arrays of insect eyes, surveying the scene. He seemed uncertain. Anxious in this artificial, closed-in environment. He was clicking somewhere deep in his gut, communicating with the others lined up in the hallway. They clicked in response.
Another Rider appeared in the doorway. Reinforcements.
2Face raced forward, bringing the baseball bat down with all of her strength. The Rider moved sideways, missing her swing. He spun and brought up his spear.
Behind her Mo'Steel and Kubrick were shouting, apparently fighting off the next Rider.
2Face swung again, landing the bat on the four-fingered hand that clutched the Rider's spear.
Jobs let loose with the shaving cream. 2Face smelled mint, saw the lime-green foam hit the Rider in two of his smaller eyes.
He shrieked. Pain? If not pain, definitely annoyance.
"More shaving cream!" 2Face shouted.
The group on the bed was yelling, too. Cheered by this small victory.
The Rider stabbed his spear, aiming at Jobs.
2Face tried to move out of the way. She stumbled. The spear hit her in the side of the head, knocking her down on hands and knees. She looked at the carpet until her vision cleared, sucked air, looked up.
The Rider put his spear under her chin. 2Face could feel the delicate pressure there. She didn't dare move. If she moved, the Rider would decapitate her.
CHAPTER 22
"LOOKS COZY ENOUGH TO ME."
The Rider froze.
At first, Violet thought it was just one of their rituals. Stillness before the kill. But the Riders in the hallway were no longer making their guttural clicking. The teddy bears were caught midsnarl and the walls had stopped exploding outward in their weird bursts.
"Looks like someone hit the pause button," Mo'Steel said, easing out of his attack stance.
Yago got up and moved closer to the Riders. "Let's just hope they stay away from rewind."
Mo'Steel helped 2Face stand."You okay?"
2Face swallowed experimentally. She ran her hand under her chin and examined it. "I think I'm fine," she said, sounding wobbly. "What just happened?"
"We were given a chance to get out of here," Mo'Steel said."Let's blow."
"Come on, people," Yago said. "Time for a little fresh air."
Violet noted how Yago immediately repeated any good idea, taking credit for it. He could have been trained at her mother's knee.
Edward scrambled out of the bed.
Violet got up, gently helping Alberto to his feet. Kubrick seemed happy to stay away from his father as long as someone else took care of him. At least Alberto didn't seem any worse off after the attack. He was beyond knowing what was happening around him.
The group moved out of the room, carefully easing around the wax-statue Riders. The hallway was crowded with Riders. Not the five or six Violet had imagined — dozens.
"This doesn't make sense," Jobs said as they inched along the wall toward the stairway. "Mother shouldn't be able to freeze the Riders. They're a real species, not part of her environment."
"Shh," Mo'Steel said. "They might hear you and decide to wake up and get busy with their spears. Oh, by the way, nice going with the shaving cream."
"Thanks," Jobs said, still sounding disturbed. "Hey, do you think these Riders and Squids are fake? Maybe Mother created them, knowing they scare us silly."
Jobs would turn the situation over and over until he reached some sort of conclusion that made sense to him, Violet knew. Logic was his crutch. His way of pretending this New World they'd landed in made sense. He never seemed bothered by the fact he had to keep revising his explanations — daily, even hourly.
Kubrick reached the front door first and yanked it open."What the —" he breathed.
The weird, nightmare world they had left outside was gone. They stepped out onto the front porch and the house behind them vanished.
Violet was left in utter blackness. She couldn't feel anything, not even the ground under her feet. "Hello?" she whispered fearfully.
"I'm here," Mo'Steel whispered.
"Me, too," Jobs said.
One by one, the others answered. Kubrick reported that he had his father's arm.
Violet felt the relief flow through her. She didn't always like her companions, but having them around sure beat the horror of being alone.
A very familiar image floated into being about twenty feet away They stood In its glow, staring at it like it was a movie screen and they were huddled down in their chairs with a Coke and a box of popcorn.
"Edward Hopper's Nighthawks," Violet said.
"It's a diner," Edward said."An old one."
"Yes," Violet said. "Hopper painted it in the nineteen-forties. The painting is supposed to represent the sterility of modern life. See how the patrons and the waiter are all looking in different directions? They're not communicating. They're alone."
Edward was not impressed."Looks cozy enough to me."
And it did. Maybe it was Violet's nostalgia for the lost Earth, but the darkened street with its display windows and cigar advertisements looked welcoming to her, too.
The diner itself— even more so. It was brightly lit. Not garish light, but warm like light from a fire. The patrons were enclosed within a bent glass storefront and seated on round stools at a polished wooden countertop. Everything was so neat, so orderly. The salt In its plain, functional shakers. Paper napkins in rectangular metal napkin holders. Mundane, comforting.
Then, in an instant, less so.
Two of the patrons, a pretty red-haired woman in a red dress and a somber man in a business suit and a gray fedora, disappeared. They were replaced by a young boy and what had to be an alien.
Violet turned to glance at Kubrick, to gauge his reaction. The alien — it wasn't a Rider or a Squid — had the same transparent, slick-looking skin as Kubrick.
Kubrick was leaning forward, intent but cautious. Barely breathing. He'd obviously noticed the connection, too.
The alien wore no clothes so all of its blue-tinged muscles and even a few organs were clearly visible. Violet's eyes were drawn to something large and deep green pumping in the alien's torso. A heart, perhaps.
The creature was shaped more or less like a person, but leaned short, stubby arms on the counter, wrapped four-fingered hands around a cup of what had to be coffee.
Its head was nothing but a triangular lump growing straight from the shoulders. No neck. For that matter, no mouth, nose, or ears. The head was the only part of the creature's body that wasn't transparent. Rather it was covered with milky, translucent, bumpy flesh that vibrated sensitively and continuously like a puddle on a crowded road.
On the shoulders were primitive eyes of black and red.
The boy was eight or maybe nine years old. He was very thin and pale with unruly dark hair and hollow dark eyes rimmed in red. He looked as if he hadn't had a decent meal in years — if ever Gaunt cheeks. Bony, scabby arms.
"It's Billy," Mo'Steel whispered.
"That's right," someone said.
Violet turned at the unfamiliar voice.
It was Big Bill.
Wormholes and all.
CHAPTER 23
"TWO SAD, LONELY CREATURES IN A LONELY SETTING."
"Are you real?" Jobs asked.
"No," Big Bill said, loosening his tie. He also wore a business suit and polished alligator cowboy boots. "I am a projection of Billy's imagination. He has created me to communicate with you."
"So communicate," Yago said impatiently." What's going on in there?"
"The alien you see is a Shipwright," Big Bill said. "A Maker, one of the aliens who created this ship. To tell it true, the creature is not a true Shipwright, but a projection created by Mother. This is how Mother sees herself."
"But she's a computer," Edward complained.
"A computer," Big Bill said, "but a highly sophisticated machine. Sophisticated enough to experience loneliness, or something very close to it, when her Makers abandoned her."
Jobs and the others watched as the white-hatted waiter served Mother and Billy two steaming cups of coffee. They weren't speaking. With the Shipwright's weird eyes, Jobs couldn't even tell if they were looking at each other
"Two sad, lonely creatures in a lonely setting," Violet said.
"And both Looney Tunes," Mo'Steel said.
"They — they seemed to be fighting before," Jobs said. "Have they reached some sort of agreement?"
"The battle continues," Big Bill said. "Only they have agreed to take it out of the realm of this node. Billy did not want all of you to die."
"How thoughtful," Yago said.
"So where are they fighting?" Mo'Steel asked.
"There at the counter," Big Bill said. "Within Billy's mind and Mother's circuitry."
Jobs felt an ache in his chest. A machine that experienced loneliness. The idea spoke to his poetic side, spoke to his techie side, spoke to all of him.
He thought of all the pain, suffering, and death that Mother's loneliness had caused. He thought of the extreme danger Billy had put himself in to try and save their lives. He'd never seen anything as sad as those two strange creatures at the diner counter.
Violet felt the sadness. He could see that on her face.
Even Alberto was slumped down, staring in the general direction of the diner Did he recognize Mother? Recognize the machine that had been his undoing? No, Jobs thought. No, that couldn't be.
Mo'Steel and Edward were quiet, too. Awed, watching the scene unfold.
So Jobs was surprised to see 2Face approach Kubrick and strain up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. At first, Jobs was glad. Someone needed to talk to Kubrick, to draw him out of his anger. Maybe 2Face would know how to comfort Kubrick.
But then Jobs saw 2Face glance furtively at Yago, and he realized he was just creating pretty pictures in his head. 2Face wasn't comforting Kubrick, she was trying to win him over
Billy and Mother may have moved their battle out of this node. But Yago and 2Face's civil war hadn't ended yet.
It hadn't really started.
****
K.A. Applegate, Mutation
