Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Bruce held his breath as Maddox’s index finger pressed down on the button.  It slid into the podium with a scraping sound, clicking into place when it was flush with the rest of the pillar.

Nothing happened.

Just as he exhaled in relief, the podium began to hiss and spray thick white smoke.  Both Maddox and Bruce jumped backward, hands grasping at their hips for guns that weren’t there.  The sound of horns playing a quickly paced reveille filled the room

The music was tinny, like it was recorded on an old style cassette tape and left out in the heat and sun for years before being played through the cheapest speakers available.  When the halting, scratchy notes faded the smoke began to settle toward the ground revealing a small creature, barely bigger than Bruce’s fist, crouched on the podium.

It was lime green, the color bright enough to assault his eyes, and covered in short fur.  It chirped happily to itself, stretching out on top of the grey pillar to reveal the iridescent blue webbing between its front and back legs.

“Maybe you were right about this entire thing,” Maddox whispered.  “I’m pretty sure going through that energy vortex gave both of us some sort of brain damage.”

The creature turned to contemplate them, eyes taking up most of its small fuzzy face above a petite black nose.  It opened its muzzle and a string of singsong noises came out, rapidly passing from a barely audible squeal to a deep bass thrum as they plummeted through the human hearing register.

“Is that a flying squirrel?”  Bruce asked incredulously.  “Why does it look like Lisa Frank threw up on it?”

It cocked its head slightly to the side.  This time it let out a long, sibilant hissing drawl that felt like someone was pulling nettles across Bruce’s skin.  He could feel hairs standing on edge and nerves stinging as the sounds slipped past him.

“Yeaaaaah,” Maddox replied.  “I think you have a point.  We need to leave and come back later.  Preferably after we find a way to bring guns.  Possibly a recoilless rifle or two.”

“Test test,” the creature’s voice was high-pitched and halting, reminding Bruce of the handful of times he had tried to use his high school Spanish at a market while deployed in South America. “Can you understand?”

Bruce looked at Maddox, and the other man shrugged.  Both of them had backed up until they were merely inches from the portal in the ground, ready to jump back in at a moment’s notice.

“Sure,” Maddox said.  “We can understand you.  Now, can you tell us what the hell is going on?  We came in here wearing a lot of expensive gear.  If possible, we’d like to retrieve it.”

“Oh no no,” the tiny figure chirped.  “You not strip down before enter dimensional transit maw?  That not good.  That bad.”

“How bad?”  Bruce asked.  “Are we all going to start bleeding from our ears and collapse?  Did we destroy the gear?  What are we talking about here?”

“Gear destroyed,” the green creature agreed, nodding its head quickly.  “Gone.  Poof.  Turned into energy.  That energy creates signal.  Beacon.  Things see beacon.  If lucky?  Only shades come.  If unlucky?”  It shivered adorably.

“Okay boss,” Bruce said nervously.  “I am seconding your plan to come back with heavy ordinance.  I’m not sure I know what a ‘shade’ is, but the little fella here isn’t making them sound like they’re going to show up with a pot roast to welcome us to wherever the hell is.  I’m out.”

“Back to Mars it is,” Maddox agreed, turning and stepping into the shallow pit housing the portal.  Bruce joined him only to find himself standing atop the flickering disc of energy like it was solid ground.

He looked over at Maddox.  The team leader shrugged at him before jumping and landing on the barrier a second time, again with no result.  Bruce made a note that the other human was falling as if they were under Earth standard gravity rather than the lower levels he was accustomed to on Mars, but that was hardly the real issue.

They were trapped.

Bruce cleared his throat, looking down at the crackling strobes of violet energy around his ankles before turning his attention back to the green and blue squirrel thing.

“Hey little guy, I don’t suppose you could turn the gateway or whatever this is back on, we kinda need to head back home.”

“No no, Treekipp not in control of dimensional transit maw,” it replied.  “Maw locks in place automatically when dwellers come.  Not let them teleport out of compressed dimensions and into real world.  That cause big problem.”

Bruce bit his lower lip, trying to keep the frustration from his voice.

“Who or what are the dwellers?  Are they going to try and kill us?  More importantly, are they little green men that are going to try and shove metal probes up our butts?”

“No no, not rectal probe.”  The little creature leapt into the air, spreading its hands and feet wide so that it could glide on the navy blue membrane between its furry appendages and land on Maddox’s shoulder.  “Yes kill.  Dwellers are many things.  Shades, boggles, hunger forges, void maws, acid spawn.  Only thing for sure is that they want to kill any person from realspace and feed on their energy.”

“Not Treekipp though,” it continued proudly.  “Treekipp is recording.  Flash grown.  He not taste good to dwellers.  The two of you delicious though.”

It blinked a pair of overly large eyes at the two of them before smacking its lips theatrically.

Somewhere deep down the tunnel of the only entrance into the portal room, a mournful but utterly inhuman howl echoed.  Bruce felt like someone had ducked a bucket of ice water over his head, shivering as a steady wind began to blow toward the three of them from the room’s exit.

“Shades,” Treekipp chirped.  “They have your scent.  Give hunting call.  Good luck new friends.  Don’t let them feast on your soul cores.  Very painful.  Very not good.”

Bruce sighed deeply, pushing off the portal to step off of the now useless energy plane and back into the room.  He glanced around one last time to confirm that there wasn’t anything he could convert into a weapon.  Finding nothing, he hopped in place a couple of times, swinging his arms from side to side to limber up.

“Bet you’re glad that the section chief had us doing twenty hours a week of PE and close combat in the gravitron,” Maddox said, climbing out of the dormant portal and beginning his own stretches.  I know a lot of the guys thought that he had us doing laps just to torment us, but there was a method to the madness.  Stops muscular degeneration due to low gravity and keeps us all in tip top shape.”

He snorted, not looking at his commander.  From the open doorway, the strange wind increased, carrying with it the scent of rot and stale air that reminded Bruce of the times he’d had to clear abandoned buildings complete with dead rats and vermin.

“Not really,” Bruce replied.  “Chief Stedman didn’t know we would be engaging in hand to hand, and he never took part in PE himself.  Pretty sure he saw it as an excuse to keep us busy and away from the bars.  Plus, I’m not sure a right cross is going to do much to whatever the hell a ‘shade’ is.”

“Sorry by the way,”

Bruce glanced over at Maddox.  The other man had dropped into a fighting stance, body turned sideway and eyes toward the door with barely any weight on his front foot.

“Sorry?”  Bruce asked.

“You warned me about this crap every step of the way Bruce,” Maddox said with a shrug, bringing his hands up from his waist so that they could defend his chest and head more easily.  “Standing directives superseded your warnings, but that doesn’t make you wrong.  The opposite really.  I probably should have ignored the orders and gotten chewed out back at Eagle Base.  Better than getting eaten by whatever the hell is coming for us right now.

“But look at the bright side,” Maddox continued with a wink.  “Our fuzzy friend promised no rectal probing.”

He groaned at the dumb joke, unwilling to take his eyes off of the entrance to the room.  The air was still rushing toward them, accompanied this time by a hissing scrape that sounded like cloth sliding across metal.

“Say,” Bruce remarked, trying to focus on anything but the way the back of his neck was prickling as he suddenly felt like he was being watched.  “Little green guy.  Do we actually have any way of hurting these things beyond just punching them?  I don’t suppose they have an exposed nervous system or a sudden fear of loud noises we can exploit?  That would be the sort of thing that would be very useful right about now.”

“No,” it chirped back.  “Like everything in the dimensional transit corridor, they can be damaged by acts of will.  Simply fight them normally and wish with all your might for them to be harmed, and they will be harmed.”

Another howl, much closer this time.  It slithered across Burce’s skin, trying to find a hole, a weakness of some sort..  The wind had stopped, but the stale sepulcher odor had settled into the chamber. It felt like the entire world had paused to take a breath before exploding into violence.

“Got it,” Maddox said lightly.  “Punch and bash bad guys until they stop moving.  Don’t let bad guys hit me.  Seems simple enough.”

A screech echoed down the hallway, loud and shrill enough to pulp eardrums as it washed over the two humans.  Bruce felt it with every fiber of his being.  It made his eyes water and his teeth hurt as it dug into his flesh with a million invisible barbs and pulled.

He took a step backward, gasping for breath as the nerve endings in the front of his body all fired at once.  It didn’t matter whether he was wearing clothing or not, it felt like he was standing naked in an Alaska snowstorm.  The wind froze and burned at the same time, threatening to overwhelm his senses.

Ironically, the one thing it didn’t actually harm was his hearing.  Despite the pain blossoming throughout the rest of his body, Bruce could hear every note of the bloodcurdling call.

Then he saw them.  A dozen flickering purple shapes darting down the hallway toward him and Maddox.  Some of them ran on two legs like humans.  Others loped on four like a bear or a tiger.  At least one writhed across the ceiling with a long, snakelike body and no legs at all.

Bruce felt his hands close into fists as he waited for the charging creatures to arrive.  His skin began to tingle as if it had fallen asleep and was slowly starting to awaken.  Silently he was grateful for the pain.  The numbness and pins and needles helped distract him from the onrushing horde of surreal monsters.

But that only brought him a moment of relief.  The entities moved fast, covering the entire visible distance of the hallway in barely five seconds before throwing themselves upon Maddox and Bruce.

His feet shuffled forward, giving Bruce a flash of momentum and extending his reach as his left foot snapped up catching a quadruped in what he thought was its face.  There was a flash of blue light and the creature stumbled backward.

The snake monster slipped past it and Bruce brought down the foot he’d just used to kick the first shade and planted it.  Both of his hands darted out, grasping hold of either side of the snake creature.

Bruce ignored the burning, almost electric tingle that rushed through his arms as he pivoted on the newly planted leg, bringing up his other knee and slamming it into the shade while his arms held it in place.  Once again there was a flash of blue light, but this time he could feel the thing shudder under his hands.

Without thinking, Bruce dug his fingers into the monster, parting the purple light and sinking deep into its ephemeral hide.  It shook silently in his grip, trying to free itself even as a thick, dark purple pudding began to ooze through the holes in its skin.

He ripped.  Hands pulling the snake apart from the inside and sending motes of violet light flying all over the room as the monster began to quickly dissolve.  Exhilaration pulsed into him.  They were strange, but they certainly could be killed.

His moment of triumph was costly.  It only took Bruce about a second to tear the snake into shreds, but that was more than enough time for one of the bipedal shades to slip to his side.

It punched him.  There was nothing fancy about the blow.  No rotational force, no focusing the area of contact down to a square inch.  It wasn’t even particularly fast.

But oh God did it hurt.  The strike picked up him, sending Bruce flying a foot or two through the air, and that probably saved him as whiplike tendrils of violet energy sprang out of another biped and a four legged shade, slapping into the floor where he had been standing in a shower of blue sparks.

As for the punch itself?  It felt like someone had dropped a bowling ball on him from a second story window.  Nothing was broken, but Bruce was pretty sure that his bruises were going to have bruises tomorrow morning.

He bit his lower lip, launching himself forward as he brought his right leg high over his head and slammed it down on the quadruped that he had kicked earlier.  The heel of his foot hit the top of its head, blasting the shade downward in an explosion of blue light

Behind him, Bruce could almost feel the three shades that had attacked him regaining their footing and turning to follow.  He didn’t give them a chance.  A quick skip of his feet sent him moving around the flank of the stunned shade, buying him another couple of feet and the time he needed to ram a pair of punches into its side.

Like the snake before it, the creature exploded into embers of purple light, but this time Bruce didn’t take a second to gawk at his handiwork.  Instead, he kept moving, eyes scanning the crowd of monsters as he looked for another target.

“Into the tunnel!”  He barely registered Maddox’s scream.  “If we let them surround us, we’re beyond toast.  Let’s put some distance between us and regroup!”

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