---Chapter 3
“Poor beast,” Jax muttered as the single creature tripped on a cardboard box and fell face-forward on the hard road. He lay there for a moment, sprawled out on the cracked asphalt.
“They’re going to catch him now,” Lenny said, watching with a sort of horrified fascination. He had never seen anything like this in Belltoh, even during the riots of June 21st last year. Then the people had stormed the mayor’s mansion and knocked out the windows, before being beaten off by police with shields and blackjacks, or shot by the few with energy rifles. But even that terrifying, wild crush had been more domestic than the brutal scene playing out before him.
“He’s a goner.”
“Not if I can help it!” Jax exclaimed suddenly, standing up.
“What are you going to do?” Lenny cried in a tense whisper, afraid that the traveler would bring the wrath of the creatures down on their own heads.
“I’m going to rescue him,” Jax replied coolly, reaching into the inside of his felt overcoat. Before Lenny could reason with him further, the young man had pulled out what looked like a skateboard, but without either wheels or wipers. Instead, it had a pair of round metal tubes facing downwards, each taking up almost half of the skateboard’s underside. Lenny did not even know how this had fit in his coat: it certainly had not appeared to be resting there before.
With a precise flip, Jax threw it down on the edge of the building, jumping up onto the board with a practiced skip. His feet fit into leather cups on the board’s surface, holding them in place. For just a moment he balanced on the edge of the multi-story building.
“Jax, no!” Lenny jumped to his feet, reaching out towards him. But the traveler had already pushed off.
Coat flapping back behind him wildly, he plummeted towards the road below, arms outstretched behind and in front. Lenny balled his hands into fists, shocked. But before he could truly believe that the traveler was a goner he saw jets on the bottom of the board flare, cushioning the fall. Jax expertly bounced it off of a projection on the side of the building, leaning as he guided it from there to an old signpost beside the road, then bounced down onto the pavement, yellow hair waving above him.
“He’s crazy,” Lenny muttered, glancing from Jax to the oncoming vehicle. The armored truck was only a hundred feet away now, dogs straining at their leashes in front. By now the lone rat-creature had scrambled back to his feet, panting and staring around in terror. He seemed unable to decide if running any further was worth it.
At that moment Jax whipped by him, holding out a hand and making space on the back of his jetboard. With a scream, the rat creature grabbed his hand, jumping up on the board just as one of the lead dogs was about to spring at him. The jets flared brighter and the board shot across the street, carrying both of its passengers down a narrow alley on the other side. Lenny lost sight of them as they disappeared in the shadow of the large structure. The vehicle’s drivers and their dogs were thrown into confusion by the sudden rescue. Rat creatures with painted fur started boiling off of it as it skidded to a stop, while the dogs tangled in their leashes and fought each other to be the first to turn towards the alley way. Shouts came up to Lenny, but he could not pick out the words in them.
He hoped that his companion had gotten far enough away to avoid capture.
The creatures finally got the dogs beaten into semi-silence, before they started to run towards the alley. It was then that Lenny realized he could do something to help his friend’s escape without foolishly throwing his own life away.
Pulling back the sleeve of his silver suit on his right hand, he mentally initiated the sequence for firing his energy cannon. The apparent skin between his wrist and hand parted at a hairline crack. His hand folded downwards, snapping mechanically into place under the wrist. A silver barrel slid into its spot, grooved with glowing blue lines on the outside. They glowed brighter as Lenny increased the power going to the cybernetic cannon, until it reached the level he wanted. He pointed his arm at the truck below and braced his feet against knock-back. This had all taken only a few heartbeats, quicker than it could be described.
“Fire,” he said quietly to himself, holding his right arm with the left hand. He felt the energy toll taken from his electronic reserves just a moment before the cannon fired. A blast of neon blue light, so bright it would have blinded him except for his automatic optical dimming, charged away from his wrist. A ball of energy streaked through the air as fast as lightening and struck the vehicle full in the side.
Whoomp! It shuddered and rocked on its wheels, creatures and dogs howling as the metal plating cracked. Something caught fire beyond the shattered armor, smoke billowed upwards from the wrecked hulk.
Not waiting to inspect the full scope of his damage, Lenny turned and ran towards the edge of the building where the staircase went down. There was no knowing if the creatures below had seen him just before the blast, or noticed where it came from. Escape from that area was the best way to survive. As he ran down the protesting steps, he sent a signal to his arm, folding the cannon away. It was still uncomfortably hot, but the coolant system would keep it from burning him.
Rusty metal stairs clattered under his feet. The alley at the bottom of the steps was still empty. Lenny followed it away from the open road.
More cautious now, he peered out of it into a courtyard between buildings, which was paved in pale gray tiles and had an ancient, crumbling water fountain in its center. Behind him he could still hear the cries of the rat creatures as they tried to figure out what had happened to themselves and their rig. In front of him, the buildings surrounding the empty courtyard were eerily quiet. Old awnings fluttered their torn pendants in the wind above the doorways, while dark windows stared back at him with all of their glass broken out.
“I hope that Jax survived,” Lenny muttered, “or else I’ll be stuck in this dismal world.”
As he finished speaking there was a loud explosion behind him, a blast of hot air rushed past and shards of shrapnel bounced down the entrance of the alleyway. Spinning around, he saw flames and smoke from the open road. It seemed that the burning had touched the truck’s fuel tanks. Rat-creature’s screams filled the air.
Losing no more time, Lenny slipped into the courtyard. The fountain had long since ceased to run, laying dry and crumbling under the hot sun. No moss grew in the area, despite the cracks and obvious age of the tiles. Buildings hemmed it in on every side, leaving no obvious avenue of escape. But one of the structures had a large, broken-in door through which Lenny could see a gleam of light on the far side. Through the door, everything was darkness.
He considered activating night vision in his eyes, but decided to save the energy in case he needed it later on. It was a tall building, but did not appear to be extremely wide. Feeling his way with his feet, he walked into the ruined first floor.
The floor was gritty with shattered window glass and drywall chunks from the roof. Once his eyes had adjusted a little, he could make out sagging divider walls with their insulation spilling out, warped linoleum flooring and old office chairs tumbled about at ghostly angles. What seemed very far away, almost like a distant star, there was a gleam of daylight coming through a hole on the other side of the place. Feeling oppressed by the thought of the whole structure sitting precariously over his head, Lenny made his way quickly across to the hole. It turned out to be a large window with all of the glass blown out, letting onto a shabby back street.
The street was lined in wrecked vehicles. They were rusty, missing their windshields and covered in bubbly graffiti. But he did notice that all of them had rubber tires, or at least a place for those tires to be mounted. Leaning on the window frame, he looked carefully up and down the street to make sure that no one was moving on it, before vaulting out of the hole into the daylight.
His feet hit the hard cement with a loud clack. He paused, listening for any sign of pursuit or movement around him. There was nothing but the sound of wind blowing down the empty street. With a sigh, he tried to decide what he was going to do next. He had to meet up with Jax again in the near future, so that they could use the Di-jump to leave this place. The device should have had time to cool down, by now. But would Jax be waiting for him?
“He’d better not jump away without me,” Lenny growled, curling his hands into fists.
The rat-creature that his companion had saved had probably run off in fear by now, too wild to even thank Jax for the rescue. In which case, Jax would be alone somewhere in the north of the city, while Lenny was alone somewhere in its south. He judged these directions by the position of the sun, which seemed to be sinking towards the horizon now. But they were generalizations, not specific directions.
“Even if he doesn’t use the Di-jump, how will we regroup?” Lenny added to himself, trying to remember which way it was towards where they had first entered the city. He did feel a slight pricking of his conscious for having blown up the vehicle with all of those rat-creatures and dogs on it. But he had been doing it to help his friend and he told himself now that those creatures were not even human. They did not deserve his sympathy. Especially when they were obviously cruel, bloodthirsty and entirely willing to kill each other off without a scruple.
The thing now was for Lenny to keep alive in this crazy place and find a way to rejoin his friend. The only way he could think of doing that was to find his way back to their original entering point.
Walking down the street in an easterly direction, he tried to remember where the sun had been when they came in and which way they had gone since then. But he had not been paying attention to directions at that time, simply following Jax. It seemed to him, upon reflection, that they had mostly traveled west.
So he went east, down the street until he came to where someone had piles up bricks and erected a barrier across it. At that point he turned towards the north, knowing that he had run in a southerly direction away from the rat-creature’s vehicle. But in the tangle of buildings, streets, courtyards and city blocks, he soon got confused. This ruined place was not laid out with the directness that his home town of Belltoh was. Its streets seemed to fold in on each other and take corners even when they were not needed. Either that, or the roads would suddenly end in a courtyard with no exit except for through more structures, many of which were broken down so that they became impassable.
It was not until he had become thoroughly sunk in the quagmire of the city that he realized he had left his rucksack behind somewhere. Stopping to think, he remembered that he had dropped it on top of the building, when he was preparing to shoot his energy cannon.
“Darn it!” he growled, slapping a hand to his forehead. “How could I be so careless?”
Worn out from walking, he slumped against a nearby building to rest his feet. It was gritty on his back, the bricks it was made of covered in a film of soot and dust that had not been washed off in what appeared to be years. In front of him, the street stretched across to a building that looked like it had once been a theater. The old posters still flapped against a wall, torn and faded beyond reading. But that was the only wall still standing; the rest was a heap of crumbled brick and twisted metal. Lenny gazed at it blankly through narrowed eyes, trying to decide what he should do next. He was lost, the sun was setting, and he had left behind the sack with all of his possessions in it. Not to mention losing his whole world, which now seemed irrevocably lost to him. His life was in ruins just as desolate as the one in front of him.
“Perhaps I should never have left my home world in the first place,” he said finally, with a sigh, “but now that I’m here I have to do something to survive.”
He was startled to hear an answer to his monologue.
“Heh, ya have ta’ eat ta’ survive.”
Looking around in surprise, he saw a small creature sitting on the cement sidewalk not far from him. It appeared to be something between a rat and a human, leaning more towards the rat except for the straightness of its legs, flexibility of its hands and expression on its face.
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It was smaller than the others he had seen, making Lenny think that it was a young one, It was only tall enough to reach his knees when it jumped to its feet. On its head was a cap of leather, while dead leaves stitched together made a sort of skirt around its middle. A red symbol was painted on the rat creature’s chest, something like a burning flame or curling claw.
It looked at him silently with its large, dark eyes. Lenny stared back, unsure if it was the one who had spoken. Could it speak in a human tongue so like his own? It seemed unlikely, when it came from a different world and was furry from head to heels.
“Hey, are you dumb or sometin’?” The creature asked, looking at him with a wrinkled nose. “I said, ya have ta’ eat ta’ survive!”
It obviously had been talking to him in his own language, no matter how unlikely that seemed.
“I--didn’t realize you had spoken,” Lenny replied, trying to gather his wits back about him. “I’m kind of lost, you see, and--”
“Heh, don’t have any friends around ta’ help ya?” The little creature inquired abruptly, fiddling with a small metal whistle that was hung about its neck on a rusty wire.
“No,” Lenny replied solemnly, “as I said, I’m lost. I don’t even know where to get something to eat.”
“That’s too bad.” The creature shook its head sadly, before a bright light seemed to come on in its eyes. “All alone, no friends ta’ help ya. Heh, heh. You don’t know what to eat, but I do. You!”
As soon as it had spoken, the creature put the whistle to its mouth and blew in it. A shrill sound echoed around the evening-tinted buildings, as the little rat-person added, “and I have friends ta’ help me!”
A growling noise on the other side of Lenny made him whip around, automatically activating the energy cannon in his right wrist. As it folded out, four large canines came bounding into view around a corner, teeth bared as they headed right towards him. Being so near, he could make out every detail of their structure and was not sure that they were regular dogs at all. At least, not what his world would call a normal dog.
Their coat was thin and slick, almost like an otter’s, mottled red and black in strange streaks. Though they had four paws, snout and a tail like a dog, their faces were strangely square and wrinkled. Around each of their heads was a ring of short, flapping tentacles, furred and black like their pelt. Their jaws were open wider than most dog’s mouths could have gone, with long, saber-like teeth studding them on the top and bottom.
Fear gripped Lenny as he saw them coming on, but he kept a cool head. They were at too close a quarters for him to use his energy cannon: it would have scorched him as well as the canines once it impacted.
Luckily, that wasn’t the only weapon he had installed in that space. With a mental signal he concentrated the gleaming blue energy into a solid projection at the tip of the metal cuff, forming it into a hardened lance. The beam was about three feet long and pointed at the tip, glowing with a deadly power that could burn its way through most living materials.
The dogs yelped at the sudden bright light, veering around to circle him on all sides. As Lenny turned to keep the wall at his back, something beside him jumped up to latch its teeth in his elbow. It was the little rat-creature. With an inadvertent cry he slapped at it with his other hand, knocking loose the voracious young beast. Small lances of pain sunk into his arm where its teeth had met, but it had fortunately missed any of the embedded wires connecting to the energy cannon. Lenny swung his lance at it once and just clipped the tip of one ear, sending it scurrying away with a squeak. Immediately, one of the canine creatures took a bound towards him and he was forced to whip about, lance glowing with light as he waved it before them. The hound leaped away again, circling just outside his range.
There was only so long that Lenny could keep the lance burning. Every minute he felt it eating in to his energy reserves. He could switch over to using his own vital energy in a pinch to activate the cybernetics, but the power needed to keep the lance bright would have soon brought him to his knees. He had to chase the monstrous dogs away before it came to that.
Another one, on his left side, darted in toward him. Leaping to meet it, he felt its hot, rancid breath brush his face. A duck and a thrust sent the lance striking home: the creature shrieked in an unearthly tone and fell to the ground. Black smoke wreathed up from it.
The other three dogs took this as an opportunity to rush at Lenny’s exposed side. He whirled and slashed, missing all but the tip of one’s muzzle. It yelped, still pressing the attack. Lenny had not noticed until now how large they were. But up close he saw that one could easily hold him pinned down if he fell. They were as big as a man but lower slung and more heavily muscled.
His energy reserves were nearing extinction and the dogs still showed no sign of leaving him. Desperately, Lenny flashed the lance at them and fought his way over to where a pipe ran down the outside edge of the building. With a slash he sunk the lance into one part of it, sparks flying upwards as the metal melted and he sliced through it. One more swipe and a chunk of pipe fall away. Folding the cannon back into place behind his hand, he snatched the pipe up and swung it in an arc to keep the dogs at bay.
It worked, for a moment. But the creatures were not as afraid of cold iron as they were the energy lance. Before Lenny knew what had happened, one had leaped past his guard and knocked him off his feet. Its long, knife-like teeth shot towards him. He gave a wild cry of fear and jammed the pipe crosswise in its mouth to block the bite. The other two scurried closer, trying to press in and get a taste of him for themselves. A small, squeaking voice laughed and cheered as Lenny struggled to push the dogs away...
There was a loud Thwock, the sound of someone shouting a wild war cry, and a shock of electricity that went all through both Lenny and the dog that was on top of him. He gasped, feeling the edges of the metal inside him outlined for a moment by the pulse. The dog yelped, jumping away, while one of its companions scrambled away in fear. The third one lay on the ground, black blood trailing out from a dent in its skull.
Stunned, Lenny dropped the pipe and lay blinking up at a pair of figures that had just come dashing up the street, one of them twirling a sling made of insulated wire and a leather strip, while the other held a taser in his hands. It was Jax and the full-size rat creature which he had rescued earlier on.
“Len!” Jax almost jumped on top of him. It had been him raising the war cry, of course. “Heck, man, those were hounds of doom! Were you massacred?”
“Not quite.” Lenny prized himself into a sitting position with a grim expression. “Though the electrical bolt almost finished me off. Couldn’t you have hit one that wasn’t standing on me?”
“Sorry.” Jax gave a wry twist of his mouth, crossing his arms on his chest. “But at least we showed up to save you. You could have been killed.”
“That’s true,” Lenny admitted, holding out a hand for a help up, before adding when he was on his feet, “thanks. I owe you one. How did you know where to find me?”
“We didn’t. We went back to the place you and I first landed and didn’t find you there, so started searching back through the town. Lucky for you, we heard your shout and came a runnin’.”
“Yeah,” the rat-creature agreed, slowing his sling’s arc and wrapping it up into a neat bundle. “Those Battlehounds, they don’t mess around when they’re hungry. Ya’ had a close call.”
“Oh, yeah, this is Raggsy,” Jax put in, throwing an arm out towards his new companion. “A Ratperson. He’s going to be traveling with us now. He knows something about the strange power! Lucky rescue, or what?”
“Two of them,” Lenny returned, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders to get the tense feeling of fear out. He could still feel the pressure of that monstrous dog’s paw pressing into his chest, and smell the nearness of its breath. Looking around, he saw that the bodies of the dead creatures had strangely transformed in the last few minutes. Their skin and flesh had melted away with the smoke and blood, leaving only a skeletons of black bones behind where each had been.
“Those things were uncanny. Look at their bodies.” He pointed the bones out to the other two, taking the heaps in with a sweep of his hand.
“Yeah.” The Ratperson said again, nodding his head sagely. His helmet gave his eyes an unfriendly squint and his tone was blandly practical. But his words were said in a friendly manner, “they’ve become like that since the Change. Before, they were just dogs, living feral in the streets. I can remember it, not so long ago. Not even back to the good ol’ times, when I was hardly more than a pinky. But since the Change, t’ings have gone from bad to worse.”
“The Change?” Lenny looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
Raggsy tilted his muzzle up to look at the sky. Following his gaze, Lenny saw that it was turning the pinks and blues of twilight, while long shades were starting to eat into the streets.
“Not here. At my place. Nothing more than a rathole, ya’ know, but I can tell you more there. T’ings will be out on the streets soon. T’ings like the Battlehounds and the Bloodsworn.”
Jax shivered visibly at these last words. “Lead the way. If those things chasing you on the truck were a sample of the Bloodsworn, I don’t want to meet any more of them at night.”
“Oh, those?” Raggsy shrugged, gesturing for them to follow as he led the way down the street in a northerly direction. “Nah, those were just my angry neighbors. They’re always like that, they just don’t usually catch me out. The Bloodsworn, now, they hunt the night like wraiths. Ratpeople turned pale by livin’ in the dark, with eyes as big as your fists and blood drippin’ from their teeth. Not nice a’tall.”
“I’d say.” Jax agreed, glancing nervously around them as they went. Lenny was just glad that the young traveler had found him again, so that they could teleport out of the world if things got too bad. With his energy reserves used up, his rucksack lost and his limbs still shaky from the fight with the beasts, all he wanted to do was find somewhere safe to be in the night, Bloodsworn or no.
Raggsy led the way with unerring instinct through the maze-like city, even in the dark. His obviously home-made helmet gleamed faintly in the afterglow of the sunset, while his long coat hid the rest of him in shadows. Lenny could not help noticing that a pink tail curled out from under the back of this coat, swaying gently in the air as he walked. He also had a pair of thin, delicate ears blooming on each side of the helmet, much larger than any human’s could be. Not to mention the slim whiskers projecting from each side of his muzzle. Even in the shadows, he was definitely not human. But when Lenny saw the inside of his house, he was glad that they had found him.
It was built in the cellar of a collapsed building, with a hidden trap-door to reach it. Once they had pushed aside the piece of scrap-metal that concealed it and climbed down the ladder underneath, they found themselves in a small, cozy-feeling space that was pitch dark. Raggsy disappeared for a moment, after which they heard a door open and close, the soft rumble of an electric generator starting up, and the room was lit by a dim, yellowish light hanging from the roof in a cage.
The cellar had originally been much larger, but Raggsy had divided it off with bits of collected barrels, wardrobes, wooden doors and other articles of furniture too numerous to mention. This wooden-paneled dividing led to a warm, cabin-like feel, amplified by the overstuffed couch, ragged carpets and rickety card table that had been set up in the middle of the room. There was also a wood stove, a bedstead and a few dressers set around the edge of the place, stacked with various pieces of what Lenny immediately classified as ‘junk’.
“Well, ‘eres my hole,” Raggsy said, stepping back out through a door which led to his generator room, “not much, but it’s been home for awhile.”
Moving over to one of the dilapidated dressers, he picked up a tarnished silver tray with an assortment of old, chipped mugs on it. There was also a bottle in the center, holding what looked like brown sludge-water. Setting it on the card table, the Ratperson pulled up a few uncomfortable folding chairs and offered them seats, as well as a drink. “I found it in a gutter the other day, but it shouldn’t be too bad. It’s something ta drink, at least.”
He poured himself a glass, then held it out to the young men. Lenny declined, but Jax gave him a wide grin. “Sure, why not?”
Raggsy poured some out and handed it across with a pleased smile, which lit up his face to a surprising degree. “Good for you. There ain’t almost nothin’ that I wouldn’t try once! Ta’ eat or drink, that is.”
Jax took a sip and almost choked. Spluttering into his cup, he slammed it back down on the table. “What is this, rainwater with old leaves in it?”
“I told ya’ I found it in the gutter.” Raggsy looked hurt, so Lenny hastened to interfere.
“What is this ‘Change’ you were talking about? Does it have to do with the central power core becoming, well, whatever it’s become?”
As he spoke, Lenny moved his arm to prop it on the table with his head on top. But just before setting his chin on it he winced, being reminded of the one injury he had sustained in the fight with the dogs.
Seeing his expression, Jax leaned forward anxiously, “what is it? Are you hurt?”
“I forgot. That little thug of a rat bit me,” with a grimace, Lenny pulled up his sleeve to expose the wound. It was a pair of square tooth marks just below his elbow, not deep, but crusted over and reddish. “I hope it doesn’t get infected.”
“‘Ere, I’ve got somethin’ for emergencies like that.” Raggsy jumped to his feet, scurrying over to one of the dressers to pull open a drawer and take out another bottle. “I always have the hardest time not drinkin’ this stuff...but it’s best left for emergencies, like I said.”
He came over with a small, square bottle containing amber liquid. At first, remembering the sludgewater, Lenny was wary of it. But Raggsy showed him the label, which said 'X-1 brandy’ and assured him that it was “pure spirits!”
Knowing that it would sting, but also cleanse the bite marks effectively, Lenny let his friends apply it to his arm. Once it was clean the Ratperson wrapped a marginally pure strip of old blanket around it for him, fastening it neatly with a rusty safety-pin. Lenny tried not to image the rust creeping through the layers of the blanket as he forced his sleeve back over the lump to hide it from sight. When it was in place he pressed the Ratperson once again to tell them about the ‘Change’ that he had mentioned before.