[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1112185613685358642/1165100309610242089/rick_n_wings.png?ex=65459f38&is=65332a38&hm=4ca51a0c952b6172d653fd1d1b794cd199b69cf3c82599012664ec715dcfe9ef&]
Pt. XIII
Rick falls and has met terminal velocity, how long ago he is not sure. It’s been a while though. He hits the rocket button and braces for the immediate slowdown. He loses his stomach, but knows it’ll be back. Once every minute or so, he activates the rocket pack and it slows him down with the bonus being it doesn’t fit, so when he fires the boosters it makes him do violent circles. It complains at this little activity with sparks and rising temperature forcing Rick to let gravity take him, again. He uses it sparingly, hoping when the time comes that he can activate it at just the right moment and come to a gliding graceful stop. High Altitude Low Opening (HALO), that was the point. And if anything his army training has given him, it’s the faith that anything can be done if you set out with no expectations and a wide enough target. This does not have to be the end.
Once the Army trained him, they loved testing it out in real-world conditions. He jumped from 70,000 feet, spent three weeks in the jungle, then swam out to a sub and was taken home. No problem. Killed 36. Ruined 7.3 million U.S. dollars in North Vietnamese infrastructure. And got a bounty on his head, Fat goatman, dead or alive. That reward was 10k.
Major, who ran the LRPS said, “I thought seriously of turning you in myself and getting that money.”
“Dude, that’s not how it works.”
But Rick stopped trusting his leadership after a few members of the team, with bounties, disappeared.
HALO is five weeks of jumping out of planes. It’s fun. He always wished the army would have let him do it more. Again at Fort Benning. The HALO school is where he discovered The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. That series changed his life. The first “real book” was published in 1977, but Donaldson was a grunt who did the cliche grunt thing and wrote his stories by moonlight while standing in foxholes. His protagonist especially resonated with Rick. Old Tom, a cynical leper, shunned by society, destined to become the heroic savior of The Land.
After he discovered the stories at Fort Benning, he started collecting them fervently. Couple of mimeographed pages here, couple hand-copied pages there. The stories were developing a cult following where he and others could trade the parts they had. It was one of the first questions he asked any supply sergeant, “Got any Donaldson?”
“No.”
“Who here reads?”
Simple as that.
A good supply guy will at the very least have heard of it before, if not actively collect the pages already whether he reads the stories or not. Good supply sergeants have an eye on the bottom line because below that is their pocket.
As the years went by, the stories kept finding him. By the end of his war, he surmises there might have been hundreds of different stories of Thomas Covenant losing bits and pieces of himself all over The Land. The Land? Really? Honestly one of the dumbest fantasy location names Rick ever read at first, but by his third story, he dreamt of the place and its purple mountains and blighted swamp. Paladins and dwarves.
As he falls through the orangey glow of the heated rock, he thinks of Old Tom because it is hurting his old brain trying to do the math on how far he can fall before he has gone too far. He thinks the number is around three hundred feet.
How far have you fallen already, smart guy?
He doesn’t know.
Then it dawns on him; this information does him little good if he does not see the ground approaching anyway. And also he is not wearing a parachute, he is wearing a malfunctioning rocket-thing; both seem like ingredients for instant death once he finds the ground. Which is good because it certainly doesn’t look fun recovering from something like that.
The farther down he falls, the cliffs on either side glow brighter. It's definitely growing hotter also. Even the air feels heavy. The amount and type of education Rick has accumulated doesn’t give him the knowledge that he should be dead, that the amount of pressure alone should have killed him long before he shoveled his first shovel full of lizard shit. First, the temperature is a toasty 145 degrees here, a few miles closer to the ocean and he would have been saved a few tens of degrees, closer to Yosemite or any mountain/volcanic region can get closer to five thousand. Avoiding the active laval tubes is how it's done. That Rick has even made it this far is unique. That’s also something he doesn’t know. Yah, so some people from the Up can make it down here, but beyond a few miles is deadly; for humans. But, again, Rick doesn’t know any of that. He doesn’t know that he isn’t a ‘real’ human. He doesn’t know so many things. He is pretty sure this is how things end for him though; in a puddle at the bottom of an endless chasm.
He hits the button to activate the rockets, they fire and he slows down and everything is fine until one hundred and forty pounds slams into him from above.
The one hundred and forty pounds says, “Oof, mother fucker,” with Rat’s voice.
“Rat?” Rick cranes his neck trying to get a look but instead, all he sees are two gigantic leathery wings stretched out from either side of him. The wings are braking like mad, wind filling the membranes between the bones. They make sort of a fart noise.
Rat’s face appears. A huge smile attached. He says, “Hey, buddy. This ain’t over yet. We need to land without you dying. You ready to do something crazy?”
“Why not, how much worse could things get?”
“On the count of three, fire your rockets again. This time, though, don’t stop firing them until we are either safe or dead. Sound good?” he screams into Rick's ear.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Rick nods.
“Rick,” Rat screams. “Fire the rocket on the count of---”
But Rick has already fired the rockets, and this time things are different. He slows almost completely to a stop. The wind stops whistling and the heat and humidity return. Stopped, he can see train tracks lined all along the wall. Built on sturdy tar-coated beams. The whole thing looks suspect. Rickety as hell.
Then a train shoots by at breakneck speed, rocking Rat and Rick in midair with its turbulence.
“Okay, buddy, hard part's over. Just gotta glide to a safe landing and we are done with stupid shit like falling to our deaths.”
Over the din of the firing Rocket, Rick yells back, “how close to the bottom are we?”
Rat laughs, “Nowhere, this stupid thing almost goes all the way through but cuts a left just on the other side of the core, but by then you’d have been swimming in lava. For thousands of miles.
“How do you know?”
“Things call the active lava tubes home, some have mapped it out. Made a pretty penny. Then there was the Mad King who hired a team of gnomes to build him a fireproof submersible. You’d probably be the second ‘human’ to go down there. No, wait, fifth, no, eighth.”
When Rat put the quotations around the word ‘human,’ they dropped quickly out of the sky and Rick was sure he had gone back to falling. That’s pretty much what made the sudden stop, five feet or so later, even more jarring. The rocket hits the floor and like a soda bottle being held underwater, it sparks and sputters and just acts like an asshole until it blasts off the rock ledge freeing itself from Rick’s shoulders, disappearing into the fog above.
“Holy shooting star, Batman, how much fuel does that thing have in it?”
“Oh, it probably doesn’t run on fuel. Pirates probably captured a baby dragon and had their gnomes rig its brain to a trigger. And please don’t call me Batman. That’s really insulting. I am not a Bat.”
“You aren’t a Rat either.”
“Yah, but rats are cool.”
Rick disagrees but keeps it to himself, wondering if he should ask if he has a name other than Rat. They are looking at each other when it dawns on Rick, “Holy shit, You’re alive!”
“Yep,” Rat smiles, showing his pointy brown teeth. He reaches into his trenchcoat and Rick finds himself tensing, not knowing what to expect. This is his buddy Rat, but is it his buddy Rat? Rick finds himself confused after the thought and trying to put it together in a way that makes sense, until Rat pulls out a flask.
After the stopper is pulled with his teeth, he takes the plug and hands the flask over to Rick.
Rick greedily accepts but before he pulls away, Rat puts both hands around the it with Rick’s hand pinned between. “It really is good to see you, buddy.”
Unsure how to respond, Rick decides on a nod and lifts the flask to Rat before taking a sip. Grog is one thing but he just realized how much he missed the Rotgut.
The silence continues and they drink perched on the edge of the platform, the tracks just beyond. Occasionally a locomotive will appear out in the chasm chasing its light up or down a wall before disappearing again.
“These are some of the most ancient railroad tracks I have ever seen.”
“Yep, the gnomes are pretty proud of it.”
“How come these aren’t corroded like the ones near the lizard cave? These looked well-maintained.”
“That’s because they are. The founders blew that track up centuries ago, and a bunch more. Severing our ties to humanity above. Things got too complicated. Now we aren’t supposed to be going to the surface at all.”
“The rail was cut to keep you out?”
Rat smiles at the question, “But of course, things got bleak around the beginning of the 19th century. The gnomes went cloud crazy and started to build up. Had to stop them before they fucked the Up as much as they fucked up the Down.”
“What can you do when you build a giant ass city on holey ass bedrock?”
“No way to shore up every leak.”
“Hence the pirates.”
“Bingo, and hence people like you.”
Again Rick is confused, but watching Rat put on his coat distracts him.
Rat stands and wraps his wings around his arms and then shoves his arms into the sleeves of his trench coat. Once tucked inside, he passes for a furry faced person who kinda looks like a rat.
“So now what?” Rick asks thinking things are heading back to some kind of normal.
“Nice arm.”
Rick says, “Thanks,” and attempts to lift it to show it off to Rat but can’t. The thing is glued to the ground. “Holy crap,” he complains while mid-attempt to make it move even a little.
“Yah, we aren’t going anywhere until the train comes and even then I hope the lazy ass porters help us drag you inside.”
“Why can’t I move my arm?” and as if asking the question brings forth the answer, he whispers, “oh.”
“Yah, you should have grabbed whatever charm they bewitched this contraption to.”
“A fucking medallion, Doctor Sally wears it around her neck.”
“Well, the good news is they won’t just assume you’ve fallen to your death. She will make that old dwarf captain come looking for you. I know it.”
“Why? I’m just an old vet who likes fried chicken and copping a buzz.”
“Nah, you ain't. I can’t tell you anything, except maybe this one thing; you are not here on accident, dude. I vetted the shit out of you.” He trails off as if in thought. “I guess we could hire a gnome to re-thingamabob your dealio here but I’ve got zero cash. And I ain’t never seen a gnome do shit for free.”
The platform begins to vibrate. First slightly, but then growing more intense.
“Train is coming.”
Rat stands and pulls up on Rick's arm. He manages to make it leave the ground but has to drop it moments later with a thunk to go find his missing breath.
With the train in sight, Rick hands the flask back to Rat, who gulps at it greedily. Rick climbs to his knees to give lifting it a shot with a better angle. It works. The arm comes up and he is able to stand, cradling it in his remaining real arm. “This isn’t going to work forever,” he tells Rat, already feeling like putting it back down won’t be a choice.
And over the screech of brakes and the sudden tumult that comes with an arriving train, Rat yells to Rick, “Don’t worry about it. If we get through this next part, there’s going to be luggage carts and wheelchairs galore to get you around.”
“Where are we going?”
“Back the way we came, back to the New World under New York City.”