Attack the Geek (8 page)

As the speed of the fight ramped up, faster and faster, Ree let years of martial arts training and lightsaber fights in the park take over, parrying, riposting, dodging, and pressing on instinct. Ree watched the fight almost from the outside, as if she were living a first-person fighting game. And it was awesome.

Even a short lifetime of martial arts training wasn’t perfect, though, and Ree took a slash across her left arm from the robot as its torso spun around like a top, then pressed her.

Her sword in one hand, Ree backed up, trying desperately to ward off a hurricane of deadly light.

She found an opening in the robot’s attack pattern, so she dove forward through the gap and stabbed at its torso. The construct turned aside at the last minute, but her blade still punched through the metal close to the arm hinge.

As Ree followed through with the roll, she heard another sound of lightsaber cutting through steel, and when she recovered, the killer robot’s head toppled to the ground. Its staff flickered off, and the machine’s torso collapsed beside the head.

Eastwood offered a hand, but Ree stood on her own.

The upside to lightsaber wounds, if there was such a thing, was that they were instantly cauterized (unless you were an Aqualish like Ponda Baba, apparently). But her forearm still felt like it had been doused in kerosene and then tossed into a bonfire.

Looking around, the store had become even more of a disaster zone, though the chaos was mostly feeding on itself, with only occasional attacks making their way over to the bar. But at this rate, there wouldn’t be a single piece of merch left in salable condition. The store would be ruined, all so that Lucretia could have her stab at revenge on Eastwood for stealing back something that rightly belonged to him.
Fuckin’ A.

Grognard had taken a spot at the bar three seats down from a wobbly Wickham. He took a long draw from a bottle of his Adamantium Ale. The bottled versions of his brews were the real stuff, the ones with the magic. He served them sparingly, since the only thing worse than a mopey drunk magician was a mopey drunk magician with extra power.

“Are we going to stop this thing, or just wait until everything’s broken?” Ree asked, trying to rally the troops, herself included.

“Gimme a minute. Not all of us are young like you or crazy like Eastwood.” Grognard took a long swig from the bottle.

In chorus, Ree said, “Thanks,” while Eastwood said, “Hey!” The bartender sighed and walked his way back over.

“Any new ideas?” Ree asked.

“Some of these things will just run down their nostalgia batteries. It’d take an epic amount of energy to keep them running past that point, and if Lucretia had that much power at her disposal, she’d probably just make Eastwood’s heart explode.”

The former astral cowboy squinted. “Seems like.”

Drake stood from behind a table, his rifle still braced and ready. “If we could retrieve a few of the objects from the store, I believe I could concoct a countermeasure, absorb the ambient chaos energy, and convert it into another form. The project I’ve been working on was designed to answer a similar, if not identical, question. And I just so happened to have brought it with me today. It’s in the back.”

“How convenient!” Wickham said, slurring her words.

“Providence, my disbelieving . . . colleague.” Ree chuckled to herself, as Drake clearly had to search for a moment to find a word that fit both his distaste and his manners. Drake had the uncanny knack to be where he needed to be when he needed to be there. And if it extended to knowing what tool to bring, Ree wasn’t going to question him. The chances that Drake was collaborating with Lucretia were about one in a flobbidy-jillion.

“It’s a deal. Get in there and start adjusting while things are at a lull,” Grognard said, pointing his thumb back at the office.

Drake nodded and made for the office. Ree turned back to the storefront just in time to see an insectoid monster jump the railing.

“Shit!” Ree said, drawing her lightsaber in a hurry.

Chapter Six

Speak Technobabble to Me, Baby

Talon lunged forward and stabbed at the mega-bug, intercepting it before it could pounce on Ree. The totally-not-inspired-by-
Alien
creature batted her sword away, but halted its attack, turning to focus on the swordswoman. Grognard hefted his glaive-guisarme and took a swing at the creature. The insect abomination ducked, and the three of them moved to encircle the creature.

Ree wished she had some thicker armor, especially when a claw swipe tore her apron in half, dropping the phaser to the floor. As soon as it hit the ground, the phaser started firing wildly. The three geeks scattered to the ground to avoid the blasts.

The bug-beast bounded over the table where Ree had taken cover, but it managed to jump right onto the blade of the lightsaber, which Ree’d held up over her head.

Ree’s fortuitous duck-and-cover
: 1

Bug Thing
: 0.

Advantage
: Reyes.

Ree, Grognard, Talon, and Chandra held off the randomly spawned creatures while ducking the erratic fire from assorted weaponry. Drake emerged from the back room with a device that looked like the unholy offspring of a Hookah and a vacuum tube television.

Drake set the machine down behind one of the tables and started unfolding a set of four chrome legs, each ending in a polished claw-foot. “Once I activate this, it may be best to keep your own magical tools out of the directional input valve.”

“And that looks like what, exactly?” Ree asked, gesturing to the assortment of pipes, valves, and thingamabobs coming out of the machine.

He wiggled an opening that looked suspiciously like the store’s vacuum cleaner’s wide nozzle. “This one.”

“Got it,” Ree said, taking a step back.

Drake spooled up the device, which made a sucking sound that Ree didn’t hear with her ears as much as with her . . . soul, maybe? Whatever it was, it felt woogy.

Whoa.
Ree flashed back to the hoary days of smoking pot in college, though that might have been inspired by the Hookah shape as much as the existential tugging of the machine.

A
Space Samurai
freighter
model came soaring over toward the bar, then dropped out of the air like an anvil when it crossed the plane of the machine’s nozzle. Grognard dove forward, dropping the glaive to catch the model. He hit the ground with an “oof!” but kept the ship aloft.

He sidestepped back out of the beam’s path and set the mini on the bar. “That thing costs $900.”

Ree watched as more creatures, props, and game pieces wobbled under the power of Drake’s machine. Plastic fighter squadrons clattered to the floor, war game figures holding skirmishes on Styrofoam terrain went still, and summoned creatures vanished back into the boxed sets, comics, and game books that were their origins.

For a moment, the room was still again.

“Thank fucking God,” Ree said.

Grognard walked over to the store section, running his hand over broken pieces, crumpled boxes, and mangled comics. Ree trotted over to join in as he surveyed the damage.

The devastation was near-total. Some of the weapons were still intact, but most had nicks, burns, or gouges taken out of the blades. The neat rows of comics had been mauled, trampled, burned, and scattered. Shelves and shelves of games had been wrecked, turned into a ruined mound of plastic sprues, torn cardboard tokens, and stained rulebooks.

Hundreds of games, figures, statuettes—each designed to bring joy, hone the mind, or celebrate passion for a story or a beloved character. All ruined. Ree felt sick to her stomach.

Grognard didn’t talk, he just walked up and down the rows, taking it all in. Ree knew he did most of his inventory by memory, his mind an epic-level spreadsheet that rivaled the Overstreet Comics Price Guide.

The storeowner stopped at the end of a row, beside shattered glass cases with ruined busts and maquettes of superheroines, cyborgs, and starship captains. “I’m going to kill her,” he said finally.

“Boss?” Ree asked.

His eyes were damp, shot through with red. “I’m going to find Lucretia, and I’m going to kill her myself. I can’t recover from this,” he said, opening his hands to the room. “At least two-thirds of the stock is completely ruined. And there’s no way any insurance company is going to accept a vandalism claim when there’s no evidence of forced entry, there are no suspects, and it took place while we were all here.”

“When we find Lucretia, we can make her fix it,” Ree said, even though she knew it was crap as she said it. “Or at least make her pay you back.”

Eastwood joined them in the store. He looked at Grognard, the bags under his eyes even heavier when he was mostly back lit. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Grognard. If I’d known . . .”

Grognard cut him off. “You didn’t. It’s her fault, no one else’s. Help me get everyone out of this and find Lucretia. That’s all I need right now.” The bearded geek nodded, and the two men shared the silent solidarity of the stoic male. Or something. Neither of them were the talk-about-our-feelings type.

Ree looked back to Drake’s machine, which was vibrating and looked like it was being lit from within. “Do we need to worry about that thing exploding?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Drake said. “Probably. Probably not. It might be best to find another use for this energy, just to be certain.”

Grognard chuffed. “Just put it in the closet for now. We’ve got a bullfight to finish first. He picked through the piles of ruined merch and pulled out the Hulk hands he’d asked Ree to fetch before the store had gone mad. He picked them up, squeezed the foam a bit, and nodded. “Still good. You all can cover me, and I’ll put this thing to bed. Then we can hunt down that haughty Nabokov fetishist and settle the books.”

Grognard looked in turn to each of the geeks. “When I built this place, I knew that not everyone would like it, or me. That wasn’t the point. The point was to make a place where we could be more than a bunch of paranoid obsessives in our little bolt-holes, where we could build a community, remember the things we share, and let off some steam. And no one is going to keep me from salvaging that dream, if there’s anything left to it.”

The rest of the group stood up, each with a bit more spring in their step. Except for Lieutenant Wickham, who had her back turned to Grognard and was intently staring at her iPad.

“Still can’t beat that level on
Angry Birds
?” Ree asked.

Wickham didn’t turn, just flipped Ree the bird.

Ree chuckled, then turned to Grognard. “Boss, you should let me use the Hulk hands,” she said under her breath, trying not to draw attention to the request.

Grognard raised an eyebrow at her. “Why? The gloves are magic, but there’s a baseline mass question, which means it should be me.”

“Anyone can use the Adamantium Ale. And I can layer Buffy strength on with the Hulk hands,” Ree said.

“This is my shop, Ree. And the woman who ruined it is on the other side of that Minotaur somewhere. It needs to be me.”

Ree sighed. She could press the issue, maybe even win, but she could see the hurt in his eyes, something she’d never seen before in her sturdy boss. His world had been shaken to the core. He needed a win more, even if she might be able to pull off the deed more easily.

“In that case, you’re going to need a clown to distract that thing and whatever else is out there.”

That at least got a hint of a smile from the brewmaster. “I suppose I will.”

Ree beamed, then pulled out her phone again, glad for the hundredth time that she’d shelled out for the Damage Resistance 20/- case.

She restarted the
Spider-Man
clip, and without the whirlwind of weird, she dropped into the fun of the film easily, filling her mind with the excitement of Spidey swinging his way around New York, strength, agility, and Spider-Sense all working in concert as Peter zoomed through the city.

When she looked up from the clip, she saw that Chandra, Drake, Eastwood, and Grognard had assembled by the door. Grognard was wearing the Hulk hands, and now that they were active, they’d changed from immobile foam fists into extensions of his hands, empowering his grip. He slammed one fist into an open hand, and each punch made its own mini thunderclap.

“Everyone ready?” Grognard asked. Ree picked up a Sting prop, spun it a few times in one hand to test the blade, and felt that it still had some mojo to it—some of the collective nostalgia for and love of the weapon in the Peter Jackson movie lingering in the prop.

She joined the ersatz adventuring party by the door, where Eastwood was pleading with Grognard to take the lead against the Minotaur.

“This is all because of me, Grognard,” Eastwood said. “Let me take the gloves and set things right. It’s the least I can do.”

Grognard shook his head. “This discussion was over five minutes ago. Just keep everything else off of me while I put this animal down.”

Ree saw that Wickham had moved over to give herself a better view of the coming chaos.

Standing just a few feet away, she felt the vibration of the door each time the Minotaur hit it, tirelessly hammering on the refreshed wards.

“Is that thing part Energizer bunny or what?” she said, trying to break the tension. Only Drake gave her a polite smile, the one he gave to be gracious, not because what she’d said was actually funny.

Not all of them can be gold,
Ree admitted, and adjusted her grip on Sting, the
Spider-Man
energy still buzzing softly in her mind. She might get a good two minutes of fight out of the clip, depending on how much oh-shit last-second dodging she’d be doing.

Eastwood held the wrought-iron door ring in one hand, and counted down on fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.