Blackjack Villain (56 page)

So I watched them, and they huddled in their hiding places, waiting for me to inevitably fall asleep.

* * *

They kept me hidden away for so long that I lost track of time. I was forced to relieve myself in the corner opposite the spider (no sense in going looking for trouble) and before too long my stomach ached something awful.

The ants made another try at me but it ended with most of the ant army in sticky tatters, spread like jam beneath my boot and fists. I watched the remnants retreat, burrowing directly into the hardened gelatin wall. It gave me the idea of how to escape, but in practice it was a lot harder. Digging my fingers into the walls revealed them to be comprised of some sort of fibrous tendrils, held together by clear syrupy glue. I could easily tear through the walls, but they self-repaired almost as fast as I could destroy them.

I gave up on that and settled on one of the neutral corners of the cell.

Only after I had settled down did I realize how freezing cold the whole place was. I huddled as best I could, but that only drew my attention to my injuries.

Blood and dirt caked my body, and I counted nine arrows or quarrels sticking it of my legs and midsection, including one particularly painful quarrel jutting from my knee. How I had endured the blood loss and pain, I couldn’t say.

I grabbed the nearest arrow, dug into my belt and midsection and tested it. Only the very tip had gone through the tough canvas belt, but it had caught a large blood vessel because my whole hip was drenched in crimson. I pulled the arrow and studied the head and noticed it wasn’t barbed.

With simple heads, arrows would come out quite easily. I tested them one by one in case there was a barbed one to surprise me. None were, and I managed to pull them all out without too much trouble. I had nothing to close the wounds, so a few of them spilled precious blood down my pant leg.

The one benefit of the cold was that my body was so numb that I couldn’t feel anything but pulling the quarrels would prove to be a more difficult affair.

I looked over at the ant horde, but they were content to watch. In any case, I would probably bleed out in a few hours, giving them a veritable feast. The huge spider sat motionless, still ignoring me, but I wondered for how much longer that would last.

The three quarrels stuck to me were serious trouble. One jutted out of my knee, another from the fleshy part of my thigh, dangerously close to the femoral artery. The final one was actually the most painful, sticking out of my shin, from where it had impaled itself into my tibia.

I tackled that one first, gently grasping my pant leg on either side of the tear, and ripping it apart. As I had feared, the quarrel was embedded into the bone, but fortunately, hitting the bone meant it hadn’t dug in the barbs on the arrow head. I held onto the shaft of the quarrel, and touching it, sent a wave of agony up my leg, as if the quarrel tip had pressed against a nerve. There was nothing else I could do, so I gritted my teeth, screamed, and pulled.

It was white, blinding pain shooting through my leg. I pounded my head back against the wall repeatedly, but it would not fade nor diffuse. I roared and cursed, punched the walls, and pounded my head some more, and only after a few moments, that seemed like long minutes, did the pain begin to dwindle.

Only one down and that was the easy one.

The other quarrels were about eight inches apart, both dug deep. I tore the pant leg up, noticing my hands were shaking badly. I had feared that the quarrel stuck into my knee area was too low, too near the major tendons of the joint, and my worries proved right. It was deep, about two inches to the right of the center of the patella, the kneecap, and about an inch above it.

I had put so much pressure on my legs, during the scrum after my arrows ran out, that both crossbow bolts had broken at the shaft, leaving me with a sliver wood sticking out of the skin to have leverage with. Aggravating the wounds with all that activity had caused a great deal of bleeding and flesh damage, but that gave me a bit of space to try to feel into the injury for the arrow head.

Sticking your finger into a wound, even when numbed from the cold and exhaustion, isn’t something I would recommend to anyone. My fat finger probed into my knee, and I bit down on my teeth, feeling them give.

I pulled back and took the time to remove my left boot, untying the laces breathlessly, then ripping the boot off and folding over the leather ankle and stuffing it into my mouth. Returning to my knee wound, I bit down hard, tearing into the leather.

Digging into my leg, pain flashed into my face, like a bright light waved near my eyes in pitch blackness. I probed and searched, following the arrow shaft into the injury, and pushing back the flesh so my fingers could fit downwards. I could tell my breathing was spasmic, scattershot, and closing my eyes I went by feel. I feared that I would pass out, providing the denizens of this cage with a large meal, but I bit harder into the boot, feeling my teeth shred the heavy leather.

Finally, I touched the tip of the quarrel’s barb. It was sharp, and I felt it prick my finger. Trying to be as gentle as possible, I reached for the flat side of the barbed head, and saw it was a three-blade broad-head tip. There was only one way to get the barbed head out of my leg, and that was to use my strength to bend the blades of the arrow head back into each other, making them effectively one barb, then use my finger to ‘cover’ the blade’s reverse edge as I dug it out of my leg. The special metal was strong enough to pierce a super’s skin on the sharpened edge, but it bent just like aluminum of the same gauge. I twisted the blade into another, using only one finger, and grasping what I could of the bloody quarrel shaft as leverage. The blade bent easily, but the pain caused me to flinch violently, and draw my hand out of the wound.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I raged, pounding my head back into the wall.

I dug in again, faster than I should have, and almost faded out, but I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. Slowly this time, I reached the bent blade, and dug for the second blade, but it was around the other side of the quarrel. Instead of tearing through tendon and muscle, I got the idea to twist the quarrel around, and immediately regretted it, as the agony caused my whole body to convulse and I had to turn over to vomit, clearing I had in my stomach.

My finger remained inside the wound, thankfully, and I had successfully twisted the quarrel to reveal the last free blade. I bent it back into the two others, and pulled it out of my leg, using my finger to protect against the reverse edge of the quarrel blades, and in one swift motion, I ripped the quarrel free.

I tossed the quarrel a few feet from me and looked down at my hands, covered in blood, shaking in fear and pain. Spent, I leaned back against the wall and wanted to fade out, sleep a welcome friend, but I knew I might not wake from that slumber, either from blood loss, or getting munched on by the ants.

“Ok, one more,” I mumbled through the boot to no one in particular.

It was the same process on the last quarrel, only easier, since it was in a meaty part of the thigh, as opposed to the tendon nightmare that was the knee. I dug my finger in and found the tri-bladed head of the quarrel quickly, bending the first tine, then the second. Once the three blades were one, I used my finger to as a guide and pulled the quarrel out much the same as the first two.

I had worked so fast, and only by feel, so I didn’t even need to look at the wound, but once I gave my leg a once over, I was frightened by how badly they were bleeding. The thigh injury in particular was pouring blood, so I tore strips of my shirt and made a half-assed compress, and tied it around my leg, then made another for the knee.

My leg was awash in blood, and I fought off another dizzy spell, biting into the boot, but it was to no avail.

I leaned my head back on the wall, and slowly faded out.

* * *

It was by far the most vivid dream I’d ever had.

We were in a house unlike any other I have ever seen, like a combination of my lair’s bottom floor and the inside of a tree-house, except narrow, wooden and claustrophobic.

Zundergrub was nearby, banging a hammer, fixing something, but what I couldn’t tell. I asked him to keep it down, but he ignored me.

Cool heard me screaming and ran over to see what the hubbub was about.

“Hey,” he said. “Zee has to fix that or we’re fucked. Why don’t you grab your tools and get to work.”

I noticed that he carried a small ball of fur in his arms, caressing it gently. It was a tiny rabbit, with machine guns instead of hands.

“Let’s get the job done!” the rabbit meeped, almost inaudibly.

Cool returned to fixing whatever it was he was working on, and I got a good look around. A bunch of Retcon’s droids were working on the walls, as was his daughter, Dr. Walsh. All at once, the sound of banging was everywhere, as a score of hammers came down in succinct order.

A hand grabbed my shoulder, and when I turned it was Apogee, dressed in full costume.

“I told him to go suck my dick,” she said.

“What?”

She waved her arms in frustration, “It won’t stop bothering me!”

“Who won’t?” I asked.

Apogee pointed at a green ball of light that came closer. Inside the illumination was a face I couldn’t recognize and when it spoke, I could barely understand the gibberish.

“Who is that?”

“Like I know,” she snapped, exasperated. “Can you make it stop?”

The light faded, but I didn’t care about it. Something from above drew my attention. The leak was drip-dripping on my head.

“What the hell?”

I climbed upstairs and discovered that our home was narrow, but tall, and like Retcon’s building, each story was different and unique. I climbed past a study similar to Dr. Retcon’s, and onwards to a room above, with fish tanks lining the walls. The tanks were empty except for bubbles that floated upwards, popping on the water’s surface.

Then I was inside the tank, submerged and fighting to swim upwards. When I came to the top, I looked down and saw the roof of the house, which from here seemed more pyramidal, but with the colors and decoration style of Shivver’s home.

I broke the surface and saw a low mist obscuring everything but the shore nearby.

The house must have slid below the waves, so gently none of us noticed, and now they were all going to drown unless I pulled them out.

Taking a deep breath, I dove back in and snuck back into the house, breaking a window and easing in. The water didn’t rush in as I had expected, but was held back, as if by an invisible force field.

I ran down the interminable flights stairs screaming, “We have to get out, everyone get out!” to which almost everyone ignored. Except Apogee, who came rushing up to me.

“Can you ask this ghost to leave me alone?”

The face within the light followed her, still talking but unheard.

“We don’t have time for that,” I told her. “The whole house is underground and we’re going to drown!”

“What?”

That drew the attention of Dr. Walsh and Haha, who hopped along the floor to me.

“Yes!” I continued. “We must have fallen into a sinkhole or something, and the whole house is under water.”

I turned to the rest, “Leave everything behind, we have to get out!”

Cool Hand stopped his hammering and asked, “You serious?”

“We’re underwater, Cool. Come on, Zee,” I told Zundergrub, grabbing him away from the wall, where he was busy hammering some planks.

“Everyone upstairs,” I ordered. “It’s a short swim to the shore.”

It was like herding cats, getting the confused bunch to move, but eventually all trudged up the stairs to the top floor, where my window lay open. Even the ghostly green light followed.

“Go on, swim up and you’ll see the shore. Just go!”

The first one through was Dr. Walsh, and some of her droids. She was helped up by the first robot and stepped gingerly into the water. Once across, she looked back at me, nodded and swam upwards, followed by her robotic minion.

Cool approached next, grabbing Haha and tucking him into the backpack.

“Don’t think rabbits can swim,” he said, and stepped out.

Zundergrub and Apogee went next and I followed last. Before I crossed over to the water, I gave the ghost a look.

“You coming?”

She shook her head no and faded out.

Once outside, I saw, to my horror both Apogee and Dr. Walsh stuck on the baseboard that rimmed the roof of the house. Walsh had come first, and her coat had snagged on some rusted nails. Her robots were no use to her, as they had swum off already. She tugged at the coat but it wasn’t giving. Walsh began to fade, as she ran out of oxygen.

Apogee was closer, and fresher, as she had come out of the house later, but her leg was badly stuck, the wood splintered inwards, keeping her from moving at all.

I reached over for Dr. Walsh, ripping her coat, and hurling her upwards, my shove giving her some momentum to reach the surface only a dozen feet above. She reached it and I saw her treading water and start to swim to the shore.

Apogee struggled against her bonds, and all my efforts to pull her free were of no use. She was stuck for good. I got closer to her foot and saw it was broken and mangled around the knee, the rest of it deep within the roof of the house.