Anton Strout - Dead Waters

I grabbed one of the skeletons climbing up my right thigh and tore it off my body. A piece of my jeans went with it, but I didn’t care. The little monster writhed in my hand, but I didn’t give it time to act. I threw it up into the air like I was coaching little league kids how to play outfield, and then swung at it. The skeleton shattered into tiny pieces, its structure proving to be even more fragile than the Harpies. That gave me hope.

The sensation of the others scrabbling their way up my back started wigging me out. I threw myself backward onto the desk behind me. A mashing crunch sounded as my body slammed down onto the desktops. A few of the broken pieces dug into my back, but compared to the thought of their tiny blades poking at me, I was fine with it.

Prone, my legs dangled over the edges of two of the desks and a skeleton head rose up over the crest of my left knee. I kicked my leg straight out as if a doctor had been testing my reflexes, sending the pirate figure up into the air above me. I flashed my bat out at it and it exploded into dust and fragments of wire.

Jumping up to my feet, I was feeling pretty good with the way things were going. I grabbed another one on my leg, swinging it by its head until there was an audible popping sound and its body separated, sailing off with a distant crash.

My moment of triumph was cut short when I looked down at the center of the circle. Two of my pirate attackers had been smart enough to stay clear of me, and had instead taken position by the bound student’s head. Their swords were poised over the frantic movement of his widening eyes.

“No!” I shouted, diving for them, but they were already lowering their blades. I wasn’t going to make it. I hit the floor hard, skidding into the student with a harsh “oof” as I drove into him.

Connor’s feet shot past my head, one landing on the floor next to the student’s own head and the other lashing out at the two skeletons. They shattered as his foot connected, their pieces raining down on the student’s tightly shut eyes.

“Jesus, Simon,” Connor said, “I thought you were trying to save him, not add to his injuries.”

I scrambled up to my knees and began untying the poor kid. “What happened to the Harpies?” I asked Connor.

Connor lifted up his hand, displaying a fistful of tornoff Harpy wings.

“Nice,” I said. “Remind me never to buy you a bird as a gift.”

Connor tossed them to the floor. “As long as it’s not an evil bird,” he said.

“Where’s Darryl?” I asked.

Connor looked away. “He might have escaped.”

“ Might have?”

Connor got testy. “It was a little hard keeping track of everyone, what with the chaos of fighting Harpies and rescuing you.”

“You weren’t rescuing me,” I said.

“On, no?” he said, haughtiness in his voice. “So you could have lived with yourself watching the kid here get his eyes gouged out, then?”

I didn’t bother responding and continued untying the student. I undid the final knots, before a thought hit me. “Where’s the Inspectre?”

We both looked around but we couldn’t see the Inspectre anywhere. “Crap,” I said, but Connor held a finger up to silence me.

Off near where we had come in came the sounds of struggle, even though we couldn’t see much from where we stood. We hurried our way through the maze of stored stuff while the student finished untangling himself from the coil of ropes encasing him.

Following the sounds, we came across the Inspectre, flat on his back on the floor. He was still clutching his sword cane, but every other inch of him was wrapped up in a writhing sea of movie snakes and sea serpent models, including a mutant octopus-looking thing that had full control of him from the waist down. Muffled cries for help came from behind either a tentacle or snake section that ran across his face. I couldn’t tell which.

Without wasting a second, Connor and I made quick work liberating the Inspectre from his monstrous little captors. I pulled the tentacle from around his head, ripping it in two before throwing it off into the surrounding darkness.

“Are you all right, sir?” I asked.

The moment he was free, the Inspectre scrabbled around on the floor until he could get up on his knees.

“What, what?” he said, somewhat flustered. “Yes, yes, of course I’m all right.” He found his sword and sheathed it back into the hollow of his cane, and then used it to help himself up. I moved to help him, but he brushed me away.

“It would appear,” he continued, “that my fencing skills were a bit lacking, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head. “You routinely clean my clock in the F.O.G. training room.”

Connor chimed in, “I’m sure it’s not easy trying to fence miniature sea creatures.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” the Inspectre said, shaking his head. He stroked his mustache, and then stopped, pulling away with something pinched between his fingers. “There are scales in my mustache.”

Something caught Connor’s attention back in the center of the room, and he turned.

The student was attempting to lift himself up onto the desks and pull himself along the tops of them while trying to kick his legs free from all the rope. Connor reached the open circle and grabbed one of the dangling ends. “Not so fast,” he said. He pulled the student back toward him like he had just roped a steer at a rodeo. “Going somewhere?”

“N-no,” the student said, looking a little crazed. “I was just trying to get free of all this.”

“Uh-huh,” Connor said, not letting go of the rope.

“I was ,” the student said, still sounding uncertain. “What? You think I was trying to escape with the rest of those guys?”

“Trying, yes,” Connor said. “Succeeding, no.”

The sounds of several Harpy cries came from out in the darkness along with the sounds of a few chairs falling off the tops of desks.

I lifted up my bat and readied it. The Inspectre unsheathed his sword from the cane and looked around.

The student looked at me with recognition. “You again,” the student said. “The guy from the bar who followed us to our studio the other day.”

“That’s me,” I said, looking around the room for more enemies.

“Relax,” the student said. “I don’t think you have to worry. Those things won’t last long. They lose their juice faster than a laptop battery. That’s part of the problem.”

“What problem?” I asked.

The student stopped fussing with the ropes and went silent. He must have forgotten who he was talking to and clammed up when he remembered. He shut his mouth and shook his head.

“What problem?” Connor repeated.

“I don’t think I should say anything more,” he said.

Connor stepped closer to him. “Oh, I think it’s in your best interest if you do,” he said.

“They were going to kill me,” he said, still in shock.

“I might kill you, too,” Connor said. “Making me destroy all of this classic memorabilia.”

“What?” the student said, snapping out of it. He looked over at the Inspectre. “You look old enough to be in charge here. This one isn’t really going to kill me, is he?”

“Don’t look at me, young man,” the Inspectre said. “At least not for sympathy. Your friends were the ones who unleashed those things on us, after all.”

“They aren’t my friends,” the student said. “They had me tied up.”

The doubtful look on the Inspectre’s face got a little doubtier.

“Okay, fine,” the student said, looking away. “They were my friends, but not after today.”

Connor walked back over to him. “You want to tell us what they were about to do with you, then?”