Page 24 of Taken to Kor
The thing is still coming closer, its arms swirling around like a top gone out of control. It looks entirely spineless as it tries to maneuver above me so that it can avoid the strike of my spear, but nah-uh. Fuck that shit!
“Carpets don’t eat people!”
I stab at the same time that it releases another deafening shriek. My spear catches its maw and I force it back, but apparently, this thing doesn’t want to die, either. Its arms whip around and it manages to reach past my spear to my face. It scratches its claws across my cheek, like it’s going for my eye — and I actuallyhaveeyes! — but I manage to snap my lids shut at the right moment.
“Rhork!” I shout and then I kick the grate behind me, trying to get it open.
“Deena!”
“I can see y’all. I’m in the grate fighting this stupid carpet!”
The token goes dark for a moment and I have the audacity to wonder if he’s doing okay — who am I kidding? Ishedoing okay? Am I doing fucking okay? NO, I’M NOT! — before returning my attention to the blood-hungry bathmat trying to stick its claws into my stomach.
“Carpets don’t fucking scream at people!” I shout.
I stab and catch it just below its neck, right where a collar bone would be if it were human. My spear pierces its skin and lodges awkwardly around the bone and, when I push, sinks in deeper.
The thing screams, but unfortunately, I don’t seem to be in deep enough to kill it and now my efforts have just brought it closer to me. It slashes for my face again, but I manage to lift my right forearm in time to catch its claws there. Fire rakes over my arm and I kick and this time, I’m rewarded for my efforts when the grate behind me gives.
Hands close in around my ankles. Four of them. I’m flying back over my stomach and suddenly, I’m spilling out of the cubicle of darkness and I know without looking up that it’s a Niahhorru body behind me.Bodies.
But I don’t have time for them right now either, because it’s still coming.
I brace both feet on the ground and level my spear at waist-height and when it emerges onto two legs instead of four, I pull back and then shove my spear forward on a scream, “I fucking hate you, carpet!”
I gut the thing, stabbing straight through its center. It folds over my spear, trying to reach me — actually succeeding in scratching my tits, which are out and exposed in just a tattered blue bra.
I roar. “Aaaaaahhhhhhrrrrrrr!” I level my weight into it and shove it back into the duct, but it holds onto the edges, refusing to go quietly into the dark.
“Rhork, she’s here!” I hear someone shout behind me in Meero.
And then the carpet creature I’m locked in a battle to the death with suddenly, finally, explodes. At least his head does. It’s there one moment and the next, pop! It slinks down onto the floor in a pile of goo and I withdraw my spear while bodies suddenly close in around me. They’re all sharp spines in every direction as they turn to face out, all except for one.
I look up into his face as he lowers the cannon on his arm and our eyes meet — well, I look up at the translucent bright green light shimmering where his eyes should be, and his head tilts down like he’s looking at me. His jaw is set and his lips are pressed into a thin line. He looks furious to see me and I’ve got no clue why, only that my blood is hot and I’m ready for another one.
“Don’t they know carpets aren’t supposed to fight back!” I shout at him stupidly.
He flinches, like I’ve slapped him, but the edge of his mouth twitches as his lower left arm stretches towards my face. He pushes a loc draped over my nose up over my head, out of the way. Then he nods at me once. “We can’t turn on the lights. There’s too much of this rot everywhere. We’ll have to kill them all.”
I scream, unable to control the volume of my pitch, “Bring it on.”
He hands me a weapon strapped to the spikes on his back. In his hand it looks like a little grenade, but it takes me two hands just to lift it. He flips a switch on the side and the whole thing zings and a bright pink flare rips down its right and left sides. “All you have to do is point and press.” He steps behind me, positions my hands so that one supports the barrel and the other holds what feels like a crank on the right side. He makes the motion to press the crank forward and then pull a small trigger mounted on the handle.
“Got it. Now where’s one of those fuckers?”
His laughter rumbles in my ear and he whispers an order that I can’t imagine anyone can hear over the horrible sound of static making it impossible to freaking think, but the warriors immediately comply when he tells them to free me from the protective barrier they’ve made around me.
The tunnel stretching away from me has only carpets in it. The Niahhorru warriors are all behind us. Perfect. No chance of hitting anything I don’t mean to. I fire before Rhork tells me to. The blaster or whatever the shit this is bucks in my arm and would have sent me flying back if he weren’t right behind me, acting as a bracing wall.
“You understand the recoil now?” He whispers in my ear and his voice sounds like some dark melody. Not trying to cage me, but trying tounleashme.
And he succeeds.
Tears come to my eyes. I feel them on my cheeks. I hear him whisper somewhere in the nightmare filled-darkness,I’m proud of you,as together, we fight these monsters. And as we fight, we’re no longer a human and a pirate. We’re no longer a male and a female. We’re just two beings who want to live. Two equals.
And when he glances down at me once and a while, while I shout curses and complaints at the carpets that won’t stop coming and won’t go away, he smiles.
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