TRACK 11 –

LAW

“So, we know that Silent Mouse’s radio works. Did he sound different to you? Never mind, it’s almost time for me get going, c’mon Freak.” I said, the giant cat perked his ears up then stood up and stretched languidly before coming to my side.

“Rawr.” Freak growled, as I patted him on the back and side.

“You sure as hell took your sweet time. I feel like you are being obstinate on purpose. Are you in your rebellious teenage years?” I asked, my tone mocking but inside I was serious.

Freak still listened to me but he was becoming more and more independent. More of his own being. I would need to start treating him less like a pet and more like a comrade in arms.

“Rawr!” He growled, then playful batted at me with one of his humongous paws in response.

While the blow was in play he was now over fifteen feet long from the tip of his adorable yet scary nose to his long and furry tail. He weighed close to two tons and mad of straight up muscle. He was a fucking magical tiger and his paw knocked me five feet away. Good thing for me that I was a magically strengthened champion of the gods and could take it. I caught my balance and shook my head then left the newly constructed radio room, waving goodbye to Savage Gopher our head radio operator.

She grunted and gave a noncommittal wave her personality left a lot to be desired in person. On the radio however, she was a regular savant and you couldn’t get her to shut up half the time. Her voice was sexy as hell as well but that was neither here nor there.

Freak and I made our way to the airship docking yard, which was on top of the fortress without any interruptions. The forward operating base was almost empty compared to the hive of activity it had been the last few days. We walked through a veritable ghost town, the troops and workers stationed here were around but there were less than a hundred of them. Not a lot but more than enough to defend the fort and go on outlying missions. Plus, the workers here were doing the usual resource gathering and creating.

We reached the top of the stairwell and walked out onto the airship docking bay. I waved to a couple of airmen and they saluted then when about their tasks, while I turned my attention to the only two airships currently in the bay. One was an older model, the first design and was stationed here. The other brought a smile involuntarily to my face. It was the newest model and my personal airship.

After the forward base had been constructed and manned, the villagers assimilated, and the rest of the work was done all my elites went off and began their missions. Each taking their share of the soldiers and resources they were allocated.

Freak crouched and leaped the twenty feet up to the deck of my airship. The cat was a monster, I pulled up the airship info.

AIRSHIP INFO.

I closed it as I climbed the rope ladder up to the deck, joining Freak on board. Since the ship was only built for two people I quickly had it ready to go and saluted the airmen one last time before casting the lines off and leaving the forward base on my own mission.

Freak took his customary place on the bow of the airship and I guided us on a large looping turn to the northwest. I took us up another few hundred feet and caught an airstream heading in the direction I wanted to go. The world spread out below me like a painting and I admired the beauty and view as I steered us along.

It was nice to be alone with just Freak. It had been a long time since I had came back in time and I hadn’t been alone for more than a little while ever since. It wasn’t that I didn’t like being around people but everyone needed some space, especially considering that was why I first went into the mountains before I came here. My music and the sound of the wind, and the airships engine were the only sounds this high up and the solitude was refreshing.

A few hours went by this way and not only did I enjoy it but Freak did as well. To the point where he had been hanging his head over the gun whale like a dog, his long sandpaper tongue lolling in the wind. I laughed out loud and shook my hair out letting in blow in the win as well enjoying the speeding airship like my friend was.

The carefree feelings went away and a sigh escaped my lips. I was tired, not physically because my new and improved body healed fast and seemed to have huge reserves of stamina. No, it was a mental exhaustion. The stress and constant moving, constant doing of something, the constant thought that if I failed everyone would die and it would all be my fault. All because I was too weak, not good enough, not smart enough, just not enough.

These thoughts were always with me, in the back of my mind, always there making me stress, worry, making me wonder if I was more than just a poser. I never knew why people gravitated to those who projected that sense of self confidence, that aura of leadership, competence.

That was what he tried to project to the others and to himself, a quiet competence, an aura of safety. Another sigh escaped my lips as I thought on it for the millionth time, even more so since Chief Running Hawk’s death. It had always been a problem of mine back before when I played games. I never wanted to lose anyone, not a single soldier, peon, whatever. It was how I tried to win at everything, total victory.

The sun was setting in the sky when I roused myself from my musings, having partitioned my mind to think and fly the airship. It was then that I noticed the sudden change in air pressure and the sky around us. Clouds appeared in the distance and not normal white fluffy ones, these were dark grey almost black and ominous. I pushed away my self-pity and focused on the now and the growing thunderstorm directly ahead. The distance between my airship and the evil looking weather pattern closed rapidly. Great big gusts of wind started to blow and I had to grip the rudder hard to keep the ship from flying about wildly.

As the power of the wind grew it took more and more of my strength to hold onto the rudder. All this happened in seconds giving me no time to turn and try to flee the storm. Instead, it was as if the storm was sucking me in on purpose, like it was alive or something.

Rain added to the mix coming in at Freak and I sideways. It pelted us like tiny stones since it was flung so hard by the wind. My cat had come down from his perch on the bow when the storm started and now the two of us stood side by side at the helm. Then a brief respite of only a second happened and with it a face resolved itself in the clouds. A huge monstrous thing that reminded me of the movie The Mummy. Freak and I shared an incredulous look and then the respite ended and the force of the storm returned. A moment later we were inside the clouds and shit really began to hit the fan.

Thunder, lightning, tornado force winds, and stinging rain hit us from all directions. It was all we could do to stay on the deck of the airship, the rudder offered no control. We were completely at the whim of the storm. The face returned seemingly all around us and then just below the howling din of the storm I could hear a voice. It oozed evil intent and just hearing it made me fell unclean. Freak did as well and growled low in his throat at the vile barely audible whispers.

DIE HUMAN… YOU WILL DIE HUMAN… YOU ARE NOTHING… YOU CAN CHANGE NOTHING… YOU ARE WEAK… YOU ARE A CUCKOLD… YOU ARE WORTHLESS… YOU… WILL… DIE…

“Bring it on motherfucker!” I yelled, shaking my fist at the storm raging around me.

Freak joined in and roared at the top of his massive lungs. The voices stopped and the face melted back into the clouds.

“That’s right! You better run bitch!” I yelled even louder, my face a rictus of anger and rage.

Then the laughter started. It surrounded us and with it the storm began raging even stronger than before. Lightning began to blast us from all directions, hitting the airship with staccato blasts that sounded like machinegun fire. It was a good thing that I had metal lightning rods installed in the new airship version but it was just barely diffusing the myriad of electric charges. The rain came even harder now so thick I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction.

I put my arm around Freak and hunkered down in the center of the helm while the wind gusts turned, spun, and tried to flip our craft in all directions. I lost any sense of where we were and time. The storm seemed to last forever and it flung us up, down, left, right, with no let up. The amount of times that my feet left the deck and I thought I was going to fly out into the sky were too many to count. Suddenly, a particularly vicious round of lightning slammed into the overtaxed balloon and it burst, a huge hole appearing in its side.

That was when things went from bad to way fucking worse. Without the balloon to keep us airborne my quickly deflating zeppelin started careening to the ground. Not only that, my ship began to spin in an uncontrolled circle tumbling down through the sky. The storm didn’t relent either, continuing to strike us with lightning and pelt us with rock like rain. The g-forces began to get stronger and stronger, pulling Freak and me back and throwing us to the stern railing. We hit the railing hard with a crack so loud it was audible over the torrent of water and thunder.

The breath was knocked from my lungs but I was able to hold onto Freak holding him tight so neither of us flew overboard. I remember going to the local school fair when I was a kid and would always go on my favorite ride, the Gravitron. If you aren’t familiar with the infamous ride please let me enlighten your ignorance.

The Gravitron was shaped like a UFO. It dark grey, almost gunmetal in appearance. It looked as if it floated five feet in the air but was actually supported by four different connections each bolted to the ground below. The entrance was a large rectangular door that opened from the top down and became a staircase that you took to enter. Inside the ride was a round smoke filled interior that had a DJ booth in the middle and tall flat cushions set against the wall. These cushions were what took the place of traditional chairs.

The idea was you stood against the cushioned wall and buckled a strap across your chest. The ride would start with the DJ calling out the ‘are you ready’ and playing some music. All of the songs were usually some type of 1980’s glam rock, White Snake, Van Halen, and the like. But they really fit the ride, because it would start by slowly spinning and then gaining speed almost unnoticeably. The g-forces were mild at the beginning and caused a giddy jovial feeling and then it sped up exponentially throwing you back against the wall and holding you there. It is then that the true ride begins.

When the g-forces become sufficient you unbuckle your safety belt and start to climb around on the wall. The pull of the gravity keeps you plastered to the back wall and as a small boy and daredevil I used that force to turn sideways, upside down, backwards, and into all the other positions I could. Not to toot my own horn but I got pretty damn good at it. It was those skills that I practiced for so long as a kid, that I never thought I would use, came to my rescue now.

The prototype glider was attacked the stern of the airship and I made my way over to it, slowly, carefully, and difficultly as I fought against gravity while pulling Freak with me. We inched our way along the four foot wooden wall, moving ever so slowly but coming closer to the goal with each passing second. Inch by grueling inch went by until we reached the glider. The ship was still spinning keeping the g-forces strong which was a blessing in disguise because they allowed to me move albeit slow as fuck.

The airship wasn’t idle during my sojourn and neither was the storm. Both kept on going, the storm growing in power and the airship gaining speed while spinning all while still careening to the earth below. Eventually, I pulled us to the glider and used all my strength to get Freak and his almost two thousand pound body onto the glider. He growled and whined but did as I instructed trusting in me implicitly. When he was in position I caught a view of outside the airship and my eyes went wide as the ground rushed towards us while we fell hitting terminal velocity.

I pushed the fear from my mind and continued with what I was doing. Time was running out and there was no room for error. Freak was in position on the glider, his claws digging into the magically reinforced wood. I pulled myself atop him and grabbed the gliders unlocking brake with my left hand. As happens when things start going to well, shit happens. A particularly strong lightning strike hit right next to the glider just as I pulled the unlocking lever.

The strike not only blinded me but launched me off of Freak and the glider, then out into the stormy sky. My brain rattled around in my head for a moment and I must have blacked out for a second. Because when I got my shit together I was spinning through the air with no ship to be seen and no Freak or glider near me. To add to the confusing insanity, I realized the ground was only a couple hundred feet away and closing fast.

The only positive was that the storm’s fury lessened as I fell further and further to the earth. My wits returned to me but I was already past the point of no return. I couldn’t fly and even my new body and strength wouldn’t survive a fall from a thousand feet up. Images of me pancaking and my blood and organs splattering the ground came to me unbidden. Fear gripped me then, a feeling that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. I was right on the brink of giving up when a thought hit me, fuck you!

No bitch ass deity was going to break me. If I was going out, I was going in a blaze of glory and with a big fuck you to the bastards. I flung my arms and legs out wide in the familiar skydiving position. I had been a few times with my ex, she who shall not be named, and the training came back just like riding a bike.

My pose slowed my fall and gave me more time to assess the situation. It was still shitty. Even though I had slowed my speed of descent the fact was that I was still falling to the earth. Not my fire, earth, or water magic would be able to help me in my current predicament. The ground was all shadows and flashes of light form the lightning behind me and I could see that I wasn’t going to be lucky enough to hit a body of water. In fact, it looked to be nothing but rocky ground for as far as I could see.

Just as I was about to resign myself to my soon to be pancaked fate I heard a familiar sound.

“Roar!” Freak sounded out from above.

I twisted my neck and a huge smile broke out across my face or tried to as my cheeks were flapping from the force of the air. He was still on the glider and somehow he was piloting it while roaring defiantly into the storm and sky. He brought the glider within range for me to grab on and I pulled myself back onto his back as we flew through the sky. Just in time too, as we leveled out just a few dozen feet above the ground and coasted forward through the lessening rain.

YOU WILL DIE… YOU WILL DIE… ALL OF YOU WILL DIE…

The voice followed us as we glided further away and finally out of the wind and rain. Freak guided us down until we were just a few feet above the ground then he gave me a mewling roar and a look of apology. Instinctively I knew what he was trying to emote, he didn’t know how to land…

“Well fuck…” I said or tried to because it was then that we touched down in a glorious disastrous cacophony of flailing limbs and pieces of quickly disintegrating glider.

“Rawr!” Freak cried, the air blasted from his lungs by yours truly and the ground we both collided with.

For a few moments everything was a blur while we crashed into the rocky terrain. The pieces of glider, Freaks body, and my own tumbled, twisted, spun, and smashed forward at a breakneck uncontrolled pace. Each time we hit the ground and one of us touched a limb it was bruised or broken. Each time skin or fur was grated off by the unforgiving cheese grater like earth.

We tumbled like that for what seemed like eternity before coming to an abrupt crashing halt thanks to a handy boulder. Red and green flashed around my periphery surrounded by an oncoming blackness. I managed to share a look with Freak and saw he was alive but in as bad a condition as I was.

“It’s gonna be ok Fre…” I started, then the darkness took me.