Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
CHAPTER
FORTY
Mid-flight, Junella's mind was whirling around the problem of the sea of guards and doormen they'd inevitably land dead center in. The wheel solved this problem for her. When her eyes unclenched from the impact, she saw that none of 52's protectors had any interest in apprehending anyone. They were much more interested in getting the hell away in time.
Praxus Pammer's courtyard was a madhouse. People poured like floodwaters from the other three apartment buildings. They fled for the exits, and the gilded gates that had once made them feel safe now bottlenecked them in. People who would normally never lift a finger's worth of effort in an average day were now pummeling their neighbors out of their way like pro wrestlers. Their shrieks of panic were overpowered by the howling, agonized wails of Gyre 2's metal as it strained to keep itself in one piece.
From his perch on Zinc's shoulders, Toby looked back. He could not imagine how George had sailed them through. Gyre 2 was whirring like a top. Compared to the rotational speed of the wheels on either side, it was almost a blur. And getting faster. Through the windows in each doomed apartment block, Toby could see furniture flying and tenants tossed around like toys. The wheel's hub was already starting to glow and smoke from friction.
Even Junella was momentarily dumbstruck by the sight. But she'd had enough practice keeping herself alive in a catastrophe to know when to rip her eyes away. She raised her cutlass like a general and brayed, "Get moving, George!!!"
Zinc was yanked off his feet and Toby clung to him like kudzu as George did indeed take off. "Where to, Madam Brox?"
Her eyes scanned the courtyard for any place that wasn't clogged thick with people. Behind her, Gyre 2's scream rose in pitch. "There! The fence!" she pointed out.
"You intend for me to jump it?"
She raised her volume enough for Zinc to overhear: "No. I intend for my partner to smash the fuck out of it."
The canine perked up. "Heck yeah! I just wish it was that muskrat's face!"
"Exactly my thoughts."
Junella had picked a spot along the fence equidistant between two exits. Some tenants blocked their way, but not many. George's presence made them reconsider their position. The nightmare skidded to a stop and swung Zinc into position. Zinc shook off his dizziness in a second, shook off Toby in another, and felt his blood surging within his metal. He revved up his devices. Time for them to do some knock-knock-knockin'.
But just as he was about to, Gyre 2 came loose.
The sound was like a clock's mainspring tearing itself free, but deepened and amplified to the point it nearly burst the eardrums of everyone in proximity. Steel struts turned to curly fries in an eyeblink. The sky rained white hot metal slag. Gyres 1 and 3 were shoved sideways, tilted like the Tower of Pisa, by the force of the explosion. The main hub's core had accelerated until it shattered, becoming a multi-ton shrapnel grenade. It blew the giant wheel straight off its supports. And for three seconds that seemed to last an eternity, the entire building was airborne.
It hit the courtyard with such force it made George's landing look like a raindrop's splat. The ground buckled, sloshing like a waterbed. Anyone in the courtyard still on their feet was sent flying. Our protagonists, however, were so close to the gates they merely got facefuls of bars and a quartet of bloody noses.
Gyre 2 did not stop when it hit the ground. It was a sixty-foot yoyo, bursting with kinetic energy. As soon as it hit, it bounced. It was block 2A that happened to touchdown first, and everyone inside its twelve suites died instantly. A hailstorm of concrete divots peppered the air as the wheel skidded and hopped like a runaway tire.
Toby looked up to see the mammoth structure, crammed full of one hundred and sixty-five residents, sail above his head.
Its shadow blotted out the artificial sun.
It was only due to the endless parade of impossible terrors he'd endured already in Phobiopolis that the mouse didn't simply switch off in shock and go catatonic.
None of the five saw Gyre 2 land. But they heard it. Another reverberating WHOOM that knocked them off their feet again and sent shockwave echoes ringing through the whole of Bigwheel 52. Zinc recovered his senses first, his head popping up to see the runaway wheel take another small hop and start rolling.
Where it had hit, everything was obliterated. Everything. Ornate street lamps lay fallen like toothpicks. Busted water pipes rained over the debris like reared-up snakes. What had once been two restaurants, a craft boutique, and a bookstore was now a massive dent filled with rubble. Grass and dirt sprinkled everything for a circular quarter-mile. Ectopians ran in circles, screaming.
Soon there were enough citizens with their attention diverted that the sky began to flicker. The calm blue shifted. Starlight began to leak through. Also the night wind. All it took was for the illusion to falter this much, and in an eyeblink the bubble burst. All of 52 was suddenly exposed to the elements, over a thousand feet up in the air. The wind ripped fruit from trees and residents off the edge into the void.
Zinc pulled himself to his feet. They had to get out of here. People who'd died in the courtyard would be reanimating soon, and some of them would remember seeing a skeleton horse and four misfits jumping out of the wheel just before it went berserk. Zinc revved up his doorknockers and they bled through the bent gates effortlessly. "Come on!" he shouted to his friends. "Let's tear ass!!"
Piffle had to help Junella up, who'd had her head smashed (again) by falling debris. She took only a moment to reawaken and slap the hamsterfly's hands away reflexively. Her eyes widened at the devastation around her. The ongoing devastation. Because the wheel was still rolling.
It came upon another apartment building and gave it a hug. Gyre 2 tore through the smaller structure with pathetically little resistance. Homes were ripped open and residents scattered to the sky.
It cannot be imagined what it must have been like for the residents still inside Gyre 2. No matter how many times they died, they kept reviving, trapped within a spinning hell. A few of the most alert ones were able to maneuver towards their busted-out windows and leap to safety. Of the few that tried, a handful actually made it.
Each apartment block was like a gigantic rectangular boot, leaving gigantic rectangular footprints behind. Each section was already encrusted with dirt, debris and blood. The wheel was still in a business district, so shoppers fled in all directions while boutiques burst like water balloons.
The wheel approached a well-known salon called The Butterfly. Inside, some customers were still under the roaring hairdryers, or floating without a care in sensory deprivation tanks. Everyone else scrambled, leaving these few unaware of their fates. Some of the women under the dryers looked up in alarm when the building they were in suddenly acquired a much lower ceiling. They had only moments to react before their bodies were smashed up into the hairdryers like stuffing a broken egg into a thimble. Those in the deprivation tanks burst from the pressure a split second before their bodies were flattened.
Toby, meanwhile, was covered head to toe in scrapes and bruises, same as everyone else. He was staring at the wheel as it continued its rampage. Bigwheel 52 was more than wide enough to give it plenty of room to play in. How many more buildings would be destroyed, homes lost, and people splattered, before it stopped? It would have to roll off the edge sometime, right?
Zinc extended a wrench to gentlemanly escort Piffle through the hole he'd made in the gate. Junella and George were already through. Zinc looked back to see his client still standing there, paralyzed with empathy. "Yo, amigo. We gotta move feet, I'm sorry. No time to hang around here and rubberneck."
Still staring, Toby unconsciously followed Zinc's voice over the little pile of rubble to the grass outside.
"We have to stop it," he said.
The others turned to look at him.
"We can't!" Junella burst. "What do you expect? I'm gonna just stand in its path and give it a stern look!?"
Toby wasn't aware until Junella's reaction what had actually come out of his mouth. It was something his conscious mind never would have decided. And for good reason. What chance did four mortals and a nightmare have against a cataclysm that was already well underway and clearly unstoppable?
But Toby was a mouse who had read many stories, and watched many movies, and he understood on a reflexive level that this was what good guys did. When there was trouble, they ran towards it, not away.
Of course, now all his worries were dogpiling him, telling him he was more than insane for thinking such a thing. This was beyond him. Beyond all of them. They could do nothing but make it all worse.
Yet his gut would not let him believe that. Even though it had been the man with the sideways eyes who'd flipped the switch, they were there when he'd done it. They could have stopped him. They should have. They were obligated.
Sounding like no one wanted to hear it less than him, Toby insisted, "We have to try."
Junella lunged at him. Behind her, Gyre 2 took out a power station and a grand fire sprang to life in its wake. "You want us to pull some crazy-ass comic book shit!? Fine! YOU try! Got any suggestions, Cap'n Fantastic!?"
Piffle tugged on the skunk's arm. "Hey! Don't be so mean to him!"
Hearing Piffle defend him gave Toby a tiny surge of confidence. And it was enough for an idea with a somewhat-plausible chance of success to pop out of his brain. He snapped his fingers. "The resizing window!"
Junella blinked. Her rage at her client's naivete vanished and her own brain latched onto his plan. It was terrible, of course. But it was something they could try without a great deal of personal risk. She nodded, deciding, then vaulted up onto George's back and one-handed-snatched Toby onto the seat behind her. "Not bad, mouse. We'll try it. But if it doesn't work we get the fuck gone, you understand? You're paying me to get you home, not save the world."
"What is the plan, per se?" George asked.
Junella patted his shoulder. "Navigate us in front of it. But not too in front, got me?"
"Got you, Madam Brox."
"Piffle, can you fly with Zinc?"
Before she could answer, Zinc did. "No need. I'll run." He had some rage to burn off.
***
Gyre 2 was paving a trail of screams through downtown. Millions in property damage. Dozens of stores squashed. Hundreds dead, or wishing they were. Another bookstore had been crushed a moment ago. Shreds of paper pages fluttered through the air like ash after a volcano. Sirens split the air as emergency crews in snakelike vehicles (made for navigating Ectopia's narrow streets) drove around frantically. Some stopped to coup de grâce the wounded. It was all they could really do. In a moment of valiant stupidity, one guardsman parked his vehicle in the path of the runaway wheel. It was swallowed under block 2J without so much as a shudder.
In the wheel's path now was an elementary school. Children trampled each other getting to the exits. A demented few stayed behind, just to experience the most awesome death of their lives. When Gyre 2 sheared their school in half like parting a hairdo, some kids cried, others cheered. Desks, tablets, trash bins and innumerable worksheets littered the ground where the wheel ripped through.
It demonstrates just how pissed off Zinc still was that he managed to keep pace with George. Not many people can match a galloping nightmare for speed. Zinc rhythmically clamped his wrenchtips, getting a feel for them again. They'd been missing for less than an hour, but he'd felt skinned without them. He tested every micrometer, caressing them internally, integrating them back, reintroducing them to the doorknockers, making sure his body was whole again, as he was sure he'd have need of his brute strength soon enough.
The wheel was not especially fast, but it was relentless. It showed no sign of stopping until something forced it to. So its path was easy for George to predict. He noticed something else about its trajectory, but kept it to himself. It was possible their plan could avert it.
He arrived at a spot where, he predicted, the wheel would appear four blocks away in approximately twenty-nine seconds.
"Piffle, gimme the window!" Junella barked.
The hamsterfly's antennae shot up. "I thought you had it!"
Junella looked back at her, eyes blazing. "I do NOT need this shit right now! Stop playing around and gimme!!"
"I don't have it!" Piffle wailed, wringing her hands apologetically. "We must've left it in the car!"
Toby, still gripping George's rump for dear life, felt another idea poke through. "Junella, can you dumbfound it?"
"Maybe," she said. "If I can remember what it feels like." She was aware that concentrating on mindfucking something was one of the best ways to fail at it.
The street was shaking. The roar of the Gyre was getting louder. Stampeding people were starting to clog the path in front of them, much more concerned about several tons of rolling death than a nightmare horse.
Junella was flicking her hand by her hip furiously, but nothing was jumping into her fingertips.
Toby saw the frustration curdling on her grooved vinyl face. He remembered something else: Piffle was better at this. "Piffle! Do it!!" he whirled around and shouted.
She was so startled, she handed him the resizing window without a single thought or hesitation.
"Great job!" Toby told her.
"Oh wow, I did it!"
Toby quickly put the window in Junella's hands. "Here. You know how to make it do the shrinky thing."
It was good timing too, because the wheel was in view now. They had a comfortable few seconds left to get their asses out of the middle of the street before it ran them over.
Junella fumbled with the little flimsy thing before getting it held up correctly in front of her. She fixed the wheel in its center. Hoping desperately, but expecting failure, she brought the corners together.
Toby's idea was a good one, it just didn't happen to work. The wheel was simply too big. And the window worked best on stationary objects. All that happened when Junella tried to shrink it was that she managed to reduce several fleeing pedestrians to doll-size.
"Well fuck," she said.
George did not need to be told that moving his friends out of the way was now a priority. He swung around, scooped Zinc up on the bridge of his nose, and plowed blindly through the fleeing crowd. "Sorry! Sorry!" he cried out to anyone he trampled.
Piffle took flight and landed with the others just a few heartbeats before the wheel rolled by. The noise was so loud it almost wasn't noise at all, just a skullshaking vibration that whited out all other sound. Gyre 2's apartment blocks were getting battered to hell and back, but each one was constructed for safety and durability, double reinforced. So while the brick facades were long since chipped away, each block was now a box of skeletal metal. And from the screams, there were still plenty of tenants trapped inside, dying over and over and over.
"It failed..." Toby whispered to no one.
"Not yer fault," Zinc said with a pat on the shoulder. "I wouldn've thought to try that. Hell, I was just planning to run off and not come back to EC for a few decades."
"...Which is what we should be doing right now," Junella sang sternly. "You had your shot, Toby. Pure luck it didn't work. I don't blame you. Now we flee the scene."
George hesitantly spoke up. "There is some information I think you all should be aware of first," he said, an ominous worry in his voice.
Junella did not like how he sounded. "What now!?"
"I am quite certain of this," he prefaced. "From my observation, I have concluded that the wheel will not, as would be best, roll off the edge and fall into the parking lot. When it hits that large white building over there, it will have slowed enough that it will turn. Its course will be diverted. It will fall down through the spokes."
Zinc's eyes bulged. "JESUS!!!"
Toby was about to ask why that was so bad when his mind filled in the image. Ectopia Cordis was a giant cylinder. Each Bigwheel was supported by five spokes around a central axis. If Gyre 2 tumbled over the outer edge, the worst that would happen is that a lot of people's cars would be pancaked. But if it fell down instead, through the spokes, there was no limit to how many more homes and businesses it would destroy. Maybe it would crash down to Bigwheel 51 and land flat. Or maybe it would keep on falling, gathering momentum, bouncing all the way down. Fifty levels of city property. Bigwheel after Bigwheel. The already-unfathomable damage to 52 would be only the beginning.
The horror was almost too much for Toby to bear. He could feel his brain bulging at the seams, threatening to burst his skull. Normally, his fear would have turned him into a stone icicle by now. But it is a strange thing, how sometimes colossal tragedies affect us differently than small ones. The octospider had sent Toby into a screaming panic. Amaurosis Fugax had nearly driven him insane. But this... this was so big his brain just seemed to give up. A bizarre kind of jittery calm enfolded him. It was like when runners hit the wall and keep on going. Gyre 2 had crushed the limits of Toby's panic. He was now a hair trigger away from passing out, but until then, he found himself in a state of floating, urgent lucidity.
"We can't leave," he said resolutely. "There has to be something else we can try."
Junella felt her anger flare. But she put a lid on it and simply clutched Toby's arm. "No."
He swatted her hand away. His movements felt like swimming. He looked straight into her fierce eyes and replied, calmly, "I make the decisions. I'm the client. We're going to stop that thing because I say so." Toby would later have almost no memory of anything he said or did in the next few minutes.
It took incredible restraint for Junella to not backhand this idiot mouse's face straight off. Instead she bit her lip and decided to humor him. "Allright, Sarge. We'll play it your way. But we are going to DISCUSS THIS later," she tempested. "Do you have any more ideas?"
George stepped in to give Toby's malfunctioning brain a rest. "I do. But it will require re-transforming into my bird form, so I can see the whole city from a wider angle."
"We're out of potion," Junella said, making a turning-out-her-pocket gesture.
"Can we get more?"
Zinc traced through his inner map of the city. "Any survival store'll have some. I've only been here once before, since 52's not my kinda party, but I know exactly where the potions are in ol' Rippingbeany's place if we can get back to 48 quick enough."
"Then let us not delay." George picked Junella up in his teeth and planted her in his saddle, then did the same with Toby. The stallion looked around for a nearby elevator or slapstation, saw none, and decided to improvise. He took off running for the nearest spoke-edge. "I shall explain on the way!"
George's prediction was perfect. At the end of the street was indeed a very large white obelisk-shaped building. It was an imaginite storage silo. Needless to say, such places are heavily reinforced to deter robbery attempts. When Gyre 2 smacked into it, the silo cracked like an egg. But doing so ate up a hell of a lot of kinetic force. And now, just like George had warned, Gyre 2 was jolted out of its linear path and onto a new one. Headed right for the edge of Spoke Five. It must be understood that, as enormous as an apartment-building-sized ferris wheel is, it is nothing compared to a Bigwheel. Picture dropping a coaster on a slowly rotating wagon wheel, and you will have some idea of scale. The spokes were thick enough to house many, many stores and houses, but the gaps between easily allowed Gyre 2 to pass through. Downward and downward, causing unthinkable chaos with every bounce.
***
Ectopia Cordis is far from defenseless, and Luxy Bleeder, like any good leader, anticipates and plans for incidents like this. The mammoth cranes Toby had seen scuttling up and down the sides of the city were already en route to intercept Gyre 2. Their mighty steel snouts had special hooked lines designed specifically for wrangling runaway architecture.
Alas, the nearest of them was way down at Bigwheel 8.
Every forty hours, the cranes docked near the base of the city to receive supplies and fuel. It was part of Mr. Muskrat's devious design that Gyre 2 had come loose at just the right time for all four cranes to be as far away as possible. Until their operators managed to race them up the city's scaffolding, there was nothing that could be done about the destruction. Nothing but to stare and hope and wait.
*****