i dunno, i take it as a compliment, neway...
Just a review of what happened last time...
But finally that hole in the ceiling came into sight! Yes! I dove up it and saw the light at the end of the short tunnel. I legged it down there like there was no tomorrow. I only noticed the enormous chunk of rock coming loose from the ceiling just before I ran under it. No time to stop, no time to dodge. My legs carried me under it just as it fell. It hit me HARD in the back, knocking me face down on to the ground.
ON WITH THE FIC...
Chapter 31
Splat
I ran. Ran tirelessly through enormous expanses of wilderness. Over hills, through woods, over deserts, though jungles. Endlessly, aimlessly, simply flying forward for miles and miles and miles. Never getting tired or thirsty. I ran so far I was sure I must have crossed through Mudos, Sligos and Glucose and I would be in the sea soon, but it never came. I just kept on going as if to go on forever.
Forever and ever and ever. Someone was beside me. Running along to. I never saw or heard them there, I just knew that someone was running along beside me. And then he spoke.
It was like nothing I’d ever heard before or have heard since. A voice so powerful that it felt like the world would obey it. A voice that seemed to be made out of everything around me, the grass, the trees, the sky, the hills. And the words he spoke were amazing. They weren’t in another language. Somehow, they weren’t even a language at all. Yet it was clear that they meant something. And though I didn’t understand the words themselves, I could somehow understand what they meant.
I can’t repeat what he told me. I do remember and I do understand and it wasn’t a secret, it’s just… I can’t explain, it’s like, it’s impossible to tell you what he told me with normal words. It was so powerful, so meaningful, so mighty. Yet there was a deep sadness in the voice, some terrible feeling of sadness gripped the being running along beside me, speaking to me.
A terrible sadness in the person next to me, that for some reason I couldn’t turn my head to see. I couldn’t turn my head at all towards him. He kept just out of my line of view at all times. As he ran beside me, as he spoke to me, as he sent me back…
I woke up to find myself lying with an enormous pile of rocks that had tumbled out of the mine entrance behind me. The entrance was completely blocked by tumbled rocks so that no one would ever be able to get inside.
I shook my head to clear it. Mad dream! It made me feel weird but also kind of mystified. It felt so real… so real and… and so great, so enormous!
Well, it’s better than reliving the worst moments of my life all over again, I told myself, shaking my head again. So where are we? Destroy laquameety, check. Save 10 mudokons…
I followed the train line back to the complex where I’d first seen Martor talking with the other executives. There was a lot going on, what with the alarms telling them the Kenarra Root mines had been destroyed and Demana being dead and all. I found myself a computer terminal and found out where lab 377 was, then I set off. I reached the place in a week but spent ages looking around for the actual lab. It took another 2 weeks and there was only a mile-square area to search! There were landmarks at the corners of the land where the lab was hidden: an odd shaped rock, a large tree, a lake and a valley between to mountains.
The place was high security, hidden properly. After realising that it wasn’t like your average glukkon-run factory: sticking a kilometre into the air billowing masses of smoke into the sky, I started a proper search. But I found nothing. 3 miles away from the square was a factory. I decided that I would go and check there if I didn’t find the lab soon. I didn’t really know if I was in the right place (though it had all the right landmarks).
But 2 days from heading for the factory I was searching the rocky hills in the Western side of the area. It was there somewhere that I found a cave. About 10 metres inside the cave the stone walls disappeared and where replaced with metal walls! Another 10 metres in and I found a pare of solid blast doors. Fortunately they weren’t locked; they swung open as I hot-wired the control panel outside!
As the doors swung open I was hit by a solid rush of air and smells and sounds.
The air was putrid, it smelt of sweat and blood and rot and fuel. You could taste it in your mouth. The air seemed to plaster itself against the inside of your throat, making every breath foul. And the sounds, sounds of faint, far off screaming, machines buzzing, wild animal howls that sent shivers down my spine.
And I felt fear. It was normal to feel mudokon-me afraid and I wasn’t surprised by it, nor by the fear of paramite-me who always felt afraid in a dangerous or tense situation when I was alone – it was always more comfortable with company. Fear from my laguameacy side was a bit of a surprise, it was usually confident as long as it wasn’t trapped or injured.
But the thing that took it out of me most, that made me go weak with fear, that made me want to turn around and leg it out of that cave right than and there, was the flood of fear from the scrab inside me. The scrab was always so confident, so sure, so unafraid. It had kept me going through thousands of desperate situations, and now, here it was, wanting to turn and leave right then and there.
But I knew I couldn’t leave. I had something to do and it had to be done, for the mudokons. And to prove to everyone that I wasn’t a psychopathic monster. I took a deep, not very reassuring breath… And marched into lab 377, to complete my quest… Course if I’d known what was in there at that point I would have obeyed the scrab and spent the rest of my life alone!
And now i'm closin down for another week to get some more stuff written. Later dudes! If i don't post next Saturday you'll now no why! Later dudes! *grabs to suitcases, puts on a pair of sunglasses, grabs a wallet and a couple of plane-tickets and runs out of the building*
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