Rogmasher Rampage Page 3

  Luigi trotted over and yanked open the passenger door, producing a painful screech. Billy climbed into the pickup and was just about to compliment Luigi on his moxboarer scar when an earsplitting squeal stopped him midsentence.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” said Luigi, grabbing the blue-furred demi-creatch that Billy had nearly sat on and tossing it into a cardboard box behind the seat. “It’s-a not your fault. People sit on Papeesha all the time. She never learns her lesson.” Billy watched the strange hamsterlike creature as she licked her fur with an incredibly long yellow-orange tongue. She glared at Billy with her big glassy eyes, silently warning him not to get too comfortable in her seat.

  Luigi revved the engine and gunned the pickup down the street at a speed that was not entirely appropriate for two guys heading to a funeral. It wasn’t long before they had left Piffling Elementary far behind and were whizzing past cows and farmhouses.

  “Mr. Vriff-a-nee, he must-a have a lot of faith in you, Billy,” said Luigi as he took the truck around a dusty hairpin turn. “Either that,” he added with a wink, “or he’s-a tryin’ to get you killed before you finish your first year of training.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Billy. “It’s like he wants me to break the record for most creatch ops in a single month.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s keeping you busy, that’s for sure. It’s a miracle you still have all-a your arms and legs.”

  Luigi flicked a few switches that transformed the dashboard from a worn-out strip of cracked plastic to a bank of dials, levers, and flashing lights that would have been perfectly at home in the cockpit of a fighter jet.

  Awesome, thought Billy. Wait’ll I’m sixteen and they let me take one of these for a spin.

  “She’s not-a got all the latest gadgets like your parents’ van,” said Luigi as he hung a left and drove the pickup past a chain-link fence and into a vast expanse of farmland, “but she’ll get us where we need to go.” He paused and added, “Better make sure that seat belt’s-a tight, Billy. With this baby, liftoff can be a little rough sometimes.”

  Within seconds the dirt road they were speeding along became wide enough to serve as an airport landing strip. Billy had taken flight from this road once before, when his parents found it inconvenient to use their usual takeoff spot in Dullard Woods. The vast stretches of farmland on either side of the road provided Luigi with the privacy he needed as his pickup truck took to the skies.

  Luigi pulled a lever on the dashboard and up they went into the air. Billy prepared himself for the spectacular view he’d be getting from his half-open passenger window but was treated instead to a mouthful of dust as the pickup slammed back down onto the road. “Maledizione!” growled Luigi. Billy felt sure it was not the sort of word Luigi would say in front of his grandmother. “Fly, you old piece of junk!”

  The pickup reluctantly did as it was told, this time wobbling precariously from side to side as it slowly gained altitude. A sudden loss of power halted their ascent at thirty feet; then a stomach-whirling dip sent the pickup careening across the surface of a cornfield, shearing cornstalks like a razor shaving stubble.

  “Volare! Volare!” shouted Luigi, pounding the dashboard with his fist. “Fly, before we all get-a killed!”

  With only seconds remaining before they would plow headlong into a row of towering maples, the pickup lurched up and away, corkscrewing through the air at top speed. Vertigo-inducing views of the cornfield below alternated with blinding blue patches of sky until finally the truck leveled off and followed a more or less steady trajectory high above the Indiana countryside. Billy shot a glance at Papeesha to see if the hazardous takeoff had frightened her. She was sound asleep, evidently unaware that there was any other way for an AFMEC vehicle to operate.

  “Sorry about that, Billy,” said Luigi. “They keep telling me to get a new truck, but I can’t-a do that. We been through so much together.” He then grabbed a package from the glove compartment and tossed it into Billy’s lap. “Better get started, my friend. You’ve got a lot of reading ahead of you.”

  Billy’s eyes lit up as he realized what he was holding in his hands: his first ever creatch op prep manual. It was a brown paper package about the size of a small dictionary, with a smudged title stamped on it in dark red lettering:

  “Huaqing,” said Billy, struggling with the pronunciation. He knew the word was pronounced “Hwah-ching,” but it was tricky getting his mouth to make the right sounds.

  A feeling of triumph swept over Billy as he tore open the package and pulled out the contents. Billy had seen AFMEC prep manuals before, but they were always delivered first to his parents, who gave them a thorough going-over before letting Billy have a peek.

  There were two slim hardbound books, black with white lettering on the covers:

  They were both timeworn and rough around the edges, their pages yellowed from age and stained with a variety of substances, human blood among them. These books, Billy knew, contained general texts for use on any number of creatch ops.

  It was the third book in the package that most interested Billy, the one that had probably been written up and printed out just that morning, containing information specifically related to the current mission. It consisted only of white computer paper, bound by a black plastic spiral strip on the left-hand side. Billy raised it to his nose, inhaling the scent of fresh laser-jet ink. It bore a title that set Billy’s heart racing:

  Rogmashers. No way. My first solo creatch op and I might end up head to head with rogmashers? Man, this is going to be incredible.

  Billy had read about rogmashers, had even seen grainy footage of them in an AFMEC training class. They were among the largest creatches on earth, and within the category of mountain creatch they were the largest bar none. Many grew to heights exceeding fifty feet, a few reaching sixty feet or more. They were bipeds—a rarity among creatches—and possessed almost unimaginable strength.

  “Rogmashers,” said Luigi. He whistled and raised his eyebrows knowingly. “No question about it, Billy. Vriff-a-nee is trying to kill you.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning they began to make their descent into Chinese airspace. By this time Billy had managed a brief nap at Luigi’s insistence, but not before going over all three books and committing to memory any facts relating to the upcoming creatch op. It looked pretty straightforward: no more than two or three rogmashers were estimated to be involved. They had been making sporadic incursions into human-controlled territory near the remote mountain village of Huaqing. Though there had not yet been any attacks, Billy was being sent to investigate the incursions and assess the threat they posed to the village. If an incursion should occur during Billy’s watch, he was fully authorized to use all AFMEC weapons at his disposal to drive the rogmashers back.

  Billy had already begun to picture himself doing battle with the rogmashers, and the scenes in his head promised plenty of action. According to the prep manual, he would be equipped with at least three different kinds of weaponry: long-range glaff rifles, paragglian crossbows, and an ample supply of hortch grenades. Billy had some experience with glaff rifles and hortch grenades, but this would be his first time firing a paragglian crossbow in the field. They were hard to control but highly effective if you knew what you were doing. Billy was stoked.

  Here’s where all that target practice pays off, he thought. I nailed those simulated pridd lizards in training last month. Hitting a rogmasher should be a piece of cake.

  Cloud cover obstructed the windows of the truck for most of the descent. When “Old Maria” finally broke through, Billy was treated to a spectacular first view of the Chinese countryside.

  “Here,” said Luigi, handing Billy a pair of powerful AFMEC-issue binoculars. “We’re not in Piffling anymore, eh?”

  Billy peered through the binoculars. He began studying the landscape for details that might prove useful for the creatch op, but before long he found himself swept up in the sheer beauty of the countryside rolling past below them.
There were terraced rice paddies carved into the hills like enormous grassy staircases, straw-hatted men and women knee-deep in water, straightening rice seedlings by hand. Ancient farmhouses dotted the fields, each with carefully tended courtyards and little stone tables where elderly men huddled around pots of tea. Sometimes he’d spot a local temple, its red tiled roof low in the middle and curved up at the edges, as if weighed down by the brightly colored statues of dragons and bearded warriors crowded on top of it.

  China, thought Billy. I can’t believe I’m really here.

  “I’ll be taking you to the local AFMEC field office,” said Luigi. “They’ll have all the equipment you need: the rifles, the crossbows, the grenades. But they won’t have this.” Luigi reached into his shirt pocket and produced a small vial filled with thick yellow-green liquid. Attached to it was a simple silver chain. “Wear it around your neck,” he said, handing it to Billy. “You’re going to need it, trust me.”

  “What is it, some kind of anticreatch poison?”

  Luigi laughed, long and loud. “No, my friend. It’s olive oil. From my grandparents’ farm in Sicily. It came from a withered old tree long considered dead. Suddenly one year, this tree, it starts-a bringing forth the biggest, plumpest olives in the whole orchard.” Luigi gestured vigorously with his hands. “Now for the people of my village it is a sacred olive tree, a bearer of good fortune. My grandfather, he’s no fool. He started putting the oil in vials like this and selling them all around Sicily.”

  Billy held the tiny bottle up to his nose and sniffed. It was olive oil, all right. “So this is like a rabbit’s foot or something.”

  Luigi drew his eyebrows together in stern disapproval. “It is no-thing like a rabbit’s foot. It works, I tell you.”

  “What, it protects you?”

  “Yes, it protects me. I’ve taken that vial with me on every creatch op I’ve ever been on. And I’m still alive, so it must-a be doing its job.” Luigi spoke with the finality of a scientist laying down one of the fundamental laws of physics.

  “So now you’re giving it to me?” asked Billy.

  “Yeah, I’m giving it to you. Don’t worry, I’ve got dozens of them back home. I give them to people I care about. My grandfather would have wanted it that way.”

  Billy didn’t really believe in good-luck charms, whether they came from olive trees or the legs of rabbits. But he could see that Luigi took his lucky olive oil very seriously, and that giving it to Billy was a very big deal.

  “Thank you, Luigi.” Billy put the chain around his neck, allowing the vial to drop beneath his T-shirt. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  “You better believe you will,” said Luigi. Then he nodded sagely, adding: “And it will-a take good care of you.”

  Minutes later they descended to an AFMEC airstrip deep in the Chinese countryside. The pickup’s landing was even rougher than its takeoff. The truck slammed into the runway so hard Billy felt sure the axles would crack, and then immediately began skidding across the tarmac at top speed, fishtailing into 360-degree spins as Luigi desperately tried to bring the thing to a stop. When he proved unable to slow it down in time, they shot off the end of the runway and splashed into the middle of a very wet rice paddy.

  Never mind the creatches, thought Billy as the truck began sinking into the mud. You need the lucky olive oil to save you from this pickup.

  Luigi tried for several frustrating minutes to get the truck back up on dry land, then pounded the dashboard with an angry fist, growling more words his grandmother would not approve of.

  “Okay,” said Luigi. (Billy had never heard the word okay sound so thoroughly un-okay.) “I’ll take you to the secret entrance on foot, then see if anyone there can tow me out. Stay here, Papeesha,” he said to the sound-asleep demi-creatch as he opened the driver-side door. “I’ll be right back.”

  Billy grabbed his prep manuals and followed Luigi, plunging knee-deep into the water of the rice paddy. By the time Billy and Luigi crawled up an embankment to a packed-earth footpath nearby, they were both sopping wet from the thighs down. Billy surveyed the area as he did his best to wring the water from his pants legs.

  They were surrounded by steep hills, thick with groves of bamboo that glowed golden yellow in the early morning sun. The air was hot and humid, and smelled faintly of manure. A lone bird cawed somewhere up in the hills. To one side of the rice paddy stood a crumbling gray farmhouse. Strips of red paper—Chinese characters hand-painted upon them—were peeling away from the top and sides of its doorway, flapping quietly in the warm breeze.

  “Does all this belong to AFMEC?” asked Billy.

  “Not exactly. The Chinese government leases it to us on a year-to-year basis. They don’t allow us to put up fences, though, so we have to keep a low profile in case locals wander through.”

  Billy smiled as he thought of their landing a few minutes earlier. Some low profile.

  They followed the footpath out of the rice paddy and up a hill. Soon they were making their way through a Chinese graveyard, weaving between moss-covered gravestones and sculptures of fearsome lions.

  “So where’s this AFMEC field office?” asked Billy.

  “Just on the other side of this graveyard,” said Luigi. “Now listen, I should warn you about Chang Ming.”

  “Chang Ming?”

  “He guards the entrance to the field office.” Luigi sounded respectful. Or maybe just scared. “He’s very tough, and extremely short-tempered. He likes to pick on new guys.”

  “New guys,” said Billy. “Like me.”

  “Yeah. Don’t let him scare you.” Luigi paused and added, “Too much. He will scare you, it’s unavoidable. He scares me, and I’ve-a known him for years.”

  Billy swallowed hard. If Luigi was scared of this guy, he must be one dangerous man.

  They made their way out of the graveyard and down a path to a small roadside shrine in the shade of an enormous oak tree. The whole thing was no more than four feet square. It consisted of a weathered stone statue on a patch of poured concrete, shielded from the elements by a rickety wooden shelter. Before the statue lay a vase of brittle, dried-out flowers, a sand-filled urn containing burnt stubs of incense sticks, and a plate bearing the shriveled remains of an orange: the offering, Billy imagined, of a poor local farmer.

  Luigi cast cautious glances in all directions to make sure they were alone. He then crouched down and placed a hand on the side of the stone sculpture.

  K’CHIK

  Billy rubbed his chin in admiration as he saw the top of the sculpture swing free on a hinge. Beneath it was an indentation holding a ten-digit keypad, illuminated from within like the buttons of a cell phone. The whole shrine, Billy now understood, had been constructed by AFMEC, expertly camouflaged to blend into the local environment.

  Luigi entered a long series of numbers into the pad, then stood at attention. “Be ready,” he whispered to Billy. “Chang Ming is coming.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Billy straightened up and waited.

  The seconds stretched into a minute.

  “He’ll be here,” said Luigi. “He keeps his own schedule.”

  Billy had already begun to form a mental picture of Chang Ming. He saw him as Jackie Chan with a catastrophic overdose of steroids. Sort of Franken–Jackie Chan.

  Another minute rolled by.

  Billy’s eyes wandered to the base of the shrine. He noticed a mass of cobwebs behind the statue, a leaf from one of the dead flowers caught in it. A sliver of wood, fallen from the roof of the shelter, rolled across the concrete ahead of a light gust of wind. A solitary cockroach skittered out from behind the urn. Billy prepared to squash it with a well-aimed stomp.

  “Noooooooo!” Luigi screamed.

  Next thing Billy knew, he was flat on his back, his head buried in weeds, the full weight of Luigi’s massive body resting squarely upon him.

  “Forgive him, Chang Ming,” said Luigi. He rolled off Billy but stayed on all fours. “He’s new. He didn’t
know.”

  Billy rose on his elbows and glanced in all directions, terrified, expecting the towering figure of Chang Ming to have somehow materialized out of thin air, muscle-bound and ready to pummel him with his bare fists. Only then did he realize that Luigi was talking to the cockroach.

  “A new guy, eh?” said the surprisingly deep voice of Chang Ming. He was just over an inch from head to toe. And he was not a cockroach, Billy could now plainly see. He was a six-legged creature with some roachlike features but many humanoid characteristics as well. His beady black eyes were protruding from a face that included mandibles and antennae along with teeth, eyebrows, and sideburns.

  Billy scrambled into a crouch and turned to Luigi, wondering if this was all some sort of elaborate prank. Chang Ming the Merciless was a little bug dude? But Luigi’s terrified face, contorted into an apologetic grimace as he cowered before Chang Ming, told Billy that this was no joke. Chang Ming—little bug dude or not—was to be feared. And a kid who had attempted to squash the guy presumably had more to fear than most.

  “What’s your name, new guy?” asked Chang Ming. He was standing on his hind legs, two of his remaining legs folded across his tiny chest.

  Billy opened his mouth but no words came.

  Chang Ming raised one of his last two legs and pointed it at Billy. “What are you, deaf?” He had a slight Cantonese accent, one that would have been right at home in the mouth of a Hong Kong cabdriver. “I asked you a question, buddy. I suggest you answer it.”

  “B-Billy. My name is Billy. Billy Clikk.”

  “Click, eh?” Chang Ming cocked his head to one side and spat onto the concrete. The saliva exploded into flame upon hitting the ground, then sent up a surprisingly large cloud of charcoal gray smoke. “Weird name.”

  Flaming saliva? No wonder Luigi’s so scared of this guy.

  Luigi pulled a crumpled brown paper bag from his shirt pocket and began opening it with trembling hands. “I brought you some biscotti, Chang Ming. Your favorite: chocolate amaretto.”