The Jagged Teeth Read online

  “Mhmm,” the woman said and moved back into the shadows.

  “Seriously, please don’t eat me. I’d make terrible plant food. It’s all the smoking. Wait, did I say smoking? I don’t smoke. I’d never burn a plant. Oh, God, being eaten by Mutants was so not the way I wanted to die!” Reimar babbled as he desperately wriggled in his chair.

  The woman said nothing. She just stared at Reimar, who found this deeply unsettling. His squirming bid for freedom failed, Reimar moved to another tactic. “Look, err, what’s your name?”

  “Bayan,” she said quietly.

  “Look, Bayan, I think we can understand each other. I want to live and you want to… well…err… plant your seeds or something?”

  “No. I want to unlock the key to immortality.” Bayan said, deadpan.

  “Hahaha, very funny…”

  Bayan didn’t laugh.

  Reimar started. “No, seriously?”

  She gracefully arched one eyebrow, “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  Reimar whistled softly, “Well shit…”

  They were interrupted as the man walked in. “Bayan,” he said casually.

  “Resner.” She acknowledged, not moving from her spot.

  The man turned his attention to a now thoroughly stunned Reimar. “Why is he here?”

  Bayan looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t sure…”

  “About what? He’s human, and he’s not what we’re looking for. Shoot him.”

  “Hey, now, nobody needs to do any shooting. Just let me and my granny go and we’ll get out of here, alright?” Reimar stammered.

  The two ignored him. “He isn’t,” Bayan agreed, “but shouldn’t we at least…”

  “No. Shoot him. Leave him for the wolves.” The man said simply.

  She shrugged, “Okay.”

  “Wait, no! I’m not human! I’m a plant too. Just…” Reimar was babbling as the woman grabbed him.

  “Quiet!” she snapped, “Try to die with some dignity.”

  “Easy for you to say Petals!” Reimar protested as she cut the ropes and led him back outside through tunnels carved into the rock. “You’re going to shoot me just for being human?”

  “Yup.”

  “What did I ever do to you?” Reimar wailed.

  “I’m a Mutant. You’re a human. You’d shoot me too if I gave you a chance,” Bayan stated bluntly.

  “I would now,” Reimar muttered.

  She laughed as they exited the cave system to a ledge overlooking miles of forest to the East. The sun was setting. “I’m sure you would. Still at least you get a nice view.”

  “Oh, well, that’s okay then,” Reimar drawled sarcastically. He looked out across the trees. The orange band drawn across the horizon gave way softly to a pink and purple hue, arching above the peaks of the mountains in the distance. The view filled him with the boundless longing for life that a man only feels on the steps of the gallows. “Can’t you just let me go?” he pleaded softly.

  Bayan almost managed to look sad for a moment. “That’s not how it works. I’m sorry.” She said. She put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him to his knees.

  “Okay, okay…,” Reimar panted, he’d been close to death several times but he’d never seen it coming like this before. “Just…please don’t shoot my Granny.”

  The woman smiled sadly behind him. “Sure,” she said, unconvincingly, as she pulled out the revolver. She was still smiling when she shot him.

  3: No man shall go free

  Sound came first. A muted soundtrack of distorted voices, a confused stomp of feet echoing in the dark, two feet dragging across the floor. His eyes were open but all he could see was darkness. The throbbing pain from the cut on the side of his head where the bullet had skimmed past his skull pulsed rhythmically to the frantic beating of his heart. His head hurt, and his arms were held firmly across the shoulders of two… well he wasn’t sure what. But they were dragging him deeper into what sounded like a cave. Water dripped around him, ever so often falling on his face. Cold, wet, it fled along the contours of his face like glacial tears.

  Voices came and went: some cried for help, some snarled and screamed in rage. Reimar trembled in fear. He knew where he was.

  The walk ended abruptly as he was unceremoniously thrown to the ground on the cold, wet, earth. His fingers dug into the loam, longing for the escape route they knew his body couldn’t follow.

  Silence fell. Reimar could only hear his own erratic, panicked breathing.

  A light appeared, but no bright, cleansing light, just an enveloping shade of grey. The light moved closer, the Grey leaned down.

  “Do you know where you are?” the Grey asked. Its voice was dry, polite and utterly emotionless.

  “Y..y…yes,” Reimar stammered.

  “Do you know who I am?” The voice probed deeper.

  “I, I do,” Reimar swallowed hard.

  “This is good,” the voice said calmly. “To his feet!” it commanded.

  Two pairs of unseen hands lifted him to his feet. “Tell me, have you lived a good life?”

  “I tried, sir” Reimar breathed. It seemed wise to be polite.

  The voice chuckled. “Don’t we all…” The light receded slightly and lowered. “To live a good life, doing good, being good… that is the meaning of life is it not?”

  “I…well, I suppose.”

  “Then, if you know this, and you know where you are… You must know I have not lead a good life.” The voice paused, “So you know, when I ask you a question… you will answer it.”

  Reimar trembled but said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything.

  “Hmm, you are unsure of my meaning? Pity. Humans usually grasp these things quickly. Allow me to…illuminate it.” The Grey shone brighter in the dark. In the sudden flare of light, Reimar’s sight chose its moment to return. It showed him the oval of the cave he stood in, the stalactites stabbing down from the ceiling… the human skeleton standing next to him.

  Reimar squawked, fell and scrabbled away from it. The skeleton looked at him disinterestedly through the hollow dark caverns of its eyes. Its neck creaked as it tilted to one side slightly, revealing straggling cables swarming across its frame. Lights flickered in the shadows among the spines and spurs of its bones, illuminating it in the gloom like a macabre Christmas tree.

  It wasn’t alone. Several of the things dotted the chamber. A couple sat on barrels playing cards in the corner, another was doing a very good impression of urinating up one of the walls. If they realised they were dead, they sure didn’t act like it. One of the two that had dragged Reimar in leaned down and grabbed his forearm. It pulled him to his feet and stood behind him with its hands on his shoulders, forcing him to face the human man slouching on a throne at the rear of the room next to a yellow spotlight which now loaned its weary light to the hollow.

  A throne was perhaps the wrong word. It was a battered, flaking gilt chair, positioned before a bristling thicket of ivory, from which tusks of all shapes and sizes pointed in every direction. A pair of human women sprawled on the pile, gazing at Reimar with eyes as hollow as the skeletons. Their beauty clashed with the ugly scene around them and the heavy chains wrapped around each of their ankles.

  The man smiled indulgently at his creation and beckoned from his throne. The skeleton moved forwards pushing Reimar before it. The man’s face was half-metal and an odd grey square screen covered where his left eye should be. From the square a digital eye peered out, drawn on in pixilated black. It blinked out of time with the biological one in an extremely disconcerting fashion. Other parts of him were metallic too, most noticeably an entire leg, an elbow and, interestingly, a large part of his cranium, which had been replaced with a spherical bulb of grey steel.

  “Welcome, my boy,” the man said warmly. “I’m sure you know who I am. Still, manners matter. I am Cyber.” He observed Reimar carefully. “I see you too have moved beyond the realms of petty humanity.” With this he gestured with a mixture of metal and biolo
gical fingers at Reimar’s right leg. His trousers had torn off at the knee, revealing his battered but functional prosthetic leg. Reimar shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

  “Now, I think, we will understand one another.” Cyber stood, unfolding out of his chair. The women on either side flinched automatically as he strode past. He waked over to Reimar, who was by now, quite literally, shaking in his boots.

  “Come now, come now, there is no need for fear,” Cyber said softly. The women behind him revealed the lie with their wide, frightened eyes. “You know the way to something I need. All I need you to do is tell me how to find it.”

  “Find what?” Reimar asked, finding his courage.

  “You know what it is I seek,” Cyber said slowly and deliberately.

  “I’m not sure if I do,” Reimar laughed nervously. Cyber did not laugh. “Tell me!” he hissed threateningly.

  Reimar babbled, “I honestly don’t know what you want, I really don’t!”

  The man strode across the floor. He grabbed Reimar by his shirt and hoisted him up into the air. “I seek the key to immortality!” he yelled in Reimar’s face. “A freedom from this artificial life I have endured for too long! No longer will my life be dependent on machinery and metal! Now tell me where to find that mountain!”

  Reimar’s mouth worked but his panicked brain went blank and no sound came out.

  There was silence. “Well, that’s a first,” Cyber said disappointedly. He sounded so human that Reimar’s fear lifted, but only for a moment. “I suppose you really don’t know. Pity,” Cyber continued, dropping him. “Throw him in the pit!”

  “What?” Reimar said shocked, “But I know where it is!”

  “Too late. In the pit!” The man said angrily. He turned away.

  Fell fingers grabbed Reimar and dragged him towards a side tunnel filled with awful sounds of screeching and scratching. “No, wait, no, I can be useful! Wait!” Reimar yelled. The noises came closer and the light dimmed.

  A gunshot thundered in the cavern and the fingers fell away. Reimar fell to the floor.

  “You!” Cyber snarled.

  “You bet your sweet arse” a familiar voice drawled. Bayan sat with her back to wall on a recently vacated barrel. Its previous occupant lay sparking and smoking by her feet. A smoking revolver was held loosely in one hand, hanging nonchalantly over her crossed legs. Her other hand held an apple. She took a large bite.

  The man flinched as the crunch echoed from the rocks. “Why are you here? Our business is concluded. The boy is mine,” he snarled in annoyance.

  Bayan shrugged and took another bite. The man flinched again. “I just really love the décor, Cyber,” she said sarcastically.

  “Leave!” Cyber snarled.

  “Not without him,” Bayan replied, without looking at Reimar. “As inconvenient as it is to both of us, I need him. Alive. And preferably in one piece.”

  “We had an accord. No man shall go free. You knew that when you sold him.”

  “Sold me?!” Reimar exclaimed indignantly.

  Bayan looked at him for the first time. “It was that, or kill you. I think I made the right choice, don’t you?” She said calmly.

  Reimar didn’t have much of an answer to this, so she turned her attention back to Cyber. She took a final bite of the apple and jumped lightly to her feet. “C’mon, Barry, cut the crap and let the kid go. We both have better things to be doing than standing in this shitty cave arguing.”

  “Don’t call me that!” Cyber hissed, clearly incensed.

  Bayan covered her mouth, theatrically. “Woops!” she said, muffled through her palm. “It just slipped out!”

  Cyber growled. The women on either side of him shrank away in fear. Bayan’s fist tightened almost imperceptibly around the gun.

  “The kid isn’t even human, technically you’re not letting a man go free. I’ll…” Whatever she had to say next was cut off. While she’d been talking the number of lights in the gloom surrounding her had grown.

  “Into the pit, both of them!” Cyber yelled angrily as bony arms reached out from the dark keen to do their masters bidding.

  “Fair enough,” Bayan shrugged nonchalantly, unperturbed by the surging skeletons. A split second later the small explosive inside the apple she’d dropped earlier exploded dramatically, blowing bone fragments and apple juice in all directions. Bayan moved quickly.

  “C’mon, hero, let’s get you out of here,” She said and grabbed Reimar’s hand in the dark. Her hand was small but strong. Thin, unmistakably feminine fingers gripped and pulled him to his feet.

  Her hand led him through darkness, through moans and cries in the dark towards a slight breeze that blew gently on his face. It blew stronger and stronger the further along he came.

  They left the cave through a cold iron ladder. Reimar had never climbed faster. Outside, they ran into the treeline under the light of a crescent moon and stopped to catch their breath. “What…the…!” Reimar panted.

  “I imagine you have some questions,” Bayan remarked, having recovered far more quickly. She peered around at their surroundings.

  “Just a few,” Reimar managed, sarcastically.

  “Well, shoot,” Bayan said. “I think we’ve got a few minutes before the others arrive.”

  “The others?”

  “Your Gran, and the robot that keeps threatening to shoot me.”

  “Why would you..?” Reimar started.

  “Well,” Bayan interrupted, “partly because I was starting to believe him, partly because I’m not overly fond of slavers like Cyber but, mainly, because according to your Gran…,” she looked at him intensely, “you know the way to the King.”

  Reimar started. “And why would you want to go there?” He asked cynically.

  This train of thought was promptly derailed as Meinal came stomping bad temperedly through the woods towards them. Granny could just be heard scolding the robot over the sound of splintering wood. “… And another thing, walk slower you stupid machine! My hips hurt! My goodness, have you no sense at all?”

  Meinal stomped over to Reimar and Bayan. “We are here, Wrinkled One,” he sighed dejectedly, his eye a depressed blue.

  “I…what? I can’t see them. Down, robot!” Meinal picked up Granny and deposited her none too carefully in a bush to his left.

  “Woops,” he said unconvincingly over Granny’s tirade from the depths of the bushes. “Master, bossy one,” he acknowledged, stomping over and sitting with a resounding crash on an unfortunate holly bush.

  “Meinal,” Reimar greeted him fondly. “Would you mind rescuing Gran, please?”

  Meinal nodded, reluctantly, and plucked Granny from the bush before depositing her on a fallen log. She sat looking rather dazed with several leafy twigs embedded in her white hair.

  “Same as you. I want answers,” Bayan said, answering Reimar’s question as if nothing had happened.

  “No. I want to find out who destroyed my home. You want to live forever. Not the same thing,” Reimar corrected her, walking over to his Gran and starting to remove the foliage from her hair.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said, dazedly.

  Bayan shrugged. “Whatever. Take me with you. You won’t even have to thank me for saving your life,” she added with a wry smile.

  Reimar snorted, “… from the people you sold me too!”

  She shrugged, “I didn’t want to kill you, but I couldn’t let you go free. Cyber was a good solution. I had a debt to pay.”

  “Master, if I might interject. I believe we could remedy this situation easily.” Meinal joined the conversation.

  “Yes, Meinal?” Reimar queried tiredly. He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day.

  “System proposes we simply kill this woman (he gestured at Bayan). I calculate a 27.93527% chance she will attempt to kill you again. Personality profile matches a psychopathic megalomaniac.”

  Bayan arched a delicate eyebrow but said nothing.

  Granny, apparently now recovered
from her ordeal, got to her feet and shuffled over to Bayan. She peered at her face. Granny’s eyes were still sharp and clear, her light blue pupils appeared enormous, magnified in the round thick lenses of her glasses. She sniffed once. “She smells like flowers,” she announced, suspiciously.

  “Yes, thank you for that piece of information, Granny,” Reimar said sarcastically.

  “Are you done?” Bayan asked quietly, staring back into Granny’s eyes. Granny narrowed her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said and moved away to sit beside Reimar. “I like her,” she said decisively.