The Unbearables
Part 4
The swamp around Castle Plundarr would never be mistaken for "prime development land", although RD Rivero had made a small fortune selling parcels of it to the Wollos as such. It was a humid, sulfurous mass of rotting and unnaturally-shaped vegetation. Every insect bit or stung, most of them large enough that they didn't have to sneak around to suck blood; they just knocked their victim down and took what they wanted.
The Slinky mob's hideout was located in the swamp, just beyond the moat of Castle Plundarr. The remnants of the Spotface mob made their way towards it, in the hour just before dawn. Fianna led the way, Spotface bringing up the rear.
"AAAAIIIIEEEE!" Fianna suddenly screamed shrilly.
"WHAT?! WHAT?!" Ayanna screamed back in panic.
The massive caninoid was spinning like a top, his huge arms thrashing at his own body, slapping himself with fear-crazed speed and ferocity.
"Spider web! Spiders!" the caninoid yiped. "Isitonme?! Isitonme?!"
"Hold still, you big puppy!" Ayanna yelled. The nincompoop stopped, eyes wide with terror, his whole body trembling with enough force to make nearby trees shiver.
"There it is, on your nose," Spotface said. Fianna's right hand flew up and smashed across his face with such force his hat flew off. The caninoid staggered backwards on wobbly legs; he'd nearly knocked himself unconscious.
Ayanna grinned. "Consider that payback for tying me to that stop sign pole. Now let's get moving, if you can still walk."
She continued on while Fianna followed clumsily.
********
The Slinky encampment was small, a cluster of shacks surrounded by a chain-link fence. The largest was set aside as living quarters and office space.
Axelle leaned against the desk in Slinky's office, wondering if she'd made a mistake. The air conditioner hummed from the wall in a demonstration of mechanical futility as sweat crawled down the assassin's back and stained the armpits of her shirt.
I should have hooked up with Spotface, she thought to herself. At least the air conditioning worked. And everyone was somewhat sane.
On the floor in front of her, Lucifer Daimou was playing Ants in the Pants, the old Fisher-Price game. He'd long ago lost all of the ants; however, there were plenty of big fat black ants running around in the swamp, so whenever he felt like playing, he just went out and caught a bunch of them.
Axelle recognized them from her courses in jungle warfare: bullet ants. An inch long, they were highly venomous, and so aggressive they made fire ants look like dead Quakers. She sat on the desk and pulled her legs up as one hastened by, stopping to hiss at her as it went.
"Sure you don't wanna play, Deadly Killer Lady?" LD asked, looking at her from a face covered with blisters and welts. His voice had the faint wheeze of incipient anaphelactic shock.
Just then the door opened and Slinky Avenger came inside. She walked over and through the hissing ants without any concern, coming to her desk and sitting down. She saw an ant scuttling across the desk, and her tounge snapped out a good twenty inches, adhering to the ant, and then snapped back into her mouth.
"Chewy," Slinky said, noticing Axe's wide-eyed stare.
Axe fought down the bile that was working up her throat. Trying to concentrate on business, she said, "So how do things look?" Axe asked.
Slinky grinned. "Well sweethaat, with dose mugs in da Spotface mob outta da way, it looks like weez in da clear."
Axe raised an eyebrow. "Could you translate that into English?"
"We got the catnip trade sewed up," Slinky said. "We own the ass of every nipped out feline in the TCATGR! WE ARE GODS HERE!!!"
Windows shattered and the ants began to hiss with renewed energy.
"Sorry," Slinky said with a shrug.
"Now I know how Fianna felt," Axe said, massaging her ears. "So am I out of a job or what?"
"Heck no!" Slinky chirped. "Fianna and Ayanna are still on the loose. You gotta whack those two before you're finished."
"Ah, a mission at last ," Axe grinned. "So what are you paying me anyway?"
"Two sticks of slightly-used bubble gum and all the catnip you can carry."
Axe considered this, then said, "Hell, why not? I need the practice. But, uh keep the gum."
********
The second-largest shed in the compound was the catnip storehouse, equipped with a large lock on the large door. Fianna looked carefully around, then took the lock in his right hand and pulled with increasing force until the entire latch mechanism tore out of the wood.
"You still haven't told me why you wanted to come out here," Fianna said as he and Spotface entered the darkened shed. Light spread out before them, and Fianna looked down to find Ayanna wearing a diver's lamp on her head.
"I've got an idea," she said. "If I'm right, it may bring down the Slinky mob, the Unbearables, even RD himself!"
They came to the back of the shed and found dozens of bales of catnip, stacked high and deep.
"Okay, I don't know what you're hoping to find but, hey, pay attention!" Fianna said as the light went out.
Spotface yanked her head back out of a catnip bale. Her light was askew and her eyes were slightly unfocused.
"Sorry, too much to resist," she slurred, then dashed off over the bales. Fianna sat down on one with a resigned sigh and waited.
A moment later there was a joyful whoop and Ayanna came charging back down, a rolled piece of paper in her mouth. She hit the floor with a skid then ran to Fianna and dropped the paper in front of him.
"It's just what I suspected!" she said proudly. "It's all a conspiracy! RD outlawed catnip to drive up the price, then commissioned his Unbearables to eliminate the competition and steal everybody else's supplies. Slinky is his secret outlet to the 'nip market on the street."
"How do you know this?" Fianna asked.
Ayanna nudged the paper. Fianna picked it up and unfolded it. At the top it said, "Packing Slip". Below this was a hand-written message.
"Dear Slink," Fianna read aloud. "Here is the catnip the Unbearables took from the Spotface mob at my command. Remember to mark up the price at least three hundred percent, since we control it all now. Hugs and kisses, RD." The caninoid blinked at the paper, then said, "Well, that's pretty convincing."
"Yeah, we, hey what's that noise?" Ayanna asked as a strange, irritating whistle penetrated her ears.
Fianna reacted as though the sound was penetrating his skull. The caninoid cried out in pain, his hands going to his ears. Twin flickers of silver flashed out of the darkness and slammed into the defenseless dog's chest. With a grunt of suprise Fianna toppled backwards over his catnip bale. Only his wingtips were visible, and they weren't moving.
The whistle stopped, and the lights came on overhead. Axelle stood by the switch, her dog whistle hanging from her lips like a cigarette.
"'Achey Breaky Heart' indeed!" she snorted.
"You!" Spotface yelled.
Axelle put her whistle in her shirt pocket, reached beneath her jacket and produced a set of Tanto fighting knives.
"Vee!" she said with a smile as she advanced on the cheetah. "Double-you and ex, why, Zhie."
"Back off, you pretentious chimp!" the cheetah snapped. "You're no match for my speed!"
Axe hesitated, then said, "Do me a favor: try not to beg for mercy. A true artist does not suffer distractions lightly."
Despite herself, Ayanna was rattled by Axe's sheer confidence, as though the cheetah were already stuffed and mounted in the assassin's trophy room. But Axe kept coming, and Spotface knew she'd have to strike first if she wanted to strike last as well.
The cheetah tore across the remaining distance between them and launched herself at Axelle's head. Axe's smile never wavered; the entire face vanished, and Ayanna felt a stitchery of fire erupt in her soft underbelly. She screamed in pain and landed sloppily, her legs going out from under her as she skidded across the floor, leaving a trail of red in her wake.
Ayanna staggered to her feet. She was afraid to look beneath herself, afraid she'd find her own bowels trailing on the floor beneath her. But when she steeled herself and looked, she saw only a series of thin scratches, running from breastbone to groin, then outward to each hind foot.
"That's where I'll make the cuts when I skin you," Axe commented mildly. "You're going to make a lovely toilet seat cover."
Ayanna looked up snarling, then suddenly smiled. Axe registered the change a fraction of a second too late. Then a large, loosely-packed bale of catnip slammed down over her head, stunning her and pinning her arms to her sides.
Axe staggered away from her attacker, still wearing the bale, spitting out catnip and shaking it from her hair. When she reeled around to see who had committed this affrontery, she found Fianna. The caninoid's shirt sported two holes, one for each lung. Through the fabric, metal glinted.
"Chain mail," the nincompoop said with a wide grin. "Don't leave home without it."
Axelle's trademark Mona Lisa smile never faltered, but her eyes narrowed dangerously.
"You are roadkill on the highway when I get loose, buster!" she growled. "Remember that sonic emitter I used in my story? I still have the chair and all the straps in the prop room. You are so dead!"
Fianna grinned, his golden eyes alight with mischief. "But to do that you'd have to leave off your current project and write a riff."
"Is that a dare, mister?" Axe said, her eyes shooting daggers at the dog.
"Why, now that you mention it, I believe it is!" Fianna chuckled. Then the caninoid grabbed the squawking assassin by the bale and sat her in the corner, piling enough catnip on top of her to ensure she'd be stuck until the story ended.
When he was finished, he turned to find Ayanna looking at him strangely.
"What?" he said.
"You're not nuts, are you?" she asked.
Fianna grinned and started towards the door.
"You're not suicidal either," she said with growing conviction. She bounded in front of the dog and sat down, bringing him to a halt. "You just do this stuff to keep people involved and interested, so they don't drift away."
Fianna shrugged and walked around the cheetah, saying, "It's my way of showing appreciation for my friends, that's all."
"It really bugs you when somebody leaves, doesn't it?" Ayanna said.
Fianna kept walking. After a moment, Spotface followed.
TBC