“Kill him!” I wheezed. Blest suddenly came stumbling like a straw puppet with the feeding bowl clutched in a fist. He clocked Balt on the back of the head.
Balt grunted. I felt his grip slacken. It gave me time to get my fingers into his eyes again. He roared, grabbing my wrist. I chopped him in the throat. Blest smacked Balt again with the bowl just above the ear. Balt went raging maniac and charged Blest, rolling on him like a bear. The alien plant leaf which had up till this time been stable, suddenly unfurled, doubling in size, whipping out like a serpent. It latched onto Balt’s midsection like a cincture, squeezing the breath out of him. He writhed and howled, clawing at the thing, only to get more wind sucked out of his lungs.
I kicked at his head. Blest stayed well back from the constricting force that had plagued him for so long. The sudden intrusion on its stable habitat had pushed the plant parasite to violence.
While Balt twisted and howled, I hissed out a vindictive laugh. “Never forgave you for busting up my fingers, Balt. Not too smug now are you, you fucking bitch-ape? What’s that, can’t hear you?” I ground my boot heel into his flailing hand, stepping on it so hard I heard it crunch. He grimaced in agony while struggling in the wet glass.
I motioned to Blest. “Here, help me drag this fuck over to the tanks.” Zan watched the battle out of the corner of his eye in a groggy haze.
We dragged Balt by his heels, taking care not to touch the alien plant. Under no circumstance did I want it to leapfrog to either of us. We upended Balt into the tank formerly occupied by me. He sputtered foul brine and splashed like a fish but he slipped under water, having no more will to fight, clutching feebly at the constricting leaf robbing him of further strength. Before the lieutenant sank to the bottom, his lungs filled with water and he stared out of his glassy cage with lips parted in an O like one of those black bugs in the vessel beside him. Oh, how Balt glared out from behind that glass! If I could only snapshot that scene.
We crouched on our haunches, panting. I reached over and patted Blest on the back. “Good work, friend. You came through as I knew you would. We were always a team.”
Blest babbled an incoherent word. “This is fucking madness, Rusco. Where are we?”
I slapped him on the back. “Madness or not, seems your vine critter came in handy after all.”
I gathered up my boots, then snatched up Balt’s weapon, gripping it in a sweaty palm with an air of triumph. There’d be some serious payback for old Mong now.
Blest stared at me with suspicion glinting in his eyes then at Balt’s twitching form in the tank. “Why put him in there? Let’s kill the fucker and get out of here.” He grimaced as Balt convulsed in his watery prison.
“He’s already dead, Blest. No way to change that.”
“Don’t like him swimming in there, Rusco. He ain’t dead, and you know it.”
“I know what you’re thinking. Let’s not mess with things that aren’t broken.”
Blest shivered, as if recalling an odious memory of his own tank experience. “That damn plant thing constricted me like a bitch, Rusco. The green devil water gave it more strength.”
“Yeah, well be thankful you’re out of there and rid of it now.”
“For how long?” He started to shake like a recovering Myscol addict and I had to grab his shoulders and shake him like a wet blanket and slap his cheeks a few times.
“Snap out of it! We have to move, Blest. First, let’s gather up Zan. He looks to be in a bad way.”
We cut him down from his swinging post, then unwound the leather from his wrists and got the groaning man up onto his feet. His back was mangled up, sure, nothing we could do there. But Mong had spared him the usual agony of extra deep slits this last time. Zan swayed on his feet, moaning, looking around in confused horror.
“Amp up your game, Zan,” I said. “We’ve got a journey to make.” I shook him as I had Blest. Seemed it helped. Zan wasn’t in great shape. I considered dropping him in one of the spare tanks to heal him up better but I grimaced at the idea. No time, and even if I could hold him by down like a rat in that witch water, by the look in his eyes, I knew he’d not go in easily.
“Steady him, Blest. I’ve a little last minute business to take care of.”
“Like what?”
Over to the remaining tanks I hobbled and took the butt end of my rifle in a firm hand. With all my force, I smashed the nearest Mentera tank.
Blest’s eyes bugged out in horror as the glass cracked and green fluid trickled down the side. “Are you fucking insane?”
“Chip and Chong are inseparable,” I declared. “We separate these bitches and we create a whole new dynamic, don’t we? It’ll sharpen up our old friend Mong. He seems to be a big fan of trials and tests.” I leaned in and smashed the glass again with triumph and rage.
“What about us?” Blest croaked. “You plan on getting snipped by their claws?”
“I’m not messing around here any more.”
“Easy for you to say, Rusco, you’re—”
The next strike hit the cracked glass square on and the locust came spilling out in a spray of green water and glass. The thing rolled then coiled up in a dense, black heap. It lay there sprawled, its antennae quivering before the broken tank. Then the dwarf wings fluttered in a burst of movement. The power of flight seemed lost over the passing
