Part 7 (1/2)
”-realize,” Dread continued, ”this is but a clever-” He paused tellingly.
”Now!” Louie shouted.
Dwight's still snout suddenly snapped around the archfiend's leg. Uttering a cry equally divided between surprise and pain, Dread once again toppled to the ground.
Doc shot the roscoe from Big Bertha's hand, then trained both his six-shooters on the horizontal mastermind.
Dread's groan held a particularly sinister edge. He slowly turned his head to stare malevolently at Delores and her cohorts. His words were even slower and more fraught with meaning than usual: ”You don't expect to escape-unavenged.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. It was true, Delores thought. They had won the battle. But what good would it do them if they could never get out of Joe's Bar?
”Yip, yip! Bark bark bark!” Dwight announced.
”Of course not,” Louie added as he smiled at Dread. ”The Doctor won't be able to avenge anything. Dread is coming with us.”
The bad guys snarled collectively.
”Try anything,” Doc drawled, ”and I'll show you why I won two blue ribbons at the Wild West Territorial Fair.”
”Two blue ribbons?” Big Bertha's voice held a grudging respect.
”Well, only one of them was for shootin',” Doc admitted. ”More than that would have been redundant. Got the other one for cannin'.”
”Canning?” Big Louie asked.Doc nodded. ”Best dandelion preserves northwest of the Pecos.”
”What if I”-Dread paused with great import-”refused?”
Dwight growled, his teeth snapping shut a fraction of an inch from the villain's throat.
”Whatever you say,” the villain allowed. ”I mean, perhaps it is time for a”-Dread halted uncertainly-”change of scene.”
At the dog's urging, the criminal mastermind got to his hands and knees and crawled quickly from the bar, surrounded by Delores, Louie, Zabana, Officer O'Clanrahan, Dwight, and Doc. Further interference from Dread's bench-people was discouraged by two six-guns, a police special, and a strong set of canine teeth, all aimed at their leader.
The door slammed shut behind them, and they were out on the street, in the eternal night.
Delores looked admiringly at Big Louie. ”You got us out of there.”
Louie blushed. ”Well, it wasn't me, exactly.”
”Don't be so bashful. I didn't know you had it in you.” She gave the sidekick a hearty pat on the back.
”I don't,” Louie admitted. ”It was Dwight.”
”The dog?” Delores asked, not quite comprehending.
”Bark, bark. Yip bark bark,” Dwight replied.
”Beg pardon, missy,” Doc interrupted. ”But it might be better to do our congratulatin'
later. We have a bar full of angry fellas behind us here.”
”Right you are, boyo!” Officer O'Clanrahan agreed as angry shouts accompanied the sounds of stomping feet from within the bar. ”Leave it to a local. I know every back way there is hereabouts.” He pointed to an alleyway across the street. ”Down there!
Quickly!”
Delores frowned at the still-crouched Doctor Dread. ”Zabana? Would you mind carrying our reluctant guest?”
Dread looked up angrily from his crouch, as if he might hesitate meaningfully in obeying Delores' orders. However, the combined proximity of dog fang and jungle muscle kept the villain's complaints to a subverbal level as Zabana lifted him with a single hand.
”Jungle prince at your service!” Zabana announced as he hoisted the snakeskin-suited miscreant over his head.”Good enough,” Delores agreed. ”Let's get out of here!”
They followed Officer O'Clanrahan and Dwight into the alley. It was a very dark alley. Where harsh white light seemed to be everywhere on the nighttime streets, here it pooled every fifty feet or so beneath pitifully dim bulbs set high up on the brick walls, leaving the s.p.a.ces in between totally devoid of illumination. Dwight barked occasionally to let the rest of them know that he and Officer O'Clanrahan were still in the lead. But Delores didn't like walking into the utter darkness. It was like stepping into the void, a place beyond the Cineverse, where there were no more movie worlds, where there was nothing-except nothingness. She had a sudden, chilling thought: If the Change changed everything again, would this be the final result? Would the Ci- neverse itself cease to exist?
Delores forced herself to breathe regularly, and to keep on walking. She had to admit it. There was only one reason for her thoughts to wander to such depressing extremes.
She was still jumpy from her last confrontation in the dark. It was a foolish fear.
There wasn't going to be a slime creature waiting for her in every dark place she ever walked into. There couldn't be.
”I've been waiting for you,” the deep voice moaned out of the darkness.
Delores only jumped a little bit. After all, she had been expecting this.
”I guess that you have not been waiting for me,” the voice said dolefully. ”I realize that, at first, the thought of me might be repulsive, nauseating, malodorous, and likely to cause people of a gentle const.i.tution to lose their lunches. But I can be patient.
Believe me”-the creature sighed soulfully-”I do grow on people. I have to-it's the fungus in the slime.”
”Oh, no!” Dread exclaimed from where Zabana carried him over one jungle-prince shoulder. ”It's not-It's not-”
”It is,” the Slime Monster rea.s.sured him.
Dread screamed.
”He faint,” Zabana remarked. ”Dead weight on shoulder. ''
”Such is the memory of slime,'' the monster commented.
”Now, see here!” Delores demanded. ”We have no time for this!” Her patience was at an end. Not only was this monster threatening them, but Big Bertha and the many minions could find them at any minute! Delores hesitated before she spoke again, but realized she had to ask it, even though she knew she didn't want to hear the answer.
”What do you want?”
”I want to give you a choice,” the voice said calmly. ”You may come with me, and live with me in eternal, if somewhat messy, bliss. So I am mildly radioactive. So what? Why can't I be loved?”The creature lapsed into a gloomy silence.
”Or?” Delores prompted after a moment.
”Or,” the monster sadly continued. ”I will be forced to drown you and your fellows in a suffocating wall of slime. You see, we monsters are not accustomed to taking 'no'
for an answer.”