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  Either way, they had every intention of killing her, and she had no intention of dying.

  She stepped back and drew her sword in one fluid motion. She twirled her blade with the same grace a gymnast demonstrates dancing across the mat and twirling a ribbon. Only there was more blood.

  The first ShimVen split apart at the midsection. She planted her back foot, cementing her in place, and held her sword in front of her. The momentum of the charging ShimVens carried two of them forward and impaled them on her blade like kebabs.

  The remaining three grew more frantic as their friends dropped dead. They ran with no apparent target or goal, smashing into shelves and toppling displays. They even swiped at each other when they collided in their rabid attempts to escape.

  That’s when Sam realized what was making the ShimVens act so off. They were afraid. Not of her… If they were, they would be trying to run away from her, not through her. But what else was there? What could scare these demon creatures?

  The ShimVens stopped suddenly, as if time had frozen. Three of them were fanned out in front of her, a semicircle cutting her off from the exit and pinning her against the wall. She’d need to cut through them if she wanted out. What were they waiting for? If they charged now in unison, they had a chance at taking her.

  She heard something behind her. Turning, a small flicker of movement drew her eyes up to the vent on the wall near the ceiling. Leaning out of the vent was a furry creature, about the size of a cat—maybe a bit bigger. Its front claw dug into the wall like it was made of tissue paper. Its teeth were on full display. A warning for all in the room. A glimpse of how they were about to die.

  Now Sam knew what the ShimVens were afraid of. If it scared them, then she knew to be cautious of it. But there were few things that scared her.

  As if it heard her thoughts and took her resilience as a challenge, the creature shot out of the vent like a fuzzy missile. She pivoted out of its main line of fire, but the creature raked its claws across her shoulder. The hit knocked her off balance and shot a wave of hot pain through her body. She braced for a follow-up attack, but it didn’t come. Instead, she heard a cacophony of violent and terrified noises behind her.

  The creature and the ShimVens were locked in battle like a barn full of feral cats, rolling and clawing at each other, screeching and howling.

  Sam poised to attack, her sword at the ready, but didn’t dare interfere in that mess. She watched and waited for them to kill each other.

  Until they rolled her way.

  She dove over them, slashing down and taking the arm off a ShimVen. The hairy critter took advantage of the blow and tore the injured ShimVen to pieces.

  Sam rolled to her feet. The remaining ShimVens, though they outnumbered the newcomer two to one, scurried around searching for a way out. There was no loyalty among the bugs. The ShimVens clawed at each other as they fought for an exit. The newcomer tackled one of them and tore it apart. It didn’t eat it, though; the bugs weren’t prey, they were enemies. This thing attacked like it had a vendetta.

  Sam stood back and let them kill each other. Or at least, let the fuzzy one kill the bugs. Maybe the slaughter would tire it out enough that she could kill it without losing a limb.

  The sudden rumble that came up through the concrete floor dashed those hopes like a rock to the head.

  Something shook the entire shop from underneath. It didn’t feel like a quake, but Sam had never felt one on this planet, so she had nothing to compare it to. It felt more concentrated than a quake, though, like something had grabbed hold of this one structure and started shaking it to hell.

  She backed away from the brawl, toward the exit, hoping she could just run and rendezvous with the team. But then the floor cracked open. It began in the closet where she’d found the six ShimVens, and the cracks snaked out from a drain in the floor, forming a spiderweb design around it. The drain caved in, setting off a chain reaction, inch after inch of the floor falling into a sinkhole.

  Sam hopped back just as the edge of the hole reached her. She jumped up onto the counter and watched the spread stop just feet from her.

  Then the bugs appeared. Dozens of ShimVens climbed out of the hole, eliciting flashbacks of the swarms on the space stations. Now hopelessly outnumbered, the new creature seemed to realize his fate. It arched its back, tipped its face to the sky, and let out a sound like it was blowing into a conch shell. It sounded almost sad.

  Its cry lingered on the air as the ShimVens swarmed and devoured it.

  With the mysterious third party currently being digested, the swarm set its attention squarely on Sam. At least she was in familiar territory now.

  Or so she thought.

  The conch shell bellow returned. It couldn’t have been coming from inside the bellies of the bugs. Right? That would be insane. Though, insane things were becoming all too common.

  No, the sound wasn’t coming from the bugs. It was coming from the herd of fuzzy creatures that began pouring out of the overhead vents. The walls and ceiling began to crumble as the dead creature’s family came to avenge its death.

  It was war.

  And Sam was caught in the middle.

  Not one to take sides, she spun and extended her sword. Bugs and fuzzy creatures alike were diced in half. But when she’d completed her death twirl, the shop was still enveloped in a ferocious war of alien monsters.

  She was not going to survive it with her sword alone… She needed more firepower. And she knew just where to get it. The ShimVens were kind enough to crack a gas line when they burrowed up from underneath the gift shop, and the place was currently filling with flammable gas. Another minute and it would be primed to blow. She just needed to find a way through the carnage. She’d rather not be inside when it exploded.

  She flipped over a mass of fur and pincers and almost slipped when her boots hit the floor, which was slick with blood and guts. She slashed through the crowd, each hole filling in so quickly, she barely had time to pass through it. The exit was just ahead. She pushed through the last line of creatures. As she passed over the threshold of the gift shop, she slashed the tip of her sword against the concrete floor, making a spark.

  The gas lit, and Sam was suddenly in the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon. She jumped, and the force of the explosion pushed her up and away. She slammed into the ground twenty feet away and rolled until the fire on her back was out.

  She did not lament the death she’d caused. Only the candy that was lost—all the candy she would never get to eat.

  She stood and brushed herself off.

  “Got to find the guys,” she said to herself. “This job’s not done.”

  Chapter Seven

  The smoke from the gift shop had grown thicker in the air. The team decided it best to find an indoor space to reconnect and plan their next move.

  “Of course there was an unexpected roadblock,” Joel said, hiding his face in his hands. “I broke my own rule. I jinxed us.”

  They found the maintenance department a few rows over from the arcade pavilion. They nearly had to drag Joel away from Double Dragon, but reason and a hefty dose of threats from Sam won out in the end.

  They stood in a small concrete room. The shelves that lined the wall were full of tools, half-used cans of paint, various solvents and glues, and small buckets of assorted hardware to replace the nuts and bolts of the rides. The mix of chemicals in the air started to make the team’s heads swim.

  “I got a pretty good look at the new thing while it was trying to eat my face off,” Cody said. “It’s called a Rapoo.”

  Joel snickered. “Well, that can’t be too bad. I mean, how dangerous can a furry little critter with ‘poo’ in its name be?”

  Cody sighed. “Ever heard of Trixador?”

  “That moon colony where all the settlers vanished in a night?” Joel said.

  Cody nodded. “Rapoo.”

  “Shit.” Joel sat on a mop bucket and hid his face again.

  Cody leaned against the
wall and looked down at the floor. He closed his eyes, like he was reading the encyclopedia entry for ‘Rapoo’ on the backs of his eyelids.

  “They’ve got teeth hard as diamonds. Harder. There are documented instances of Rapoo actually eating diamonds. They’re fast, capable of achieving land speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. And they’re agile. They move along the ground like weasels, with long, flexible spines. And don’t let their fuzzy exteriors fool you; under the hair, they’ve got a thick layer of fat and skin that some blasters can’t penetrate.”

  Reggie sighed as he summarized, “So they’re fast and hard to kill.”

  “Faster and harder than ShimVens,” Cody qualified.

  “Great,” Joel said. “Because that’s exactly what we needed: a pest worse than the ShimVens. I suppose they are spawned by a Godzilla-sized weasel beast, too?”

  Cody shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

  Joel stood from his bucket. “Well, we did our best. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Didn’t we do this already?” Reggie asked. “We’ve got every last cent invested in this job. We quit, we lose everything. We won’t have enough capital to fund another job, and we won’t have enough fuel to get off this planet. We’ll be stuck here. With ShimVens. And Rapoo.”

  Hopelessness filled the room, mixing with the chemical fumes and pushing the guys toward blackout. But Sam took a deep inhale and felt her head clear.

  “ShimVens and Rapoo,” she repeated to herself, as if it were a clue to some puzzle. She paced the small, concrete room, repeating the names, trying to turn a key in a rusty keyhole.

  “I think Sam’s broken,” Joel said.

  “The ShimVens and Rapoo,” Sam said again, still pacing. “I watched them go at it in the gift shop. I’ve seen that kind of fight before—it wasn’t predator versus prey. It wasn’t a fight for survival or territory. It was bitter. They hate each other. That was a feud, a gang war.”

  Cody seemed to understand where her thoughts were taking her. “You think we can use that?”

  Sam nodded. “We’re in the middle of a war right now. The ShimVens and Rapoo want each other dead; we want them both dead. We need to figure out a way to help them kill each other. Let them do our job for us.”

  Reggie opened the door a crack and peeked outside, performing a routine sweep for hostiles. It seemed like he was being paranoid about some low-intellect alien monsters overhearing their plans.

  “Brainstorm session. How do we make that happen? We thought we killed all the ShimVens, but apparently, they’re in deep hiding underground. Sewer system?”

  Cody brought up the park’s specs. “There are service tunnels under the park connecting everything. Power lines, water, it all runs through there. I guess we can assume that’s where the ShimVens and Rapoo are, as well.”

  Cody minimized the park schematics and brought up the sites on animal behavior and ecology that he frequented. “They’re both apex predators. Put them in the same ecosystem, and they fight for dominance. And we know that at least the ShimVens have been genetically altered, so there’s no telling how they’ll react within a typical ecological framework. They seem to desire to destroy for the sake of destruction.”

  Reggie waved his hands impatiently. “Yeah, they’re monsters, we know. What does any of this mean?”

  “Typically, species won’t march toward mutual destruction out of spite,” Cody said. “Well, aside from humans. But with these two, I think if we find a way to gather them all together and incite a full-blown war, they’ll wipe each other out.”

  “Perfect,” Joel said. “Let’s start a genocide.”

  Sam and Reggie walked the perimeter of the maintenance department, leaving Cody and Joel to devise a plan. They scoured the schematics, poring over every detail of the service tunnels, searching for a solution.

  Turned out, orchestrating a species war wasn’t as simple as they’d hoped.

  “What about here?” Joel pointed to a position on the map, a wide-open area that looked to be a hub for the service tunnels. “It’s big enough. We lure them here. Once they’re in the same place, they’ll just get on with the murdering, right?”

  Cody shook his head. “Sam said that the ShimVens in the gift shop tried to run. They only fought back because they were backed into a corner. There are too many exit points here. We need to trap them all in one place.” An idea sparked in Cody’s head. “Too many exit points. All those tunnels.”

  “Yeah,” Joel said, annoyed. “You already told me my idea was stupid. No need to rub it in.”

  “No, I think you were on to something. Just the totally wrong something.”

  “Thanks,” Joel said, sarcasm thick in his voice.

  Cody highlighted the open space on the schematics. “This hub connects every service tunnel. Move outward from this one spot, and you eventually come to an exit. So if we start here and move outward, we can flush the ShimVens out of the tunnels.”

  Joel nodded. “They’ll be out in the open. We just need a place to corral them and a way to get them there.” He studied the schematics again. His eyes lit up. “There. Definitely there.”

  Cody rolled his eyes. “Though I disagree with your motives, I agree that location will work.” He zoomed out on the schematics, getting as comprehensive a view of the park as they could. “We still need to find the Rapoo, though. Sam said they came out of the ventilation shaft.”

  He overlaid the heating and ventilation system on top of the schematics of the park. It looked like the veins inside a body.

  “In this particular park, the ventilation connects the whole place,” Joel said. “They run above and below ground. If they’re in the vents, we can flush them out the same way.” He pointed to a structure on the north side. “That must be the central air intake. We can put something in the openings, push the Rapoo out.” Joel giggled. “We’ll push out one huge Rapoo.” His face turned red as he laughed breathlessly.

  Sam and Reggie returned.

  Reggie nodded to Joel. “What’s so funny?”

  “He’s got the sense of humor of a third-grader,” Cody said. He raised the schematics for Sam and Reggie to see. “We think we’ve got an idea of how to solve this problem.”

  After Cody explained the plan, Reggie looked at the ceiling, reading his own thoughts like they were scrawled on a piece of paper. “That sounds like it could work. We just need something to flush them out. And a way to lure them to the kill zone.”

  Cody smiled. “I think I’ve figured that out, too.” He highlighted a long, rectangular structure along the eastern edge of the park. “I think we can find everything we need here.”

  Sam’s eyes lit up. “The cafeteria?”

  Cody nodded.

  Sam marched out the door. “Then let’s go shopping.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sam wasn’t hungry anymore. The candy binge had solved that problem. But it also brought about another aching desire within her. Eating all that candy had made her realize that there was so much she’d missed growing up. So much she brushed off as frivolous, now that she’d grown up and adopted a utilitarian lifestyle.

  What else had she missed? What other wondrous foods had she never eaten? The opportunity to search the cafeteria offered her another chance to find out. She was aware that most of the food would be spoiled by now, but there was always the chance she’d find more fantastically processed food that would survive a nuclear explosion.

  It was with that childlike sense of wonder that she burst into the cafeteria of Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park. But along with the heightened sense of awe that jazzed kids on Christmas morning, came the darkest depths of disappointment. No one was ever as disappointed as the child who did not get the item at the top of her wish list. And no one would ever be as disappointed as Sam when she found only beige food trays and bins of rotten meat.

  “Perfect,” Cody said unsarcastically as he retched and pinched his nose. “This stink should be e
nough to lure the ShimVens and Rapoo.”

  “Why haven’t they found it already?” Reggie asked. “Seems like a solid cache of food.”

  Cody ventured a guess, formulating his hypothesis as he studied the carcasses of some dead ShimVens and Rapoo. “Probably too hot a target. Both species would fight over it and lose a portion of their population; they’ve probably deemed it not worth the risk.”

  Sam studied the labels along the food line as if they were written in a foreign language. “What is a sloppy joe?”

  Joel shook his head. “Sometimes I think you’re a robot.”

  An expert at masking her emotions, Sam did nothing to let Joel know that comments like that bothered her. Perhaps she should. She recalled Reggie telling her that they were family and families fight and she should be honest about things that bother her… But she didn’t want to bother with all of that. She just wanted Joel to not be a dick.

  “If I was a robot,” she said over her shoulder, “I would pull your arms off and shove one up and one down. Your guess as to where.”

  Joel swallowed hard. “It’s a mess of meat slopped on a bun. Sloppy joe.” His tone was devoid of humor. He seemed to have caught Sam’s unsubtle message.

  Joel and Reggie began gathering up the meat and any other odiferous food they could find. All of the pans in the foodservice line were at least half-full. They found a cart in the kitchen and loaded it with the pans, trying not to vomit from the smell and thick swarm of flies that followed them.

  Cody and Sam explored the kitchen. They had the lure, now they just needed a way to flush the creatures from hiding. The means to expose the Rapoo, at least, could be found here in the kitchen.

  “They have sensitive senses of smell. We just need to pump something into the ventilation system that irritates it, and they should come running out looking for fresh air.” Cody picked up a plastic tub full of red powder. “Fine black pepper should do the trick.”