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  A bug took advantage of the opening. It lunged and cut Joel across his shoulder.

  “Reggie? Joel? You guys there?” Cody said.

  Joel screamed as a flash of hot pain seared his shoulder and shot through his arm to his fingertips. “Shitfuck!” he yelled through the comms. “We’re having a situation! Please hold!”

  The pain brought him to one knee, and the cars to a standstill.

  The bugs pressed forward, forcing Reggie and Joel further away from the ladder. Sensing their escape about to be cut off, Reggie slashed with a renewed sense of vigor. He dropped two bugs, leaving only three to cut through.

  Hopes of killing them died in his chest as a new surge of bugs appeared from tunnels two and three. They must have sensed the flour in the air and taken it as a sign that something wasn’t right, that something was about to happen that they would not like. They ran past Reggie and Joel, headed straight for the ladder. They scrambled over each other, fighting to climb it.

  Joel and Reggie’s exit was gone.

  “What’s plan B?” Reggie asked as he formed a human wall between Joel and the bugs.

  Joel growled through his teeth. “Don’t have one.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  Joel laughed and then winced from the pain. He pulled a small bundle from his pocket and handed it to Reggie. It was wrapped like a loaf of bread from someone’s grandma. Reggie unfolded the white cloth to reveal a pipe bomb.

  “What’s plan C?” Reggie asked. “Hopefully it doesn’t involve us getting flash-fried in a tunnel that’s been pumped full of aerosol flour.”

  Joel stood, gritting his teeth. “It’s rigged with a three-minute timer. We set it and forget it.”

  Reggie caught a leaping ShimVen in the throat with one of his pincers and threw the dead creature to the floor. “You may not have noticed, but our exit is blocked. And even at my fastest, I couldn’t run the length of one of these tunnels in three minutes. It’s got to be a mile long.”

  “The shortest tunnel is point-eight-seven miles long, actually. And we won’t be running.”

  Just then, cars two and three raced into the hub and skidded to a halt mere feet from them. The second he had been attacked, Joel had turned the cars around, knowing an alternate exit would be needed.

  “We Mario Kart out of here,” he said with a smile. He climbed into car number two.

  Reggie slashed one more bug, then climbed into car number three. “Dibs on Yoshi.”

  Joel slammed on the accelerator. “Bring it.”

  They tore off down tunnel two, the shortest route, with three minutes until the pipe bomb would explode. Well, ‘tore off’ might be a bit of an exaggeration. They were driving vintage bumper cars, after all.

  They raced by a scattering of ShimVens. The bugs seemed confused, off. They definitely sensed something in the air. Whether they realized what was about to happen was undetermined, but they seemed to know something was going on.

  Joel couldn’t pass up the opportunity to crash into the bugs they passed. He swerved to the left and smashed into one, which bounced off the hood with a satisfying thud.

  Reggie yelled his objections, demanding that Joel take their race from death a little more seriously. Until he rammed a bug himself and sent it flying into the wall—then he couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He had not felt such unbridled joy in a long time.

  “How long we got?” he shouted.

  “Two minutes,” Joel answered.

  Reggie gripped the wheel. “Bet I can take out more than you can.”

  Joel looked shocked. “I accept your challenge.” He pressed his back into the seat and his foot down on the pedal. The two swerved through the tunnel, slamming bugs, smearing them across the concrete floor, hollering with the kind of joy this park hadn’t seen since the bugs arrived.

  Reggie had just pulled ahead in the tally when that joy nearly killed him. He crushed one bug, the one that put him in the lead, when a second came from nowhere and t-boned him. The car tipped onto its side and slid along the concrete, causing Reggie to bump his head on the ground.

  Joel didn’t wait for his car to come to a complete stop before leaping out. He ran to Reggie’s side, hurriedly checking if his friend was still alive.

  Reggie coughed and groaned as fresh blood poured from a gash in his forehead.

  “I get hit with a red shell?”

  Joel put Reggie’s arm over his shoulder and lifted his big friend to a standing position. “Yeah, man. Bowser got you.” He dragged him to car number two. “Can you hold on?”

  Reggie straddled the back of Joel’s car, the aerosol dispersal system between his legs. He was seeing double, maybe triple, so he couldn’t say for sure how many ShimVens were charging from the rear.

  “Hold on,” Joel said as he accelerated.

  That crash had cost them precious time. Only fifteen seconds left until the pipe bomb would blow and engulf the tunnel in a white-hot flash.

  Ten seconds. The tunnel entrance came into view. The ShimVens were gaining on them. More appeared along the edges of the tunnel and in front of them, closing in around them, seeming grateful for the sudden appearance of an easy meal. Then they noticed the flour spraying from the back of the car.

  Five seconds.

  “Get ready to jump,” Joel said.

  Zero seconds.

  There was a BANG, and then a rumble started behind them, building in intensity.

  As soon as they crossed the threshold of the tunnel entrance, Joel and Reggie dove to the side. A quick burst of intense light and heat and noise shot out of the tunnel after them. The guys rolled on the ground, clutching their ears. They felt like they’d been kicked in the chest and had onions rubbed in their eyes.

  Joel tried to stand, but the world swam around him. He lost his footing and fell onto his butt. He yelled for Reggie like they’d been separated by miles, but his friend sat right next him. Joel couldn’t hear his own voice.

  Through the haze caused by the biggest flashbang ever, Joel and Reggie saw dozens of black figures come running out of the tunnel. Reggie stood shakily, holding his pincers out, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to use them.

  It turned out he didn’t need to. The ShimVens ran past them and never stopped running.

  Reggie looked at Joel and shrugged, as if to say, ‘Well, I guess we did it.’

  Joel gave a thumbs-up. Then he tapped on his earpiece and pointed to Reggie as if to say, ‘Tell Sam and Cody that we completed our part of the plan, and we did so in an extremely cool way, and we’re the awesomest.’ Then he laid back and stared at the sky.

  Reggie raised Cody and Sam on comms. “We’re good.”

  Chapter Ten

  The ground rumbled with the echo of an earthquake, a hiccup. Knowing Joel, Cody figured it was likely something else. The minutes that passed were pregnant with worry. The carnage was clear in the background of Joel’s last communication. And now this explosion.

  Cody thought of his friends underground, in a nest of ShimVens at his behest. For his plan. After clearing the space stations and vanquishing the queen, Cody was thinking about death a lot more. The possibility of it was more real than ever. It felt closer, like it could be around any corner; it wasn’t just some far-off thing, an eventuality that deserved no attention because only old people need worry over it. It was everywhere. And his decisions could inflict it on his friends.

  “We’re good.”

  Reggie’s voice cracked through the worry building in Cody’s head. The weights that had piled up on his chest crumbled to dust and blew away. The presence of death was pushed away, at least for now.

  When Cody looked to Sam, he felt like she saw something in him that he was trying to hide. Maybe she saw the specter of death, too—she was more familiar with it. Or maybe she saw his worry. Either way, she nodded, the kind of subtle move meant to set him at ease, to share his burden.

  Cody popped the top off the black pepper and dumped it into the ventilation intake.
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br />   Sam nodded again, a different sort of gesture: one meant to acknowledge achievement. One she was clearly more comfortable with.

  “Let’s move,” she said.

  They raced to the funhouse and took up position at the rendezvous spot. It didn’t matter where Cody stood, the creepy clown in the mural on the front of the building seemed to follow him. Its psycho killer eyes haunted him. But they also offered a distraction from the chaos around them.

  ShimVens had begun to run past them and clamor into the funhouse. Cody twitched with every clickety-clack of bug feet, his fingers aching to pull the trigger of his scatterblaster. But if he started shooting now, the bugs would run, and the whole plan would crumble.

  He hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to sit and watch the ShimVens pass by. There was a time not long ago when the sight of them would have put him in a fear coma.

  Sam put a gentle hand on his forearm. Again, she seemed to notice more than he realized.

  “Almost,” she said.

  Joel and Reggie came around the corner of the nearby lane, dragging each other along. Both were banged up and bleeding. They fell in a heap once they reached Sam and Cody.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” Sam said.

  Joel mumbled something about Mario Kart and Bowser before pausing and taking a deep breath. As he exhaled, he said, “Fine. We’re fine. Let’s do this.”

  He drew his blasters and tried to stand, but Sam grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back down, behind cover. He shot her a confused look.

  She pointed up the road to a herd of frantically sneezing Rapoo. The Rapoo slammed into each other as they followed the scent of meat that would lead them to the funhouse. Apparently, the fine black pepper had worn off, giving them back their olfactory senses.

  Joel looked over his shoulder at Sam. She’d just stopped him from ruining the plan. She’d also stopped him from running into a herd of Rapoo. He didn’t know which was the stronger of her motivations, but he expected her to scold him like he was an irreverent child.

  Instead, she nodded and said, “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

  The last of the Rapoo disappeared inside the funhouse. The Notches maintained their position for a minute, listening for a clue as to what was happening inside. At first, all they heard was sneezing. Then they heard mayhem.

  Shrieking, crashing, shattering glass, cracking walls.

  The war had begun.

  The Notches took up their new positions, one team at the entrance, one at the exit. They would allow the two warring species as much time as they needed to wipe each other out. If either tried to flee, the teams would take them out. Then, once the fight seemed to have settled, they would move in and finish off the winners.

  It was a cruel trophy, but the Notches weren’t in the business of honoring victors. They were in the business of eradication.

  Cody and Sam posted up at the exit. Sam drew her sword, while Cody finally readied his scatterblaster. It felt oddly comforting in his hands, like a destructive security blanket. A flicker of movement drew his attention and his fire. Something burst in the doorway before he could even tell what it was. It didn’t matter anyway—ShimVen, Rapoo, both were dying today.

  The next ten minutes was a tense game of whack-a-mole. The Notches did their best not to blink, and reacted to every sign of movement. The battle must have turned in the Rapoo’s favor, because ShimVens began trying to escape. First, only a couple. Then ten. Then a whole flood.

  Reggie squeezed off a burst of semiautomatic gunfire, dropping a wave of bugs. Sam stepped in front of the doorway and twirled her blade, slicing bugs as they tried to run. Then there was nothing. No more bugs tried to escape. It grew quiet.

  “Sooo…” Joel shrugged.

  “We need to clear the building,” Reggie said.

  “Do we, though?” Joel said.

  “Yes,” Reggie said. “I’ll head in this way. You wait here in case any try to slip out.”

  “Great idea,” Joel said.

  “I’ll head in this end,” Sam said.

  Cody agreed to guard the exit.

  Sam entered the spinning tunnel, where a dead Rapoo spun around like a sock in a dryer. She avoided the corpse and moved through the sections. She climbed up a wavy slide, swung over a ball pit using gymnastics rings, and walked effortlessly over a balance beam. This funhouse is amateur hour.

  She saw only corpses until she reached the mirror room.

  There, she found what looked to be a dozen live Rapoo, but Sam knew that was an illusion. There was only one. The solitary creature to survive this battle of two species. The most powerful of them both. A Rapoo the size of two of its kind. It was stained red, covered in the blood of both its family and its enemies.

  It stood atop of pile of corpses and was currently eating its way through them.

  Sam tried to determine which Rapoo was the real one. The air was thick with the smell of blood and rancid meat; her senses would not help. She tried to sneak further into the room, but the moment her boot touched the floor, which was slick with blood, the Rapoo heard her. It turned its attention from its current meal to its next one.

  With Sam locked in its sights, the Rapoo lunged. Sam was on unsteady ground and unable to dodge. She raised her sword instead and managed to block the Rapoo’s slash, which would have opened her up, but the hit knocked her off balance. She slipped and landed hard on her back. The air tasted like pennies and clogged Sam’s throat.

  She suddenly felt sick, like she wanted to vomit but couldn’t.

  The Rapoo stepped on her chest. It lowered its face so that it was only inches from Sam’s. There was something very different about this creature, compared to the ShimVens. It wasn’t just a wild animal looking for food… This thing wore a look that Sam recognized. It didn’t kill out of necessity. It wanted to. It liked it.

  Sam tried to drive her blade into the Rapoo’s side, but the beast was too close; she couldn’t get an angle on it. And it was heavier than it looked. It felt like someone had set a rock on her chest. And then another on top of that. And another. She tried to roll to her side, arch her back, push the Rapoo off her. But nothing worked.

  The Rapoo opened its mouth, giving Sam a closer look at its diamond-hard teeth than she ever cared to have. It unleashed a low hiss that built into a growl.

  And then the left side of its right side turned to bloody hamburger.

  Reggie walked toward it, preceded by a barrage of machine gunfire. The Rapoo fell off Sam, but it wasn’t dead. It scrambled to its feet, still getting peppered by gunfire. It pushed against the blast like it was walking into a strong wind.

  Sam rolled to her feet. She pressed back with one leg and shoved off the wall. She slid across the blood-soaked floor like a macabre figure skater, and slashed low, taking off the Rapoo’s front legs. Her angle and proximity made her attacks more successful than Reggie’s. The Rapoo fell forward, writhing but still trying to escape.

  No, Sam realized. Not escape. Kill.

  Reggie let off the trigger as Sam stood over the Rapoo, poised to deliver the killing blow. She drove her sword straight down, through the beast’s back, pinning it to the floor. It wriggled for another twenty seconds, hissing and howling, until, finally, it died.

  The war was over. Both sides had lost.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You’re right,” Sam admitted, looking out over Rocket Roger’s Vintage Amusement Park. “This is pretty awesome.”

  “Right?” Joel responded.

  The Notches had climbed to the top of Rolling Thunder to sit on the highest peak. They didn’t say much, just took the time to relax and observe their handiwork. It wasn’t often that the place they just cleaned still existed after their job was done.

  Silence stretched as they watched the sun dip below the horizon, casting a colorful wave over the park and everything beyond it. The job had gotten hairy at the end, but the team agreed that it was a success
, and that they were definitely improving; the explosions this time were minimal, and they’d thought up creative ways to flush out the critters without setting everything on fire. And they only almost died a little.

  They basked in their victory.

  It caught everyone by surprise when Sam blurted out, “I’ve never been to an amusement park before.” She said it like she was confessing some long-held secret. She kept her eyes on the horizon. “Never ridden a rollercoaster. I’d never even eaten candy. I didn’t have a childhood like you guys did.”

  She let those words hang. She didn’t know how to follow them, or what she meant to convey. Why she’d bothered to tell them. Until Joel reminded her.

  He stood and walked up the track to the ladder. “Come on,” he said to them. “Let’s go turn this bitch on.”

  The guys immediately followed Joel down the ladder. Sam paused and took one last look out over the park. Though a plume of smoke was still rising from the gift shop, and the blood had begun to ooze out of the funhouse, the view was a pleasant sight. She could imagine the park full of people, happy families, teenagers on first dates. She could imagine herself walking through it, playing the games, eating the food.

  She’d never done that before. Imagined herself doing something so normal. That stuff always seemed so alien, so far away that it would be like trying to imagine touching the sun. There was no context.

  But she had context now.

  Joel poked at the controls of Rolling Thunder until he felt familiar enough with them. Then he showed Reggie how to use them. Joel and Sam stood in waiting along the edge of the concrete platform.

  Sam felt like a fool, like a tourist waving her camera around and pointing at the tall buildings. She may as well have been wearing a fanny pack. But when that rollercoaster car came rolling to a stop at her feet, she didn’t care about any of that. All she could think about was racing through the track, diving down those hills and speeding around the turns.

  She and Joel climbed into the car and pulled the safety bar down across their chests. The car lurched forward, and Sam left her heart back on the platform. She’d hunted the galaxy’s most notorious criminals and been swallowed by a ShimVen queen, but this rollercoaster felt like the most exhilarating thing she’d ever done.