But the two in the drawing room didn"t even hear her. Valerie placed a delicate hand upon her lace-covered throat. "I"ll always love you, wooden finger or no!"
"Maybe we should go out on the street," Louie suggested. "People may be more willing to talk there.""Valerie!" Kenneth exclaimed.
"How about going to a shaloon?" Doc added. "People alwaysh talk over drinksh!"
"Kenneth!" Valerie replied.
Delores nodded. "Well, we"d better do something, or-"
She had no chance to finish, for the air of the peaceful drawing room was split with fiendish laughter. There was even more blue smoke than before.
Kenneth looked distractedly at the blue fog. "I say, isn"t it getting a little close in here?"
"Not as close as its going to get for"-the unmistakable voice of Doctor Dread hesitated triumphantly-"some of you! There is no escape from the minions of Dread!
There is no fleeing from"-he paused even more significantly- "your destiny!"
By the time Dread was done pausing, the smoke had cleared, and Delores could see that he had brought Bertha and his other minions along. The minions gave up leering at Delores the moment they recognized her, switching their attentions to Valerie instead.
"See here!" Kenneth objected. "There are certain things not done in polite society!"
"Ah, but we have no time to be"-Dread paused smoothly-"polite. We only have time to be"-he stalled menacingly-"final.""
His minions laughed nastily.
"I say," Valerie mentioned, "how did all these people get in here anyway? Has Simpson left the front door open?"
Big Louie sidled up to Delores. He whispered up toward her ear. "But let me tell you about my idea."
Delores frowned down at the sidekick. "You mean we didn"t use your idea? I thought you wanted us to use the ring."
"They still aren"t cowering!" Big Bertha exclaimed. "How can you have any self- respect as a villain if people don"t cower!"
"Cowering?" Zabana scoffed. "Zabana laughs at cowering!"
"Well, yes and no," Louie answered. "But my plan was in the way I wanted to use the ring. That"s the trouble with you heroes. It"s always act first, think later."
"Perhaps they will cower," Dread suggested with a pause, ""-if one or two of them could no longer cower""- he hesitated even more tellingly-"ever again!"
"That"s it!" Kenneth exclaimed. "That sounded like a threat to me! I"m going to ring for Simpson and have the lot of you thrown out!"
Delores started to object to Louie"s accusation, but she realized he was right. At the first sign of danger, her fists started flying. It was all the fault of Hero School, she supposed; some of those bad habits learned in Jeopardy 101. She remembered how perilous it could get around the dormitories, especially when they were cramming for finals.
"Kenneth!" Valerie whispered pa.s.sionately. "How forceful!"
Kenneth shrugged manfully. "It is nothing, Valerie. Why, I remember a time during the Boer War-"
"I like it more," Valerie answered, her stiff upper lip beginning to tremble, "when you remind me of the Indian Uprising."
All of Dread"s henchpeople c.o.c.ked their various instruments of death and pointed them at Delores" hardy band.
"I don"t think we have time to worry about plans," Delores remarked simply. "Let"s blow this joint!" This time, Delores reached over and turned the ring herself. There was the usual blue smoke.
"Oh, Kenneth!" Valerie"s voice faded away. "You know if it wasn"t for Cyril-"
Delores blinked. She could hardly see anything, even after the smoke cleared. It was night.
Something growled in the darkness. A moment later, that growl was answered by a scream.
"Noises!" came the voice of the jungle prince at her side. "Zabana laughs at noises in the night."
Delores was glad somebody could laugh at this. "Louie," she whispered. "Do you think we should get out of here?"
"It depends," Louie replied frankly. "Where exactly is here? This place might be dangerous-"
There was a gurgling, shrieking sound, like somebody drowning in a swamp.
"Then again," Louie continued, "this place might only be very noisy. You take a risk every time you jump from movie world to movie world, especially when that next world is unknown. This particular place might seem bad, but where we end up next may be worse. What we"re doing now is like playing Russian roulette with a little plastic ring."
Delores tried not to jump when something howled in the distance. That was no way for a hero to act-even if she hadn"t quite gotten her diploma. Besides, maybe Louie and Zabana were right. Even though there were all those noises, nothing had happened to them-yet. This world could be quite different when daylight arrived.
There was probably no reason for her every sense to be heightened tenfold, her every muscle tensed for action. This place could turn out to be perfectly peaceful, idyllic even-maybe.
There was an odd cry high overhead, half scream, half cackle, like a bird being driven mad in the lightless sky.
"Then again," Louie said, "I could be wrong."
A rumbling came from all too close. It felt as if the ground might be trembling slightly beneath them. Unless, Delores considered, it was the shaking of their collective legs.
"Maybe Zabana have to think twice, too," the jungle prince admitted.
The rumbling grew even closer. Delores looked where she thought the noise was coming from, and realized not all was darkness. There was a light out there. No, it was two lights, two small points of sickly green. They came nearer still, and she noticed a certain oddity about their shapes. They were rounded, almost ovals, like a pair of tiny, glowing fish hanging in the air, or-or disembodied eye sockets glowing from within.
As soon as she had that last thought, she knew it had to be true. The glowing green things were eyes, watching them, coming ever closer. It was hard to judge size or distance in this total absence of light, but those eyes seemed to be growing awfully large.
"Uh-oh," Louie said at her side. So the others could see these glowing orbs as well.
"Eyes? Zabana not afraid of-" The jungle prince stopped abruptly, for he had smelled the same strange stench that had almost made Delores recoil in revulsion; a blast of hot, humid air that carried the putrescent odor of things long dead-vile creatures Delores wouldn"t have wanted to meet even when they were alive. There was a sigh of wind, then a growled inhalation.
Whatever was out there had opened its mouth and was breathing on them.
"Maybe we can reashon with it!" Doc suggested from where he had collapsed nearby.
"Maybe we could get out of here!" Louie further suggested.
But Delores knew it was no use. She had seen something in those bright green eyes, something that spoke of finality, and maybe death. The thing had found them now, and in a second, with a single motion of its unseen form, it could decide whether they lived or died.
There was a moment of silence, as deep as the darkness that surrounded them. But the quiet was broken by a single word carried upon the fetid air.And the word was: "Slime."
^ ^ 3 ^ ^
"TEENAGE TERROR!".
They say, when you"re about to die, that your whole life pa.s.ses before you.
Roger thought of Gladys, and Andrea, and Phyllis with that funny little smile. Then of course there was Fifi the exchange student, and Nancy with her pom-poms. Those, at least, were all of the girls up to midway through his junior year in high school. After that, of course, it got complicated.
But Roger didn"t have time for complications. He was trapped in a car, falling to his doom.
Well, he was chewing gum. At least his ears wouldn"t pop. When you worked in public relations, you always tended to look on the bright side.
If only there was some way to save himself, like he and his friends had managed time and again in the Cineverse. If only he had a Captain Crusader Decoder Ring!
But he did have a ring.
Roger felt in his pocket. It was broken, crushed into four pieces by a clumsy foot. But what was broken could be mended. At least it could in theory, if he had the time and the tools. At the very least, there was food for thought.
Well, maybe not food, Roger realized, but there was chewing gum!
He spit the well-chewed gum into his free hand and flattened the wad with his thumb.
With this accomplished, he quickly pressed the four broken fragments of the decoder ring into as close an approximation of the original circle as he could manage, being careful to keep the dial free of the makeshift adhesive.
He looked up and out of the car"s windshield. The rocks and rolling surf were less than a hundred feet away. It was now or never. Roger closed his eyes and twisted the dial.
"See you in the funny papers!" he shouted.
But where was the blue smoke?
Roger opened his eyes. He was surrounded by bright sun and surf, but he was no longer falling. Oh, he was still strapped into the car, but from what he could see, trapped as he was in his permanent seat belt, all four tires seemed to have sunk in the sand.
Sand? What had happened to the onrushing rocks? And what about the exploding gas tank? Had Roger blacked out for a while? Besides, there was no beach near his mother"s house, only sheer cliffs and deadly rocks.He was someplace different than before. The ring must have worked, at least a little bit. Maybe it had somehow transported him up or down the seacoast, out of harm"s way. Roger did his best to study his surroundings from where he was strapped in. Not only was there sand here, but he could hear distant music; electric guitars and some- thing else. Roger strained to hear. Bongos?
Voices and laughter came from behind the car: "Oh, wow! Groovy!"
"That"s a way-out board you"ve got there, man!"
A pair of blond teenage boys in swimsuits walked up to Roger"s window.
"And, Frankie!" said one as he pointed at Roger"s jogging suit. "Dig those surfing duds!"
"Hey, Brian!" the other one exclaimed. "Cowabunga! I bet you could really hang ten in those!"
Brian laughed. "What a kook!"
Roger felt a strange disquiet, deep in his stomach. Maybe the ring had really worked after all. He knew one thing for sure: no one talked like this, except in the movies.
And he had a terrible feeling what kind of movie this was.
"Hey!" a woman"s voice cried out from farther up the beach. "What a crazy woody!"
Now, now, Roger thought, trying to calm himself. Perhaps this was just a serious, dramatic world that was using the beach as but one of its many settings. Roger frowned. Weren"t those guitars getting louder?
Brian looked up. "Hey, dig that wild wahini!"
Another woman, also blond, teenage, and-in her case- wearing a psychedelic green bikini, skipped toward them across the sand. Yes, Roger was certain of it now. Those guitars were getting louder.
"Hey, Dee Dee!" Frankie called. "Catch our new friend here with the wild wheels!"
He looked back in the window at Roger. "Sorry, man. I didn"t catch your name."
Roger introduced himself.
"Roger-Dodger!" Brian replied. "This is Dee Dee, the fairest flower on the sand!"
"Tee hee hee," Dee Dee replied as she blushed prettily.
"But hey," Frankie suggested, "we were about to mosey on down the beach to a barbecue. Why don"t you come along?"
Roger thanked him, but explained that he was trapped in his seat belt."Hey, man," Frankie a.s.sured him. "No sweat. We got that covered."
"Yeah!" Dee Dee chirped enthusiastically. "I hear Bix!"
Roger a.s.sumed she was referring to the ever louder guitar strums.
"Here they come!" Dee Dee shrieked excitedly.
Roger turned his head as far as he could, trying to see what was making Dee Dee jump up and down in the sand. Four other teens walked out from behind the snack bar, each one carrying a musical instrument. They wore identical shirts, with vertical red and white stripes, and had their hair cut in a "modified-Beatle" style, with bangs just long enough to be blown by the sea wind. The first two carried guitars, the next one a ba.s.s. Roger was most impressed with the last fellow, who carried an entire drum kit. He could see the band"s name in bright red script on the ba.s.s drum: "Bix Bale and the Belltones."
The instruments meant only one thing: Roger"s worst fears were realized. This was that kind of world.
It took them only a minute to set up their drums and face the ever-growing number of teens that Roger realized now surrounded his car.
"Come on now!" Bix shouted. "Let"s shake a tail feather!"
Roger had to face up to it. "This is not just a beach world-" he began aloud, letting the reality sink in.
With that, the band started to play, a full, rich sound despite the fact that Roger could see no wires, microphones or amplifiers.
Roger finished the horrible truth: "-it"s a Beach Party Musical world!"