Attack on an Evil God

by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson

Chapter 15: The Battle of the Unknown Dimensions

The conference was under way, everybody was seated and waiting. Dora was going to the podium to give the speech that would connect all those emissaries to the evil god in another dimension.

Goat Boy walked out of the woods and was trotting up to the walkway around the Pearl when he was spotted immediately. The guard saw he had a rifle and called to him.

Goat Boy looked at the man. The man looked at Goat Boy and brought his gun to bear on him. Goat Boy answered the gesture, and they fired at each other at about the same time. A bullet just missed Goat Boy. Goat Boy hit his target dead center. He fired again for good measure, and the man came down on his knees with a stunned expression, before slamming down on his face. His bodyarmour was only good for 9mm, and Goat Boy was wielding a 5.56 NATO.

A guard behind the first one took aim and fired a stream of lead at Goat Boy. He hit once, and Goat Boy trotted on. Another guard appeared before him, and Goat Boy shot him, and the next one, and the third, two or thee times.

A couple of police officers guarding the doors ran inside. There were two guards at the door and four guards on the tanks firing at Goat Boy now. He was getting hit. He felt one of his arms break. No matter. He fired up at the ones on the tanks and got one in the face and one in the thigh. They both toppled over, one dead, the other screaming.

The conference was in turmoil, but Dora tried to calm everybody down. She told them there were enough guards. The gunfire could be heard inside. The rapid, firecracker-like snaps from the MP-5Ks and the rather louder blasts from the M4 carbine. Those were far more ominous. People were standing, but unable to decide where to go.

Goat Boy developed a limp after someone put a hole in his thighbone. He had a little over twenty holes in him when he gunned down the guards at the door and reloaded on the run. He fired through the door before going in. The glass broke, and he could walk right in, without having to muck about in the revolving door. He fired a few rounds at the guys above before going in, getting one in the shoulder.

There was a corkscrew stairway to the upper floors, built over a fountain. Behind it was a partition, beyond which the conference was going on. People were running around inside. Goat Boy shot them. People were lying on the floor. Goat Boy shot them also.

Some four guards appeared on the upper part of the stairway and fired downwards. Goat Boy felt many bullets pass through him. He returned fire. He needed to reload and, while he was at it, got one of his legs shot from under him.

While Goat Boy could not be killed by conventional means, he could be physically mangled. He sat up and managed to gun down two of the guys on the stairs before being shot up real bad from behind. He never saw the attackers, but there were four guys there, shooting at him. Parts of Goat Boy littered the floor.

The guards emptied six magazines into the body before they were sure he could not move. Then they moved in. Satisfied, they called it a success. Now for the ambulances to arrive.

Dora was upset. But she figured she could maybe salvage the situation. First, she needed to make sure that the assailant was properly dead. He was obviously magical and needed to be countered magically.

She got a salt shaker and some toothpicks and went to the body. She claimed she was just curious, just for whoever was listening in. In reality they could not help but to obey. She looked closely and saw Goat Boy look her in the eye. All his limbs were severed. He was missing a horn. One eye was crooked where a bullet had passed through the socket.

She spoke to Goat Boy: “I don’t know who you are working for but, whoever it is, he or she delayed my plans for only ten or fifteen minutes at most.” She smiled.

Dora poked some toothpicks into his body. One on each limb. And she drew a mystic sign on his body with salt. And she made a sign over him with her finger. She stood up, and Goat Boy started to dissolve. He turned to dust and smoke.

Dora turned back to her circle of conjuring, and tried to get as many people as possible there, for a group hug.

* * *

Hansi looked around to see a couple of barrel-like robots aiming their arm cannons at him. He could see a glint of lasers coming from them. There appeared to be some dust swirling in the air. The lasers hummed, slowly growing louder as if powering up.

Up close, the robots were rather imposing, even though the head looked a bit flimsy with sensors and antenna sticking out of it. They also looked old and battered. No need for batteries when you can just sift power from the ether. No worries about component decay when things are semi-alive. Hansi wondered how much soul was in those things. Probably not enough to make them sentient.

The hum was growing louder. That worried Hansi on a subconscious level. He was sure he was about to get blasted. Blasted and fail, and have a weird demon pass through the seat of Satan and, from there, to other dimensions, absorbing every soul available, unifying all into one.

That was it. Now he’d be blasted. But he’d bring one of them with him, he decided. He whipped up the shotgun as quickly as he could and fired. The shots went right past the foremost robot, and made a massive crater in the one behind, which in turn fired a great bolt of lightning into the one ahead of it, causing it to catch fire.

Hansi felt the shotgun torque his arm, and that hurt a bit, but he forgot it immediately and ran. He turned a corner and ran aimlessly over bridges, up stairs, down stairs, onto rooftops and through apartments.

He saw a lot of desiccated bodies but paid them no mind; they were all aligned pretty much the same as the first ones he had seen.

Finally, when he was sure that he wasn’t being followed, he stopped. He was on a rooftop, with good view over the city. It looked randomly designed but uniform. And there, not very far away, he could see what he was looking for: the evil god.

Proceed to Chapter 16...