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Part Two
By The Mighty Lanzman
"Yaaah! Fraggers! Bastiches!" Lanz screamed, popping off several bursts from his laser at the half-dozen Kortac soldiers running towards him. Two of the green-skinned monsters tumbled to the ground, bizarre fluids leaking from their violated bodies. They certainly hand’t been expecting Lanz to come charging straight at them, especially when he was outnumbered six to one. Well, four to one, now.
The four remaining Kortac opened up with their own weapons. Sizzling blue bolts of unknown energy sprayed at the running capper, coming perilously close as the Kortac got the range. Lanz flipped a willie-pete at the cluster of aliens and dove for the ground.
Whoompf! Lanz surveyed the results of his grenade, thinking that maybe he should start a Kortac-brand charcoal briquettes company. Six down, twenty or thirty to go.
BuckFifty stood beside Tolstoy, staring at a large viewscreen which was currently displaying a map of New York state. A blinking dot showed them where Lanz had been headed. "Really?" Buck asked. "You mean there really is a Boone’s Farm?"
Tolstoy wasn’t sure how to respond. "Yes, BuckFifty, that is how your own human records name this location," he finally said.
"Sum’bitch," Buck observed. Animebabe rolled her eyes.
"It can’t be that Boone’s Farm, Buck," she said. "Just a coincidence."
"Let the man dream, A-babe," YingYang said. "C’mon, Tolstoy old boy, heat up the teleporter and let’s get out there."
Anime looked around. "Say, anybody seen Edgar recently?"
"Aw, who cares where that goofy gator’s gotten off to?" Ying said. "Let’s go kick some Kortac butt."
"Edgar’s usually not far from Gray," Anime said.
"The reptile’s activities are irrelevant," Tolstoy stated. "YingYang, your zeal may be premature. We do not know that there are Kortac present at Boone’s Farm." Buck snickered at the name, but Tolstoy didn’t miss a beat. "Remember, Lanzman was investigating a possibility, not conducting a raid. That is why we sent him alone."
Ying was not to be dissuaded. "Poop on you, dude," he said. "There’s Kortac there or my name isn’t YingYang."
"Your real name isn’t YingYang," Animebabe pointed out. "It’s . . . "
"Well, we gotta get going," Ying said hastily. He tapped his teleport control. "Tolstoy?"
"Coordinates generated and matched," the cappers’ mentor replied. "Teleport when ready."
Animebabe, BuckFifty, and YingYang vanished in a flash of light.
"Ow! Ow! OW!! DAMMIT!!" Lanz swore as he sat behind a pile of logs. Another group of Kortac soldiers had caught him in the open and gotten in a couple of grazing hits with their weapons. He’d managed to make them back off long enough to get to cover, but there were burns on his arms and hands. Lanz checked the gauge on his laser. Twenty-five percent power left, he thought. Splendid.
The sounds of his tormentors came again, close by. Lanz swore under his breath, preparing to sell himself as dearly as possible. He was just about to roll out from his cover when another sound made itself known. The unmistakable sound of BuckFifty’s laser-bazooka, followed immediately by the always-entertaining sound of Kortac bodies doing their best jigsaw puzzle imitation.
Lanz broke cover to see Buck, Animebabe, and YingYang racing towards him, picking off Kortac goons with gleeful accuracy. "Woo-hoo!" he yelled, opening up with his own rifle.
The cappers were reunited seconds later. "About time you guys got here," Lanz commented. "I was beginning to think maybe the secretary had disavowed all knowledge."
"Huh?"
"What?"
"Sum’bitch?"
"What, you never saw Mission Impossible?" Lanz asked in reply, too happy at being rescued to have thought of a better joke. His compatriots were staring at him, noticing the dirt, the burns, the torn clothes, and the missing seat of his pants.
YingYang found his voice first. "Criminy, Lanz, were you fighting Kortac or mud-wrestling?"
Anime was pulling a med-kit from her equipment. "Better let me get something on those burns," she said.
Buck, all business, asked "How many more Kortac around here?"
In between saying "Ow!" and "Ack!" and "D’Oh!" as Anime treated his burns, Lanz replied "I’m not sure. There were thirty or forty to start with, I think I’ve capped about eight or nine, and you guys just took out another twelve or so. Figure maybe twenty five. Maybe more."
YingYang slapped a fresh power cell into his weapon. "Good," he said, "Cuz Buck got most of the last bunch with his bazooka. Glory hog."
"Got another one of those?" Lanz asked, eyeing the power cell. Ying handed him one.
"We better call in, let Tolstoy know what’s going on here," Anime said. "What’d you find out, Lanz?" She dabbed a last bit of ointment onto his wounds and closed up her med-kit.
"Well, aside from the fact that the Kortac can’t shoot for crap, and that they seem to have a thing against rental cars, not much," Lanz answered. "I was too busy playing duck-and-cover to see much."
"There wouldn’t be this many of them here unless they were up to something nasty," Buck observed. "Boone’s Farm. Probably gonna make cheap wine and get everybody in New York drunk."
"There’s only two buildings here," Lanz said. "The farmhouse and the barn. We should probably check ‘em both out."
"No silo?" Buck asked. "Isn’t this a farm? Don’t you non-Canadians have silos?"
Lanz laughed.
"White Phosphorus is my best friend," he said, pointing at a blackened and smoldering pile of rubble that looked sort of like the skeleton of a melted tootsie roll.
"Sum’bitch," Buck observed.
To Be Continued
(Oh, first Gray Zombie isn't concerned with Lanz's disappearance, now Edgar's missing. Curiouser and curiouser)