Chapter 7: Mausoleum
Summer day, the grass is green,
Sky the bluest we've ever seen,
I'm feelin' love inside so hard,
Baby let's go-o . . . to the graveyard!
Cemetery lovin's easy to do,
Cemetery lovin', just me and you,
Let's have us a rave,
Layin' on a grave,
Park your ass
On the green grass,
We can love all alone
On a warm stone—
Love me in the graveyard, baby,
And I'll love you low,
Love you high,
Love you baby
'Till you die—
In the graveyard, baby!
-Robbie V. and the Tombstones, Grave Rave
Time stayed stuck but events went on. Making no effort to shape up his oversight of Australia, 8-Ball continued his normal way of life, with small changes.
He relocated the mobile home, for one thing. Bill's generosity in the matter of providing motive force for the rusting old vehicles did not extend to 8-Ball's realm. Pyronica had pleased Cipher, so in her domain, cars, trains, even airplanes worked. But Australia had long since run out of gas.
Think of what that means. Imagine that you were an upper-middle class Australian, oh, let's say your name is Maxwell Hopson. Imagine you had saved up for years for a nice fat down payment to buy yourself a great second-tier luxury car, let's say a Volvo S60. And then the morning after you purchased it you wake up to learn that the world has been taken over by of extra-dimensional demons and that all the gas in Australia has vanished. Your brand-new car will never run again—well, just think about it. That would just plain make you mad, Max.
For 8-Ball, no gas was no problem. Fifty humans, chained to the hitch, could drag a mobile home, very slowly, across the arid landscape. About twenty died every day, but 8-Ball easily replaced them. Sometimes he dined on one of the bodies, other times just left them to sun-dry into mummies. Many of those who perished died of exhaustion and heat. A good few others, though, succumbed to the bites of Australia's venomous snakes or spiders.
That was something 8-Ball did not fully understand. He was immune to their poisons himself. If the humans wanted to be weaklings and die from one bite, why, that was their business. The deadly brown snakes, or the taipans—he'd grab one and swallow it whole, rather relishing the heat from its bites as it slipped down his gullet. It was like a hot-pepper fan chomping into a nice Carolina Reaper, which has been known to kill small mammals who took an incautious bite of it.
After some "months" and after efforts exerted by about six thousand haulers, at an 80% mortality rate, 8-Ball now lived on the outskirts of a small ruined city on the coast. Lots of urban rats—human variety—lurked in the broken buildings and littered streets, near enough if he needed reinforcements or lunch.
He parked the mobile home near the cemetery of a desolated and desecrated church, its roof half gone. No human refugees camped inside the building, though what further punishment they might fear was beyond 8-Ball's imagination. Surviving under Bill was hell enough.
And he made his plans and settled in, with the humans keeping their distance—he could psychically summon some if he needed, and compel them to come, but he did not intend to need them—except for the few who now and then replenished his stock of home-brewed beer or served as his meals.
It was a shame that the kind of telepathy the Henchmaniacs had shared in the Nightmare Realm no longer functioned on Earth, but Bill wouldn't alter all the physical laws of nature. At least he could use the phone Bill had given him when the time came. Though it would only reach two demons, come to that. He decided if he were up against it and really needed help, he might push the red button. Not the yellow one. You didn't want to make Bill Cipher mad.
Not that 8-Ball intended to push the yellow button. However, if he could follow Bill's orders and capture the rogue human, he knew Bill's chief personal assistant would just love to have her and have the chance to deliver her to Bill. Maybe, 8-Ball thought, he could somehow manage to turn her over himself. After all, with Pyronica gone, a happy Bill might be in the mood to give him more territory, or better territory.
He kept the phone handy, waiting for the time when Wendy Corduroy would come visiting.
The purpose of his life had dwindled down to waiting.
For her.
On my kill list, I had crossed off Pyronica and Hexagony. Master Ax had allowed me to rest and heal from my wounds. The third name on the list taunted me because I knew that after the first two, word would get out and 8-Ball would be expecting me.
He was the lizard-like bastard that, with Teeth, had once tried to eat Dipper. That was about all I knew. "Where do I find him?" I asked Master Ax each day.
"On Earth," he always replied. "Have patience. I'll send you there when I think you are ready. Drink some tea."
I hated the stuff, but I drank his tea. That put him in a good mood, as far as he had good moods.
Man, I used to think Stan Pines was the worst boss to work for. But Stanley let me slack off and goof around and never fired me. He never made me run up and down thousands of steps carrying seventeen pounds of water on a three-pound yoke.
Or teach me how to punch through three inches of wood from a distance of three inches away, making me do it over and over and over until my bleeding knuckles felt busted and I couldn't even close my hands on the well windlass. I had to trap the handle between both my palms and roll my aching shoulders to haul up the water.
Also, Stanley never teleported in a sparring partner I had to fight. Master Ax did—tough ones, too. An old bearded guy who could slap me nine times with the flat of a katana before I could tap him once with the flat of my axe. He could run up the smallest branches of a tree by (he claimed) thinking light thoughts. He could grab my arm and wrench it until I begged him to stop, and didn't stop until I acknowledged he was better than I.
Or the girl dressed in dark wraparound shades and black vinyl who came at me with real guns that fired, I guess, paint balls or something like them. They stung like hell when they hit, though they didn't break the skin. She, too, could run straight up a wall and across a ceiling, firing two-handed with deadly accuracy, and when I tried to shoot her, she could weave and bend her body cobra-quick, dodging the bullets as if they moved in slow motion.
I got her at last, letting go of my pistol, drawing my axe and throwing it, and grabbing the pistol again before it had dropped more than six inches from where I'd turned loose of it, then firing as the girl dodged the axe and nailing her one-two-three with shots to the chest.
When an observing Master Ax said, "It takes you a long time to learn to use the weapons with which you fight best," I asked, "How did I do that so fast? Drop the pistol, throw the axe, grab the pistol in mid-air, and fire three times?"
He replied, "Don't ask how. Just know that if you did it once, you can do it every time."
The girl congratulated me, but we had more fun times together after that. Damn, she was good.
After her, my next sparring partner was, like, the worst. That one was the irritating short old man who had me wax his car all the damn time.
But I learned. I learned something from each of them. After what felt like months, the old white-bearded guy swung at me, his face shining with the confidence that he would tap me, only to stare up at me in the next instant after I'd blade-hooked his weapon, jerked it out of his hands, and swept his feet from under him. He gazed at me for a second, and then, lying on his back, gave me a slow golf clap. "You may have a little potential," he said, and I finally realized that he was a human form taken by Master Ax. Duh.
And there came a time when the girl, with an assault rifle on full auto, sent a stream of bullets chasing me, and I contorted back and neck and arms and legs around them all and then chopped her weapon clean in two and poised the axe blade right over the middle of her forehead, the second time I'd beaten her and the first time I'd been able to dodge bullets at point-blank range. We stood panting, facing each other. Her dark glasses had half-fallen off and dangled from one ear. Her eyes were blue.
Those eyes said she knew I could have cut her skull in half as easily as I had chopped the gun. "Wow," she said with a slow, sexy grin. "Hey, good job. Some time let's go out together and do the town, babe."
"I don't swing that way," I told her.
And last, the little bald guy—after waxing his car over and over and over, I discovered I could anticipate and parry all his best karate blows. He couldn't land a single one. But I could have—stopping my hand just before it would have shattered his temple just north of his jaw joint, killing or incapacitating him. He had nodded, smiling. "Car is shiny enough now," he said. "Use what you have learned." He bowed to me.
Then came the mid-term exam, when I took on all three at once and emerged untouched, while they all knelt on the ground, Master Ax snapped his fingers—though he didn't have any, really, he manifested them at need—and said, "You are ready for your final examination. Pyronica is in Japan."
"Wish me luck," I said.
"Make your own luck," Master Ax told me. "You should be able to do that now. Prepare and then I will send you."
He did. But after I came back, after I had defeated Pyronica and Hexagony, I had to fight him in his white-bearded form all over again, and he was better and made me better until finally I turned aside all his attacks. He didn't wait for me to tag him. This time he said, "You will find 8-Ball in Australia. Do you feel ready?"
I said, "Let's find out."
Winter remained in Australia, now that the course of the Earth around the sun had been halted by Bill's power. He let the planet spin on its axis, though, to give the world a semblance of days and nights. And even in nominal winter, the part of Australia where 8-Ball had moved was always hot.
Then one day, always the same August day, the phone rattled and buzzed. Slow but not stupid, 8-Ball realized he was being called. He picked up the receiver. "Yeah?"
"She's coming." Bill's voice. "Catch her, don't kill her. Hurt her if you have to. Keep her prisoner and call me."
"Why don't I call Kryptos?" 8-Ball asked. "If I get Corduroy alive, I want to deliver her to you. But I can't leave this damn place. Kryptos can, or can stay here and sub for me. Or just return my teleportation powers to me."
Cipher snapped, "Not after you fucked up so bad last time. OK, you want to call Kryptos, push the red button."
"Thanks, Boss," 8-Ball said.
"Yeah, yeah, don't call me 'Boss.'" Bill hung up.
And 8-Ball replaced the receiver as he scanned the empty horizon, drank the last of the current bottle of beer, and then lifted the heavy phone and punched the red button. Instantly he heard the querulous voice of Kryptos, a being similar in some ways to Bill Cipher. An incompetent idiot, in 8-Ball's opinion, but Bill had made Kryptos his vice-dictator. "Who is this?"
"It's me, 8-Ball. Hey, you busy for the next week or so? I'm gonna have a package to deliver to Bill."
A pause, and then Kryptos, whom 8-Ball knew was already calculating "what's in it for me?" said, "I can be there. Give me a call when you need me. I'll drop everything and come."
On the third day after that, insofar as days had meaning in the unchanging now of the altered reality, Wendy Corduroy materialized in a stinking outdoor toilet, primitive, a revoltingly stained and discolored toilet seat on a galvanized, bottomless tub over an excremental pit. The outhouse walls had been fashioned from corrugated iron. The temperature inside was a hundred and ten. She kicked the door open, beheaded a brown snake that reared back as she stepped out, and looked around.
An old house, falling in and probably plundered for shelter material by the survivors, stood a few yards away. This probably had been a sheep ranch—station? Was that what they called them?—before the big change, before Bill's takeover.
"Straight ahead when you get there," Master Ax had told her.
So. Straight ahead and miles away under a burning sun she could see the vague heat-shimmered gray shapes of buildings. Beyond that the sky lightened in a way that told her she was near a beach and the sea. It was going to be a long walk.
Thank you so much, Master Ax.
The trek began hot and grew hotter as the sun slowly slipped down the yellow sky. By the time she saw the old church ahead and the rusted mobile home parked near it, stifling sunset had set in.
Master Ax had shown her a vision of the scene. "He will be in or near the home on wheels. He is not very intelligent, but cunning, fast, and tougher than you believe. Expect and show no mercy with this one."
"Yeah," Wendy had said. "'Cause Pyronica and Hexagony were so nice."
"If you wish to try your wit on 8-Ball," Master Ax has said mildly, "I suggest you wait until you have removed his head. No faltering with this one. None."
Wendy hunkered and studied the landscape. If this had been the Western United States, there might have been cacti or Joshua trees to provide cover, but no. A few boulders, most of them too small to conceal her. But if she circled wide to the ten o'clock position, she could come in through the cemetery. Tombstones and above-the-ground, single-crypt mausoleums, all in weathered stone, would give her, perhaps, enough cover to get her within a few feet of the mobile home without being spotted.
She crouched behind an almost inadequate rock and watched the western sky's awful red glare fade, waiting for dark and for her chance.
. . . I waited for my chance.
An hour after the sun went down, I saw a light come on inside the trailer. It was real dim and yellow, more like an oil lamp than an electric light, and it lit only one window, probably the living room.
If you wish to make no sound in approaching a foe, remember where you are putting your feet.
One of the things Master Ax taught. A hard one to learn, but once learned, it became habit. Even though I couldn't clearly see the ground, I knew where my feet had to go, and I took great care in placing them, one after the other. I made less sound than the evening breeze did as it began to sweep the dust.
One cautious stride. Stop and consider where the next will fall.
From the trailer I heard no sound at all. From the broken city a mile or more away came faint noises of music. From what I'd learned of Australia, I assumed it came from radios powered by hand cranks. The electrical system there was shot, scavenged for copper which could be beaten into spear points and arrowheads.
Funny how even when facing a bigger enemy like Bill Cipher we humans found time to hate each other and try our best to kill those who disagreed with us. I'd noticed that in my scouting expedition to Old D.C.
The ruined townscapes all around the former U.S. capital sometimes echoed with screams, shouts, and an occasional gunshot. Not many of those—Bill limited the supply of ammo. Pyronica, in her domain, let the weapons and ammo production roar along. Bullets couldn't hurt her, so what the hell, let everybody go armed all the time. And Old California, as far down as Baja, was supposed to be a war zone, so many arms slipped in from Asia.
But very few working firearms remained in Australia, close though it might be to the center of supply. The demand probably was there, but 8-Ball had a prejudice against humans holding guns, which theoretically could kill him, and so virtually nothing got through.
Next step. Each one took me a minute to three minutes to plan and execute. I didn't know a lot about 8-Ball, except he was an undiscriminating carnivore. He liked human meat. But he'd eat anything, including other sidekicks of Cipher. I'd heard that if a particular henchling displeased Bill, it got shipped off to serve 8-Ball. Or to be served to him.
The shaft of my axe felt slippery in my sweaty hands. After a creeping hour and a half, I was still three steps away from the last high step into the doorway of the trailer, I cautiously squatted and pressed my left hand into the dirt, then held the axe with that one and did the same with the right. I laid the axe down soundlessly and rubbed my hands together. Number 10, Wendy Corduroy, stepping up to the plate.
Another step. Two to go.
I understood from Master Ax that 8-ball didn't have much in his head. No brains, I mean. But his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes were there. The brain rested between his shoulders, a swelling at the top of his spinal column, shaped like a cobra's spread hood within the top of his rib cage.
Chop off the head, but not a roundhouse swing. That would blind him, deafen him, but not outright kill him. An up-and-over, blade coming straight down in the middle of the head, splitting it and the neck, cleaving into the soft meat of the brain, would do the trick.
That was gonna be hell to pull off in a trailer with a low ceiling. Instead, I'd thought about surprising him, getting in a quick blow, then jumping out as if fleeing, luring him into the open where I could strike most effectively.
If he didn't go for that, I could set fire to the damn trailer. Unlike Pyronica, 8-Ball was not fireproof.
Next step. One more and then kick open the door. Tricky—the front steps were dry-laid concrete blocks, wobbly, have to watch my balance, not tip them. I controlled my breathing and focused everything on muscles of legs and arms. Be in the moment. Nothing else matters but the attack.
Last step, and then up silently onto the blocks. I held my breath and raised my right boot to stamp through the insubstantial door.
I guess my Spidey sense tingled. I jerked my head back and glimpsed a dark silhouette loom out from the flat roof above me.
But I was off-balance and had no time to feint. It struck too fast for that, slamming a rock against my head. I'd twisted enough to avoid a direct strike—that probably would have killed me—but the world exploded yellow, and I felt myself falling back and the ground hit my back hard and I lost my breath—
Through ringing ears, I heard the crunch as 8-Ball jumped down from the roof and landed on all fours next to me. Felt his rough, scaly hands on me as he rolled me over. My reaction time was screwed. I couldn't move fast enough. I felt him manacle my wrists and I tried to shove them down past my butt so I could get my heels through—
Shit. He'd hooked the chain through my belt. He kicked me over onto my back and leaned down to pick up my axe.
"I heard you were coming," he said. "Surprise."
I spat at him.
"Bet you'd taste fine," he said, squatting down next to me. He touched my cheek. His hands smelled like rotten fish. "This is a good axe. Is this what you used to whack Pyronica? Bill's mad about that. He always had a soft spot for that fuckin' bitch Pyronica."
"Turn me loose and I'll fight you," I said.
"No, don't think so. Come morning, I gotta hand you over to Bill. But I know you're a mean little fleshwad, so—gotta stash you somewhere safe. And I'm gonna need some help. And I don't want to have you bitching at me." He stood up. "So—goodnight."
He kicked me hard in the head. This time I went all the way out.
Coming out of it, I puked. You almost always do when you're knocked out. You start to wake up, and then you vomit. I was laying on my belly, hands still manacled, wrists against my butt. I managed to turn my head just enough.
"She's awake," said an Aussie-accented voice. Human voice. Man.
"She ain't gonna hurt you." That was 8-Ball.
I heard stones grating against each other. Then a thud as something real heavy was set down on the dusty earth. A boot kicked dirt over the place where I'd vomited. Human hands rolled me over onto my back.
"Redhead," said the Aussie voice. I registered that it was daylight again—morning dawn-light, say, because no direct sun was shining, but the sky was a paling, dusky blue past the heavyset human's face. He was probably forty, forty-five, long shaggy black hair, few streaks of gray. He had a busted nose and a face sunburned until it was the shade of an old saddle. He grinned with gapped brown teeth. "Reckon she ain't had none in a while. How about it, Red? Fancy a root?"
"None of that." It was 8-Ball's voice, though I couldn't see him. "Bill wants her in her current condition."
"Bugger!"
"Let's get this done." Again 8-Ball hunkered down. I tried to roll back on my shoulders and get in a kick, but he was out of range. "Stop that," he said. "Listen, Wendy Corduroy. You're going into a tomb. You've got no say in it. Behave yourself and I'll call Bill in the next hour or so and he or his assistant will come and take you off my hands and you'll live at least that long. Scream and put up a fight, and I'll add an hour to my call-in time for every minute you keep it up. Just remember, you're going to be shut up in a stone tomb. No food. No water. Hotter every minute. You're gonna die in the end anyways, but you can make it hard—or harder. Your choice. And thanks for the pretty axe."
He picked up my shoulders, the Aussie guy grabbed my ankles, and they lifted me up five feet, swung, and then tossed me into an open mausoleum. I hit hard on my back, crunching into something. Rotten wood, a coffin. And bones. The faded, hateful aroma of old decay rose around me.
I heard them grunting. The Aussie cursed, and 8-Ball cursed back: "Dammit, put your back into it!"
I lay staring straight up. They'd thrown me into a stone tomb, a raised rectangular mausoleum-for-one. They somehow got the lid on and grated it shut an inch at a time, and I saw the rectangle of blue sky overhead narrow and become triangular, and then the triangle dwindle to a narrow crack of light. And then I heard stony thuds.
The bastards were piling rocks—more likely uprooted tombstones—up above me. They were weighing down the lid.
But I wasn't lying still. I was wriggling and shimmying like a girl giving a lucky client a lap dance. What I was really doing was shoving my jeans down, belt and all. It was tough going over my hips, but I squirmed and hitched and inched them down, hearing stitches popping, until I'd moved both wrists below the swell of my butt. Then I had to work them down my legs. I felt sharp things pricking into my naked thighs and calves. The broken ribs of the original occupant, I assumed, sticking through the decayed coffin lid.
My ankles had not been bound. I was able to slip off both boots. Then just as the last stony weight slammed onto the tomb lid, I started screaming, cursing 8-Ball with every dirty word I knew, and being Dan Corduroy's daughter, I knew a damn sight more of them than the average bear.
"Two hours until I call now," I heard 8-Ball yell. "Want to try for three? It's going to be hotter than an oven in there by noon, darling."
I continued swearing. There. Had my sock-clad left heel through my linked wrists. Took a lot of effort to pull my foot free. Now my manacled hands had only to come back up so I could squirm my right leg free, and then I could see about doing something with the handcuffs. "Three hours," 8-Ball yelled as I continued to curse. "Four will get you up to about eleven in the morning. Gonna be damn hot!"
"Right, mate," I heard the Australian say. "I done what you wanted. You said you had gold."
"Yeah," 8-Ball said. "In my place. Pick up the crowbars first."
I heard a grunt and some clanks and then a hard blow and something falling against the side of the tomb and then slipping to the ground. I had still not stopped cursing.
"Up to five hours," 8-Ball yelled. "I'll leave it at that. Bill won't want you completely dead, but the heat and the suffocation'll take the fight out of you. I'm going to have breakfast now." He chuckled, and I heard him dragging something away.
The Australian's body. Bon appetite, asshole.
I rested for a few seconds, and then with some grunts, I had my hands around in front of me. I got the jeans leg out of the loop, but the belt was still fastened. I pulled it up to my mouth and moved it with my teeth until I could bite just behind the buckle. That was fiddly, but after half an hour, I flicked the prong up and tugged the belt tongue back through the loop, and the belt was free, and I could pull it out of the loops and get the cuffs completely loose.
The jeans pockets were empty, but I expected them to be. 8-Ball would have gone through the pockets. Not that he found much.
However—he'd counted on shackling me through my belt, and so my belt was still here. And to the right of the buckle, it had a little inner pocket. And in it was something short, flat, and hard.
My utility knife. Very thin, little more than an eighth of an inch, but 1095 carbon steel, extremely strong. Four blades. One of which was a lockpick. Thank you, Stanley Pines, for that stupid gift you gave me as a birthday present when I turned fifteen. Belt with a concealed pocket, stealth pen knife to fit into the pocket. I'd had to go back to Gravity Falls for it, my spare boots, and some clothes. Master Ax had allowed that fast trip, thirty minutes to pack and get back, and I'd made sure to find my belt with the knife.
Couldn't think about that, or the wreck of Dad's house. Something big had stomped it. Now the knife was the important fact of life for me.
Now that my hands were in front of me, even though manacled, I could use my fingers. I got the lockpick unfolded and then slipped it into place with my mouth. With my left hand cupping the right cuff and steadying it, I grasped the knife handle with my teeth. Then it took another half hour of trying. The effort made sweat run down my face and snot leak from my nose. At last the lock clicked and the right shackle sprang loose. The left shackle was easy, because I could use my hands on the lockpick.
Good. My hands were free.
Now all I had to do was get out of a tomb, the lid of which was weighed down by maybe five hundred pounds of rock, the walls of which were fine-grained sandstone perhaps two inches thick.
I lay back breathing the stale, stinking air and recouping some strength. I could do this. I could do it. All I had to do was remember Master Ax's teaching.
But, damn, it wasn't going to be easy.
