The Way of the Ram Read online

  Unforgivingly loud even from this distance, the twin cannons came to life, firing multiple times per second, blasting away at Render from the gate. The huge projectiles passed directly over Healer and Dreamer, battering them with concussive waves. Healer took a firmer grip on Dreamer and dragged her off the Chugg grounds, positioning a concrete building between them and the guns.

  Render dodged out of the line of fire in time, flapping to gain height. As soon as it was out of those two cannons’ line of sight, though, another one somewhere along the wall got a bead on it and opened fire. The spotlights stayed on Render as it wheeled around in the air to avoid the salvo of lead being hurled its way. Each time it passed out of range of one of the guns, another would pick up the chase, destroying storefronts and blowing out windows in the Chugg building.

  Render dove and the cannons followed. As soon as Render got below about a hundred feet, level with the guns themselves, they stopped. The cloaked beast swept low to the ground, heading for the front doors of the corporate building.

  “That’s it!” Healer found himself shouting. “Go up from the inside!” Dreamer lifted her head to watch.

  Render gave the Chugg building’s double door the same treatment it had given the gates to the compound. The glass panes shattered. The polished brass frames bent and screamed as Render tore them free of the doorframe and sent them tumbling across the lawn. The red-robed invader disappeared into the shadows through the doorway.

  For a few minutes, the gunfire ceased and Healer couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears. He stared at the darkened windows, eyes searching the glossy panes for any sign of movement. He prayed that Render had made it. That it had fooled the security system. That it was on its way to fulfilling its purpose and giving them all a chance to be free of these gods.

  Then the guns roared to life again—not just the two at the entry gate behind Healer, but all of them mounted along the wall around the Megatropolis. Healer counted eight individual streams of bullets, eight cannons, all firing straight into the Chugg building. The two spotlight beams pivoted around and converged on the cannons’ point of aim. The assault shattered all the windows on that floor of the building.

  Dreamer screamed as Render was blasted out through one of the broken windows, pounded by the relentless flow of lead coming its way. It spread its wings and recovered in midair, clinging to the building and trying to scramble up along the outside.

  The cannons caught Render again. This time it could not get its bearings in time, and the constant impact of the bullets pinned it against the concrete exterior of the skyscraper. Render simply let go and fell straight down, again passing out of the guns’ range as it dropped below a hundred feet. The spotlights lost track of it again, but Healer heard its body hitting the ground.

  “No!” Dreamer wailed. “Render said they’d be invulnerable… right? They can’t be dead!”

  “They’re fine—look!” Healer pointed into the shadows near the destroyed front door of the skyscraper. The figure bounded on all fours across the lawn, leaping over the fence and out of sight again.

  “Just like Render said, nothing can pierce their hide,” Healer said.

  Dreamer took a minute to regain her composure. “Well,” she sniffed, “that’s a relief, I guess. How did those cannons know where it was?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” Healer mused. “I don’t think they ever really lost track of it. Like Hork said, I think it’s just out of their range if it goes below a hundred feet. That way they won’t shoot any more holes in the outer wall. But it seems like they’re programmed to seek it out somehow. I’m just guessing at this point, of course. We need to find out more.”

  “Well, I’m not going up that skyscraper. I don’t want to get shot either.”

  “Agreed.” Healer indicated Chugg Cybernetics. “But it looks like Render went in that building over there at some point. Let’s get inside and see if we can learn anything.”

  Chapter 49

  “We’re being watched.” Dreamer pointed.

  Healer’s eyes followed her hoof to a tiny red light in the otherwise dark and cold lobby of Chugg Cybernetics. In a corner near the ceiling hung a security camera.

  The place was ruined, furniture and chunks of drywall strewn on the floor. The walls and floor had been ripped up by Render’s claws.

  Healer was just taking a step to get a closer look at the camera when a loud, insistent electronic chime made him jump—the ring of a telephone. He spun around to the source of the sound, an information desk near the door.

  Dreamer trembled as she looked at the camera. “Do you think it’s a good idea to answer that?”

  “It could go either way,” Healer admitted. He slid around the desk and found it covered with a pile of debris. Tossing aside a chunk of sheetrock, a potted plant, and a Charlie Chugg bobblehead, he located the phone and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “What are you doing here?” a flat, even voice replied.

  Healer paused, looking at Dreamer while his mind raced. He thought of Hork and the other little worker pigs at the wall, regaining his composure. “We’re here to stop this attack,” he said. “We can see that this creature invaded your building. We’re after it. We want this to end as much as you do. We’re looking for someone named Swill, can you help us?”

  There was no immediate reply. Healer thought he heard a low hiss, possibly a sigh.

  “Come down to the Research and Development Department. Follow the trail of destruction,” the speaker said. “We have a lot to discuss.”

  “Excuse me?” Healer answered, feeling his temper rising. “We’ve got no idea what we’re walking into. How about you come up here and…” He trailed off when he realized he was talking to dead air. The caller had hung up.

  Dreamer stood in the middle of the empty lobby, looking oddly small and vulnerable. “Who was it?” she asked. Her eyes stayed on the camera.

  “Didn’t say. They invited us to the lab. They said to follow the damage Render did to the place.”

  “I don’t think so. I prefer your idea. Get them to meet us up here. Can you call them back?”

  “I’ll try,” Healer said. He pushed the redial button and waited. The phone rang until it was picked up by an automated answering system. He slammed the receiver down.

  “They’re not answering now,” he growled. “I guess we’re doing it their way.”

  Dreamer came to his side. “I don’t feel good about walking into an unknown situation like this,” she muttered, “but Arghast told me to let you lead the way for now. Don’t get me in more trouble.”

  Healer smirked and kissed her cheek. “You heard Hork. There’s a lot of fear in this city. This person might be willing to help us if we show we can help them.”

  “I understand. This is just overwhelming. I’m all mixed up with gods and monsters again.” Dreamer fixed Healer with a wry smile. “You know what the common factor is? You. I let you into my life, and you bring craziness with you. Every time.”

  “You came along by your own free will,” Healer shot back with a bigger grin. “Admit it, you enjoy these little expeditions as much as I do. Whenever I come into your life, I bring excitement with me.”

  After a minute of trying to hold a stare, Dreamer’s sarcastic smile turned into a genuine one. “Well, no point denying that.”

  Healer laughed and pulled her close. “Honestly, I want this to end as much as you do. Remember what you said when we were up that tree, being hunted by dogs? The only way out is to see it through. Let’s keep going.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?” Dreamer kept next to Healer’s side as the two of them followed the claw marks away from the lobby and down a hall.

  At the corridor’s end, two elevators stood next to a doorway marked “Emergency Stairwell.” The metal doorframe was bowed outward, and the door itself was nowhere to be seen. Another camera stared at them from high on the wall between the elevators. The elevator call buttons were not l
it, prompting them to follow Render’s example and take the stairs.

  The bare, cold stairwell felt like a dungeon. The echo of their hooves clicking on the concrete steps seemed to travel all the way up and down the shaft.

  “See the sign?” Dreamer said. “We only need to go down one floor.”

  “That’s good,” Healer answered, peering over the rail into the darkness below. “I really don’t want to find out what else is down there.”

  Once they passed through the doorway indicating the basement floor, their surroundings looked identical to the floor they had just left. On the wall directly across from them, stenciled block letters announced “RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT.”

  Healer turned around to look at the elevators, finding another working security camera. He gave it a shrugging gesture. Dreamer, meanwhile, peeked out of the elevator nook and around the corner.

  “Oh, it’s this way,” she said. A metal double door blocked the entire hallway. That door, too, was rent with claw marks and had been battered open. It swung loosely on its hinges as Healer pushed through it and into the laboratory.

  He recoiled, fighting the urge to back out of the room altogether. This had to be their destination. If Durdge and the clone enforcers had hinted at the scope of the Chugg Corporation’s technological depravity, this room laid it all out.

  The chamber was all matte walls and sterile steel surfaces. Rows of metal shelves held jars full of biological material. A massive waste disposal vat stood against a wall, next to a fume hood under a hanging duct system. A surgical table formed the centerpiece of the room, beside a rack loaded down with drills, cutting implements, and electrodes. An electroencephalograph, a cardiac monitor, and a huge glass tank filled with cloudy fluid lined another wall. Across from Healer stood a crudely rigged computer with four screens and a bundle of cables trailing across the floor.

  In front of the computer sat a little bespectacled pig in a bloodstained lab coat.

  Healer stepped in front of Dreamer and faced the pig. “Did you call us?”

  The pig nodded, fidgeting on the keyboard with his trotter. “Yes. As you may have guessed, I am Swill, the director of this department.”

  Dreamer stared at the surgical table. “This is where it happened, isn’t it? You did those horrible things to Mauler. You made Durdge. You created the clone soldiers.”

  Healer’s demeanor changed in a second. “I came down here giving you the benefit of the doubt. Is she right? Were all those things done by your department?”

  Swill shifted his weight. “I’m afraid that’s all true.”

  Healer crossed the lab and seized the collar of Swill’s coat with one hoof. He yanked Swill away from his computer, knocking over his chair. Swill made no effort to defend himself as he was shoved against the wall and pinned there.

  “You’re responsible?” Healer roared. “How many times have you almost killed us? Where’s the trap? Are there a hundred clones right outside?” With each question Healer pounded the little porker’s back into the wall. “Never mind, I’m not waiting to find out. I should skewer you where you stand.”

  “Healer, wait!” Dreamer shouted, taking hold of his shoulder. “Render was here.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’ve seen it in action. It’s got Mauler’s sense of justice. It killed Scurvert but let the innocent lambs go. It was in this building. It spared this man. It must have done so for a reason. Let him talk.”

  Healer took a deep breath and let go of Swill’s coat. “You’re right. Pig, don’t make me regret this.”

  Dreamer guided Healer back a few steps by her grip on his shoulder. “Mr. Swill, if Render let you live after everything you’ve done… I think we should probably listen to what you have to say.”

  The pig straightened his glasses and smoothed his collar. “I understand your anger, Healer. I really do. You and yours have suffered greatly because of my work. I cannot begin to take that back, but fate seems to have given me a chance to redeem myself.”

  Healer kept glaring. “You suddenly grew a conscience?”

  Swill shook his head as he stood his chair back up at his desk and took a seat in it. “I believe I became better informed. Try to understand. For pigs like me who grew up never leaving the walls of the Megatropolis, all of our information about the world outside comes from posters, television broadcasts, and public announcements. All of it is filtered through the agenda of the Chugg Corporation. They tell us that sheep are a hateful, mindless rabble that would swarm our city and tear down everything we have built here if given half a chance.”

  Healer snickered. Dreamer silenced him with a glare.

  “But the company made a critical misstep,” Swill continued. “Your business plan. At this phase, their best move would have been to deny your proposal at best, or make you vanish at worst. But you lured them with the prospect of just a little more cash in their bank accounts, which they could not resist. Even as they were preparing to spring their trap and bring this entire economic pig-sheep venture to an end, they let greed win out over reason.”

  “You mean my clinic?”

  “Yes. Pigs who came for your services had good things to say when they returned to the Megatropolis. It got people talking downtown. You were working directly against the stereotype of sheep that the company had built up for us. So they accelerated their plan. They kept my assistant and me working around the clock to extract material from Mauler and keep him too weak to escape.”

  Dreamer took another look around the lab. “Where’s your assistant now?”

  “Oh, Tuck.” Swill sighed. “His conscience was his undoing. He was overcome with guilt. He laid his tools down and refused to perform another procedure on Mauler. Now he has vanished, and I fear that they have killed him in order to hang a threat over my head and keep me working. My knowledge was vital to the production of this clone… if I’d only had the courage to follow Tuck’s example, I could have brought this project to an end. I have no fear for my own safety. But I fear for my family… my colleagues…”

  “Are you going to tell us what’s going on here?” Healer demanded. “Durdge said the Chugg Corporation has an endgame. Scurvert and Render talked about clones. Tell us what’s happening.”

  Swill turned his chair and pressed a switch on his desk. A white light came on in the bottom of the cloudy glass tank, illuminating its contents.

  Chapter 50

  “Hogdogger,” Dreamer gasped.

  Floating in the thick fluid was a broad-shouldered figure similar in proportions to Mauler but much larger. Its brown, hairless body was covered with electrodes and intravenous tubes. Its eyes resembled those of the cloned dogs, warthogs, and ospreys—thick, cloudy spheres utterly devoid of life.

  “This creature is the reason Chugg Cybernetics exists,” Swill said. “Kept in stasis while it awaits activation.”

  “We should destroy it while it’s incomplete,” Healer growled.

  Swill shrugged. “It is complete, actually. Grown exactly to the specifications required of me. I’m hiding the fact that it is finished because I am no longer essential to this project now that my employers have what they want. I have no idea how they plan to use it though. It’s missing a vital component.”

  “A brain,” Healer said.

  “That’s right,” Swill answered, surprised.

  “Durdge said that he was promised a perfect body to make up for everything he’s been put through. His brain was supposed to go into the Hogdogger body, wasn’t it?”

  “That was the plan, to my understanding. I assume Durdge told you that after he cut the wireless feed. I also assume that he has been destroyed.”

  “Right on both counts. But he said he didn’t know what Chugg was planning to do with him once they’d put him in that body. Scurvert didn’t know either… at least, he was in no condition to say.”

  Swill frowned. “Is Scurvert dead?”

  “Yes.”

  After a pause, Swill nodded. “Alright. The Hogdogger
clone, with Durdge’s brain implanted in it, was intended to do what Chugg originally had planned for Mauler when Pincher first captured him.”

  “Which is?”

  “Please, have a seat.”

  “Thanks,” Healer said, “but no thanks.”

  Swill shrugged and mopped his brow with his sleeve. “In the last fifty years since the Canine-Avian War, Chugg has devoted himself to building up his company’s capital so he could move our level of technology forward at a relentless pace. He’s done this because of Durdge, his younger son, who was killed right at the end of the War. Chugg was determined to find some way to resurrect Durdge. As you have seen, Chugg Cybernetics was established to complete that goal. Durdge was saved, for a time, and Chugg was satisfied.”

  “What changed?”

  “Toxid changed. Several years ago, probably around the time you were born, he began demanding blood sacrifices. Chugg came up with an idea that would supply Toxid with all the blood he would ever need, while eliminating our need for dogs and birds to help us retain control.” Swill rotated his chair and typed on his computer.

  The monitor changed to a picture of a blueprint. Healer leaned in close to look at it. “What’s this?”

  “This is the schematic of the bunker you probably saw outside. All the uptown pigs are hiding there now during this emergency, but its true purpose is much grander.” Swill pointed at a tiny block of text at the bottom of the image.

  Healer felt a chill. “Sheep farm. Scurvert mentioned that. What does it mean?”

  “Our plan was to take all this cloning technology that we developed—”

  “Stole,” Dreamer interjected.

  Swill shot her a guilty look. “Yes, stole. I had thought we were going to simply grow a supply of cloned sheep and keep them in this bunker, but Chugg insisted that we somehow imprison all the existing city and quarry sheep instead and use the cloning process to replace them as they were sacrificed. By then, he had decided that the whole world should suffer for what Durdge had gone through. Either way, the project’s end goal was the same—a limitless supply of blood for Toxid.”