Cineverse - Bride Of The Slime Monster Part 24

"Tee-" she gasped. "Tee hee-"

"She's been shot!" Delores yelled.

Dee Dee/Captain Crusader nodded as she swayed back and forth, both hands over her wound.

"Remember," she replied between clenched teeth, "a bullet takes-only a minute, but a-friend is yours-for life." She toppled forward, onto the sand.

Doctor Dread and Menge the Merciless, now in their more traditional bad guy costumes, stepped forward from the crowd.

"Menge, that shot was"-Dread paused triumphantly- "excellent. How easily they fell for our little"-this time he simultaneously paused and gloated-"ruse."Menge's reply was more to the point: "Ah hahahaha. Ah hahahaha!"

^ ^ 18 ^ ^

"THE FATEFUL MOMENT!".

Captain Crusader? Shot?

Roger realized at last that this must be the life-or-death situation the Plotmaster had spoken of!

"You'll pay for this!" Roger shouted with upraised fist.

"He's beginning to sound like a hero," Menge replied smoothly. "Righteous indignation with absolutely no originality whatsoever."

"Kill!" Zabana yelled with jungle-bred determination.

"Pitiful fools!" Menge crowed. "You will, of course, permit us to gloat over our accomplishments."

"Shoot!" Doc staggered to his feet as he pulled his six-gun and tried to sober himself to the task at hand.

"How-clever of us," Dread agreed smugly. "To seemingly disappear, only to- reposition ourselves!"

"Arrest!" Officer O'Clanrahan pulled a nightstick and handcuffs free from his belt.

"And wait for the moment when you hopeless do-gooders revealed the one person who might have stopped us!" Menge smirked.

"Arf!" Dwight agreed with his fellows, animal bloodl.u.s.t in his eyes.

"And now we have stopped-Captain Crusader." Dread chortled unpleasantly. "What do you say to that?"

"Slime!" Edward chorused, the sand-covered monster having the last word on the subject.

Delores stepped forward, and waved for the rest to follow her. She shouted her defiance to Dread and Menge: "Now that you've shot Captain Crusader, everybody's going to be after you!"

"It is your death!" Zabana agreed.

"Well, maybe," Dread allowed, "-if we planned to stick around."

The blue smoke exploded around them.

"See you in the funny papers"-Dread hesitated with finality-"if we don't remove you first!"And they were gone.

Roger knelt by Dr. Dee Dee Davenport.

"You really are Captain Crusader?"

She clutched her stomach as she grimaced in pain. Her bright green bikini was turning brown with blood. She nodded.

"Yes, I am the Captain."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"I did tell you," she replied. "When you pointed the Ring of Truth at me. And then I changed the subject. The Ring of Truth does work, you know-at least for getting people to tell the truth. It's not that good for getting around the Cineverse, though."

She took a shuddery breath. "A lot of things aren't working as well around here as they used to."

"You deceived me!" Roger exclaimed. "But why?"

Captain Crusader shrugged her shapely shoulders. "A hero has to be-flexible in times like these. Besides, you had to learn how to-be a hero, too."

The others gathered around Roger and the Captain.

"Dread gone," Zabana explained.

"Captain Crusader?" Louie asked. "How bad is-"

Dee Dee tried to smile, but the pain was all too evident. She took another ragged breath.

"I can last-for another page or two. I have to-to tell you everything you need to know." She reached out and weakly patted Roger's hand. "Your coming to the Cineverse-that was partly my doing, you know. We needed someone from outside, someone who could see beyond the separate movie worlds, someone who could work by my side. Too bad it came-too late."

"It may not be too late!" Roger insisted. "Maybe we can get help."

Dee Dee shook her head. "No-I'm a goner. That's one of the things that a hero always knows. Forgive me-for not showing myself to you sooner, but you had to learn how to control the Cineverse-like you learned how to control the Cowabunga- munga!"

She coughed then, covering her mouth with her hand. When she stopped, there was a discreet amount of blood on her palm.

"Captain Crusader?" Officer O'Clanrahan wailed, beside himself with grief. "Dying?""What'll we do now?" Doc chorused.

"I may be dying," Dee Dee agreed, "but there'll always be a Captain Crusader. It's one of the Laws of the Cineverse." She looked up at the man from Earth, her bright blue eyes alive with purpose. "Now, Roger, it'll have to be you."

"Me?" Roger objected. "But-"

"I'm sorry-but you have no choice." She clenched her teeth as she shivered with pain. "It is too bad-that I did not have the time-to properly train you. But you are the only one here-with the proper raw materials-the only one-who can stand up to Doctor Dread."

Her eyelids fluttered. "Take my hand, Roger. It's getting dark!"

Roger did as she asked.

"Remember," she said, her voice barely a whisper, "a song-in your heart-and a smile on-your lips-keeps Old Man-Trouble-away."

Her breath left her in a rush. Her hand went limp in Roger's. Her eyes closed. She was gone.

"Ssrrffmm." The Mumbler added his incoherent condolences.

"I suppose," Edward intoned morosely, "an event like this means it would be improper to announce our engagement-just yet."

But Delores was beyond caring about the Slime Monster's intentions. "Captain Crusader?" she whispered, as if she could barely say the words. "Gone? What can we do?"

Roger laid the Captain's hand gently upon the sand, then stood and turned to look at all the others.

"Just what she told us to do," he replied. "We will carry on, until we defeat Doctor Dread!"

Roger wished he felt as confident as he sounded. He didn't know the first thing about fighting Doctor Dread, unless he could do it by firing off press releases. He didn't even know his way around the Cine verse. How could he possibly hope to defeat the forces of evil of every movie world that ever existed?

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed impossible. He was the new Captain Crusader? The Cineverse was doomed. What could possibly be any worse?

"Look!" Frankie yelled from behind Roger. "Captain Crusader! She's gone!"

Roger spun around. He looked where Dee Dee's body had been. There was nothing there now but an indentation in the sand.The wind had started up again along the beach. Seagulls called to each other in the sky.

Big Louie shook Roger's elbow.

"Roger! Something's happening! I can feel it!"

There was an explosion, followed by blue smoke.

"Roger!" a woman's voice shouted indignantly. "What have you done? What is the meaning of this?"

Roger knew that voice. It could get worse, after all.

The blue smoke cleared, revealing a very unhappy and somewhat overdressed woman of middle years.

It was his mother.

"Well?" she said in that you'd-better-have-an-explanation-or-else voice she had honed through years of experience. "Are you going to answer me?"

"What's the meaning of what, Mother?" Roger replied, automatically adopting his most conciliatory tone.

It was, of course, the absolute wrong tone to use on one's mother.

"Don't act innocent with me, young man!" Surfers scattered as she strode purposefully across the sand toward her son. "There is something going on here, and I demand to know what it is!"

Roger looked around at Zabana, Doc, and Louie, still in their double-breasted suits, and Delores with her spangled evening gown. Then, of course, there was his own very soggy jogging suit, and almost everybody else wearing surfing duds. And his mother wanted him to explain all this?

"Mother," Roger replied at last, hoping against hope that she would accept his answer, "it's better if you don't know."

"Roger Aloysius Gordon!'' His mother declared in a tone suitable for declaring World War III.

"Aloysius?" Louie asked.

"Family name," Roger replied. "Never used."

Except, he thought rather than said, when his mother was in one of those moods.

And his mother had only begun. "First, you disappear. Heaven knows, you never call me in the first place, so how would I know when you disappear? But this time you de- cided you were too busy to go to work, too. The office was calling all over the place, looking for you. They even called Susan-she was always such a nice girl-I don't see why the two of you ever split up. She at least took the time to call me. I tell you, we were both worried sick."

Susan? Roger thought about objecting. After all, he and Susan had gotten divorced years ago. Not that his mother noticed. She was happy as long as Susan called.

"And then I couldn't find Mr. M!" his mother continued melodramatically. "His house was deserted, his little red sports car gone. I tell you, it felt like people were disap- pearing right and left in my life. You don't know how insecure that can make a person.''

Roger nodded. Susan or no Susan, it was too late to object. He knew his mother's tirades-they grew longer every time you tried to let her know there was more than one side to an issue. The only way anyone could possibly survive was to suffer in silence.

"Well, what could I do?" His mother sighed, a faraway look in her eyes. "With you gone-it's funny. I started to think how you were as a little boy-I mean, besides being messy and inconsiderate. I started going through my keepsake drawer. You know how sentimental a mother can be. And then I found this cheap plastic ring."

She looked up wistfully, including everyone on the beach in her conversation. "You know, when Roger was a boy, he loved the free prizes that came in cereal boxes. It seemed I had saved one, along with those old school reports and handmade valentines."

Big Louie had sidled up to Roger. He stood on his tiptoes and whispered in Roger's ear. "She'll go on like this for quite a while, won't she?"

Roger nodded, his eyes still respectfully watching his lecturing parent.

"And then there was all this blue smoke. At first, I thought it was the furnace, backing up again-"

"Did you ever think about the implications of all this," Louie went on. "Your mother not only accidentally uses the Captain Crusader Decoder Ring, but she ends up here, in the exact same place as her son? Do you realize how coincidental this all is?"

Roger nodded even more vehemently. Of course, after what he'd been through in the Cineverse, nothing would surprise him.

"No, nothing surprises me, either," Louie agreed, even though Roger hadn't spoken aloud. "But this is still too strange to be coincidence. I sense the hand of the Plotmaster in all this."

"The Plotmaster?" Roger asked, his voice a mixture of astonishment and relief. At last he could tell the others what had happened to him! "I've met the Plotmaster!"

Everybody-with the exception of Roger's mother, who was too busy complaining- stopped to stare at Roger."What?" Delores asked gently, a look of concern in her deep blue eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Plotmaster mythic," the jungle prince added. "Even more mythic than Zabana!"

"n.o.body ever actually meets the Plotmaster," Louie agreed as he shook his head in admiration. "Maybe you do have methods!"

"Roger?" his mother demanded. "Are you listening to me?"

"In a minute, Mother." Roger turned back to the others. "But a number of us have spoken to the Plotmaster. He saw not only me, but Louie, Doc, and Zabana!"

"He did?" Louie asked incredulously.

"Shure!'' Doc scoffed from his spot on the ground. "And they call me the town drunk!"

"No, wait!" Roger insisted. He had to get them to believe him. He had the feeling this whole thing with the Plotmaster was somehow tied up with the Change, and the very fate of the Cineverse! But how could he explain it?