ZQ Retold Part 9: (Whatever the male equivalent of "damsel" is) in distress

Abe walked through the kitchen, looking through the room. He was trying to find something he and Abe could eat for supper.

The only food the Goblins hadn’t taken was what they didn’t consider food. In other words, Abe and Caleb were living on junk food, the type where the ingredient list covers half the box.

The pantry was completely empty. Abe cursed under his breath. It seemed that the Goblins were trying to starve them. The one thing still in the pantry was a dusty can of tuna. Abe sighed, pulling it out.

EXPIRES: 9/17/12, the date read.

Abe angrily threw down the can, and stormed back to the garage.

“The Goblins stole all our food!”, Abe spat.

“Calm down. I’m sure your cousin has some food. Why don’t you ask him?”

“I suppose”, Abe muttered to himself. “Even if he doesn’t have any food, maybe he knows where some is”

“Guess we have no choice”, Caleb replied, picking up his revolver from its place in a dish rack, which Caleb had brought to the garage.

The first thing Abe and Caleb noticed when they walked onto Affadax Avenue, was that the street was eerily void of Goblins. Scanning the area, Abe saw only a black speck in the sky, probably a zeppelin.

“This street was teeming with Goblins last time”, Caleb muttered. “Why would they suddenly be gone?”

“Maybe they’re planning a surprise attack. Or. . .OH MY GOSH!”, Abe shouted.

Caleb flinched in surprise. “What was that for?”, he asked.

“They probably want to concentrate on a specific target! And unless there’s some other guy in the area who’s selling weapons. . .”, Without finishing the sentence, Abe ran off in the direction of Tony’s house.

Tony ran through his backyard, mowing down Goblin after Goblin with his machine gun.

He ran to a corner, where the old, red picket fence met the wall of his house. Suddenly, a massive gust of wind swept the yard, sending dead skunks sailing through the air. Tony looked up in horror. A dragon was landing in the vacant lot next to his house. Karab stepped down from it.

“Raktalo hek dilwar!”, Karab shouted to a second Goblin, who clutched the dragons’ reins. The Goblin cracked the reins, and the dragon roared out a fireball. In an instant, the fence was ablaze. The ancient posts quickly disintegrated into flaming ashes as if they were made of dust. Karab walked through the fires. It seemed that his white robe was protecting him from the fire.

“How I love dramatic entries”, Karab hissed at Tony.

“You said our deal was done”, Tony growled at him, jumping away from the fence. He aimed the barrel of his machine gun into Karab’s heartless, red eyes.

Clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick, the gun said.

Karab began to laugh. “As the aliens in those old movies of yours say, ‘DIE PUNY HUMAN SCUM!’” He pulled a crossbow from a strap from his back, and reached into a quiver hanging from a belt. The quiver was situated where most people with guns kept their holsters. He reached in, and produced. . .nothing.

Surprise crossed the Goblin’s face, which quickly morphed into rage. He began shouting words that Tony guessed were Goblin curse words.

“Well, then nevermind”, Karab snarled. “I can ask one of my soldiers to kill you later. Most of your weapons will be nothing but ash”

“So will your troops”, Tony replied. “I think they’re looting my house, which you just set on fire”

A range of emotions crossed Karab’s face. First shock, then sadness, and then anger”

“They’re expendable!”, Karab barked. “I can ask my leader to make a whole new batch! If their brains are fine, I can even give them the same personalities and memories!”

By now, all of Tony’s fence and about a fifth of his house had been reduced to burnt husks. A Goblin knight, like the one who Abe and Caleb had fought walked up to Karab. The two quickly talked to each other in their native tongue.

Before Tony could react, the knight kneed him, and he crumpled to the ground. He felt rusty metal pressing against his neck, but then heard Karab shout something in Goblin. Pain stabbed through his head as the knight did what he presumed was kicking him in the face. Suddenly, Karab let out a bloodcurdling scream.

As the world faded away from Tony, he thought he saw Abe coming to his rescue.

Tony’s parents were deeply religious. Sort of. They had written their own Bible, and had taught Tony from birth that even worse than the Seven Deadly Sins were the Three Even Deadlier Sins. They were: refusal to eat vegetables, refusal to go to bed before 6 PM, and refusal to clean your room. In any case, he was constantly told that one toe out of line, and he would go straight to hell.

As he had become a dealer in illegal weapons, illegal drugs, and worst of all, illegal dead skunks, Tony figured that, if his parents were to be believed, he would be in Satan’s kingdom. It sure seemed like hell, since the first thing he saw was fire. As he looked around, he noticed that there was far less fire than he had thought. The only fire he could see was only the size of a campfire. Also, hell was very small, and looked like a garage.

Tony sprang to his feet.

“Uh, hi”, Caleb said, as he scanned the area for his machine gun.

“Don’t bother looking for the gun”, Abe told Tony. “It’s toast. Literally”

Caleb groaned. “It’s the apocalypse, and you still can’t refrain from awful puns?”

“Nope”, Abe said, chuckling.

Abe had built a campfire in the garage, keeping the door open to provide an escape for the smoke. In addition, Caleb had found an electric fan, and would occasionally switch it on to blow out the smoke at a quicker rate.

“What is this?”, Tony asked as Abe handed him a skewer with a small, green piece of what appeared to be meat. “Don’t tell me this is roast Goblin”

“It is roast Goblin”, Abe said. “Frank saw the fire and came over. He helped us take out the Goblins. Then he showed us how to cook them. Apparently, he lives on the stuff”

“It’s like eating bugs”, Caleb explained. “Innovative and a way to save food, yet also absolutely revolting”

“Better put out the fire”, Tony told Abe and Tyler after dinner. “Don’t want to give the Goblins a huge signal that shows where some humans are. Humans who just killed one of their highest-ranking”

As Tyler whacked the fire with a piece of the Goblin knight’s armor, attempting to smother it, it became apparent that they were too late.