Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 21

By Christopher D. Carter

In this finale to the third adventure, our heroes are faced by villains at every turn. Crush is pitted against Lord Felino in the high mountains of California, and the dark stranger holds a secret that no one would guess. In the nuclear plant, the DAM and their new found comrades face off against the STUN's most deadly pair of malefactors, Deke and Carlos. Will the plant explode during their battle? Only time will tell, and in the end, Huit Brighter may be the one who holds the key to their survival!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher D. Carter
• Release date: Jun 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781940451381

Christopher D. Carter

Christopher D. Carter is an engineer by trade. After spending many hours of free time drawing, painting, and writing, he decided to unleash a unique universe of characters upon the worlds of science fiction and comic book fandom.

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Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 21

by Christopher D. Carter, © 2016

Text and Illustration Copyright © 2016 Christopher D. Carter

All Rights Reserved

Also by Christopher Carter available at ebook retailers:

Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 1 – 5 (Book 1)

Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 6 – 12 (Book 2)

Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 3 & 13 – 21 (Book 3)

Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 1 & 2

Caught in the Neuse

Android and the Werewolf

Children’s Books

When Kitty Came to Visit

Discover other titles by Christopher D. Carter at

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SawdustEntertainment

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Epilogue

Afterword

About the Author

Foreword

I wanted to dedicate this book to my sons, Christian and Josiah. They are great kids (and now adults) whom I love very much and hope their adventures in life take them to Tomorrow Mountain and far beyond.

Chapter 1

*

Dr. Tatum, Seth, Pound, Cindy, and Bat

*

Pound stood by himself in the concrete room and gaped at the high ceiling that hovered above him. The room had a moist feel, and steam floated through the air, condensing on the cooler walls and dripping to the hardened floor. There was a deep pool of water surrounding the metal fins and pipes of the heat sink, and it reminded him somewhat of a YMCA pool, except that it was in the basement of a nuclear facility and there were no swim lanes or towels.

You wouldn’t want to swim in that, Dr. Tatum said to him, and he selectively tuned out her voice. He was still passively angry with Dr. Tatum over Sherry Lance’s disappearance months before, and even though Sherry was back from another dimension, somehow, he wanted to blame the Doc for the mess they were in now. She waited for a congenial reply to her comment, and when he did not reply, she walked over to Seth and Cindy. It looks like we’re at a dead end.

Thanks, Doc, Seth said with a frown. You couldn’t find a better phrase than ‘dead’?

Yeah, but maybe she’s right, Cindy said with teenage sarcasm. Maybe this is the end.

That isn’t what I meant, she said to Seth and turned to Cindy. Don’t say that. Never say that. There has to be a way out of this, she reasoned, but the sound of running footsteps told her different.

They’re coming, Cindy replied. And they’re going to kill us. As if to the beat of a drum, as soon as she finished those words, the two STUN agents appeared from the long hallway with guns in their stone-skinned hands. They were in the basement of the nuclear facility, surrounded by hot water, and there really was nowhere to run. Pound stepped over closer to the nervous teenager, and he nudged her to get behind him.

You’re as optimistic as I am, I see, he said to Cindy as he kept himself positioned in between her and the enemy. There was not that much distance between the wall and the heated water of the pool, and he looked down into the glowing red liquid. Then he looked at Cindy’s rocklike skin and how close she was to the pool, and he wondered how wise it was for her to be near the water. I guess I’m not helping you out any by saying this, but rocks sink in water, so you should be careful. Cindy returned a typical dissatisfied teenager smirk, and he shrugged his shoulders. I’m just saying.

Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Don’t throw stones in a glass house’? she remarked.

Yeah. I’m not sure how that relates at all, he replied, and she held up a fist.

Here’s how it relates. I’ll bust your glass.

Pound laughed at her as he decided that she was fitting in well with them. Cindy returned a smile from behind him, though her joy was only on the surface. When she looked at the two STUN guards coming at her, she could not help but think of all the people that STUN had murdered at Faraway Mountain. Men, women, and children. Except for herself, Princess Beni, and Captain Colere, she did not know of any other survivors from the other side of the dimensional portal, and she was unsure whether the grief over their deaths would ever go away. Her heart was hurting, and she could feel the pumping of blood in her temples, pounding and thumping with every beat. The past was an enormous weight and so hard to carry, and she wondered what the future might hold. At that moment, a new cold, hard vision came to her, and the vision was a clear prophecy, one which brought intense concern and roiled her emotions. Her concern was followed by a powerful fear, and then by overwhelming grief. The enormity of those emotions was all rolled into one concentrated revelation of her mortality. Death was on its way to the nuclear power plant, and it would take her new found protectors away, consumed by a hot, red and white explosion.

She blinked, and the ghastly vision was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She had never seen into the future before, and she was understandably uncertain about whether the prophecy was real or fiction, but she did not like what she had seen, and she believed she had to change it at all costs. She had to make it not happen. At that moment, time seemed to be locked in place for her, and she knew what she had to do. Maybe she could not do anything about the past and the horrible deaths which she had witnessed at Faraway Mountain, but the hot, red and white explosion had not happened yet. She had to change the prophecy so that the tragedies of the past were not repeated.

Cindy then thought about herself and wondered what others saw when they looked at her. She was just one angry teenager with one angry past and one angry future, but did anger really sum up her existence? Did she have to stay on that path forever?

No, and no, she told herself. Her life was a canvas, and like any good artist, she could choose the next color to paint on it. It did not always have to be the pulsing, pounding, thumping, angry color of red. The paint could be sky blue, or leaf green, or daisy yellow, but not always bloody red. For her entire life, it had been red, but it did not always have to be red.

And just like that, Cindy chose another color for her palette; another color for the canvas of her life. Life green was the color she chose. When she did this, the story of her life moved on, and the tale wrote itself as the dark visions of hopelessness and despair evaporated. The call of the DAM whispered and settled into her bones.

That was when time started again for her.

The STUN guards were coming. Seth and Dr. Tatum lined up behind Pound and Cindy, and they braced for the onslaught of the stone men. Rather than draw guns, the guards chose to raise their fists, and they came straight at them at full running speed. Pound watched the men’s fists with his eyes as if to try to time when they would smash him head on, and he thought to himself that this could be his last fight on earth. One of the STUN guards was so close that Pound could read the nametag around his neck: Deke Slate. At the last second before Deke’s fist connected with Pound’s face, Cindy shoved Pound away from her and into the wall, leaving her in front of Seth and Dr. Tatum. The stone guard was caught off balance by the sudden departure of his target, and his fist was aimed too high to hit Cindy’s face. She snatched his wrist with both hands and threw him over her head to the back corner of the large open room. The second guard, Carlos Gold, did not see exactly what had happened, and he was running too fast to stop. He was struck in the chin by the heel of his Deke’s shoe as he flew through the air. With his chin now up in the air and his eyes at the ceiling from the blow, Carlos did not see Cindy’s foot sweep beneath his own, clipping his own feet from under him and forcing him to stumble by them and go face first into the concrete floor. Cindy smiled as she imagined green paint splattering across a small portion of the canvas of her mind, and she felt better to see the contrast with so much red beneath. She wasn’t finished yet though. Cindy ran toward Carlos, who was face first on the floor nearby, and she pulled back her fist as if to strike him in the head. Carlos heard her coming, and he reached out and grabbed her ankle, throwing her to the floor.

Pound recovered quickly from Cindy’s shove, and he dropped down and threw his knee into Carlos’ back, a move which he regretted as soon as he had done it. A jolt of pain shot up his leg, and his knee immediately began to swell with a bruise, but he grabbed Carlos’ arms and held him to the concrete floor. Cindy scrambled away from them, and she backed up against the wall. Seth and Dr. Tatum turned their heads back and forth between the two guards, and neither one could decide what to do next, whether to help Pound hold Carlos down to the floor or to try to hold down Deke, who was already getting to his feet. Dr. Tatum and Seth went ahead and ran at Deke, but before they could get to him, he wiped his bloody lips with his forearm and smiled.

You think you can take me, huh? Deke said and pulled out a pistol. Go ahead and try. They stopped a few feet away from him, and they did the only thing they thought made sense. They held up their hands in surrender, and the guard laughed a deep, scratchy cave like sound that came from his chest. Even if you had a gun, too, you couldn’t hurt me.

We might not be able to, but Cindy sure could, Seth told him, and Deke grabbed him by the shirt collar and raised his feet off the floor with one hand.

She threw me once, but a bloody lip isn’t enough to stop me, Deke said, and with the strength in one arm, he easily heaved Seth across the