Chapter 9 of 78 · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Chapter 9 — Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home

Book: The Butcher's Masquerade · Part: The Hunt · Previous: Chapter 8 — The Night Wyrm's web · Next: Chapter 10 — No dinosaurs of any kind · Floor: Floor 6 — The Hunting Grounds · Series: the series

Opening

» Time Until the Hunt Begins: 3.

Summary

Three and a half hours to the hunt; 83,995 crawlers; 1,013 hunters. Katia's map, drawn from the gate coordinates Gwen's team looted off Quetzalcoatlus: the floor is about 100,000 square kilometres, the size and shape of Iceland, 400-odd kilometres north to south, the river a 500-kilometre snake from northeast to southwest with at least a dozen bridges, the roads called in by every crawler and coordinated by Imani. Carl's request: knock down every bridge but one. Miriam, on the main road south with the caravans: the caravans' bodyguards cast anti-trap spells as they go, so the caravan routes are safe — Carl has Katia spread that — and forty kilometres on, across the river, is a large and 'very peculiar' Ursine town where Bianca must be put away. Carl circles it.

The plan Donut objects to: send Bomo, who last entered the space in Zockau, back out through that door with a bomb half an hour before the release. 'BOMO IS OUR FRIEND. WE DON'T BLOW UP OUR FRIENDS, CARL.' The bomb: a broken live-ammo clamshell from the Bubbles welded shut around explosives and Mordecai's Nitro Sludge — inert ramen-like blocks, a shield-potion by-product, each worth several hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate as an oxygen amplifier, too much of which mutes the blast — on a little cart, imbued with Fear. The simulator says a third of a mile flattened and a half mile beyond it killed. The system names it: Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home – Wheeled Bomb, high-yield thermobaric, 'I hope you're paid up on your homeowner's insurance.' Donut's better idea: make Bomo her own minion instead of the party's and send a Clockwork Triplicate of him out the door. 'YOU UNDERESTIMATE ME, CARL. THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO LET ME KNOW THE PLAN.' If they reach the next town in three hours, they do it her way.

Characters

• Carl — Wants every bridge but one down; builds the biggest bomb he has ever made on purpose.
• Princess Donut — Will not blow up a friend; proposes a clockwork Bomo instead.
• Katia Grim — Maps the floor from gate coordinates; will organise the bridges.
• Miriam Dom — Reports the caravan roads are trap-free and the Ursine town peculiar.
• The Sledge — Bomo agrees to be a bomb, and seems excited.
• Mordecai — Nitro Sludge, explained badly and mixed by trial and error.
• Imani — Coordinating the community map.

Locations

• The Hunting Grounds — Iceland-sized; a snake of a river; a dozen bridges; caravan roads.
• Point Mongo — Circled on the map: forty kilometres south, across the river.

Motifs

• Explosives — Nitro Sludge; a thermobaric egg on a cart; 'Boom.'
• The crawler count — 83,995; 1,013 hunters.
• The hunters — Three and a half hours; they will spread from the city like a cloud.
• 'Goddamnit, Donut' — Clockwork Bomo.