by Greg Cox
Great, Baird thought. Now what?
None of her martial arts moves were going to slow down the Three Men for long. She liked to think that the mannequins lacked her training and experience in hand-to-hand combat, but there were three of them and they were armed, so she looked about for something to even the odds, even as all three climbed back onto their feet and came at her from different directions. A length of rusty rebar, jutting from a nearby heap of debris, caught her eye and she somersaulted past her foes to wrest it from the trash. The thirty-inch metal rod felt good in her hand; it wasn’t a weapons-grade steel baton, but it would do.
I can do some serious damage with this.
Rod in hand, she hurled herself back into the fray, employing the improvised weapon for both defense and offense simultaneously. The rebar deflected the Butcher’s cleaver, even as she dodged the Baker’s rolling pin and shattered the Candlestick Maker’s right knee on the back swing. The crippled figure toppled over onto one side and couldn’t get back up again. Bits of pulverized leg littered the path.
Okay, Baird thought. Now we’re talking.
She saw how this had to go.
“You can’t kill them or knock them out!” she shouted to the others. “You have to smash them to pieces!”
She whacked away at her remaining opponents, swinging the rebar like a sledgehammer. The Butcher’s cleaver went flying, along with his hand, as she brought the steel rod down on his wrist with all her strength, breaking it off from his arm. Undaunted, he kept coming at her, as did the Baker. This was going to be a workout.
Disarm and demolish, Baird thought. That’s the ticket.
But how long was that going to take? The end of the world was dawning and they had better things to do than take some magic crash dummies apart!
* * *
Jack Sprat and his wife were the original odd couple. He was a tall, rangy string bean clad in vaguely “old-timey” garb while she was short and squat in the extreme. Neither appeared particularly interested in eating fat or lean at the moment, only in stopping Stone and company from getting to Humpty Dumpy in time to save the universe.
Nothing doing, Stone thought. He hadn’t hopped back and forth across the world and nearly gotten eaten by an “itsy-bitsy” spider just to get stalled at the last minute by a couple of nursery rhyme characters with strict dietary restrictions. Hell, I took out the Big Bad Wolf once.
Sprat rushed ahead of his lumbering spouse, trying to jab Stone with his pointy cutlery. Stone ducked and weaved, dodging the skinny mannequin’s thrusts. Stone’s fighting moves weren’t as slick as Baird’s, but they usually got the job done. He’d won his fair share of bar brawls even before he’d signed on with the Library, even if this fight was more annoyingly ridiculous than most. This wasn’t even the first time somebody had come at him with a fork. He still had a scar where that jealous waitress in Tulsa had poked him a few years back.
But then, I probably had that one coming.
Sprat lunged at Stone, but Stone was ready for him. He blocked Sprat’s knife arm with his own forearm and seized the fork hand by the wrist, then butted Sprat with his head just like he would with a flesh-and-blood opponent.
But Sprat wasn’t flesh and blood. Stone grunted in pain as he slammed his head into the solid fiberglass head. The impact was enough to stagger Stone for a moment. His head swayed limply atop his neck. An ugly bruise began to blossom on his forehead.
Okay, bad idea, Stone thought. Let’s not do that again.
Still grappling with Sprat, he lost track of Mrs. Sprat—until a fork jabbed him in the back. Stone yelped and kicked backward with one leg to fend her off. He hoped to knock her over, but her center of gravity was too large and too low; all he could do was force her back a few steps and keep her from jamming the fork in any deeper. She swung at his leg with her knife, but her chubby arms were too short to reach him. Stone thanked whatever unknown sculptor had molded those arms years ago.
On second thought, maybe I underestimated these two. I’ll take the Big Bad Wolf any day.
Trapped between the Sprats was no place to be; he threw his full weight against Jack Sprat, knocking the less-centered mannequin onto his back. Eerily, Spratt issued no sound—no grunts or groans—as he fell, but stayed utterly silent as he struggled to employ his weapons. Letting go of Sprat’s arms, Stone sprang away from the fallen figure while dashing out from under Mrs. Sprat’s slashing blade as well.
“Uh-huh,” Stone said. “Keep your silverware to yourself.”
Jack Sprat’s fingers grabbed his ankle, impeding his escape. Swearing, Stone had to sacrifice his left cowboy boot to break from the mannequin’s grasp, yanking his foot free of the boot and hobbling awkwardly away from his foes with one boot on and one boot off, which certainly sounded like something from a nursery rhyme even though it took him a moment to place it.
Diddle, diddle, dumpling … oh, the hell with it.
Staggering away from the Sprats, Stone stumbled into the tangled remains of an untended garden. Instead of silver bells and cockle shells, ragweed, thistles, and brambles had overrun the flower beds. He tripped over something in the dark and swore out loud as he hit the dirt. Glancing back, he saw that he’d run afoul of a long-forgotten garden hoe lying in the weeds. He mentally cursed whatever careless gardener had left it behind.
As relentless as a bad dream, the Sprats pursued him into the garden. Reaching back, he yanked the fork out of his aching trapezius, which stung like blazes. Scrambling to his feet, he looked from the fork to the oncoming mannequins and wondered how the hell he was supposed to stop them.
“You can’t kill them or knock them out!” Baird called out. “You have to smash them to pieces!”
With a fork?
Risking a glance at Baird, Stone saw her whaling on the Three Men from the Tub with a sturdy piece of rebar she’d scrounged from somewhere. Fiberglass limbs shattered as easily as bone when hit by rebar as Baird went to town on the mannequins, smashing them to bits. A two-handed swing amputated the Baker’s right arm, rolling pin and all. Chips and flakes went flying.
Now there’s a sight for sore eyes, he thought.
He didn’t see any rebar in his immediate vicinity, but there was the hoe. Discarding the fork, he dived for the tool and grabbed on to its long aluminum handle just as the Family Sprat caught up with him. A pronged metal blade jutted transversely from the end of the pole. He gripped the hoe like a weapon as he faced off against his lean and not-so-lean opponents.
“Batter up,” he muttered.
* * *
Little Miss Muffet skipped merrily toward Cassandra, all molded pigtails and pinafores. Cobwebs clung to the mannequin in a case of life imitating rhyme. It wasn’t armed with anything besides a large wooden spoon, but it was still as spooky as could be, Cassandra thought, like a possessed doll or ventriloquist dummy in a horror movie she regretted watching when she tried to get to sleep afterward. Cassandra had no intention of letting the lifelike figure get its clutches on her, and not just because the prospect of being beaten up or worse by Little Miss Muffet of all characters was too embarrassing to contemplate.…
“I don’t suppose we can just talk this out,” she suggested, “maybe over some yummy curds and whey?”
Miss Muffet picked up a rock and threw it at her.
“Hey, watch it!” Cassandra flinched as the rock whizzed past her ear. “That’s not very nice at all!”
Looking for a weapon of her own, she ran over to a rickety white picket fence near a picnic area. Braving splinters, she pried loose one of the surviving slats and charged at Miss Muffet, swinging the slat like a club.
No more nice Librarian, she thought. Tough it, Miss Muffet.
The slat connected with the mannequin—and broke apart.
The fencing, that was, not Miss Muffet
Cassandra’s face fell. Right, she thought. I should’ve considered the relative density of rotting plywood versus molded fiberglass.…
Undeterred by the blow, Miss Muffet kicked Cassandra in the shin.
“Oww!”
A wooden spoon smacked Cassandra repeatedly. Greedy fingers grabbed on to the hem of her skirt. Cassandra threw herself backward, tearing from the mannequin’s grip.
No fair, she thought. I liked that skirt.
Baird may have said “no retreat,” but Miss Muffet had Cassandra on the run. Limping, Cassandra retreated to the picnic area, where Miss Muffet chased her around the weathered tables and benches. The bratty mannequin was fast and determined, so Cassandra had to sprint to keep a step or two ahead of it, which wasn’t getting her or the other Librarians any closer to Humpty Dumpty, which was what really mattered. Miss Muffet was just a distraction, a delaying tactic on the part of Mother Goose. Cassandra wracked her brain for a way to solve this frustrating story problem.
Maybe this is like fighting a Fictional, she thought, and you have to turn their own narrative against them? She ran through the rhyme in her head:
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey,
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
Cassandra didn’t have any spiders on hand, and wasn’t inclined to go foraging for one, but maybe she didn’t have to. Climbing up onto one of the picnic tables, she feigned horror (which was not too difficult under the circumstances) and pointed frantically past Miss Muffet.
“Eek!” Cassandra screamed. “A spider!”
The bluff worked like magic. Just like that, Miss Muffet threw up her arms in fright and ran madly away, vanishing into the premorning gloom as fast her little legs could carry her. Cassandra grinned in satisfaction, feeling very much a Librarian.
Who needs to clobber things when you can research an answer instead?
Surveying the scene from atop the table, she saw that Baird and Stone had almost finished disposing of their own adversaries in their own inimitable styles. Broken pieces of mannequin twitched and vibrated harmlessly upon the ground. Hopping on one foot, Stone retrieved a boot from the rubble and pulled it back on. Baird maintained her grip on a lethal piece of rebar. Cassandra started to look for Ezekiel when Stone called out a warning.
“Heads up, folks! We’re not done with these characters yet … and I do mean ‘characters’!”
More of Mother Goose’s army arrived on the scene, including Wee Willie Winkie in his nightgown, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Old Mother Hubbard, the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the Three Wise Men of Gotham, Little Tommy Tucker, Mary and her Little Lambs, Tom the Piper’s Son, clutching a stolen pig under his arm, and several more that Cassandra couldn’t immediately identify. The Three Little Kittens, still missing their mittens, extended their claws as they guarded the path leading to Humpty Dumpty. Sharp teeth were bared beneath the Kittens’ whiskers. Cassandra found herself wishing that Mother Goose hadn’t been quite so prolific.
A little case of rhymer’s block would have made our job so much easier.
But where was Ezekiel? The last she’d seen, Jack Horner and Boy Blue had been converging on him. Fearing for his safety, and knowing that he would never willingly desert them, she raised her voice.
“Ezekiel? Answer me if you can!”
* * *
An earsplitting air horn responded to her plea, followed by the unexpected sight of a hot-wired John Deere bulldozer crashing through trees and shrubbery with Ezekiel Jones at the wheel. Leaning on the horn to warn his compatriots, he steered the noisy tractor straight for Mother Goose’s reinforcements while Stone and Baird dived out of the way. The ’dozer’s heavy metal blade slammed into the mannequins, knocking them over like bowling pins, just as it had done with Jack Horner and Boy Blue earlier, bits of whom were still wedged into the tractor’s reinforced steel treads. Yet more fiberglass crunched loudly as the army of figures were also ground to pieces beneath the ’dozer’s tread. Ezekiel backed the vehicle over them again, just to play it safe, before shifting the engine into neutral. He leaned out of the cab to shout to the others, who were all gaping at him in surprise.
“What?” he asked glibly. “They were scheduled for demolition anyway.”
“Jones?” Stone asked in disbelief. “What the hell are you doing in a bulldozer?”
He sounded more cranky than grateful; Ezekiel figured Stone was just annoyed that he hadn’t thought of it first.
“Please!” the thief said, offended. “I boosted my first construction vehicle before I even got my learner’s permit. They’re great for carrying off ATMs and soda machines.”
He was about to invite the others to climb aboard, or maybe follow behind him, when the tractor’s engine started choking loudly. Oily black smoke erupted from the exhaust pipe and steam billowed up from the engine. He frantically worked the gear shift, trying to get the chug-chugging engine running properly again, but it faltered and died. Hissing steam taunted his efforts.
“Damn it, Jones!” Stone complained. “You overheated the engine.”
“Did not!” Ezekiel hit the gas and ignition, but the tractor remained stubbornly inert, like a lock that refused to open no matter how many times you entered the right combination. “It must be … magical sabotage … or something. From all the bad mojo in the air, you know?”
“Bad mojo?” Stone threw down a garden hoe in exasperation. “Do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth sometimes?”
Ezekiel got down from the cab. “Like you could have done any better?”
“You bet I could. I’ve worked more construction sites than you’ve—”
Baird whistled loudly to get their attention. “That’s enough, boys. Save the sibling rivalry until after we’ve saved the universe.”
To the east, the sky was getting even brighter and ruddier.
Ezekiel knew a red-alert signal when he saw one. This was the part in a heist when the alarms went off and everything went pear-shaped.
“So what are we waiting for?” he asked.
22
They made good time crossing the grounds without running into any further obstacles along the way. Baird wanted to think that Mother Goose had run out of tricks, but she knew better than to count on that. Too many battles had been lost by underestimating the enemy, so Baird had held on to her rebar. She and the Librarians were almost to the Humpty Dumpty tableau when she signaled the others to stop. She lowered her voice to avoid being overheard—by the mannequins or anyone else.
“Okay, here’s the plan. If Mother Goose is already at ground zero, I’ll try to hold her attention while you three circle around behind her and try to get those books away from her. Got it?”
“I guess,” Stone muttered. “But I don’t like the idea of you putting yourself in the line of fire.”
“She hasn’t attacked anybody directly yet,” Baird said. “Frontal assaults don’t seem to be her style. I just need to keep her talking long enough for you folks to sneak up on her.”
“Er, she did turn a candelabra into a flamethrower,” Cassandra pointed out, “and threaten me and Cole with it.”
“True,” Baird said, “but from what you said, she didn’t blast either of you when she had a chance, before or after she got the book. And in any event, I’m the Guardian. Drawing fire while you three pull a rabbit out of the hat is my job, basically, so let’s get on with it … before it’s too late to argue about it.”
The Librarians scattered into the woods and gardens ahead while Baird hurried around the corner and down the path to where Humpty Dumpty still rested in pieces, if only for the moment. The mannequin’s decapitated body sat atop the brick wall, while his bisected head rested at its base. A wide gap a few feet across separated the two halves of his face.
So far, so good, Baird thought. He’s not back together again yet.
There were, of course, other Humpty figures to be found around the world; this particular effigy was not literally the original World Egg, but, according to Jen
kins at least, it was a suitably symbolic representation of the same. The way he explained it, they were talking sympathetic magic here, as with, say, a voodoo doll or a cursed waxwork dummy. Baird wondered why Mother Goose had chosen this particular Humpty, but only for a moment, because of a matter of much more immediate concern.
Humpty was not alone.
“You again, Guardian?” Mother Goose greeted Baird. “I thought I warned you to mind your own business and stay away from my Garden!”
The crone stood atop the brick wall, next to the headless figure, looking just as she had the last time Baird had encountered her, despite having been last seen in the form of an actual goose. Human once more, Mother Goose held one of the purloined books in each hand, while a third volume hovered in the air before her, levitating. Angry winds whipped up abruptly, roiling the dry, fallen leaves. Tree branches shook and swayed. Thunder rumbled from a clear sky that was growing lighter by the moment. Dawn was almost upon them.
“Sorry, not happening.” Baird advanced cautiously. “Guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Eve Baird!”
With a dramatic gesture, Mother Goose slammed the three slender books together with a bang. A blinding white flash made Baird blink and look away; when she looked back, the three books had merged into a single large volume floating open in the air. Pages magically flipped themselves until they reached the right spot in the text.
“Ah, there’s the whole rhyme at last,” Mother Goose said, cackling. Her exaggerated Boston accent grated on Baird’s ears. She grinned at the rising dawn as she started in on the spell:
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall …
“Uh-uh,” Baird interrupted, dropping the rebar and drawing her gun. Blue spots danced before her watery eyes as they recovered from the flash. “That’s far enough. Turn over the book, Mother Goose, if that’s really your name.”