by Charlie Wood
Aykrada ignored the paw a moment, but then shook it, laughing. She wasn’t really angry, Tobin realized.
“I hope things will go better this visit?” she asked Keplar.
“Yes, ma’am,” the dog replied. “I’ll be far away. So far, far away. People will be like, ‘Hey, who’s that?’ and everyone will be like, ‘I don’t know, he’s so far away, I can’t tell.’”
Aykrada laughed. “I’ll make sure to tell my husband that. But be careful: if he even senses you’re thinking about it, he will—”
“I swear,” Keplar blurted out, “I had no idea she was your daughter, ma’am! If I knew that, I never would have—”
Aykrada covered the dog’s mouth with her finger. “All right. Just stay away. Far away. Got it?”
Keplar nodded. Tobin was eager to hear more about the story, and when he looked to Scatterbolt, he saw that the robot was trying not to laugh, snickering through clenched teeth.
“And this,” Orion said, “is Tobin.”
Tobin quickly looked up, finding Orion and Aykrada standing in front of him.
“Oh, hi,” the boy said, extending his hand. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you, Miss…Aykrada. Nice to meet you.”
Aykrada smiled, but with a bit of sadness. Then, surprisingly, she wrapped Tobin in a hug.
“It’s an honor to have you here, Tobin. As long as you are a guest in this city, you are welcome to have anything you need. Just ask me and you’ll get it. Okay?”
Tobin nodded, uncomfortable. “Uh, sure. Thanks, thanks...”
With a laugh, Aykrada grabbed Tobin by his cheeks, gave them a squeeze, and then walked away with Orion.
“He looks just like him, O,” she said. “Just like him.”
“I know,” Orion replied. “I promise we won’t be here long, Aykrada, just a day or two. Is everything I asked for ready?”
“Yup. Anytime you need it, Orion.”
As the two of them walked down a brick path behind the billboard, leading deeper into the woods, Tobin and the others followed.
“Wow!” Scatterbolt whispered. “Did you guys hear that? Aykrada said Tobin could have anything in the city that he wanted!”
“I know,” Tobin replied, scratching his head. “What was that all about? It kinda freaked me out, to be honest.”
“Just ask for her daughter,” Keplar said. “Trust me.”
The dog winked.
“What was that?” Aykrada asked from up ahead.
“Nothing!” Keplar said quickly. “Nothing!”
As the dog ran up to the others, Tobin and Scatterbolt shared a laugh.
“So,” the boy asked, “there’s actually people living in this place? I can’t believe anyone would want to live here.”
“Well,” the robot said, “it wasn’t always like this. And some of them do wanna leave, so Aykrada’s been helping them out until we can find a new place for them to live. But there’s a lot of them, so it’s taking a while.”
“Oh.”
Ahead of Tobin and Scatterbolt, as he walked with Aykrada, Orion turned around. He watched as Tobin said something with a grin that made Scatterbolt burst out with a loud laugh.
The old man turned back to the brick path. For a moment, it felt as if he was once again on an adventure with his best friend.
After walking down the brick path, Aykrada led the group into the city of Gallymoora. As Tobin scanned the area, his stomach turned, and he nearly forgot to breathe.
There was a small city in the middle of the forest, but it was a wasteland. The houses were hollowed out and boarded up, and the cobblestone streets were littered with potholes. The giant marble fountains in the center of the city were covered with algae, and the largest fountain—the one from the billboard—was cracked into pieces and bone-dry. Worst of all, Tobin realized, there were people living here, dressed in rags and pale and beaten down. They were regular human beings, but so starved and ill they appeared to be ghosts shuffling through the wreckage.
“Oh, Aykrada,” Orion said. “I had no idea it had gotten so bad. I am so sorry.”
Aykrada looked over the city. “Since the flood we have made almost no progress. Every day, more people get sick, and every day more people are lost. It is heartbreaking.”
Tobin watched as a mother crossed the street with her two sons. One of the boys was about four years old, and the other was an infant, who was being pushed in a wobbly, barely-standing stroller.
“This is my fault,” Orion said. Tobin spun to the old man, surprised. “I should have never given you that damn thing to watch over. It was my responsibility, not yours.”
Aykrada shook her head. “I asked you for it. And you know they have been searching for it everywhere, not just here. So never think like that, Orion. Never think like that.”
She turned to the others.
“I’m sorry to say that the only building really left standing is City Hall, and the space there is pretty limited, so I’ve set up a camp for you outside in the garden. I hope you understand.”
“Of course,” Orion said, and the others nodded. “You know, Aykrada, once you get this place back up and running again, I think you could run for mayor.”
She smiled. “Thank you, O. You’re as good a friend as ever.” They hugged, and then she walked toward City Hall, which wasn’t far from where they were standing. “Have a good night, everyone. I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast, my treat.”
After watching Aykrada leave, Tobin was surprised to hear laughter behind him. Turning around, he saw Keplar surrounded by a group of children. The dog was showing the kids Scatterbolt, and the robot was putting on a show, juggling and telling jokes. The kids were laughing and clapping, fascinated by the robot.
Orion walked to Tobin and they watched Keplar, Scatterbolt, and the children.
“Once, Tobin,” the old man said, “Gallymoora was the greatest city in all of Capricious, and the generous people here and their water fountain festivals were known all over the world. If you didn’t live here, you wanted to, and if you visited, it was unlikely you’d ever want to go home. Now, all that is obviously gone.”
“How?” Tobin asked. “How did this happen?”
“A question we’ll save for tomorrow. I remember back at the apartment you kept saying you didn’t think any of this was real. Do you remember?”
Tobin nodded.
“Well, it is all very real, Tobin. Just take a look around you.”
The boy looked over the city. He felt sick, and more confused than ever.
Orion noticed the look on the boy’s face.
“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around Tobin’s shoulder. They walked toward City Hall. “It’s been a long day.”
CHAPTER TEN
Tobin was lost, driving in his car, unaware of where he was and not sure how to get home. Slowly moving along the wide, empty road, he finally saw his mother up ahead, walking in the grass.
“Mom!” Tobin called out, pulling over and unrolling his window. “Mom! Where am I? What’s going on?”
But, when Tobin’s mother turned around, her face suddenly changed, and she was a stranger.
Startled, Tobin pulled back onto the road and drove forward. Finally, at the end of a deserted highway, Tobin came upon a bridge. It was thin—so thin it was barely wide enough for him to fit his car over. When he pulled up closer and looked down, he could see that the bridge was supported only by skinny concrete beams, and underneath it, so far away he could barely see it, was the cold, grey sea.
The bridge did not look safe, but Tobin knew it was the only way for him to get home, so he carefully pressed his foot to the gas and began to drive over it. However, he did not drive slowly enough, and halfway across the bridge, he and his car tumbled off the side and plummeted to the dead water below.
Tobin’s eyes flashed open. He remembered where he was—lying in a small tent on the cold ground in the garden outside the Gallymoora City Hall. When he caught his breath, he decided he would rather be awake than asleep, so he wrapped himself in a blanket, opened the door of his tent, and stepped outside.
The boy saw the other three tents in the garden, and the crackling fire resting in the middle of them. Keplar was sitting by the fire, resting on a tree stump and poking the burning wood with a stick. As Tobin sat down on the other side of the fire, he watched the flames and the smoke rising up.
“Nightmare?” the dog asked.
“Yeah,” Tobin replied. “You heard?”
“Yeah. It’s all right.”
A silence.
“You miss your home?” Keplar asked. “Your family?”
Tobin nodded. “Very much. It’s just my mom and me, really, and my friends and stuff.” Tobin thought it over. “Before I got here, I was pretty much a huge jerk to my mom, so who knows where she thinks I went. Then there’s my friend Jennifer. She gets nervous about everything, so she’s probably even more worried than my mom.”
“Is that your girlfriend?” Keplar asked.
“No. Just a friend.”
Keplar chuckled. “Sure.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
The dog grinned. “Nothing.”
Another silence. Keplar added some wood to the fire. They listened to it crackle.
“What has Orion told you so far about all this, anyway?” Keplar asked.
“Nothing, really. Scatterbolt just told me a whole bunch of stuff about these three superheroes, the Guardians. But I still don’t know why I’m here.”
“I’m sure you can probably guess.”
“I have an idea, but I hope I’m wrong.”
“You probably aren’t.”
Tobin watched the fire. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“Why are you out here so late?” he asked the dog.
“I don’t really sleep. Not too much, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“Why, though? Everyone has to sleep. How can you not—”
“I just don’t,” Keplar repeated, making it clear this was as far as the conversation would go.
Tobin took the hint. He and Keplar sat in silence.
But then there was a dull boom, off in the distance. Tobin looked toward the dark city. Another boom, louder this time.
“You hear that?” Keplar asked.
“Yeah.” Tobin watched the quiet buildings. “What is it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Reaching to the ground, Keplar picked up the large, grenade launcher-like gun lying next to him. This was the same gun he had used to take down the blood bird earlier, and Tobin had heard him refer to it as a “plasma cannon.” As the dog listened to the night, he moved his hand toward the trigger.
Within seconds, the boom sounded again, and this time it was followed by a soft buzzing. It grew louder. Closer. It sounded like bugs. Coming closer. Soon the buzzing was so loud that the ground shook. So loud that it hurt Tobin’s ears.
Keplar readied his gun.
“Krandor,” he swore. “I know what this is—Tobin, get out of here, now, before they—”
KA-BOOM! An explosion rocked Gallymoora, knocking Tobin and Keplar to the ground! The buzzing filled the air now, like a piercing, shrill machine, and Tobin had to cover his ears when he stood. Wincing in pain, he looked toward the city, and gasped.
Hundreds of giant wasps flew into the city from the surrounding forest. They were three feet tall, wore armor-like clothing, and had horrible, ugly faces, with bulbous eyes and mouths that were filled with gnashing teeth. They were also holding spears and firebombs and flamethrowers, and as they swooped through the city in a massive horde, they were using these weapons to rain chaos down upon it.
Tobin watched as explosions erupted throughout the city, and fires rose up in terrible, scalding bursts. As their houses burned, the people of Gallymoora ran out of them, trying to take cover. But there was no place to hide. The wasps were everywhere.
Tobin spun to his left, looking for help, but instead saw Keplar run into the center of the city. As the dog growled in anger, he was using the green explosive projectiles from his plasma cannon to blast as many of the wasps out of the air as he could, but the swarm was only growing by the second, reinforced with more troops from the forest. The dog was alone in a sea of bugs.
Tobin dropped to the ground, wrapping his arms around his head and making his body as small as possible. Hearing a WHOOSH! to his right, he turned and saw Orion—the old man was riding on a metallic, flying surfboard, and as he zoomed on the board toward Keplar, he was firing his bow and arrow. As the red-tipped weapons pierced the bugs, the wasps exploded into bursts of yellow-and-black goo. POP! POP! POP!
“Tobin!” the old man yelled. “Get out of here, now! Get somewhere safe!”
The boy was lying on the ground. “Where the hell do you want me to go?!”
“Scatterbolt, take him to City Hall!”
Orion hopped off the flying surfboard, and it hovered over to Tobin. When it reached him, the metal on the board’s front suddenly morphed into Scatterbolt’s face.
“I think it’s best we get out of here, Tobin,” the robot said.
Agreeing completely, Tobin hopped onto Scatterbolt’s back and they zoomed off toward City Hall.
When they arrived on the roof of City Hall, Tobin looked back to the battle. Bursts of fire were erupting throughout the city, and from this distance, the wasps looked like big, black clouds, swooping down and creating destruction whenever they neared the streets. Keplar and Orion were a blue and red dot, almost lost among the blackness.
Hearing a noise behind him, Tobin realized they were not alone on the roof; Aykrada and her family were there: her husband, son, and daughter. The son was a small blonde boy—no more than six years old—and he was crying and holding onto the waist of his sister, who was around twenty. She was doing her best to comfort the boy, but she was so frightened herself, wincing every time an explosion erupted.
“I have to go,” Tobin heard Aykrada say. He turned and saw her standing with her husband; he was a big, burly man, dressed in his bathrobe.
“No,” her husband said. “There’s too many of them, Aykrada—they’re destroying the city!”
“I know. That’s why I have to go.”
Her husband swallowed a lump in his throat and pulled her close. “Be careful.”
“I will. You stay here with them, no matter what.”
Tobin watched as Aykrada stepped to the edge of the roof. Shockingly, her entire body suddenly turned to tan-colored stone, from the tips of her toes all the way to the top of her head. She was now so heavy that when she leapt off of the roof, her stone feet created two giant holes in the ground, and a tremor shook City Hall. Stomping through the city, she ran toward Keplar and Orion.
“What are those things?” Tobin asked, watching the battle.
“They are called the Hoplites,” Scatterbolt said. “They were sent here by a person who doesn’t like us very much.”
A burst of fire erupted, louder than the others and closer to City Hall. Aykrada’s son buried his face against his sister, who was now crying herself. Their father walked to them and led them away from the edge of the roof.
Tobin watched the city. He grew angry.
“We should be down there,” he said. “We should be helping.”
“I know,” Scatterbolt replied. “I wish we could be, too, Tobin, but we can’t. We’re not strong enough.”
“We can still help.”
Tobin sca
nned the area, darting his eyes around the rooftop; against a far wall, he spotted a mop, sitting in a bucket. Running to it, he removed the mop head from the handle and plopped it back into the water. Now he only had a wooden stick.
He brought the stick to Aykrada’s son. “Hey, little dude,” he said, crouching down. “What’s your name?”
The boy turned to him, shy and nervous. “Leroy.”
“Hey, Leroy, I’m Tobin. I’m gonna go help your mom, okay? But let me ask you something: do you know anything about superheroes?”
Leroy let go of his sister, intrigued. “Yeah…”
“Oh, cool. Do you know anything about the ones who were called the Guardians?”
Leroy squinted. “Yeah, I learned all about them in my history class. Everybody knows about them.”
“All right, good. What about the one who’s called Strike? He used a weapon like this, right?”
Leroy looked at the mop handle with some disappointment. “Yeah. Except a lot more awesome.”
Tobin laughed. “Okay, thanks, Leroy.” He walked back to Scatterbolt. “Okay. I’m gonna go down there and help them. I’m probably gonna die in the process, but I’m not just gonna sit here and watch while everybody else gets killed. So…do you wanna come with me?”
Scatterbolt grumbled, sighing deeply. “I’m not gonna be able to talk you out of this, am I?”
“Nope,” Tobin said. “I figure just being here means that I’ve gone completely insane, so why not do something completely insane to go along with it?”
Reluctantly, the robot transformed into the hover board and floated over to Tobin. “You’re gonna be a bad influence on me, aren’t you?” he asked, as they flew toward the city.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the middle of Gallymoora, Orion, Keplar, and Aykrada were doing their best to fight off the invading Hoplites, but they were vastly outnumbered: every time one of the hornets was killed, two more emerged from the forest to take its place. Making matters worse, time was not on their side: Orion was low on arrows, Keplar was down to his last few rounds of ammunition, and Aykrada was exhausted, having not used her stone powers like this in weeks. None of them would admit it, but each of them was wondering the same thing: how much longer could they keep this up?