The Strike Trilogy

by Charlie Wood

  “Come one, come all! Step right in and behold the amazing Eight-Headed Woman of Zalcaraz! Watch in awe as the most beautiful female creature in the world seduces and romances you! And, oh—did I mention she has a sister?”

  Tobin and Keplar walked toward the circus tent. Orion pulled them back to the center of the street.

  “This is an incredibly dangerous island, Tobin,” the old man said. “You do not want to start wandering off. This place is full of escaped villains, monsters, and people who will rob you blind without you even realizing it.”

  “It’s also a great place for bachelor parties,” Keplar added.

  After walking through the downtown area of the Never-World, Tobin and his friends found themselves in a much quieter, darker place: it was a more rural area, and the roads were wide and made out of dirt, which swirled up in dust clouds when walked or driven over. On either sides of the road, there were wooden-planked buildings, containing saloons, barrooms, and dance halls—none of which Tobin was old enough to enter. There were only a few cars in the sad, tired town, and they were rusted out and battered; most people seemed to get around on horseback, as there were several horses tied up outside the wooden buildings. It felt as if the town was stuck centuries in the past, with the only light coming from a few dim streetlights and the full moon above.

  “Okay,” Orion began, “the man who created Scatterbolt is named Wakefield. He’s known to hang out here.” The old man pointed to a saloon in front of Tobin and Keplar. It was the largest saloon in town, with a sign above it that read: JESSE’S PLACE. “You guys check it out while I ask around. We’ll meet up in twenty minutes. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Keplar replied. As the dog and Tobin walked toward Jesse’s Place, Tobin looked around the dirt road. The people in this dark part of the Never-World were some of the most frightening he had seen on Capricious: they were disfigured and demented, with many of them muttering to themselves drunkenly as they shuffled through the town and from bar-to-bar with their boots dragging through the dusty dirt. Tobin made the mistake of making eye contact with one of them: it was a man with a scar all the way down the front of his face, which Tobin could just about make out under the man’s wide cowboy hat. The man stared at Tobin, until the boy quickly caught up with Keplar, who was already pushing through the wooden double-doors of Jesse’s Place.

  Tobin followed Keplar through the swinging doors, and immediately felt as if he had walked into an old western film from the 1950’s: the floors and support beams were made out of exposed, dusty wood, and there was a piano being played in the corner by a small, skinny man with a grey mustache. The solid mahogany bar of the saloon ran the entire length of the back wall, and there were a few dingy tables scattered throughout the establishment. Sitting at these tables was a gathering of creatures from all over Capricious: at one table, Tobin saw a group of zombie cowboys playing cards, while at another table he saw a cyborg super-villain with a blinking, glowing eye, drinking from a giant mug of frothy beer. Behind the cyborg, there was a drunk Pegasus, passed out with his head on the table in front of him, and near the Pegasus there was a table of men with the faces of snakes, pounding back glasses of whiskey. Walking through the smattering of tables there was a squadron of saloon girls, who were wearing short, poofy skirts, low-cut tops, and red-and-black stockings. The waitresses’ purpose was to sell drinks and food to the saloon customers, but mostly they seemed to be there so that they could be harassed by the table full of two-foot tall, red-headed men with the foulest mouths Tobin had ever heard.

  With the eyes of everyone in the saloon fixed on them, Tobin followed Keplar toward two stools at the bar. As they sat down, Keplar was completely at ease, resting his elbows in front of him and watching a television in the corner. But Tobin was on edge, scanning the room and trying to blend in; he was out of his Strike gear, so he was pretty sure none of these shady characters had recognized him, but they almost certainly had recognized Keplar.

  “So,” Tobin whispered, hunching down in his seat, “any idea what this Wakefield guy looks like?”

  “Not really. An older guy. Bald. Some kind of wizard or something.”

  “A wizard?”

  “Yeah, you got me. A wizard that makes robots, I don’t know. He made Scatterbolt, so he’s gotta be pretty smart, at least. And hopefully able to help us out.”

  The bartender approached Tobin and Keplar. “What’re you having?”

  Tobin turned to the bartender and nearly jumped out of his seat: the man had three eyes, the last of which was in the middle of his forehead. All three eyes were different colors and looking in different places, but the one on his forehead was darting back-and-forth between Tobin and Keplar. He was also fat and unshaven, and his skin was blotched and pink, as if he had been out in the sun too long and dried up.

  “What are you having?” the man said again, aggravated.

  Keplar’s eyes never left the television screen. His favorite kermball team was in a heated playoff game, after all. “I’ll have a Boogeyman,” the husky replied. “Heavy on the groundrill.”

  The bartender’s eye looked to Tobin. “You?”

  Tobin wasn’t sure what to say. Did they even serve orange soda in a place like this? “Uh, I’ll have...”

  “The same,” Keplar interrupted. The husky grinned and slapped Tobin on the back, before turning his attention back to the kermball game. Tobin watched down the bar as the bartender mixed their drinks: after adding three different liquids from three old foggy bottles into a metal mixing sifter, he shook it vigorously and poured it into two glasses. The liquid that came out from the sifter was green and luminescent, and also bubbling like nuclear waste. As a vine of smoke began to rise out of the concoctions, the bartender slid the glasses across the bar to Tobin and Keplar.

  Unsure, Tobin picked up the glass, inspected it, and then looked to Keplar. The husky nodded, smirking.

  Tobin took a sip. Immediately it felt as if he had just poured napalm down his throat. He lurched forward and spat out the drink, causing an explosion of smoke to burst from his mouth. With his eyes pouring water, his stomach roiling, and his burning tongue hanging from his mouth, he hacked and coughed—it was as if his body wouldn’t allow him to swallow even a tiny drop more of the toxic liquid. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the bar mirror, he saw that his skin was ashen and empty of any color.

  Keplar laughed. “How is it?”

  Tobin stopped coughing and tried to catch his breath. “It’s a bit strong,” he said, in a voice that barely escaped his throat.

  The swinging doors of the saloon opened. Tobin heard the clanking of metal and turned around; a man was entering the saloon, about forty years old. He had a goatee and a bald head, and was wearing a tattered, black duster coat and tattered, brown pants. He was big and muscular, with a sneer on his face that clearly advertised: DON’T BOTHER ME. As the bald man sat down at the bar a few seats away from Tobin and Keplar, the sound of clanking metal was heard again, and Tobin thought for a moment that the man was wearing spurs on his boots; he wasn’t, however—the sound was from the tools hanging from the man’s belt: hammers, screwdrivers, and bags of nails.

  The bartender approached the bald man. “What’ll it be, Junior?”

  “Usual.”

  The bartender grabbed a beer and put it down. The bald man drank from it and watched the television in the corner.

  In the corner of his eye, Tobin saw a group of people stand up from their table in the shadowy saloon. He watched as they walked toward the bald man: they were three young men in their early twenties, and they were dressed in all black. They had tattoos on their faces and arms, and the shoulders of their jackets were covered in spikes. One of them had a Mohawk a foot high, while another’s long hair grew past his shoulders. The third punk, the one standing in the middle of the others, was the shortest of the group. He ha
d mangy, black hair, and tattoos on his neck that ran up the side of his head, all the way to his ears.

  “Hey, Wakefield,” the shortest punk said.

  Tobin turned to Keplar at the sound of the name. The husky had also heard it, and was now watching the confrontation.

  “Remember us?” the shortest punk said, stepping closer to the bald man. “We paid you last week to get our car back from the Warthog?”

  The bald man never looked away from the TV. He let the punks talk to his back.

  “Oh yeah, that’s right,” Wakefield said, taking a sip from his beer. “You’re welcome.”

  The shortest punk shook his head. “Only problem is, you never got us the car.”

  “Sure I did. Left it in your driveway.”

  The punk stomped his foot. “It didn’t have any wheels! Or seats! Or an engine!”

  “Well, let’s not be picky about it,” Wakefield said. “Come on, let’s have a drink and celebrate.”

  The punk stepped toward a pool table. “Nah. I think you’ll be having something else.”

  The punk picked up a pool cue and reared it back, holding it over his head.

  After the TV changed to a commercial, Wakefield turned around. As soon as he did, the punk brought the pool cue down with all his strength, intending to smash it over Wakefield’s head. But, Wakefield caught the cue, snapped it in half with one hand, and tossed his half away. Then, the bald man stood up, grumbled in annoyance, and punched the shortest punk in the nose. The punk was knocked backward into his friends, and once they got back to their feet, they all screamed in anger and charged at Wakefield. The bald man waited for them, finished his beer, and then swung the empty bottle and cracked it across the Mohawked punk’s face. The longhaired punk then lunged at Wakefield from behind, so Wakefield swung his elbow back, whaled him across his jaw, brought both his fists down onto his back, and sent him to the floor.

  Finally, without breaking a sweat, Wakefield grabbed the shortest punk by his jacket, lifted him off the ground, slammed his body onto the bar, and dragged him across it, shattering a dozen bottles and ten glasses of booze. Finishing the job, the bald man picked up the punk from the bar, held him over his head, and tossed him across the saloon. The punk crashed into the piano in the corner, causing the instrument to snap off its legs and fall to the ground with a dull BOOM!, its keys all loudly ringing at once. As the pianist and bartender looked at the ruined piano in shock, the punk lay silently in the middle of the broken wood and wires, his eyes closed.

  Tobin and Keplar were stunned. The rest of the patrons in the saloon were now standing, anxious and readying themselves in case the bald man turned his fists on them. Unfazed and unhurt, Wakefield dusted off his hands, walked to the bar, and finished a drink that wasn’t even his.

  “Sorry, Jesse,” the bald man sighed, putting a roll of money on the bar. “Won’t happen again.”

  With his metal tools clanking against him, Wakefield pushed open the swinging doors and walked out of the saloon. Keplar watched him go, then turned to Tobin.

  “Gee, I hope that guy’s on our side.”

  Outside the saloon, Keplar and Tobin ran out of the doors just as Wakefield was getting into his black pickup truck.

  “Hey,” Keplar said, “are you Wakefield?”

  Wakefield started up the truck. “Sorry, fellas. It’s my day off.”

  Tobin stepped toward the open passenger side window. “But, uh, those guys called you Wakefield, and we’re looking for a guy named Wakefield. Are you him?”

  “Yup, but I can’t help you. Sorry.” Wakefield put the truck in drive.

  “We’re here with a guy named Orion,” Keplar said, stepping in front of the truck. “Maybe you know him?”

  Wakefield narrowed his eyes.

  “Yeah, I know him. What’s he need?”

  “It’s our friend Scatterbolt,” Tobin said. “He’s in trouble.”

  Wakefield pointed to the back of his truck with his thumb. “Get in.”

  “Can you help us?” Tobin asked.

  “No,” Wakefield replied. “But my father can.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  After a fifteen minute, bone-rattling ride in the back of the bald man’s pickup truck, Tobin and Keplar found themselves standing in the lobby of “Wakefield and Son’s,” a repair shop for robots, androids, transforming cars, cybernetic livestock…and the occasional vacuum cleaner. The wide, clutter-filled shop was in an area similar to the one around Jesses’ Place—with dimly lit dirt roads and a smattering of other wooden-planked buildings surrounding it—but there was one big difference: an elevated train track that ran through the middle of the area, curving by the back of the repair shop.

  As he walked around the lobby of the shop, Tobin was inspecting all of the technological wonders and bizarre metal devices on display. In a work area toward the rear of the store, the boy could see Orion standing next to Wakefield Sr., the man that they had been looking for at the saloon. The short, white-bearded man appeared to be about seventy-five years old, with a round face and large head that was topped with a ring of thinning, white hair. At the moment, he was hunched over a table, wearing thick, black glasses and using a table-mounted magnifying glass to inspect Scatterbolt’s golden sphere.

  “He doesn’t look like a wizard to me,” Tobin said.

  Keplar picked up a tin sign that was resting on a table. The sign read: WAKEFIELD AND SON’S REPAIRS: TECHNO-WIZARDS.

  “Ah,” Tobin said. “I see what they’ve done there.”

  Keplar smirked. “A little play on words.”

  “Very cute,” Tobin said.

  Tobin picked up a small, shiny microwave with glowing springs and stepped to his right, but then bumped into something; Wakefield Jr. was standing in his way. Tobin looked up at him.

  “Uh, I mean, not cute,” Tobin stammered. “I didn’t mean you and your dad were...cute. I just meant...that…”

  Junior walked away.

  Keplar laughed. “Nice work, Tobe.”

  “I don’t think he likes me,” Tobin whispered, as he put the shiny microwave back on its table.

  In the work area in the rear of the shop, Orion was standing over Wakefield’s shoulder as the short, goggle-wearing man inspected the sphere.

  “So what do you think?” Orion asked.

  “Well, it’s not damaged,” Wakefield replied. “If it was, we’d be in big trouble.” He picked up the sphere and showed it to Orion. “This is Scatterbolt’s brain, for lack of a better word. Everything that makes up Scatterbolt—his personality, his memories, his voice—it’s all on this sphere chipboard. It was incredibly smart of him to remove this before they took him.”

  “So what they have is useless, then?” Orion asked. “His body? It’s just an empty shell?”

  “Well, they might be able to get some random information from it, but that’s all. Anything they do to it won’t hurt Scatterbolt—for all intents and purposes, I’m holding Scatterbolt right here. The only bad news is that Bolt is currently without a body. It’s gonna take me a while to make a new one.”

  “That’s okay, take as much time as you need. Just try and make it exactly like the old one. He’s become, uh, part of our team, you know.”

  Wakefield looked for something amid the piles of tools on his workbench. “Yeah, I know, I know. Don’t get all emotional on me.” He found a transparent glass tablet and handed it to Orion. The tablet had a handle on each side, allowing it to be held like a map. “Lucky for us, Scatterbolt’s body also has a tracking device, so whoever took him, you can use this to find them.”

  Orion inspected the glass tablet. There was a map on the screen, and a blinking light in the middle of a large landmass, marking the location of Scatterbolt’s body. “Thank you, Wakefield. You have no idea how much this will help.” />
  Wakefield checked his watch. “Hold onto something.”

  Confused, Orion clutched the top of the workbench with both hands. Wakefield stood in a doorway and braced himself.

  The repair shop began to rattle. A whistling pierced the air. As Orion’s brain vibrated in his skull and the metal devices and tools on the walls clanged and swayed wildly, a flying train zoomed by the shop, hovering above the train tracks outside and traveling at over 200 miles per hour. When it finally passed and the building stopped shaking, Orion let go of the workbench and regained his footing.

  “Why did you move your shop to this place, Wakefield?” he asked, with his eyes wide and his hands on his ears. “I’ll never understand it.”

  Wakefield returned to his workbench, as if the earthquake was only a minor delay. “Eh, it’s not so bad. I like being alone. Plus someone has to keep an eye on all these thugs and loonies around here.”

  Wakefield began using a small torch to solder the sphere under the magnifying glass, so Orion walked around the workshop. A framed picture on a shelf caught his eye.

  It was an old magazine cover. The colorful image showed Orion, Tobin’s father, and Wakefield, appearing to be in their early thirties, and dressed in costume. Wakefield, much thinner and with a full head of hair, looked especially young, with black welder’s goggles on his eyes and a belt across his waist with mechanical devices and tools hanging from it. The headline read:

  THE INVENTOR HELPS THE GUARDIANS SAVE QUANTUM CITY!

  “Fifty years ago we offered you a spot on our team,” Orion said, “and fifty years later, you’re still saying no.”