by Cameron Jace
The Pillar’s knife might cut through me. I don’t know. Because, for whatever insane reason, I decide to close my eyes. Not against the pain, but to get hold of the memory, trying to recognize the person on the bus everyone is scared of.
The last bit of my vision is even hazier. I look harder at the new passenger, unable to see his face like most of the others. But I am so curious. I squint, press the nerves in my mind somehow. I have to see the passenger who got on the bus a few moments before the accident. And now I see him.
It’s Lewis Carroll.
Chapter 36
Somewhere in London
The second reason Lewis wasn’t satisfied.
The plague hadn’t been fully activated yet. People were only trying to fight each other. That, by far, was nothing to what the plague would make them do in an hour or two.
That... was only the beginning.
And once the plague really kicked in, Lewis had to make his next move.
His last move.
The final touch to his masterpiece.
The reason why he’d planned all of this long ago.
His next move was to find Professor Carter Pillar.
Chapter 37
Mushroomland, Columbia.
“I have an idea.” The Pillar pulls the knife back, facing the Executioner. I let out a wheezing breath. “Why would I deny you the pleasure of cutting her fingers yourself?”
My eyes spring open from my vision about Lewis Carroll in my school bus, and then I watch the Pillar hand the knife over to the Executioner, who welcomes the idea immediately.
“Like old days,” the Pillar says to the Executioner, who nods like a child, holding the knife and staring at my hand. “Remember those?”
“I was beginning to worry you forgot about the old days.” The Executioner smirks. And again, that little secret between those two is driving me crazy. “I’m impressed you still remember vividly.”
“Since we’re all happy now—the Pillar sips and drinks then tucks in his cigar for the bazzillionth time—“I don’t see why you won’t tell me about who cooked the plague.”
The Executioner laughs, struggling to grip my hand. “Why do you really want to know that, Senior?” His men hold me still now. “You don’t really want to save the world, do you?”
“I’m aware that your men here will not get affected by the plague,” the Pillar says. “All Mushroomlanders are immune to this stuff. But think about it. Who will you sell drugs to if the world dies in the plague?”
The Executioner raises his hand from the knife, as if he had been too stoned to think about this. “Well, you’re right,” he says. “But this plague isn’t about people dying. It’s about something much bigger. A higher concept.”
“Higher than death? I’m impressed.” The Pillar laughs. “But when did we ever care about high concepts, whatever that means? Come on, Executioner, tell me. I promise you I will get back in business and work for you.”
This one seems to catch the Executioner’s attention the most. “You will do that? Work for me again like in the old days?”
“I swear on all the mushrooms in the world.”
The Executioner sighs. “Look, I don’t know who cooked the plague. But I know that someone was asking for it about two years ago.”
“Go on.”
“Someone paid lots and lots of Wonderland money, asking for a specific plague. Under no circumstances am I allowed to tell you what the plague really does to people.” This confuses me. There are people in this world even worse than the Executioner? “What I can tell you is that the Wonderlander who’d been asking for the plague had a meeting at the Dodo to pick it up two years ago.”
“The Dodo Company?” I ask.
“Not the company. The place.” The Executioner talks to the Pillar. “You still remember where that is, right?”
“The Dodo. How could I forget? The most obvious Wonderland location on earth, which no one even considers,” the Pillar says. “But I’m curious about this man asking for the plague. Was it Lewis Carroll?”
“That, I can’t tell you,” the Executioner says, turning back to me, the knife glinting in moonlight. “I think the Dodo information is enough. And now that you’re back to working for me, let me enjoy cutting this slave’s fingers and marking her as mine.”
“Of course.” The Pillar bites on his cigar. “Go ahead.”
Stranded, I close my eyes, not knowing if I can take the pain. Time seems to slow down. I can hardly breathe, unable to shake myself loose from the soldiers. Waiting for the pain is even worse than the pain itself.
But then I hear some kind of swoosh.
A scream.
Shotguns.
The soldiers let go of me.
When I flip my eyes open, I see the Pillar’s cigar stuffed into the Executioner’s throat.
Chapter 38
It’s really hard to describe what happens from here on.
In the dark, everything happens so fast. Blood spatters everywhere, and the only cause of it is the mysterious Carter Pillar.
First, he stuffed the cigar into the Executioner’s throat, snatched the knife from his hands, and stuck it into his back. Then, using the Executioner as a shield, he turned around and started shooting from a machine gun with one hand.
I duck under the table then crawl on all fours to the other side. Whatever is going on, all I think of are the kids. I come up from the other side and run toward them.
With one sneaky look behind me, I see the Pillar is raiding everyone with one machine gun and using the Executioner as a shield. The Pillar shoots like a professional, his face unaffected, cold like stone.
I gather the kids into the Jeep again and get to the wheel, about to drive away.
Then I look back. Should I wait for the Pillar, who is taking the Executioner’s men all on his own. Is he going to survive this?
Don’t do it, Alice! Just drive away.
For some out-of-this-world reason, I can’t. I turn around and drive through the war.
“Pillar,” I shout. “I’m coming. Hop in!”
Annoyed, he turns around and starts shooting at the men shooting at the Jeep now. “Who told you to come back?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I retort. “I should’ve left you here to die.”
The Pillar jumps in, still holding onto the Executioner. The children scream when they see him in the car. The Pillar pulls him to the far side, away from them.
“Where to now?” I shout in the rearview mirror.
“Drive through the mushrooms.” The Pillar pulls out a small device and dials a number. “A chopper is coming for us now.”
I don’t have the guts to ask about the chopper or what just happened. Anything to save us before the machine gun men catch us.
In the mirror, I see the Pillar gently pull a kid’s hand and look at the lost fingers. He pats the kid’s hand and nods. The kid nods back.
I keep holding on to the wheel, chugging through the muddy ground and mushrooms.
The chopper shows up in the distance. The Executioner’s men are still on our tail.
“They’ll land right there.” He points. “Slow down a bit until they do.”
“I can’t slow down with those men tailing us.”
“Figure it out, Alice,” the Pillar roars.
“Alice save us!” the kids chirp.
“Yeah, of course.” The Pillar rolls his eyes. “I kill the bad guys, then it’s ‘Alice save us.’”
Chapter 39
We send the kids safely into the chopper, and the Pillar insists bringing the Executioner along.
Once inside, the chopper takes off, evading the showering bullets from the machine gun men. When I turn to thank the pilot, I am stunned to see it’s the Chauffeur.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I suppose I am supposed to be!” he snickers. “I jumped with my parachute. The Executioner had to think you burned all bridges behind you so he’d trust you.”
“So y
ou did all this for him to trust you?” I turn to the Pillar, who is holding the semi-conscious and badly hurt Executioner. “All those games and tricks? But he could’ve shot me dead on the table.”
“I mixed his gun with marshmallow bullets,” the Pillar says, his eyes on the Executioner. “Would you like to go back to your people?” he tells him.
The Executioner, now weakened and helpless, still spits and swears at the Pillar in a foreign language. It thaws the kids off. They tuck themselves in the far corner of the chopper.
“You want me to let you go?” The Pillar hands him a parachute. “Sure. You’re free to go!”
“Just like that?” I say.
The Executioner puts the parachute on and jumps out of the chopper.
“Like what?” the Pillar says, snaking his way through the kids toward the pilot.
“You let him live?”
“Not at all.” The Pillar sits next to the pilot. “I let him fly.”
It takes me a second to get it. A smile forms on my face. “The parachute isn’t working.”
“That’s an understatement,” the Pillar says. “First, it won’t be working. Then, when he pees himself to death in the air, it will start working.”
“And?” I am confused.
“Then I push this button.” He pulls out a remote control and pushes a button. “It won’t work again.”
“And now he dies?” I ask. The Executioner is too far down for me to hear if he is screaming or asking for help.
“Not so soon.” He presses another button. “Now it works again.”
“You’re playing games with him?”
“At this precise moment, he is looking at Mushroomland with all the hope in his heart.”
“And I suppose you’ll push that button and make the parachute not work again?” I am trying to figure this out.
“Nah, it’s not me who pushes the button.” He summons one of the kids and tells him, “You want to punish the Executioner for what he did?”
The kid nods. I am not comfortable with getting the kids into this, but I need to know what the Pillar has in mind.
“That’s it.” The Pillar grins after the kid pushes the button.
“Now, the Executioner’s parachute won’t work anymore,” I say.
But then I hear a loud explosion below.
“Boom!” The Pillar jokes with the kids, who laugh from their hearts.
“The Executioner exploded,” I say. “Why all this?”
“I could have simply killed him, Alice. But I gave him hope three times and then killed him. Oh, if you only knew how that hurts.”
The kids clap their hands from the back. “Senor Pillardo!”
“Now it’s him who is cool?” I fold my hands jokingly.
“When you kill a villain, never make it easy for him. I hate when they do that in movies. If I could burn the Executioner in an oven, resurrect him, and burn him all over again, I’d do it.” The Pillar pulls out a map and points the pilot where to fly.
“So we’re going to this Dodo place?” I stick my head between them. “I hope it’s not far.”
“Not really.” The Pillar adjusts his hat, looking in the mirror. “Peru is just a few miles away.”
Chapter 40
London
Possessing an old man’s soul inside a pharmacy, the Cheshire watched the news in the TV behind the counter.
The pharmacy’s owner had locked his customers in, sheltering them from doomsday outside in the streets of London. The man had a soft spot for old people, so the Cheshire had to possess one, although he hated the slow walk, arching back, and the lost teeth.
“Some loon, that Lewis Carroll.” The pharmacist pointed at the BBC’s coverage of the Lewis Carroll man attacking another pharmacy, killing everyone violently because they couldn’t provided a cure for his migraine.
“Is that the man who spread the hookah plague?” An old woman pointed her cane in the Cheshire’s face.
The Cheshire kept his cool. No need to kill humans here while waiting for his phone to ring. He’d made some calls looking for someone to send after the Pillar and was awaiting a response.
“He is the devil,” the woman declared. “And he’s come for the end of times.”
“But he is dressed like a priest,” the pharmacist argued.
“They always do, those nasty devils.”
“I think he is Lewis Carroll.” The Cheshire thought the conversation was fun. “The real Lewis Carroll.”
“Who’s Lewis Carroll?” the pharmacist said.
“He wrote Alice in Wonderland.” The Cheshire was shocked the man didn’t know.
“That’s the devil’s book, too!” The old woman’s cane was up to the Cheshire’s nose now.
His old-man’s nostrils flared. One of the setbacks of possessing people was that he was sometimes limited to their powers. In this case, he could hardly slap this woman if he wanted to.
“Alice in Wonderland,” the pharmacist considered. “My kids love that book. I used to love it, too. Never paid attention to the author.”
“Why would you?” The Cheshire shook his weary shoulders—they ached. “I never knew of any of the names of the scientists who invented the beautiful medicines that cure us.”
“But how is this Lewis Carroll still alive? And why is he looking for this drug so bad?”
“Migraines!” The woman pointed at the TV. “I know how it feels.”
“So he is capable of infecting the world with a plague but can’t find a cure for his own migraine?”
“The irony of life,” the Cheshire commented. Like Carroll, the Cheshire was capable of being anyone, anytime he wanted, except one person, himself, because he never knew who he really was. “He wants it so bad he is killing people now.”
In his mind, the Cheshire couldn’t understand any of this. Sure, he knew Lewis Carroll in Wonderland, and he’d heard about the man’s severe headaches, which at some point contributed to his genius, but how did Carroll turn so violent?
Why did he call himself a Wonderland Monster?
“Look!” the woman said, pointing at the TV again. “People have started killing each other now. It’s all around the world.”
The Cheshire looked, and it was true. As much as he loved seeing the awful folks of humanity kill one another, he didn’t like the expanse of this plague. What started as people going mad had escalated to people turning into murderers all around the world.
Was this the real plague Lewis Carroll was talking about?
The Cheshire checked his phone again, waiting for that reply. He had to find the two Wonderlanders he was looking for. They were the only Wonderlanders capable of entering Mushroomland, along with the Pillar. The Cheshire needed to send them to help the Pillar find the cure.
How ironic, the Cheshire thought, all us Wonderland Monsters hating each other, now trying to collaborate against this Lewis Carroll.
His phone rang. The Cheshire picked up immediately and said, “So, did you find Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum yet?”
Chapter 41
Peru
It’s the early hours of morning. But instead of landing somewhere in Peru, we’re flying over an endless desert.
I don’t comment, sharing an anticipated moment with the Pillar and his chauffeur. So are the children in the back. They’re fascinated with the desert, which at first confuses me, since there is nothing to see but sand.
Then I realize that the kids have never been out of Mushroomland. This, to them, is their first vacation abroad.
And boy, they love it.
“Where are we really going?” I ask.
“We’ve arrived,” the Pillar says, his eyes scanning the vast earth below. “We’re looking for our landing spot.”
“Couldn’t we just land anywhere? Besides, I thought we were going to Peru.”
“There is a bag with a lot of candy in it, kids.” The Pillar changes the subject. “Open it up.” Oh, he isn’t even talking to me. “And there are drinks, too.
”
I watch the kids happily gorge on the candy, which is shaped like a caterpillar sitting on top of a mushroom.
I finish my candy. It’s delicious. I have the children with me, and we’re following clues to stop the plague. I think I’m good for now, if only someone would tell me why we’re here in the desert, looking for that Dodo location.
All of a sudden, the dessert turns from plain void into an artistic land full of immense drawings. Large artworks that have been etched into the landscape. How? I have no idea.
“They’re called geoglyphs,” the Pillar says. “Best viewed from above. Actually, you wouldn’t grasp what the drawing is about if you stand amidst it.”
My candy drops to the floor. My mouth agape. I am stunned.
“This desert plateau stretches more than eighty kilometers long. Geologists prefer to call it the Nazca Lines,” the Pillar continues. “Many believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture around 500 BC.”
“It’s that old?” I say while the kids compete for the best view from the top.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the Pillar says. “Makes you wonder how such an old civilization possessed the craft and knowledge to create something like that.”
“What does it mean?”
“That’s the centuries-old multi-million dollar question. Just look at the hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, and lizards meticulously crafted on the bed of the earth. No one has any idea what they mean.”
“How were they made then?” one of the kids questions.
“The real answer is ‘We don’t know.’” The Pillar bites on his cigar. I wonder if he’s going to stuff this one in someone else’s throat. “But common assumption is that the shallow lines were made in the ground by removing the reddish pebbles and uncovering the grayish ground beneath.”