Twisted Ever After

by Celeste Thrower

  “We’re like you,” he said.

  My breath stuck in my throat. “And what am I?”

  He pushed a strand of golden hair behind my ear. “A warrior,” he whispered.

  I could not help but laugh. “A warrior? I think you have the wrong girl.”

  “I don’t.”

  I leaned back into him, resting my cheek against his chest. The song was still playing, but it felt like hours passed as we danced. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Some wars rage across continents, seas, and dynasties.” He cupped my chin in his hand. “Others burn within a single heart. Your war—the battle for your freedom—is about to come to an end.” His lips brushed the edge of my mouth. “Be brave.”

  I could not think of anything to say to that. Under different circumstances, I suppose I would have called him crazy. But every word he’d ever said dripped with honesty, no matter how little sense they made. Instead of arguing, I kept dancing. I lost myself in the song’s gentle rhythm, and in Henry’s steady presence. Perhaps the song had been playing on a loop, or maybe time didn’t work quite right in that bar. All I know is, whenever I glanced out the window, sometimes it was day, and sometimes it was night. Perhaps that should have frightened me. But nothing seemed scary at all in Henry’s arms.

  Until the door slammed open with a bang.

  I jumped. The music stopped and everyone in the bar stood to face the entrance. I turned, and my heart sank to my stomach.

  “Johnny!”

  He strode through the bar—not looking at anyone but me and Henry. “I should have known,” he growled.

  “Johnny what are you doing here?”

  Henry tried to step in front of me, but I did not let him.

  “I was looking for my girlfriend.” Johnny grabbed my arm. “Instead, I find you and—big surprise—another man.”

  “I think you need to calm down,” Henry said lowly.

  “Shut up, sleaze bag. This is between me and her.”

  Before Henry could respond, I pulled out of Johnny’s hold. “Enough, Johnny! You’re hurting me.”

  “I’m hurting you, Tess?” Johnny yanked on his black hair. His eyes were bloodshot, like a dog gone rabid. “I’m hurting you? I find you here, in some derelict shack alone with some loser—and I’m hurting you?”

  “Alone? What are you talking about?” The bar was practically bursting at the seams. Bridget pulled a baseball bat from beneath the bar. Jack, Darnell, and Orville were all on their feet, watching. But I sensed they would not act without Henry’s okay.

  I didn’t want that. No matter how terribly Johnny had treated me, deep-down I knew he was sick. I didn’t want him hurt—or worse. I just wanted to be free of him.

  “Johnny,” I spoke as calmly as I could. “Let’s go outside and talk about this, just you and me.”

  “Fine.” He stomped toward the exit.

  I started to follow, but Henry stopped me. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s like you said. I need to be brave.” I had never felt more certain, more ready to stand up for myself—for my freedom—once and for all.

  Resolute, I left the bar to face my tormentor.

  When I came outside, Johnny sat on the porch-step, smoking. I joined him. As we sat there together, watching the distant stars, I remembered hundreds of other nights. Johnny and I had been together for a long time—and not all of it had been bad. We had been in love, once upon a time. But that love had mutated into something ugly.

  I don’t think I could point to any one thing—the drugs, the jealousy, or the petty disagreements. In the end, I don’t think it really mattered. The love we shared was gone. There was only ugliness left over. It was time to end the misery, for both of us.

  “Johnny. I’ll always be grateful to you, for helping me leave that town, and my dad.”

  “Don’t.” He crushed his cigarette.

  “What?”

  “Don’t give me the Dear John routine. I’m not some lover-boy you can just shrug off, Tess. You and me. We’re forever. You’ll see that one day.”

  I stood with a frustrated huff. “It isn’t up to you! I’m telling you, we’re done. Goodbye, Johnny.” I turned to go into the bar, but he pulled me back.

  “No,” he growled. “You don’t get it, Tessa. You can’t walk away from me. I’ll never let you go.”

  I tried to free myself, but his grip did not budge.

  He grabbed the back of my head and smashed his mouth against mine.

  I struggled, but he only pushed harder. So, I bit his lip instead.

  Johnny staggered back. He touched his finger to his lip, staring at the blood I’d drawn. “You bitch.”

  “Johnny, I didn’t mean—”

  With a roar, he shoved me away. I hit the ground hard. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs. I stumbled to my feet shakily.

  Johnny stared at the spot where I’d fallen. His handsome but gaunt face paled.

  “Johnny. I think you should go.”

  He didn’t look at me, just kept staring. Without another word or glance in my direction, he ran to his car.

  I watched as he pealed away. Could it really be that easy?

  When I re-entered the bar, Bridget already had a drink waiting for me.

  “Something a little stiffer than soda.” She smiled. “Gods know you’ve earned it.”

  “Thanks.” I sipped the whiskey gratefully.

  I didn’t see him coming, but when I turned, Henry sat on the stool beside mine. “It’s over?”

  “It’s over.” I sighed, feeling all the tension and pain drain from me. “He’s gone.”

  Henry raised a glass. “To you, Tessa Maher, a valiant warrior.”

  We clinked glasses and I drained my drink. “But I still don’t understand. How did you know? Who are you?”

  Henry nodded, as if he’d been expecting my question. “What do you think, Bridge?”

  “Is leor nod don eolach, Herne.” She winked again and left without a translation.

  “What was that all about? What language was that even?” I lifted my empty glass to the low-light. Had there been something in it besides whiskey?

  “Take a look around, Tessa. I told you we were all alike. Look closely, and you’ll understand.”

  I shot him an inquiring glance, but did as I was bidden. The bar was exactly as it had been. Three dozen men and women or more packed the room in their matching leather jackets. They played cards, darts, and pool. They drank and laughed and caroused.

  “I don’t…”

  “Look closer, Tessa.” Henry’s breath on my neck sent shivers down my spine. “Look beneath.”

  I squinted, trying to understand, when all at once, the veil lifted. It happened as I stared at Darnell, Jack, and Orville. I saw beneath.

  Darnell appeared exactly as he had before, in his fatigues and dog-tags. Except the tank top that had been pristinely white was stained red.

  Jack wore an old uniform, like out of a World War II film. He slammed his winning hand down on the table, completely unbothered by the bullet hole in his forehead.

  Skinny Orville bore a dirty, gray woolen suit. Two rows of buttons ran down the front, leading to a belt buckle reading “CSA.” At first, I did not see what was wrong with him, until I realized his left leg ended in a bloody stump above the knee.

  Panicked, I leaped to my feet. Everyone around me wore strange outfits. There were centurions and samurai, braves and airmen. My mind reeled as I sought out Bridget. Gone was the homely bartender, in her place, another Bridget cleaned glasses. This one’s face was painted with blue streaks and wore leather and fur. A wretched, ragged wound ran the length of her abdomen.

  “They’re all dead.” I collapsed, but Henry caught me. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see Henry’s mortal injury.

  “It’s all right.” He steadied me.

  I opened my eyes. Henry was as he always had been—perfect.

  “Do not weep for them, Tessa.” He pressed his forehead to mine
. “These people, my hunters, died in battle. They died fighting for a cause they believed in. There is nothing sad in that.”

  When he released me, everyone had gone back to normal. “They’re all warriors,” I said. “Warriors that died in battle.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then—then what am I doing here?”

  Henry caressed my cheek tenderly. “I think you know the answer to that.”

  Slowly, I reached behind my head, somehow knowing what I would find there. My hair was wet and sticky, but not from the rain. I thought of Johnny pushing me, hitting the ground, his horrified face before he ran away.

  “He killed me,” I whispered. “I—I…”

  “You, Tessa Maher, are a fallen warrior. You may have left one life, but another awaits you. Come.” Henry offered his hand.

  I took it, following him out of the bar. We passed a dark shape on the ground I knew to be my body, but I dared not look. “What happens next?”

  Henry pointed to a row of motorcycles that had not been there before. “The red one on the end, with the leather tassels—she’s yours.”

  The rest of Henry’s crew poured out from the bar behind us. Everyone found their bike. Engines roared all around me, but beneath the mechanical sounds, I heard something else. Something alive with stamping hooves and baying howls.

  “You died for your freedom, and now it’s yours.” Henry handed me a helmet.

  “So, I’m one of you—a hunter?” I turned the red helmet over in my hands.

  “If you want to be.” He mounted his own shimmering green steed. “You can ride with us, or you can ride alone. The choice is yours.”

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  NEVERLAND: THE IRON FORTRESS

  BY JACI MILLER

  A CLEVER RETELLING OF PETER PAN WITH HEART RACING THRILLS.

  The sandstorm raging across the wastelands for the past three days finally abated.

  Peter pushed his goggles onto his forehead and yanked down the kerchief covering his mouth. He climbed from the vehicle and inhaled.

  It was good to breathe clean air again.

  From his leather pouch, he pulled a crumpled chart and spread it over the hood.

  “You’re sure this is it?” His sister Wendy stood on the seat of the dune buggy, a telescope to her eye. Her long auburn hair blew haphazardly in the wind.

  Peter squinted toward the horizon and pointed. “According to the map you stole from the land pirates last month, Neverland should be just past the wreckage.”

  “Can’t see a damn thing through this cracked lens,” she griped and threw the spyglass on the vehicle’s seat. “Does it look familiar, Tinker?”

  The third member of their party, a human/machine hybrid known as a Mechum, stared across the vast oasis of sand.

  “This is the way,” she said turning her good eye toward Wendy. The mechanical one swiveled in its socket before settling on its target. That rotating eye still disturbed Peter after all this time because it reminded him of Hook, the man who haunted his nightmares and his waking hours.

  “Shall we go?” Wendy asked and slipped back into the passenger seat, then wrapped a dark scarf around her head as she waited for the others.

  Peter climbed into the driver’s side, then flipped the ignition switch and pushed the starter button. The dune buggy roared to life, expelling thick black clouds of gritty smoke from its tailpipe. After a few seconds the engine coughed, sputtered, and stalled.

  He tapped the gas pedal, swore, and jammed the gear shift into neutral.

  “Stupid thing,” he moaned, pressing the start button again. The engine wheezed at first, and sparks spit from the cylinder block, but with a grinding whine it rumbled to life.

  “Atta girl.”

  Peter patted the dashboard and slammed the vehicle into gear. The buggy jerked forward and flew over the edge of the dune.

  As they raced across the wastelands, he thought about Hook, the Machinist who killed his parents. Someday he would have his revenge.

  “There,” Wendy shouted over the fury of the engine. She pointed to a spot on the horizon.

  Peter followed her finger, noticing the subtle dip in the massive dune they sped toward. The skeleton of a sizable plane, its nose buried in the sandbank, camouflaged the entrance. Another rusting piece of history and a reminder of what once was.

  “Hold on.” He yanked the steering wheel to the left.

  In response, the dune buggy slid sideways. Sand spewed from the heavy wheels as the tread bit into the dry earth and found traction. They hurtled toward the wrecked plane in the distance.

  Peter adjusted the handkerchief, pulling it up closer to his goggles. Fine grains of sand ricocheted off his bare skin, and he cursed under his breath, wondering if the plane had any usable glass to replace the windshield. It’d been shot out by the land pirates in retaliation for stealing their map and a few dozen gallons of homemade ethanol mix they used for fuel.

  He glanced at his sister.

  Wendy had a flair for finding things and stealing them. Regrettably, she had difficulty doing it without drawing unwanted attention.

  Peter was unsure if stealth was a skill she had yet to master or if she did it deliberately because she was an adrenaline junkie who loved an adventure—even one that could end with her death.

  Either way he had to admit without the map they most likely would have missed the entrance and continued to drive around aimlessly. The fortress was built in such a way one could travel within a mile of the structure and never know of its existence.

  The wastelands were vast, and it was easy to become lost—or worse.

  And worse was exactly what they drove toward.

  The roar of the dune buggy filled his ears, and he gripped the steering wheel tighter as he thought about the man in charge of Neverland.

  For most of their lives, Peter and Wendy had been on the run from an enemy who chased them for unknown reasons. Hook had been obsessed with the Darling children for years, yet neither of them understood why.

  In fear, they stayed hidden in the shadows of the harsh environment, ran from the hunting parties Hook dispatched, and avoided at all costs being anywhere near where the wasteland survivors thought Neverland was located.

  But lately, things had changed.

  The wastelands were dying, and those living in the outer colonies were succumbing to death along with it. Most of the usable water sources had dried up, food was scarce or difficult to grow in the toxic environment, and diseases spread unchecked through the camps. If something drastic didn’t happen soon, the wastelanders would cease to exist and the inhabitants of the five iron fortresses would turn on each other.

  The wastelanders needed resources and Neverland had them.

  And that is why Peter found himself doing something drastic—heading to the one place he’d avoided nearly all his life.

  “The fire will need to be put out soon,” Peter said, pointing to the sun sinking below the far horizon. “We are too close, and we don’t want to announce our position to the Neverland watchtower.”

  Wendy pulled the thin, frayed blanket tighter around her shoulders. Her teeth chattered and her lips were a pale shade of blue. “Just a few more minutes.”

  He ran a hand through his unkempt hair and walked away, out of the shadows of the hulking plane and through the passageway leading to the other side of the dune.

  The elements never seemed to bother him the way they did Wendy.

  Crisp evening air blew past him as he stood at the lip of the crater. He scanned the bottom of the cavern through the broken lens of the telescope. At one time this had been an inlet, part of a vast ocean that dried up decades ago.

  On the parched and cracked seabed sat the iron fortress, Neverland, a sprawling metal city filled with Hook’s followers and those unlucky wastelanders who’d been captured and were now slaves to the machines powering it.<
br />
  “There will be no way out of Neverland if we are caught.”

  Startled, he jumped at the sound of Tinker’s voice. The Mechum moved to stand beside him.

  “I wish you would stop doing that.”

  “What?”

  “Sneaking up on me.” He glared at Tinker.

  Her dirt-streaked face was a flat, emotionless mask and a perfect representation of the Mechum. No empathy, no humanity, just a patchwork of salvaged parts and human tissue held together by an ancient genome sequence his father had developed prior to the fall of civilization.

  Dr. Darling, the world-renowned bioengineer who specialized in stem cell regeneration and cybernetics, had created a sequence to manipulate human genes to not only fuse with metal but cease deterioration to some degree—effectively slowing the aging process. Peter didn’t know much about his father’s work, for he and Wendy had only been eleven when Hook murdered their parents and stole the research.

  He continued to glare at her, but no response came; it never did. Tinker stared impassively, her fake eye oscillating in its steel socket. She was the result of Hook’s attempt at duplicating his father’s efforts. Sadly, Peter guessed the heartless, emotionless Mechum was probably not what his father had in mind when he attempted to create a human/machine hybrid.

  “My point is if we are caught, you and Wendy will most likely be killed, and I will be dismantled for parts.”

  The throb in his head had returned and listening to Tinker only made it worse.

  “Then I suggest we don’t get caught.”

  “Agreed. Did you eat?” she asked, changing the subject. “It’s been days.”

  He shook his head. “I’m fine. There isn’t much, and Wendy needs it more than me.”

  They stood in silence and surveyed the activity below.

  An airship floated above the fortress as it made its final descent to the flight deck on top of one of the towers.

  Peter gazed at it in wonder.

  In the past year or so air travel had become viable again. Hook had discovered an aerospace engineer in the northern territories of the wastelands and brought him back to Neverland.