The Scarecrow of OZ

by S. D. Stuart

  Caleb grabbed Zee by the shoulders. “Talk to me Zee.”

  She twisted out of his grip. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  He stepped in front of her, blocking her. “What happened?”

  Her eyes pierced his, water forming around the edges as tears welled up. “You want to know what happened?”

  Her sudden ferocity took him by surprise. He nodded his head slightly, unsure if he really wanted the answer or not.

  “I’ll tell you what happened. You happened!”

  “Zee, I…”

  She shoved him back violently. “Shut up! Just shut up! You don’t get to talk, you get to listen. Are you going to listen? Or am I wasting my time?”

  He relaxed his balled fists and tried to look as nonthreatening as possible as he nodded silently.

  “You want to know what’s happening here? I’ll tell you. We are running and hiding, erasing any trace that we were here, because our chosen leader refuses to lead us.”

  He opened his mouth and she put up a hand. “You don’t get to speak. You haven’t earned that right.”

  He closed his mouth and let her continue.

  “A secret cabal of world leaders, known only as the Directors, are coming. They want the Brahmastra. And once they have it, they will use it to kill all of us before conquering the rest of the world.”

  The words escaped his lips before he could stop them. “Why kill us?”

  She ignored his infraction. “We are hiding from them because we are the only ones who still know how to use it. We needed you to get it before they did.”

  Allowing him to speak a moment before emboldened him to try again. “But why me?”

  “There is a girl whose blood is needed to unlock the box that contains the Brahmastra. You were supposed to take her with you and get it before the Directors could steal it from us again.”

  “But why me? Why am I the only one who could do this among all the hybrids?”

  “It had to be you, because the girl asked for you by name. She said she would only help us if you went along to help her.”

  He shook his head, clearly not getting the point she was trying to make.

  “Why would she ask for me? I don’t even know who this girl is.”

  She exhaled sharply in exasperation. “Yes you do. It’s Dorothy.”

  Chapter 9

  Deep in the bowels of the Southern Marshal’s castle, Caleb urged the guard in front of him to walk faster as they made their way through the maze of underground passageways. As soon as they reached the door to Nero’s underground warehouse, Caleb brushed past the guard and took the steps two at a time down into the partially lit chamber.

  His feline eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light, yet the true depth of the warehouse remained unknown. He had never managed to reach the other end of the warehouse the last time he was down here. The multitude of odd trinkets, contraptions and carvings, from civilizations long since dead, could have stretched on into infinity for all he knew.

  Nero remained seated on a stool with his back to the door. He was at the table that held the large stack of ancient scrolls and sat bent over an open scroll, a magnifying optical lens clutched in his scarred hand. Caleb wasn’t sure he had even heard him come in until his raspy voice broke the silence. “What changed your mind?”

  “You could’ve told me Dorothy was going on your little escapade.”

  Nero kept his back to Caleb and continued to study his scroll. “Would that have made a difference?”

  “If I knew you were going to put her life in danger, I would have…”

  Caleb let his words fade to silence. He would what? He was a prisoner in the Southern Territories, despite the best efforts of everyone to convince him otherwise.

  Nero finally stopped studying his scroll and faced him. He parroted the same thing that was running through Caleb’s head.

  “And just what would you have done?”

  This line of thinking was going to get him nowhere. If he wanted to keep Dorothy safe, he had to come up with something else.

  Nero placed the magnifying glass on the table and stood up with considerable effort.

  “Her father built the box that contains the Brahmastra. Her blood is the key to opening that box.”

  “I won’t let you kill her.”

  “Who said anything about killing her? We only need a few drops of her blood. She will barely miss it.”

  “Why don’t you bring the box to her? Why does she have to go anywhere?”

  “The box her father built is big and heavy. The Brahmastra is much smaller than that. Much smaller. Believe me when I tell you, getting her to the box will be far simpler than bringing the box to her.”

  “Okay, so we get this Brahmastra first and stop the bad guys. Then what?”

  “That subject has been a matter of debate for the past couple of days. The Southern Marshal wants to keep it to ensure the protection of the hybrids. I, however, disagree. As long as the Brahmastra is accessible, it can be stolen.”

  “Then we destroy it.”

  Nero shook his head. “It cannot be destroyed. I say, after we have stopped the Directors, we drop it in the deepest hole and, this time, don’t spread stories and legends about what it does and where to find it.”

  This was a side of Nero he had never seen before. It surprised him that Nero was not even considering keeping this weapon for himself. It was like the old Nero had burned away along with his skin and from the ashes was born a new man.

  He’d spent his whole life trusting a man who didn’t deserve to be trusted. Now, he found it hard to trust the same man who had undergone a dramatic transformation and was finally proving to be trustworthy. Or was he just putting on an act?

  “We could always keep it and claim to drop it down a deep hole.”

  Nero shook his head like a father who had just been asked by his child if they could have chocolate cake for breakfast.

  “It is too powerful a weapon for anyone to possess. The Directors sent me here to find it. Why do you think I took so long? I didn’t want them to have it.”

  Maybe it was possible that Nero had changed.

  “So you don’t plan to keep it?”

  “After we have stopped the Director’s invasion, we will try to destroy it. If that doesn’t work, we will put it where no one will ever find it again.”

  “And just where could that be?”

  “There are active volcanoes four thousand kilometers southwest of OZ. We take an airship, sail right over one of them, and drop it in. It won’t be destroyed, but at least it will be inaccessible.”

  Caleb had to admit to himself, Nero had given this a lot of thought. If he truly wanted to keep this weapon out of everyone’s hands, including his own, then Caleb would help him. But there was still one thing he needed to secure.

  “What about Dorothy?”

  “What about her?”

  “Once you have the Brahmastra, will Dorothy be free?”

  “Once she has opened the box her father created, her job is done. All that I ask is that you bring the Brahmastra to me before the two of you disappear.”

  It sounded like a good plan, even though he knew nothing of the details. But if all he had to do was get this ancient artifact and bring it back to Nero to free Dorothy, the details didn’t really matter.

  Nero clapped a hand on his back. “I see it in your eyes you have already decided to help. Splendid. Come with me and I’ll introduce you to the rest of your team.”

  “The rest?”

  The skin around Nero’s mouth stretched as he attempted to smile. “You didn’t think I was going to send you out there all alone, did you?”

  Nero plucked a torch off the wall and headed into the darkness of the infinite warehouse. Caleb caught up with him.

  “Are we going to the other end of the warehouse?”

  Nero took a few more steps in silence and then paused at an empty torch holder on the wall.

  “Not quite.”

 
; He placed the torch in the holder, and using the torch for leverage, twisted the holder thirty degrees to the left. Caleb watched the stone wall in anticipation, half expecting it to slide inward or split open to reveal a secret passageway.

  The ground rumbled under his feet as the wall slid up. But it wasn’t just the wall that slid up; the entire warehouse seemed to be rising. He quickly realized that the warehouse wasn’t rising. Instead, the section of floor where he and Nero stood was dropping.

  They continued down for twenty feet before the wall around the circular stone platform ended at the ceiling of another underground chamber.

  Electric lamps sparked to life and illuminated a large glass and brass cylinder lying on its side. The cylinder rested in an indentation in the floor with one end pointed at a tunnel opening cut into the wall.

  Nero hobbled over to the glass cylinder and grabbed the brass handle that stuck out on the side. He slid part of it sideways to reveal red velvet seats that looked like they belonged in a carriage. In fact, the inside of the cylinder looked exactly like the inside of a carriage. But this carriage had neither wheels nor room for any horses on either end.

  The inside looked more like a carriage than the outside. It had the standard two bench seats that faced each other, but, unlike a carriage, there was a small instrument panel in between the two seats with a single red button.

  Nero looked at him expectantly. “If you’ve never traveled by tube, you’ve never traveled in style.”

  Caleb stepped into the cylinder and started to sit down. Nero motioned to the seats on the other side of the compartment.

  “You always want to face in the direction of travel. Trust me.”

  Caleb sat down in the rear seat of the carriage. Nero slid the curved door closed, sat down next to him, and looked at him with a playful expression in his eyes.

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  That was a weird question. Rather than wait for him to respond, Nero pushed the single red button while Caleb answered without giving it much thought.

  “About four hours, why?”

  Nero faced forward and leaned his head against the back of the seat as he closed his eyes. “Good. Velvet is really hard to clean.”

  Caleb’s ears popped from the sudden change of air pressure. Through the glass that enclosed the cylinder, he could see dust being sucked into the tunnel opening. The cylinder rumbled forward slowly until the leading-edge hit the edge of the tunnel.

  Only past experience could’ve prepared him for what happened next. Unfortunately, this was his first time. His head slammed against the back of his seat as the cylinder shot forward through the tunnel. He realized why Nero had closed his eyes. There was no source of illumination anywhere inside or outside the cylinder and it was completely dark. There was nothing to see anyway.

  Even with nothing to tell him which way was up, he still felt as if they had gone upside down a few times as the cylinder rocketed through the pitch black underground tunnel. Only the momentum that kept him pinned to his seat prevented him from being thrown around the inside of the cylinder as the tunnel curved and twisted.

  His ears popped again and he felt gravity regain control as the cylinder slowed. Through the glass ahead, he saw a faint circle of light grow larger as they got closer until it engulfed the cylinder and they jerked to a stop in the brightly lit chamber.

  While Caleb waited for his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, Nero unlatched the cylinder door and slid it open.

  “Welcome to my underground lair. Be sure to hold on to the handrails.”

  Caleb blinked a few times and everything came into focus. He stepped out of the cylinder carriage and into a massive laboratory.

  There was the faint hum of electricity all around him. One entire wall was covered with tall metal boxes, each replete with a mishmash of gauges and dials. Spaced several feet apart along the outer walls were tall metal spires that encircled the entire laboratory. Arcs of electricity shot from one tall metal spire to another. The unnaturally made lightning bolts didn’t just spark from one spire to the next, occasionally one would arc diagonally across the laboratory to a spire on the opposite wall.

  Nero was completely unfazed by any of this as he made his way through the room. He gripped the brass handrail that ran the whole length from the carriage platform to a small door on the other side of the room. Nero tripped unsteadily over some loose cables on the floor. The only thing keeping him from falling flat on his face was the handrail he clung to with all his might.

  He paused at the center of the room and looked back. “Come, you have to meet the rest of your team.”

  Chapter 10

  Nero disappeared through the door on the other side of the laboratory, completely unharmed by the artificial lightning crackling all around him. Caleb had even seen several small lightning bolts emanate from Nero and connect with the top of the closest spire. But Nero had continued through the room as if none of it had happened.

  Maybe the room looked scarier than it really was. Maybe all the electricity arcing across the room was as harmless as the glow from a faint light bulb.

  Caleb let go of the brass handle on the cylinder carriage and the fur over his entire body immediately stuck straight out right before a blast of lightning hit him square in the chest, knocking him back into the carriage.

  So much for the harmless theory.

  He scrambled to his feet quickly inside the carriage and tasted the sweet rusty flavor of blood from where he had bit his tongue. He smelled something burning, looked down at himself, and quickly patted out the smoldering bits of fur where the lightning had impacted him.

  He looked out the carriage door at the bolts of lightning that sparked gleefully like specters all around the laboratory. It was only then that he noticed the numerous warning signs mounted in every conceivable place claiming “High-Voltage”, “Danger”, and “Risk of Electrocution.”

  He leaned closer to the door and his fur lifted as it was drawn toward the electricity that ricocheted from one wall to another across the room. He placed his hand on the brass handle of the door and his fur settled back down.

  So that’s how Nero had managed to get through the room without a problem. He had no fur. His burnt and scarred flesh must have created some form of insulating layer that protected him from the electricity that crackled through every crevice of this room. Caleb’s body was covered in nothing but fur. He needed something to wrap around himself that would insulate him from the electricity if he was going to make it through this room too.

  He searched the carriage, but everything was mounted to something else in there. There was nothing loose he could grab to fend off the lightning.

  He held onto the brass handle so he could get closer to the door without drawing a fiery spark of hot electric death to him. His eyes searched the platform just outside the cylinder carriage for something, anything that would protect him from the lightning.

  He spotted a wool blanket on the edge of a desk about twenty feet from the carriage doorway. Wool was an excellent insulator, which meant it was a horrible conductor. Maybe if he wrapped that blanket around his entire body, he could make it through the room without his fur attracting any lightning.

  But he had to get to the blanket first. And he couldn’t do that if he got zapped as soon as he took his hand off the carriage’s brass door handle.

  With his hand on the handle, he stared into the electrified room and watched the lightning dance. As he watched, he noticed a cyclical pattern to the electricity. Most of it seemed to concentrate together as it traveled the room. He watched the largest concentration of electrical energy make its way around the room like the sweeping hand of a clock. Was this an optical illusion, or was there a potential lull in electrical activity at short periodic intervals? Would this allow enough time for him to get to the blanket and isolate himself from the electrical current that crackled throughout the air?

  He focused on the highest concentration of energy and, wh
en it was on the opposite end of the room, he lifted his hand away from the brass door handle. He silently counted to ten before his fur started to rise. He grabbed the brass handle and his fur lay down immediately. When the focal point of electricity was directly above the cylinder carriage platform, he let go of the handle. His fur stuck out immediately and small sparks shot between the extended individual hairs right before he grabbed the handle again.

  There was a cyclical pattern to the electricity in the room. One that he could take full advantage of.

  Maybe this was a test? Maybe figuring out the pattern of energy in the room, and using it to get to the blanket so he could pass safely through the room, was all a test to prove he was the one.

  If it took being the one to help Dorothy, then he would be the one. He would prove himself worthy.

  He watched the electricity circle the room a few more times, trying to gauge how long he could risk being away from the carriage before he was in danger. He let a few more opportunities pass as he counted silently while he envisioned himself running to grab the blanket and returning to the carriage. No matter how quickly he imagined himself running for the blanket, none of the scenarios in his head allowed any time for the return trip to the carriage. What he was planning to do could only be considered successful as a one-way trip.

  He only had enough time to reach the blanket, and wrap it around his body, before the highest concentration of electricity reached him.

  There was very little room for error, including the potentially mistaken concept that the blanket might insulate him from the electricity that coursed angrily throughout the room.

  He had one chance to make the right decision, or risk being fried to a crisp. There would be no second chances.

  Nero had already crossed the room unharmed, proving it could be done. But then again, he didn’t have fur covering his entire body that made him a magnet for the deadly lightning bolts.

  His heart pounded in his throat as he crouched, readying himself to make a mad dash for the wool blanket.