by Rob Vlock
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ivy Grissom. My name is Sam.” Junkman Sam smiled and extended his hand, which the girl pointedly ignored. “These are my friends Alicia, Will, and Sven. You already know Dixon Watts, I guess.”
“I wish I didn’t,” she mumbled with a frown.
Sam squatted down so his face was at the same level as Ivy’s. “Aren’t you a little young to be out here by yourself, throwing rotten eggs at people? Where are your parents?”
Ivy, who had tossed the egg into the air once more, missed the catch. The egg splatted on Sam’s shoe.
“I don’t have parents!” she spat. “I have foster parents! Believe me, it’s not the same thing!”
“Do they know you’re here?” Sam continued gently. “I’m sure they’re worried about you if you snuck out on your own.”
“First of all,” Ivy snapped, “stop talking to me like I’m a baby. I told you I’m almost ten. Second, they’re not worried about me. They don’t even know I’m gone. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t care anyway.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Sam replied.
“It is true! I’m on my fifth set of foster parents in the last three years! None of them cared about me! They all kept shipping me back like I was some kind of defective toy they didn’t want anymore. And then they’d shuffle me to some other family who would keep me for a while and then get rid of me. All because I ran away from home once or twice! Or maybe a few dozen times. But still!”
Alicia pulled a chair around and sat down in front of her. “Why do you keep running away from home?”
“Why?” Ivy screeched. “Why? Why do birds sing? Why do fish swim?”
I thought she meant those as rhetorical questions, but she glared at us, waiting for an answer.
“Um,” Will ventured. “Because that’s what their instincts tell them to do?”
“No, dummy!” Ivy scowled at him. “It’s because they’re freaking good at it!”
“Um . . . so . . . you’re saying you run away from home because you’re good at it?” I asked.
She puffed out her chest. “Not good. I’m awesome! Never been caught once sneaking out of a house. I can be practically invisible when I want to be. Doesn’t matter if they lock the door, turn on the burglar alarm, whatever. No one can catch me! Except Bing. He always seems to track me down before I can get very far.”
I shrugged. “Who’s Bing?”
“The social worker who’s in charge of placing me with foster families. He’s always looking at me with his fishy eyes and saying things like ‘Now, now, Ivy, we mustn’t run away. You’re such a very special little girl.’ Blah, blah, blah!”
“And where are you trying to run away to?” Sam tilted his head at her inquiringly.
Without saying a word, Ivy walked out of the storage room and stopped at the front window of the now-empty Happy Hog. “There.” She pointed at a mountain that loomed in the distance. “That’s where I want to go. Don’t ask me why. It just . . . I don’t know . . . calls to me. I have these super-realistic dreams about the mountain, and I . . . I just feel like I have to go there.”
“But why?” I asked. “What’s there?”
“That right there’s the Cheyenne Mountain Complex,” a voice said behind us. It belonged to Porkbutt. He joined us at the window and stroked his long beard thoughtfully. “Home of the US Strategic Command’s Missile Warning System. The place is built right into the mountain, protected by two thousand feet of granite. If some poor fool of a country launches a nuclear attack against us, that facility can direct our entire nuclear arsenal to retaliate. Kaaaa-boom! And then it’s buh-bye, world!”
CHAPTER 18.0:
< value= [I Give Ivy the Bad Good News] >
THE ROOM SPUN AROUND ME as Porkbutt’s words sank in. Whatever Ivy was programmed to do, I felt pretty sure it involved the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Why else would she be so obsessed with the place?
Alicia caught my eye. Judging by the grim look on her face, she had come to the same conclusion. “Her mission has something to do with the military installation in that mountain.”
“But what is it?” Will asked, nervously shredding a paper napkin.
Alicia shrugged. “Whatever it is, I’m going to guess there’s a good chance it involves the nukes Porkbutt was talking about. All I know is, I’m going to make sure she doesn’t do it.”
I pulled her away from the window so Ivy couldn’t hear us. “You’re not talking about killing her. She’s just a little girl.”
Her steely eyes met mine. “She’s a Tick, Sven. And she’s been programmed to kill us all.”
“Yeah,” I snapped. “So is Dix. And I don’t hear you talking about killing him.”
“That’s because we already stopped him from performing at Madison Square Garden,” she replied. “And as long as he’s with us, we can make sure he doesn’t do any singing. And if he’s not singing, he’s harmless.”
“Oh, right.” I snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s the reason.”
She glared at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m sure his being tall and good-looking and wearing a tight T-shirt that shows off his muscles has nothing at all to do with it,” I answered sarcastically.
Her face flushed pink. Whether it was with embarrassment or anger, I wasn’t sure.
“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes. “Jealous much, Sven?”
Without warning, a hot surge of rage overtook me. My heart pounded, and my pulse thundered in my ears.
Once again, an urgent voice rang out, delivering a message that felt as if it had burrowed its way up from some deep, uncharted part of my brain.
Kill her. Do it. Kill them all.
“Sven? Sven, you okay?” Alicia’s voice was shaded with concern.
The anger slipped away like sand escaping between my fingers. “Wh-what?”
“I was asking what you thought we should do about Ivy,” she said. “But you were just staring at me with this weird look on your face. Is something wrong?”
“No, no . . . nothing’s wrong,” I lied. “I was just thinking about . . . you know, junk and stuff.”
She looked like she didn’t believe me. “Ohh-kay. If you say so. But what do you think about Ivy? We can’t risk her carrying out her mission.”
“No, we can’t,” I agreed. “That’s why I say we take her with us. If we put a few hundred miles between ourselves and the mountain, that ought to keep her out of trouble.”
“We don’t even know her, Sven,” Alicia argued. “Who knows if we can trust her?”
“We didn’t know Dix, and you didn’t seem to have any reservations about taking him along,” I countered.
Again, her cheeks reddened. “Will you give it a rest, Sven? Fine. You want to take her, we’ll take her. But you’re telling her she’s a Tick, not me.”
Alicia strode away and sat down heavily on a chair. Folding her arms over her chest, she glowered back at me.
I walked back to the window wondering how in the world I was going to get Ivy to believe she wasn’t a real human. It took having my arm fall off and reattach itself before I even started to realize there was anything going on with me. And Dixon wasn’t convinced until the tip of his tongue leapt into his mouth to repair itself. How could I possibly get her to understand?
“Hey, Ivy,” I said hesitantly. “Can I . . . talk to you for a minute?”
* * *
When I had finished telling Ivy that she was a Tick who was designed to wipe out the entire human race, she stared into my face for a full ten seconds without saying a word. Finally, she spoke.
“Oh my gosh! You’re saying I’m . . . I’m . . . some kind of . . . killer android?”
I nodded gravely. “I know it’s not easy to hear.”
Ivy stared at her hands as if she was seeing them for the first time. “I’m not really human? That’s . . . AWESOME! So do I have all kinds of, like, androidy superpowers?” She fixed her eyes on a near
by red-and-white checked tablecloth. “Can I burn stuff with my eyes? Come on, burn!”
“No, you’re thinking of Superman,” I told her. “You don’t have heat vision. But wait—why do you think this is awesome? You’re not actually human. Doesn’t that bother you?”
She laughed. “Seriously? What’s so great about being human? My whole life I thought I was human, and nobody even knew I existed. Half the time my foster parents would call me down to dinner when I was already sitting at the table. It was like I was the invisible girl or something. But now? If I have the whole world’s fate in my hands, people will have to pay attention to me! I’ll be more famous than Dixon Watts! Ivy, the girl who ruled the world! Has a great ring to it, right? So how am I going to destroy the world, anyway?”
“Well, first of all, we’re not sure. Second of all, you’re not going to destroy the world. That’s why we tracked you down. So we could stop you.”
“Hold on!” She frowned at me. “You’re telling me I finally have something that’ll make people notice me and I have to just shut up and sit down?”
I chewed on my lip. “Yeah. But, believe me, there are worse things than having no one notice you.”
“Oh, yeah?” she sniffed. “Like what?”
“Like having everyone notice you . . . but for all the wrong reasons,” I explained. “Like me. My whole life I would have done anything to be invisible. Even if it was just for a day. Because what people noticed about me were all the things I wish no one noticed at all.”
“For example?” she prodded.
I sighed. “For example, licking garbage can lids. Eating the mold off yogurt that’s two years past its expiration date. Just yesterday, I almost ate a cockroach.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s seriously nasty!”
I shrugged. “So maybe being invisible isn’t all that bad?”
She chewed on her thoughts for a few seconds. “Maybe.”
“But you know what?” I added. “If you come with us, you can help save the world, instead of destroying it. And I’d say that’s a better way to get noticed, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” she repeated. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll come with you, but if I don’t like the whole saving-the-world thing, I want you to drop me off back here so I can go ahead and destroy it. Deal?”
She extended her hand.
“If it involves you destroying the world, it doesn’t seem like a very good deal to me,” I told her.
She waggled her hand at me. “Take it or leave it.”
“Fine,” I sighed. In the end, it wouldn’t really matter what I agreed to. If we failed in stopping the other four Ticks that were out there, they’d probably beat Ivy to it.
“So listen,” I told her. “We need to get out of here before your overseer finds us.”
“Aw, geez. I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” a way-too-happy-sounding voice piped up behind us. “But don’t worry. I promise I’ll kill you quick!”
CHAPTER 19.0:
< value= [No, It’s Not Fun] >
“OH HI, BING,” IVY SAID.
I turned around to find Ivy peering up at a slim middle-aged man dressed in a sweater vest that looked like a unicorn had thrown up on it. His sandy hair dipped limply onto his large forehead, and a neatly trimmed mustache adorned his upper lip.
“Now, Ivy,” Bing chirped. “We’ve talked about this before. You’re a very special girl. You can’t just go traipsing around whenever you feel like it. No-siree Bob!”
Ivy’s shoulders sagged. “I guess you’re going to take me home?”
Bing laughed. “No, silly-billy! Tonight you get to go to the mountain. Just like you’ve always wanted.”
“You mean I can really go there?” A broad grin spread across Ivy’s face. Her lips fell into a confused frown. “Wait. How do you know about the mountain? I never told you about that. It was—”
“In your dreams? Of course I know about that, cupcake.” Bing sat down and leaned in close to Ivy. “Sheeesh. I know exactly what you dream about, Ivy. You dream about the mountain. About pushing that button. The one that’s going to usher in a new Synthetic age. It’s why you were created. Now, just as soon as I take care of your new little friends here, we’ll go to the mountain. We could take a picnic lunch! Wouldn’t that be fun? Yay!”
“You’re not taking her anywhere,” Alicia growled, pulling a magnetic throwing star from her backpack.
Bing got one look at her weapon and his smile evaporated. “Oh, no! I—I didn’t mean it! Please just don’t hurt me! Please! I’m sorry!”
Great sobs wracked his body, and he retreated to the corner and slumped to the floor.
Alicia looked confused. “Well, okay, then. Next time you, um, decide to mess with humans, you’d better—”
“Just kidding!” Bing cried, leaping to his feet with a giggle. “You actually thought I thought you were scary! Hee hee! But you wanna see something really scary?”
Without waiting for an answer, Bing . . . yawned?
I braced myself, certain that some horror was about to be unleashed. But the only horror in sight was a set of brownish molars and Bing’s yellow-coated tongue. Which were gross, obviously, but hardly terrifying.
His yawn grew, his mouth stretching to inhuman dimensions, complete with squishy sound effects, until something seemed to wriggle up his throat and onto his tongue. It was a . . . a . . .
“Ugh, nasty!” Will gasped. “A centipede!”
“No, it’s a scorpion, dummy,” Ivy told him.
The truth is, they were both right. What was crawling out of Bing’s mouth had the body of a centipede and the arched, stinger-tipped tail of a scorpion. A . . . a . . . scorpipede! About six inches long, the disgusting creature squirmed over Bing’s chin and scurried down his body until its many feet were resting firmly on the scuffed wood floor of the Happy Hog.
In an instant, another emerged from Bing’s mouth, followed by another and another, until dozens of the horrific things swarmed across the floorboards. Their hard, pointed legs clicked audibly as they moved. It sounded like the chattering of a million tiny teeth.
Once the last of the creatures left Bing’s mouth, the man’s empty skin crumpled to the floor.
“We are the Bing Collective,” the creatures said in unison, a chorus hundreds of voices strong. “A multitude as one. Isn’t that fun? Yay! The one you knew as Bing was merely our exterior flesh sac!”
One look at the scorpipedes’ shiny black exoskeletons was nearly enough to cause my barbecue lunch to make a reappearance.
“It’s so nice that you’ve met your brothers, Ivy,” the Bing Collective chittered. “Five Omicron with her big brothers, Six and Seven. It’s like a family reunion!”
Ivy swallowed hard. “Bing? Have you always been a big man-shaped skin pouch stuffed full of a bunch of gross scorpion-centipede things?”
“Well, it sounds pretty unflattering when you put it that way, but essentially yes. We’ve been watching you, Ivy. We’ve been following you. Making sure you were safe. Moving you to a new foster home every time you did something to make your family suspicious. You see, because of a glitch in your latency algorithm, you kept trying to carry out your mission early. But no matter how much we truly wanted to let you, we had to wait until the time was right. And now that Dixon Watts—Six Omicron—has failed, it’s your turn!”
The scorpipedes squiggled excitedly around the room.
Will kinda freaked when one scuttled over his foot.
“Eww! Eww! Eww!” he shrieked. “This is so gross!”
He stamped wildly with his feet until—squish!
The sharp, metallic smell of sizzling circuits reached my nose.
Will lifted his foot. A flattened member of the Bing Collective was stuck to the sole of his sneaker.
Alicia’s lips pulled back into a malicious grin. “Good thinking, Will. Hey, Sven. Whaddya say we stomp these bugs?”
With a crunch, she crushed a scorpipede under her boot
. I followed her lead, slamming my foot down on one of the creatures that happened to be scuttling by.
“Yeah!” Will taunted. “Rule number one: Never bring a centipede to a foot fight!”
Alicia, Dix, and I all looked at him. “What?” we said together.
Will shrugged. “Forget it. Just get them!”
The Bing Collective quickly retreated and crowded around the empty skin that used to house them, a glinting, pulsing mass of nastiness.
“What’s wrong? Don’t like getting squished?” Alicia laughed.
But the Bing Collective laughed louder. “You actually think you’re hurting us? We are too numerous to be defeated. Sure, some may fall, but you can’t get us all. Hey, that rhymes! Fun!”
The Bing Collective surged forward, scrabbling over the floor and surrounding us. A burning pain exploded in my ankle. I hitched up the leg of my pants and peered at a red dot that looked way too small to have caused the agony radiating along every nerve ending.
“Ouch!” I yelled.
“Hee hee,” the Bing Collective giggled. “Yes, a single sting hurts, doesn’t it? But a hundred stings? Ooh, that’s a killer!”
CHAPTER 20.0:
< value= [We Get Mobbed] >
“THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY of them,” Sam called, trying to catch his breath.
We were all tired. Alicia, Will, Dix, Sam, and I had been stomping like crazy for the past ten minutes. But those scorpipedes were quick. For every one we squashed, we missed a bunch more.
The Bing Collective was right. There were more scorpipedes than we could ever hope to defeat. Just as I introduced one to the sole of my sneaker, I felt the stinger of another sear into the flesh of my calf.
Dix reached over and swiped one of the creatures off my shoulder. “Sven, we need more feet. There’re too many of them!”
Ivy, who had been standing to the side, watching the scene unfold, wore a look of helpless confusion.
“Ivy!” I called. “Help! Please help us!”
She blinked at me, gave a curt nod, and raised her foot. But then uncertainty clouded her features. She stood with one foot in the air for several seconds before lowering it slowly to the floor.