The Never War

by D. J. MacHale

  Instead, the nasty gangster got this evil gleam in his eye and said, “The hell with orders. I’m gonna end this right here.”

  Uh-oh. He pulled the hammer back on his revolver. I willed Spader to hurry.

  He did.

  With a giant shove, the sofa came toppling over. The big couch first nailed the nervous guy, then continued down to take out Mr. Nasty. The gangsters didn’t know what hit them. I had barely enough time to roll out of the way before the two thugs hit the floor in a pile of gangster and sofa. I sprang to my feet and dove over the pile toward Spader.

  “What took you so long?” I shouted at him.

  “It was heavy!”

  “C’mon!” I bolted out of the room with Spader right behind me. Those gangsters were going to be back on their feet in seconds, and I didn’t want to be anywhere close when that happened. We ran down the hall, turned right, and blasted for the elevators. I hit the button and looked to see that the needle pointed to “1.” Bad news. I looked over the second elevator. That needle pointed to “30.” Worse news. We were on 6. Not even close.

  “C’mon, c’mon!” I coaxed the elevators while furiously hitting the button…not that it would do any good.

  “Who’s Winn Farrow?” Spader asked. “Is it Saint Dane?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” I answered breathlessly. “But those guys were only supposed to give us a warning and they decided to kill us.”

  “You can’t trust anybody,” said Spader.

  “Hey!”

  We both looked to our right and saw the gangsters rounding the far corner, headed our way. We had to keep running. Spader and I jammed it down the corridor. Our only hope was to find a stairwell, or at least another corridor. Luckily it was a long hall and we were too far away from the gangsters for them to take a shot at us.

  When we got to the end of the corridor, we found a door that probably led to a stairway, but it was blocked by furniture and painting supplies. If we tried to dig through that mess, the gangsters would have us.

  “This way,” ordered Spader.

  We turned right and sprinted down the next corridor. This hallway ran parallel with the corridor where our room was, on the far side of the hotel. It was pretty long too, so we could stay out of bullet range. But we couldn’t keep running in circles. We had to find an escape route.

  Halfway down the corridor, I saw it. An exit sign. Without stopping to think, I took a right into that door. I was hoping to find a stairway, but no luck. It was a service corridor. We were now running parallel to the hallway with the elevators.

  “Maybe we can loop around back to the elevators,” I said. “If we’re lucky we’ll catch one closer this time.”

  “Hobey-ho,” Spader said.

  We ran to the far end of the service corridor and stopped. I slowly opened the door to peek out. No bad guys anywhere. So far so good. We quickly ran out, turned right, and sprinted back along the corridor toward our room. We had come full circle.

  But this was scary. For all we knew, one of the gangsters could have doubled back and would soon be rounding the corner in front of us. We passed our room and had only a few yards to go before hitting the elevator corridor again, when we heard footsteps coming toward us. Oops. At least one of the gangsters decided to circle back. He would be on us in seconds!

  We were done. I froze in panic.

  Spader didn’t. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me into the last room of the corridor before the turn. There wasn’t a second to spare. I caught a glimpse of the gangster coming around the corner.

  The two of us dove to the inside of the door. All we could do was hope the gangster wouldn’t peek in. A few seconds later we heard footsteps run by. I looked to Spader. He winked at me. We waited a few more seconds, then slowly took a peek outside to see the gangster running full throttle down the corridor, away from us. Excellent.

  Now we had to move fast. We booked out of the room and back toward the elevators. We made the right turn again and saw an empty corridor. We also saw one of the elevator doors opening up! We took off on a dead run.

  “Going down?” a voice called from inside the elevator.

  We were too far away for him to see us. We kept on running, and I saw the elevator door starting to close. At this point it didn’t matter if the gangster heard us or not, so I shouted out, “Dewey!”

  Too late. The elevator door slid shut. We missed it. A second later the nasty gangster appeared at the far end of the corridor. I guess it did matter if he heard us. We were now staring right down the pike at worst case scenario.

  That’s when the elevator door opened up again! Dewey heard me after all.

  “What are you guys doing?” he asked.

  We both dove into the open car before the door was all the way open. “Close it! Close the door!” I shouted.

  Dewey was totally confused. Both Spader and I started pushing the door closed ourselves. “Hey! That’s my job!” Dewey whined.

  We ignored him and almost had the door shut when the nasty gangster arrived. He got his fingers in the door and tried to pry it open.

  “Down, Dewey!” I shouted. “Not that way.” I looked up. “That way.” I looked down.

  “But there’s another passenger out there!” Dewey complained. That’s when the nasty gangster showed his revolver. Dewey got the message. He leaped at the door and helped us close it.

  “Get us out of here!” I yelled.

  Dewey grabbed the control lever and surprisingly enough, we started down. Dewey was better under pressure than I would have guessed. But he looked wild-eyed and scared.

  “Who was that?” he screamed. “He had a pistol!”

  “Where’s Gunny?” Spader demanded, ignoring Dewey’s question.

  “I just saw him in the lobby, headed outside. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing Gunny can’t handle,” I said. “Forget about what you saw.”

  “But I gotta tell my father about this,” Dewey complained.

  “Don’t do that!” I shouted. I think I scared the little guy because he backed up against the side of the elevator. I got my head back together and said calmly, “It was just a joke. Like a prank, you know?”

  “But, but that guy had a gun,” Dewey whimpered.

  “Gun?” I faked a laugh. “That wasn’t a real gun. That was…that was…a costume. For the costume party. You know the clothes we had on before? Those were costumes too. You thought it was a real gun?”

  I faked another laugh, looking sideways at Spader. Spader got the idea and he faked a laugh too.

  “Yeah,” Spader said. “It was a toy.”

  Dewey wasn’t sure we were telling the truth, but I think it was easier for him to accept it than to think there were guys running around his father’s hotel flashing guns. That was good. If Dewey called the police, they’d have to question us, and I’m not so sure they’d like the answers we had to give. No, it was better this way. But we had to find Gunny and let him know what was going on. Finally we got to the lobby, and Dewey opened the door.

  “Thanks, Dewey. We’ll let you know when the next costume party is, okay?” I said.

  “Great, thanks!”

  Dewey was a simple kind of dude.

  We ran from the elevator and went looking for Gunny. We hurried to the front doors of the hotel and booked outside. Night had fallen and the garden was lit up like Christmas, with lights hidden among the greenery.

  “There!” shouted Spader, pointing to the sidewalk in front.

  Gunny was there talking to a man. We ran down the front stairs of the hotel, through the garden and out onto the street. Gunny saw us. He shook the hand of the man and the guy walked off just as we ran up to him. We were both out of breath and excited.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, sounding a little angry. “I told you boys to stay put.”

  “We had visitors,” I said.

  “The guys from the flume,” Spader panted. “They came looking for us.”

  I didn’t like the look on
Gunny’s face. It was a cross between shock and fear. Bad combination.

  “Who is Winn Farrow?” I asked.

  For a second I thought Gunny was going to faint. He actually looked unsteady on his feet. Whoever Winn Farrow was, his name made a strong guy like Gunny very scared. This was getting worse by the second.

  “I can’t believe he sent people here,” Gunny said. “That’s crossing a very dangerous line.”

  “Why? Who is he?” I asked.

  Gunny looked down at us and was about to answer when we heard a scream.

  It was a horrifying, tortured scream that came from far away. Actually, it didn’t come from far away, it came from far up. The three of us spun quickly to look up at the hotel. What we saw made my knees go weak.

  Somebody had jumped out of a window!

  The whole building was lit up by floodlights, so the dark figure was easy to see, though I wished I couldn’t. The fall took only a few seconds, but those few seconds will stay with me forever. It was horrible. The figure screamed all the way down. Luckily for us, the tall trees in front of the hotel blocked us from seeing the final second. We stood there frozen, then Gunny broke and ran for the building. Spader and I followed right behind him. I didn’t want to see what had happened, but I was sure I needed to. Chances were this had something to do with the gangsters and this Winn Farrow dude.

  The victim had fallen onto the roof of a car and pretty much caved in the whole thing. There was no way anybody could survive that. I couldn’t bring myself to look closer. Neither could Spader. We stood several feet away, while Gunny did the tough thing and walked over to investigate.

  While we waited for him, Spader saw something and nudged me. I looked and saw someone standing on the steps of the hotel. It was one of the gangsters. The nervous one. He looked at us like he wanted to say something, but decided not to and ran off. The question was, where was the other guy?

  Gunny walked back to us and said softly, “It’s him. The ugly one from the subway. He’s dead.”

  That answered my question. Spader and I shared disbelieving looks.

  “I guess that means he won’t be trying to kill us anymore,” Spader said, sounding numb.

  This was unbelievable. When I first saw the falling body, I thought somebody had made a suicide jump. Now that I knew it was Mr. Nasty Gangster, nothing made sense anymore. Why would he jump? He had other things on his mind, like hunting for us so he could gun us down.

  I stared up at Gunny. He looked sick.

  “You gotta tell us what you’re thinking, Gunny,” I said.

  Gunny glanced back at the body. People were starting to gather and stare.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have our own war pretty soon,” Gunny said. “Right here in our backyard. It may not be as big as the one brewing over in Europe, but it’s going to be ugly just the same.”

  I heard a police siren scream in the distance. It was a far-off, sorrowful wail that was headed our way.

  The show was definitely on.

  I’m going to end this journal here, Mark and Courtney. I wish I had my ring so I could send these pages to you. Hopefully, it’ll turn up soon. But until it does, I’ll keep these pages safe and keep writing. I’m beginning to get the hang of this typewriter.

  I hope this journal finds you well, and that your lives are much simpler than mine.

  It’s March 11. It’s my birthday. Do I still turn fifteen, even though it’s 1937?

  END OF JOURNAL #9

  JOURNAL #10

  FIRST EARTH

  I’m getting ready to launch to another territory.

  It’s been nearly two months since I finished my last journal, and I can’t tell you how worried I am. I don’t want to leave here. At least not now.

  But I think we found the turning point.

  Gunny was right. I think that if we can change the outcome of this one event, there’s a really good chance we can stop World War II. Is that incredible or what? The idea of saving the lives of millions of people is almost too good to be true. Gunny was right. The turning point isn’t as big as a war between tribes like on Denduron, or the poisoning of an entire territory, like on Cloral. It’s actually one single event. One big, stupid, spectacular event.

  But it’s going to be hard to stop it from happening. Dangerous, too. Big surprise, right?

  Since I wrote you guys last, we have crossed paths with some truly foul characters. It’s getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. If we have any hope of stopping this event, we’ve got to go up against these guys again, and I can’t guarantee we’ll win.

  That’s why I’m fluming to another territory. We need some information and there’s no way we can get it here. But I’m nervous about leaving because I don’t want to miss anything. I’m typing this to you guys on the night of May 5. Tomorrow is the day everything is going to hit the fan. That much we know for sure. We absolutely, positively have to be back in time and leaving now means we’ll be cutting it really close. I’m counting on the fact that the flumes always send us Travelers where we need to be, when we need to be there. It wouldn’t be cool to get back late.

  But I think it’s a risk worth taking because, like I said before, we need all the help we can get.

  The last time I wrote to you it was my birthday, March 11. Spader and I have been here for almost two months. So much has happened since I last wrote that I hope I can remember it all.

  When Mr. Nasty Gangster took that header off the Manhattan Tower Hotel, it was truly disturbing. Seeing a man fall to his death is about as horrible and gruesome as it gets. But as bad as that was, it also left us with a mystery. How did he fall? Why did he fall? He had been chasing us around on the sixth floor. I couldn’t imagine he took a wrong turn and suddenly said, “Oops, this door leads to…air! Let’s go!” No way.

  I also couldn’t imagine that he jumped deliberately. Not that I know anything about suicide, but this guy was busy doing other things, like trying to murder Spader and me. Why would he suddenly stop in the middle of the chase and say, “I can’t believe I lost those guys. I’m such a lousy gangster, I think I’ll just end it all.” That didn’t make sense either.

  The only possible explanation was that he was murdered.

  That leads to the bigger question. Who did it? It wasn’t his partner, Mr. Nervous Gangster. Spader and I saw him leaving the hotel only a few seconds after Mr. Nasty took the dive. That meant somebody else was guilty. There was somebody else in the hotel who was part of all this, and I could make a pretty good guess as to who it might be.

  Yeah, you guessed it too. Saint Dane.

  He had to be here somewhere, looking like somebody else. Still, why would Saint Dane murder a guy who was trying to murder us? I guess the bottom line was, we had a ton of questions and not a whole lot of answers. There was only one person who could shed any light on this, and that was Gunny. It was time for him to tell us what he knew about these gangsters.

  After Mr. Nasty took the fall, Gunny told Spader and me to go back up to our room. He had to talk to the police and let them know what he saw. Of course he didn’t want Spader or me talking to them. They might ask tough questions like: “And where do you live, sonny boy?” or “Give us the name of your parents so we can call them.” That would have been tricky. So Spader and I went quietly back up to our room and waited for Gunny.

  Once we hit the room though, we weren’t quiet anymore. Spader was all worked up.

  “He’s here. I can smell him,” he said while pacing.

  “Who?”

  “Saint Dane. He’s in this building.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “C’mon, mate!” Spader exclaimed. “You know he’s got to have his slimy hands in this. He sent those gunmen to the flume to kill Press, then he sent ’em after us. How else would those wogglies know we were here?”

  “Then how come one of ’em is dead?”

  “I’m still working on that; give me some time.”

  Spader’s
hatred for Saint Dane was starting to bubble up again. That was bad. We had to keep our eyes on the ball, and that meant not letting our emotions take over.

  “Spader,” I said cautiously. “You know you’ve gotta be cool about this, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he assured me. “Cool as a cooger fish, that’s me. Don’t worry, Pendragon. I made you a promise. I won’t go back on you.”

  “I believe you,” I said. I really, really hoped I was right.

  That’s when the door opened and Gunny walked in. I thought he looked a little older than he had earlier. He was the kind of guy who wanted everything to be just so. Having gangsters plunge to a gruesome death from his hotel wasn’t part of his perfect picture.

  “I’ve seen a lot of things happen at this hotel,” he said with a shaky voice. “But this beats ’em all.”

  “Be patient,” I cautioned him. “We’re just getting started.”

  Spader said, “What’s all this talk about a natty-do around here?”

  “A what?” asked Gunny, once again confused by an expression of Spader’s.

  “You said there was going to be a war here at the hotel,” I jumped in. “What’s up with that?”

  Gunny sat down in one of the easy chairs and let out a tired breath. Spader and I sat across from him on the same couch Spader had toppled over on the gangsters.

  “You ever hear of a thing called Prohibition?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that when the government outlawed booze?”

  “Exactly,” said Gunny. “No wine, no beer, no whiskey, no nothin’. From 1920 until they gave up on it in 1933. It was all against the law, unless you knew where to go. Most people knew where to go.”

  “Speakeasies, right?” I asked.

  “Speak easy?” asked Spader. “I’m losing you two.”

  “A lot of people got rich during Prohibition,” Gunny continued. “Some did it making booze—they called it bootlegging. Others sold it in secret clubs called speakeasies; still others shipped it here, there, and everywhere right under the noses of the police. It was all very illegal. It made a lot of gangsters rich and put a lot of others behind bars. Put a lot of them six feet under dirt, too.”