Ascending the Boneyard

by C. G. Watson

  “They’re gone,” I say.

  He stares up at me, and I can hear his breath hit hard against the filtered chambers of his mask. “Exactly. Like . . . poof.”

  We stand in the stairwell, dust particles bigger than my whole head floating all around us. Haze is probably right. It’s probably full of toxins and asbestos, and by the time we get back to Sandusky, I’ll be riddled with lung cancer.

  By the time we get back to Sandusky . . . The old man took off without saying where. Brought Devin with him. I don’t know why he’d do that. Why he wouldn’t realize I’d think the worst. That people who leave Sandusky tend to not come back.

  The phone rattles in my grip. I pull up the message.

  Time unused melts into pools of regret.

  And just behind it, the same picture that came through a few minutes earlier. I show it to Haze.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  He takes the phone from me, looks at the picture, starts tapping the screen—pretty bold moves for a guy who essentially has no idea how a cell phone works.

  “There’s a link on the page to a bunch of other pictures,” he says.

  My face twitches in disbelief. Haze just used a techie word in a sentence. Correctly.

  I take the phone from him, scroll manically through the photos. There’s got to be a close-up view here or a link to a map . . . something. Why would the commandos direct me to a specific location on the map without helping me figure out what or where it is?

  I’m scrolling at a good clip, not knowing exactly what I’m looking for, but confident that I’ll know it when I see it. Sure enough, about sixty pictures in, one photo leaps off the screen at me in full-tilt 3D, and for a split second my knees buckle. Slack-jawed, I rotate the phone in my hand so I can study it from every angle.

  High on a wall, surrounded by layers of cracked and curling paint, a clock stands frozen in time at ten minutes to four. The clock face is warped, some of the numbers twisted out of shape or gone completely.

  It’s melted.

  The clock is melted.

  Time unused melts into pools of regret.

  Haze nudges me. “You’re talking to yourself again. Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Saying what?”

  “Something about melting time? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I show him the photo.

  “So, do an image search for melted clock,” he says.

  His out-of-nowhere knowledge of cyber-sleuthing trips me yet again. “I gotta hand it to you, man,” I say. “You may be off the grid, but you’ve got the mind of a brilliant lunatic.”

  He thanks me with a two-fingered salute as I start scrolling down the too-long list.

  “Here,” I say, getting a hit.

  I click the link, and my hand falls limp to my side.

  “Gimme a break,” I whisper.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a school,” I say. “Are you serious?”

  “So it’s a school,” he says. “So what?”

  So, a school has nothing to do with this mission. So, until we got to this hotel, I’d never even heard of a school in the Boneyard. So, I don’t want to tell him that this is just one more dead end, like the ones in the tunnels that belch soldiers out onto the highway in flames.

  But I don’t say any of that to Haze. I can’t. I just hand him the phone so he can see for himself.

  Haze starts scrolling through the photos the same way he channel surfs at my house: torturously slow. He stops and studies every single picture before going on to the next; meanwhile, we’re cramped inside that dusty stairwell, breathing asbestos particles the size of small cars. Well, I am, anyway.

  “These aren’t all pictures of that school,” he finally says, pushing the phone back to me. “Look.”

  I have to confess here: I pull a Haze, start scrolling through the photos nice and slow. He’s right. Some are pictures of old banks, old theaters, old schools, old hotels, old churches, even this hotel we’re in, the Castle, all with one thing in common: they’re all abandoned. Not just abandoned, but deteriorated, some to the point of complete and total demolition.

  A fresh wave of fear crashes against me.

  “Ravyn found a cockroach on my shoulder,” I blurt out.

  He snorts. “Well, isn’t that symbolic.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. Ravyn had said the same thing.

  “You know. Your mom. Stan. The whole trailer infestation thing . . . Of course it would be symbolic.”

  The stairway flickers, and I hear the mantel clock tick-tick-ticking like we’re about to be ambushed, like we’re about to wipe.

  Where the hell are the commandos, anyway? When are they going to chime in, send me a brigade, something?

  Haze is staring at me.

  “That’s crap,” I tell him, the words sticking to the insides of my mouth.

  But Haze’s stupid glasses mirror my bullshit face back to me. “You know what I’m talking about,” he says soft and low. “You wouldn’t even leave the house until—”

  “Wouldja shut up about that already?” I say, instantly regretting the harsh.

  The last thing I need is a lecture on ancient history, though. I mean, that’s not why he’s here. I brought him along to help me stay focused on the now. Isn’t that what he always says? Be in the moment, live in the now? Well, I need him now, that’s for damn sure, and it won’t help this mission if he keeps digging up what’s already dead and buried.

  We sit quietly in the stairwell for a while longer, until Haze, pragmatist that he is, says, “So, what do you want to do now?”

  I look up, blink the sting out of my eyes a few times. Dust and asbestos everywhere.

  “Let’s eat,” I say.

  12.5

  The two fried eggs on my plate look unmistakably breastlike. I think about Ravyn and how, if that stupid cockroach would have stayed the hell out of things, I might have had a chance to touch hers.

  13

  This drippy, messy breakfast is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Eggs swimming in an inch of oil, hash browns leeching grease next to them, bacon with little pools of melted fat in the curves of delicious porkness—even the pop is fantastic. I didn’t realize how starving I was until the blue-haired waitress set these plates in front of us.

  Haze and I don’t talk for at least five minutes, don’t utter a syllable unless you count our grunts and moans of gastronomic pleasure. When it finally registers that the tank is getting full, we slow down, actually chew instead of inhale.

  I lean back, slide the napkin out from underneath the plate, mop my chin with it. Generally speaking, the Tosh men are napkin averse; the old man lets Devin’s food dribble down the side of his mouth instead of wiping it for him, not caring if it stays there until the next meal or even the next day. I usually quick clean him up when the fat bastard goes into the kitchen for seconds, or thirds, or more beer.

  But this food is so trashtastic, the napkin is a given.

  Haze lets out a long, bacon-scented sigh and stretches his legs so far under the table, I have to move mine out of the way. He scratches his head through his split-pea-soup-colored beanie.

  “The Prophets,” he says. “How can you even have techno and folk together? It’s self-canceling.”

  “Exactly.” I slurp the end of my pop. “But I mean . . . they were there, weren’t they? Because the next thing you know—”

  “I know. Gone.”

  The word echoes inside me with nothing for it to land on. No soft place, no hard place, no safe place.

  Gone. As in, nowhere to be. As in, doesn’t exist.

  How do you even begin to process ‘doesn’t exist’ . . . ?

  I throw the piece of toast I’m nibbling back onto the plate. The last bite won’t go down, even with gulps of water.

  I feel restless. Antsy.

  “So, what are you gonna do about the school?” Haze says as if he can read my mind.

  I let my gaze drift out
the window and down the street, turn up the volume on the music coming into my ear so I don’t have to hear the tick-tick-ticking of the invisible clock lodged somewhere in my brain.

  Time unused melts into pools of regret.

  I flip back toward Haze with a spark of epiphany.

  turn back time

  That’s what her note said.

  A locator app I downloaded one time sits unused on my last wall screen page. Supposedly, it spews all kinds of information about a place just by uploading a picture of it. I bring up the search window again, look for the name of the school since I’m pretty sure that’s where the clock will be. Industrial Tech, it finally says. I can use the app to verify it when we get there.

  “We gotta roll,” I say, grabbing my bag and sliding out of the booth.

  Since he’s the one with the job, Haze is also the one packing money, so I let him pay for our food. The blue-haired waitress smacks her orange-tinted lips, watching us with mild interest as we wander out onto the sidewalk. Haze follows me silently down the sepia-toned streets of the city.

  Before long, we come to a stop in front of what looks like a stone fortress at least half a dozen stories high. As I open the locator app, my pulse goes supernova with heightened awareness that we may have just been lured right into an ambush situation. Without any distinguishing markings on the building, I have no way of knowing if this is a minion fortress or an UpperWorld stronghold or something else completely.

  Either way, it looks vacant.

  I quick snap a picture, press a couple of buttons, and wait.

  Industrial Technical High School.

  Verified. But I’m feeling only a little calmer. I won’t know for sure until I see the clock.

  “We’re going in,” I tell Haze.

  He motions toward the slick glass-and-steel building next door, whose backlit sign also reads INDUSTRIAL TECH.

  “If you haven’t noticed,” he says, “school’s in session.”

  “In a completely separate building.”

  “This building is wedged between a fully occupied school and a busy highway, Tosh.”

  “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” I ask, scanning the perimeter for a point of entry.

  “Where’s your sense of reason?” he counters.

  Haze doesn’t seem to understand that sometimes in battle, it’s necessary to take the full risk. To go max red, if need be. But why would he? I’ve never told him how any of this works.

  “We need to stop a minute and think this through,” he says.

  “C’mon, Haze. When did you turn into a wuss?”

  “When did you turn into Roundhouse?”

  My eyebrows push up over the tops of the yellow goggles. I’d no more expect the word “Roundhouse” to come out of him than words like “links” or “Boneyard.” Besides, Haze doesn’t even own a TV. In fact, the only time he ever watches TV is at my house, and then he usually makes me put on the news or, worse yet, the History Channel.

  I decide to test him.

  “I bet Roundhouse would phone in a bomb threat or something,” I say. “Get the school evacuated, create a massive diversion; and while everyone’s attention is focused on protecting their new state-of-the-art investment, we could slip in here completely unnoticed and do what we need to do.”

  I fully expect him to ask what it is we need to do. But he doesn’t.

  Instead his mouth gapes open. “You’re not thinking about calling in a bomb threat, are you?”

  The panic in his voice wavers in the air between us as alarm bells start going off for real over at the glass-and-steel version of I-Tech.

  His head snaps in my direction.

  “Phone’s totally in my pocket,” I say, lifting up both hands so he can see them.

  He stares me down like he doesn’t believe me, but really I’m just as surprised as he is.

  “Dammit, Tosh—”

  “I swear. I had nothing to do with it.”

  His eyes narrow at me.

  “I swear to God,” I add, because it’s the only leg I have to stand on. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Even so, all the little techies start rushing obediently through the glassed-in hallways and bleeding out the see-through doors of the überswanky Industrial Tech High School, and I watch with relief as they’re ushered around to the far side of the building.

  The other side. Of course. Our opening’s around the back.

  In which case, we don’t even need a diversion, I tell myself, as we make our way around the fortress. The doors are bricked up, but I know there’s a way in. No chance that raiders have left a place like this alone. Besides, it’s too trashed for there not to be a hidden entrance somewhere.

  Haze’s muffled footsteps fall in behind mine like we’re a couple of covert ops.

  “You’d better be right about this,” he says.

  I’m thinking the same thing, but it would probably freak him out if I said so.

  Behind the building, I scout for anything that screams on-ramp: door, window, knocked-out bricks. I finally spot it—there, closer to the end than the middle, is a crawl space barely big enough for either of us to fit through. A metal grate that’s meant to cover the opening has been pried away, leaving a gaping hole that’s the obvious point of entry.

  I swing my bag over my back, wedge through the opening and into a dark crawl space, trying not to think about what else might be lurking down here. This time, unlike in the subway, Haze doesn’t bring up ten-pound rodents or foot-long cockroaches.

  We reach the end of the crawlway, where the space opens up and light pours in from broken windows. As my eyes adjust, I see that it’s high enough for us to stand all the way up.

  The alarm bells from the new I-Tech that still pierce through the midday air are now dulled by the layers of brick and concrete surrounding us.

  We make our way inside, pick silently through the chaos of dirt, peeling paint, scattered debris, and broken glass. The stench of panic and fear overpowers the cramped area, bleeds into the thick air around us, kicks my pulse into fight-or-flight alert.

  Our footsteps echo flat and dull through the long hallways. I stop at each classroom door, scan the walls for the melted clock, continue through the gauntlet of abandoned rooms, overturned desks, charred Bunsen burners sitting out on lab tables, broken pencils, papers plastered to the floor, undisturbed layers of dust and silt covering everything in sight. Someone has scrawled SAVE I-TECH in blue spray paint across a row of lockers.

  Every now and then, I peer out a window, catch a glimpse of the cc’s down below as they scramble around the new school, looking for the source of the alarms. Is this the work of the commandos? Is this their way of making sure I find the clock? Because when I do, I hope they’ll solidify the rest of the mission for me.

  “So what’s your fascination with that clock, anyway?” Haze wheezes behind me as I poke into room after room to quick survey the walls.

  I wish I knew what to tell him as I stop in front of a random doorway, stare into the stripped-bare classroom—white paint peeling off the walls, study papers strewn across the floor, a broken fluorescent light dangling from the ceiling by a single wire.

  But the desks . . .

  The desks are frozen in time, arranged in rows that are precision straight in a space that’s eerily tidy. I don’t need to look to know it isn’t here. Not in this near-perfectly preserved room.

  I back away, unable to find the words to explain to Haze what my fascination with the clock is.

  That it’s because I can still hear it.

  Because it hasn’t stopped ticking since she left, that’s why.

  Because my survival bar is flashing “the end is near” in glowing green letters, and I don’t know how much time I have or how long I get to make things right this time. To level, to unlock some of those savory weps from the expansion pack so I can do something right for once. To become Worthy.

  Because what kind of supreme fail would I be if I couldn’t undo what
I’ve done?

  The noise from the crowd outside begins its slow ascent, climbing the walls of the fortress, winding through the broken windowpanes until it drowns out even the Motor City pumping into my left ear. I turn, disoriented, dart to a window on the other side of the hallway, only to find myself looking into a courtyard instead of down onto the area between the two schools. The students are streaming over from their designated safe side.

  Holy shit. It’s some kind of mob.

  I start panic-dodging through one room after another. I don’t even care which platoon it is at this point. I just want to find an exit so I can get downstairs and join this raid.

  Haze follows close behind me.

  “Tosh,” he calls out. “Tosh. What are you doing?”

  His voice syncs to the lyrics of the Motor City tune pounding in my head as I scramble in and out of doorways, looking for an exit. There must be an exit—this is a school, for Christ’s sake. Correction: was a school.

  You like shows about construction, don’tcha, Dev? The sound of my own voice reverbs inside my head as the picture flashes between Devin before the accident and Devin after.

  Old I-Tech/new I-Tech.

  Sometimes they put dynamite inside and blow the buildings up. You like that, right, Devin?

  The hallway twists and bucks so violently around me, I have to stop in a doorway to steady myself. I slide my gaze up the far wall, lock sights on the clock.

  The clock.

  Hanging there, suspended in time at ten minutes to four.

  The yellow goggles show in super-high-definition the way the outside casing is in pristine condition while the plate inside with the numbers printed on it has literally melted over the hands.

  I tip my head, tighten my red-rimmed gaze.

  Fire . . .

  My palms smash against the goggle lenses. I clamp my eyes shut, but I can’t block out the sight of the tunnel raiders pouring onto the abandoned highway, fully engulfed.

  The heat of invisible flames coils around me, crackle-pops against my skin. The stench of burning flesh unbolts me from the spot, and I start shouting at Haze.

  “Get ’em out of there! Get ’em out of there!”