Ascending the Boneyard

by C. G. Watson

  But Haze just stands there, frozen in confusion, watching me scramble for an exit.

  I don’t blame him. He doesn’t know the rules of the Boneyard because I never bothered to tell him. And now I don’t have time. I need to get down there, join the platoon, save the raiders, reach Turk’s lair. I have to fix this.

  Haze blocks my path. “Tosh,” he says, his voice the softest, quietest thing in this abandoned building. “This isn’t right. You’re not right.”

  Wisps of charred debris float past me, stick to the sweat film covering my face as I back away from him, as I spin around, try to get some traction down the hallway.

  Just as I reach the stairwell, the alarm clock on my phone goes off, even though I don’t remember setting it. But I stop anyway, pull up the screen. Neon-green numbers pulse the time at me.

  Ten minutes to four.

  I stumble down the stairs as a huge disturbance erupts from ground level. The hordes of raiders are swarming toward us, shouting, waving signs and banners with the same two words scrawled across them.

  SAVE IT!

  “They pulled their own alarm,” Haze says.

  UpperWorld operatives, I tell myself. Inside job.

  “They must’ve—”

  He cuts his thought short.

  Everything stops short, in fact: the sign waving, the marching, the cries of protest. Within seconds, the crowded space between both I-Tech schools has gone dead silent as a crane backs its way toward the mob.

  A massive wrecking ball dangles from the top.

  Seconds of absolute shock pass before the crowd catapults into a deafening shouting match with a handful of balding comb-overs in brown suits planted stalwart next to the crane. The cohorts reek of smugness and apathy, and even though there’s only a handful of them, their mere presence incites the mob’s rage.

  The riled-up crowd pushes forward again, gains momentum as it circles the wrecking-ball crane.

  The brown suits are twitchy, nervous, not to mention ridiculously outnumbered and seemingly unprepared for a confrontation of this magnitude. Undaunted, they launch their own attack against the protestors by shouting counterthreats into a megaphone.

  “Hey, where’s your sign, man?” someone says, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me into the flow of the crowd.

  I stammer like an ass-nugget, fully incapable of articulating a single coherent thought. There goes my invitation to join the raid.

  “Are you deaf?” the kid says, putting a death squeeze on my scrawny bicep.

  I throw a panicked look over my shoulder, spot Haze scrambling to catch up with me.

  “I said, where’s your sign?” The dude is maybe a year older than me, tall and ripped, with buzzed, nearly white hair dyed royal blue. Tenth Warriors often raid in blue battle gear. Is this guy Supershooter? I don’t remember him being this much of a dickweed.

  “I didn’t make one,” I say, trying not to stammer.

  “No slackers allowed,” he says. “We all agreed.”

  “I know, but dude, I’m here. I mean . . . I’m here, aren’t I?”

  He stares me down for a few seconds before letting me go with an unnecessary shove. It takes more than a few seconds for the blood flow to return to my arm.

  “This is important, man,” he says, brandishing his kielbasa-sized finger at me, and before I can respond, he’s swept into the crowd again.

  I survey the posse, the echo of royal blue in jackets, hair dye, face paint. Even the signs are painted in blue lettering.

  I have no idea how many times we’ve circled the building so far, only that my ears haven’t rung this bad since I went to that Metallica concert with Cam Tyler and his wannabe rock-star dad back in eighth grade, and no one said a word about how friggin’ loud it was going to be, and I spent the next three days nodding vaguely at people without the slightest clue what they were saying.

  The crane inches its way toward the school, and the energy from the crowd is reaching critical mass—any idiot can see that shit’s about to get all the way real down here.

  “We need to get lost,” Haze hollers. He would think that, of course. He doesn’t know. I should have told him how this thing worked a long time ago.

  “We can’t,” I shout back. “We need to be here.”

  “Says who?”

  Her note.

  turn back time

  “C’mon, Tosh. This isn’t our fight, man.”

  The crowd surges forward, matching the bullhorns volume for volume, pushing closer to the suits and the school and the wrecking ball. We start to clot in the space between the crane and the old building, and before long we’re toe-to-toe with the brown-suited comb-overs. The crowd around me is shouting so violently that tiny drops of spit occasionally hit my cheek, and I try to inch closer to the edge just to get out of the line of fire. As I toe the periphery, I see Supershooter standing there, only now the group has fully coagulated and the crush keeps me from moving away from him. My best strategy is to pretend one of us isn’t there.

  In the midst of all the screaming, a nearby cluster of blue-festooned Tenth Warriors spins a hushed conspiracy to commandeer the bullhorn and take control of the situation. As I spin around to eavesdrop, I’m almost taken out by a protest sign that reads THIS IS OUR FIGHT!

  “We can’t fail this,” someone says into the cluster.

  I fully understand the imperative.

  “If we let them destroy this,” Tenth Warriors whisper, “there are no second chances. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever!”

  The words ricochet against my ear along with a spray of frenzied saliva.

  I throw a terrified glance over my shoulder, watch as Supershooter lunges for the bullhorn-toting suit, snags the device right out of the guy’s twitchy hand, and comes straight at me. Before I can react, he shoves the bullhorn against my bony chest and says, “You wanna be part of this? Then say something, Einstein. And make it genius.”

  The raid.

  I’m in.

  Not to mention terrified, as the roiling crowd tumbles reluctantly into silence.

  I frantically scan the crowd for Haze as Supershooter shoves me forward, and when I spot him, he gives me a nervous thumbs-up. For the record, I think he’d make a much better spokesman than I would. He’s much more articulate, for one thing, not to mention incognito. But it’s not his game, and besides, right now all eyes and ears are on me. The silence is brain-splitting.

  The brown suits position themselves at my back, close in as tight as they can without actually touching me. I let my gaze slide up the side of the fortress, then down again, until it settles dustlike over the top of the crowd. I have no idea what to say as I lift the bullhorn to my face and hit the switch.

  “The sky will fall.”

  My voice comes out the other end a hell of a lot stronger than it does going in. Not my words, I acknowledge. I’m stealing text messages someone sent to my phone. But still, my voice.

  “And death will beat its wings against the ground.”

  I drop my arm for a moment, watch as the crowd murmurs and nods.

  “The world beneath will weep blood.”

  The murmurs turn into loud whispers, and I feel my energy rising with theirs.

  “And the known . . . will cease to exist.”

  Those last words come from nowhere, just roll out of my mouth and into the crowd. The mob starts yelling and cheering and pumping their fists into the air, and suddenly a helicopter appears overhead with letters painted on the underbelly that I can’t quite decipher. I swing around to the left and then to the right, as more and more bodies filter into the crowd, doubling the size of the mob in a matter of seconds.

  Only these guys aren’t Tenth Warriors.

  They don’t wear blue hair, or blue face paint, or blue anything.

  They’re infiltrators.

  I drop the speaker, dash into the crowd, grab Haze by his coat sleeve. We fight our way through the crush of Tenth Warriors, half of which are climbing onto the crane, s
caling the long arm toward the wrecking ball. The other half try to pick us up and crowd-surf us, but all I can think about is getting out of there before they realize that they’ve been hacked, that somehow UnderWorld minions are raiding their raid.

  We sprint off campus and across a crowded overpass, not needing to stick around to know what’s going to happen. All hell’s about to break loose, and the abandoned building next to the highway is going to be demolished in the next few seconds. Concrete, glass, wood, dust, memories, dreams, gone—just like that.

  I hope not too many of those raiders get taken out with it. That would hardly seem fair.

  Then again, fair isn’t in the playbook.

  The thought shoots like a mortar round through my stomach.

  I pull my phone out, thinking maybe I’ll try the old man at home. He’s gotta be back by now. He doesn’t even go out drinking for more than a few hours at a time, and this time he took Devin with him. I don’t really care what the old man does to himself, but the guy doesn’t have the slightest idea how to take care of my brother.

  When I unlock the screen, there’s a message waiting.

  From the cockroach.

  Every bone in my body begins splintering under the weight of grim reality. . . .

  I failed at saving the abandoned building.

  I couldn’t keep Tenth Warriors from the disastrous fate of incursion.

  I’m an absolute fail.

  13.5

  We duck into a casino a couple of blocks away, where the cocktail waitresses have on these skimpy bikini tops that plunge so deep in front there’s almost nothing left to fantasize about and microminis with lots of ruffles that make the skirts bob up and down as they wiggle through the casino, offering free drinks to the gamblers.

  A girl in a neon-yellow wig sashays up to us, asks, “Can I get you handsome boys something to drink?”

  I take in the heavy makeup, the starkly outlined cheeks and lips, the green-coated, black-rimmed lids, the heavy false lashes. When I get to her eyes, something about them makes me want to look away.

  “No thanks,” I tell her. “We’ve got shit we need to do.”

  14

  We make our way to a bank of slot machines off to one side where there aren’t too many people playing and hop onto the tall stools. I can’t say it’s quiet over here, but at least it’s quieter than smack-dab in the middle of the casino.

  “So what are we supposed to do now?” Haze says, not even trying to hide his irritation.

  I take a slow spin, examine every square inch of this place. It’s a decent hideout, at least until we can regroup, try to get some info, figure shit out.

  I haven’t even fully articulated a coherent thought before a buzz hits my back pocket. The last thing I want to see right now is Turk again, but I open it anyway, all judgment to the contrary.

  The known will cease to exist.

  By the time Haze notices, I’ve been staring at the screen so long I’ve lost the ability to blink.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I clutch. I’ve never told Haze about the text messages. Not about Commandant Turk, who’s been tracking me with my phone since before I started this rogue mission. Not about the commandos, who said I could be of use to them. And sure as hell not about the expansion pack—Haze would kill me for getting that invested after he warned me off the game.

  Now, for the first time since we left Sandusky, I show him this one, since these exact words tumbled out of my mouth just minutes ago.

  “Someone catches you on the news and is so inspired by what you said, he texts your own speech back to you. So what?”

  I can’t expect him to know it’s from Turk when I’ve never told him about Turk.

  I start nervous-swiveling on my stool, but Haze sticks his foot out and stops me midspin. “We’re probably not even supposed to be here,” he says. “The least you could do is not draw attention to that fact.”

  “Drinks, boys?”

  The cocktail waitress has found us again. We turn to see her standing behind us in a classic supermodel pose (yes, the old man makes Devin watch that crap too—I usually switch it to Roundhouse whenever he leaves the room). She’s carrying a drink in each hand.

  “We’re not gambling,” Haze says, then quick backpedals so we don’t get kicked out. He tries to drop his voice a whole octave. “Uh, not at the moment, anyway. We will be. Shortly. As soon as we decide on our best strategy.”

  I want to kick Haze under the chairs, but I know she’d see me.

  “You’re not gonna get very far on these slot machines, I’ll tell you that much,” she says. “They have ’em rigged so you have to feed it some serious coin before it’ll kick anything back. And you can’t walk away, because you’re thinking, One more slug and this baby’s mine.”

  Haze pulls the edges of his cap down. “Yeah, well, we’re a little light on slugs at the moment, so maybe we’ll just—”

  “Take the drinks anyway,” she says with a fake pout. “They’re terrible, but they’re on the house.”

  Haze shakes his head, but I quickly relieve her of one of the cocktails.

  She smiles as I sip what tastes like watered-down pop, then reaches into the pocket of her ruffled apron and pushes her hand toward me. I turn my palm up, and as she presses the object into it, I feel something pass between us, an electroshock wave of familiarity, of remembrance, of knowing. I lift up the bottom edge of the gaming goggles, but she’s no less a vision in yellow without them.

  “Have we met?” I ask, trying to get a better look at her under that masquerade of a getup she has on.

  “That’s the oldest pickup line in the book,” she says, straightening her screaming-yellow wig.

  Still, she winks at me before walking away.

  “What’d she give you?” Haze asks.

  I open my hand, look up in confusion.

  It’s a slot-machine coin.

  “Why’d she do that?” he asks.

  I shake my head, scan the garish, neon-lit casino, hoping to catch a glimpse of sunshine-yellow hair. It’s a big floor, though, lots of banquettes with nooks and crannies that could swallow a person up whole.

  I spin my chair back around, noticing the machine in front of me for the first time.

  It’s a slot machine called Hells Bells.

  I look down at the coin in my hand, then back up at Haze.

  get lucky, her note said.

  “You gonna play it?” he says.

  “I dunno. Should I?”

  “What’ve we got to lose?”

  I hand him the slug, which he immediately pushes into the machine, and then he pulls the handle. After a moment or two of jockeying for position, four sevens drop into place across the front of the screen. Bells and lights go off overhead, and for a split second I think it’s because we’re busted, but then I realize it’s because we won. I expect the metallic ka-ching of dropping coins to follow, but it doesn’t. Instead a small digital readout tells us how much we won and asks if we want to keep going.

  Haze doesn’t even consult me. He pulls again, and once again, a row of sevens rolls across the screen.

  “Someone must’ve been on this machine all day and then gave up, like she said.” He pulls the handle two more times. The first yields a win with sevens, the second with bars.

  I kick a glance over my shoulder, jarred by the small cluster of brown suits taking casual strides in our direction. They’re armed with sunglasses and antennae-like earpieces and who knows what else.

  “Hey, time to cash out, man,” I whisper. “I think we’re about to get busted.”

  “One more,” he says.

  As my gaze nervous bounces over to the security minions, Haze pulls the lever again, only this time, it isn’t a row of sevens that toggle into view, and it isn’t a row of bars either.

  It’s a row of cockroaches.

  “Jesus!” I shove against Haze’s arm. “C’mon!”

  He rips the printout from the machine; but as we
turn to hop off our stools, it’s obvious we’re not going to get very far, because by now we’re surrounded by a minuscule cc detail.

  “It’s best you gentlemen leave,” one of them tells us in the deepest voice I’ve ever heard. “Now.”

  “I’ll be sure they cash out and go,” I hear from behind us, turning just in time to see that retina-piercing yellow wig push through the antennae and move toward us.

  “Ready?” she says, sliding one of her slender arms through the crook of mine and the other through Haze’s before guiding us toward the cashier cage.

  “Just act like it’s no big deal,” she says once we’re out of earshot, rushing us through the casino like the three of us just pulled off the heist of the century.

  “Is this a holdup?” I blurt. I’m not sure why, except that she’s the one who gave us that slug in the first place, and now she’s escorting us with purpose to the cash-out window.

  “You boys aren’t eighteen, are you?” she asks.

  Haze and I flash a worried glance at each other over her head.

  “That’s what I thought. Come on.” She pushes us up to the cage, where a beefy dude with a shaved head bends down to greet us.

  “Heya, Starlight,” he says to her with a wink.

  “Heya, Bubba,” she says back, flashing him a thousand-dollar smile. “Can you cash these gents out? They lost track of time and just realized they have a ride to catch.”

  I wonder if she means that figuratively.

  “Sure thing,” Bubba says. As he studies our printout, I study the way he’s oozing out of his casino-issue vest and how that dinky bow tie makes his fat head look even more mutantly huge. I wonder if they date, Bubba and Starlight. I wonder if Starlight is her real name or, you know, her professional name.

  “They got this off sixteen hundred?” he asks.

  Starlight answers with a musical, “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I thought sixteen hundred was off the grid.”

  “Guess they fixed it,” she says.

  “They sure as hell did.” Bubba does not look happy. He glances up from the ticket, noticing me and Haze for the first time. “Which one o’ you was on it?” he asks.

  I don’t waste a second sticking my thumb in Haze’s direction. He sucker-punches me down low where Bubba can’t see from inside the cage.