Ascending the Boneyard

by C. G. Watson

  “NIM has a plan in the works to reclaim sovereignty of the country. And I’m trying to figure out how to stop it. All I know is, they’re prepared to fight to the very end to see this thing through. To the death.”

  Her words come through in slow motion, hit my head from a thousand different angles. I need a Medic. Someone’s gonna need to throw me some massive heals, because I’m fading, man. I’m fading, and Haze is fading, and Mason’s fading, and even when I close my eyes, all I can see is the same chilling phrase wavering above our heads where we should be solid green.

  The end is near.

  “Yeah, but they can’t just make an earthquake happen,” Haze says. “Can they?”

  “You’d be shocked at what NIM can do.” Mason scans the mirrors again. “They’ve already launched a string of so-called natural disasters.”

  “Like what?”

  “A few minor earthquakes—practice drills, you could say. Forest fires. Wildlife die-offs.”

  I’m drop-kicked back into the conversation. “Wait, wildlife die-offs?”

  “Yeah. You know. Birds. Fish. That sort of thing.”

  Birds . . .

  I reach in my pocket, touch the feather I’d stashed there, wonder with a thousand-watt jolt of alarm if by having it, I’m somehow harboring the enemy.

  “And the earthquake that’s supposed to happen?” Haze presses.

  The voice of the carny echo-twangs in my head.

  Thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.

  Mason swerves around a fallen tree branch in the road. I scan the horizon. Not a tree in sight.

  She doesn’t seem fazed.

  “NIM’s ultimate goal,” she says, “is to implement a new order. It’s all totally underground for now, which is why I need more info. But my guess is, once people hear about these quote-unquote natural disasters, they’ll become terrified, seek help from a leadership that’s strained and ineffective, at which point the movement sweeps in and—bam. It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

  I formulate my next question about three dozen different ways in my head before I finally blurt out, “So who are you working with?”

  She goes white, then pink at the question.

  “No one.”

  Only something about her tone makes me veer toward not believing her.

  “Is that why you’re out here all alone?” I ask.

  This time she throws me a look of borderline hostility.

  “I’m alone because my father has no problem leaving his daughter to fend for herself while he goes off on some ridiculous salvage mission,” she says. The words ricochet through the cab of the Jeep like small explosions. “I guess that’s just what happens when a father’s idea of salvation isn’t the same as his daughter’s. It’s easy to think you’re saving a world that doesn’t bear any resemblance to the world you left behind.”

  I panic-dig in my bag for my earbuds, desperate for some Bunny Puke or Motor City, anything to drown out the mega-whir of chaos inside my head.

  Bunny Puke proves effective. Until I spot the bright yellow dot barreling down the road toward us.

  The three of us watch as it gets closer and closer, and suddenly my head glass shatters in a shred-of-metal, squeal-of-tires collision of denial versus reality.

  The bug truck zips past us going double the speed limit in the other direction.

  “Whoa,” Haze says. “Was that Termi-Pest?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  The tang of panic rises in my throat.

  Is it Stan? Is she with him?

  I stare into the side-view mirror long after the yellow dot disappears.

  “What are the odds of a Termi-Pest truck being all the way out here?” Haze says.

  I lean backward over the seat. “Turn around,” I tell Mason.

  She takes her eyes off the road long enough to look at me like I’m crazy. “What?”

  “Turn around! We need to follow that truck!”

  “The hell,” she says. “I’m on a mission—you guys are just along for the ride. If you want to follow that truck, you can get out and—”

  “Holy shit, Tosh,” Haze says, leaning forward to smack me on the shoulder. “Look!”

  A second bug-mobile zips by less than a mile behind the first one. We’re still watching it disappear in the rearview mirror when along comes another.

  And another.

  “Dude,” Haze says. “This is biblical.”

  I check the phone, but there’s nothing about a plague of cockroach trucks from the commandos or anyone else.

  The next message does come through, though. Loud and clear.

  Fear will shake the world to its foundation.

  Just as I’m reading the message, it starts.

  The ground beneath us lurches, and the road begins to buckle and roll, and all Mason has time to do is slam on the brakes before the entire road rips completely in two, right down the dotted yellow line.

  19

  The shaking goes on forever.

  Seems like it, anyway. But eventually the tremor stops, and once it does, once the dust and debris settle, reality takes its grim shape in a panoramic arc around us.

  The earth has unzipped.

  The highway has split completely in two, and now the right side of the road is a half story down from the left side.

  We are stalled out on the lower deck.

  “Everyone okay?” Mason asks.

  “Fine,” Haze says from the back.

  “Mghunh,” I groan.

  We manage to scramble out of the Jeep and stagger into the middle of the highway. Or what has become the middle of the highway, seeing as how the old middle is now an escalator ride up. The newly formed fissure surfs an asphalt wave as far as the eye can see in either direction as the three of us stand and survey the damage: puffs of black smoke off in the distance, pockets of flames burning through freshly ripped holes in the earth, toppled utility poles.

  “It can’t be,” she whispers.

  “What?” I ask.

  “This can’t be happening.” Her voice sounds unimaginably soft compared to the hard, angry edges that have cracked open all around us. Quiet tears slide down her face as she takes it all in. “This can’t be real. I thought it was just him, ranting like he always does. I thought if I followed him, caught him in his lies, I could . . . I just never thought anything like this would ever really happen.”

  The sadness in her eyes freeze-hardens, then cracks, as she zeros in on me close and tight. I was right about her. Mason Barshaw is no Supergirl. She’s not like Elan, or Ravyn, or Starla Manley. Those girls weren’t in trouble, and they didn’t need to be rescued. But Mason Barshaw? I know just by looking, by listening, that Mason and I are both hostages to the same captor.

  She wraps her fingers around my arm, tugs at me. “Now that it’s starting, we’ll be surrounded by NIM before we know it. And because of who I am, because of what I’ve done—” Her words break off, but the fear graffiti-paints itself across her face.

  “They’ll kill us,” Haze says.

  I turn away, spit onto the asphalt. I need to get my thoughts together, need to stay clearheaded. I can map this one, I tell myself. She doesn’t need the extra worry.

  But I can’t pretend I’m not worried. I’m scared as all hell, in fact. I look over at Haze for guidance. Instead, he says:

  “You just had to take that bug truck, didn’t you?”

  “Aw, Jesus, man, would you get off the bug truck for one second?”

  “I told you not to do it, Tosh.”

  “You tell me not to do a lot of shit, Haze. If I listened to every single thing—”

  “You guys!” Mason lifts her hand, points into the distance. “It doesn’t matter. They’re coming.”

  I look up, expecting to see a couple of Jeeps, maybe a four-wheel-drive pickup truck or two, and there are some of those, yes. But there’s also a fleet of Humvees coming up from the sout
h, and not the yuppie kind, either, but the military kind. As I squint to get a better look, I see . . . Yes, it is. It’s a tank with a turret perched on top, and it’s aimed in our direction.

  “Do you think they’d really fire on us?” I ask.

  “Let’s not stick around to find out.”

  We clamber back into the Jeep, and I go limp with relief when the engine starts right up. Mason spins a wide brodie onto the shoulder before heading back up the highway the direction we came, sending us the wrong way on what is now a one-way road.

  I wish we had a tank. Nothing wrong with a Jeep, but a tank would roll right over the top of anything in our way and absorb the hit from ammunition rounds a hell of a lot better than these plastic-wrap windows.

  “Can you go any faster?” I ask.

  “I’m doing ninety,” she says. “How much faster do you want me to go?”

  “A hundred would be good.”

  Mason drops her foot, and my body presses against the seat back from the jump in speed.

  It’s unearthly silent in the car.

  Somewhere down the highway, once the seismic fissure veers into the grass and heads west, I notice a turnoff with just enough time to catch a fleeting glimpse of a road sign before Mason takes the ramp and follows the curve in a sharp arc. I grip the roll bar as we exit the highway going way faster than we should, and just like that, we’re on a totally different highway, headed in a completely new direction.

  She suddenly perks up. “Hey. You said your phone has GPS?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “There’s this place out West that’s supposed to be mega-spiritual.”

  A heavy thud hits the inside of my chest. Somewhere spiritual. It’s on the list. My mom’s list.

  “Why do you want to go there?” I ask, fighting not to stumble over the words.

  She glances into the rearview mirror, watching for signs of NIM, I’m sure.

  “They say it’s a healing place. Miracles, restoration, the whole chimichanga.” She gives her lips a nervous lick. “If we make it that far,” she adds.

  A healing place.

  I should have brought Devin.

  I should have let him in my go-kart, should have brought him with me on this mission. Instead the old man carted him off somewhere, only he doesn’t want to take care of him the right way, and now they’re gone and I don’t know where they are and don’t even know if I can throw my brother a heal if he’s not actually here.

  The known will cease to exist.

  Jesus, how does anyone keep going, knowing that might be true?

  Mason points to the phone. “Fire it up.”

  I look at the screen, at the little red light flash-spasming up at me.

  “I’m dying,” I tell her.

  “Oh. Use mine, then. It’s in the glove box.”

  I shoot her a look.

  “I have to hide it while I’m driving,” she says. “I used to have a little problem.”

  Haze snorts in disgust but stops short at revealing that I made that mistake too.

  A minuscule smile crosses Mason’s face as I take her phone out and fire up the GPS. I try to smile back, want desperately to feel its reluctant pull at the corner of my mouth. But I can’t.

  “What am I looking for?” I ask instead.

  Her eyes leave the road, start scanning the air. “I can’t remember what it’s called. How about typing in . . . ?” She darts a quick look at her phone and then at me. “ ‘Spiritual West.’ ”

  A dull throb starts in the epicenter of my chest cavity, radiates out in waves of invisible pain. I have no idea where Stan promised to take my mom. All I know is, she wanted to go somewhere spiritual.

  I choke a little on the thought.

  My phone buzzes from where I stashed it under my leg, and I open it, even though I probably shouldn’t use up any unnecessary juice.

  Fear will rock the world to its foundation.

  Oh shit.

  “Pull over,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “Pull over!”

  She does, and within seconds, we’re hit by a strong aftershock. The ground completely liquefies around us.

  Mason spins on me as soon as the shaking stops.

  “How’d you know that?” She searches my face like she’s trying to read a map, and something in her eyes makes me want to do more than answer her. I want to tell her the truth.

  I’m just not sure what the truth is anymore.

  “We are in an area of heavy seismic activity,” Haze says, pulling the answer out of his ass á la Roundhouse. “There’s always more shaking after a quake.”

  I’m impressed. Not that I’d tell him that; I haven’t forgotten we’re still in the middle of a fight.

  She shakes her head in awe as we get back on the road and continue southwest, stopping every few miles to let the ground buckle beneath us. Between the aftershocks and the NIM convoy, which I’m sure must have us on its radar again by now, I keep checking out the windows, waiting for the other combat boot to drop.

  From time to time, I sneak-look at Mason, watch the Supergirl logo on her shirt rise and fall with each frightened breath. My phone continues to buzz the same way it has right before each aftershock, and each time, I warn her to pull over. She has no idea I’m getting advanced insider information about the quakes, but she looks at me like I’m Einstein every time it happens, so I only feel a little bad.

  “God,” she says as we pull back onto the highway. “You’re like a human Richter scale.”

  “Now you know my superpower,” I say. “You have to swear your undying secrecy and allegiance forever.”

  I’ve finally managed to get a full-blown smile out of her. Dimples crease the space between her cheeks and her chin, and faint lines feather out the sides of her eyes. The bigger she smiles, the more her mouth pulls slightly to one side, and I decide then and there that it could easily be my new mission just to make that happen again.

  “It’s a deal,” she says.

  We hang out in that unblinking moment: me, tethered to Mason by a lame joke that had the power to make her smile, and her, distracted from driving by a gaming geek from Sandusky, Ohio. Just then, Haze shouts, “Watch out!” and Mason slams on the brakes. But it’s not enough to keep us from careening into a massive pile of twisted yellow metal.

  For a terrifying moment, the world is a blur of jagged edges and crushed glass and torn canvas and smoke and blood and asphalt, but eventually it stops and we come to a rest, upright and mostly unscathed. We take a few seconds to catch our breath, and then . . .

  It can’t be.

  It’s not possible.

  But it’s true.

  We’re knotted up in a mangled dog pile of Termi-Pest trucks.

  19.5

  Mason says she’s stuck, so I whip around to her side of the Jeep for an assist. Haze falls out after her.

  We cough into the smoke-filled air, wave it away from our faces. I watch as she takes a bandanna out of her pocket, as she ties it around her nose and mouth to help her breathe.

  My mouth slowly falls open.

  I know her.

  Mason Barshaw.

  I absolutely know who she is.

  20

  “Look at that,” she whispers.

  I peel my eyes away from her, cast a glance over my shoulder, spin the rest of the way around.

  It’s the most chilling thing I’ve ever seen.

  Larger-than-life cockroaches, a dozen or so of them, lie scattered all over the highway, like mutant insects in one of those black-and-white Japanese horror movies.

  Even worse, the Jeep is totaled.

  We pull our stowed bags from behind the seats and start picking through the massive wreckage, but a low murmur pulls my attention to an area off the side of the road, about fifty yards past the hissing pile of bug-mobile carnage. I crane my neck until I see that the Termi-Pest drivers have congregated together like a Dickies-clad battalion, talking in hushed tones that carry eas
ily across the flat landscape, and suddenly I know down to the microscopic fibers of my being that one of those guys is Stan.

  To hell with Turk’s lair. I’ve got Turk right here in my sights, right in the middle of his fucking army.

  I lunge forward, and almost on cue, the men spot me. They stir, agitated, like a nest of hornets that’s been disturbed.

  They spread out, take a defensive posture.

  “Stan?” I call out. “Stan! Show your face, you coward!” I start jogging toward them. “I know you’re here, you sonofabitch! Where is she? Where is she?”

  Mason calls after me.

  So does Haze.

  “Tosh!”

  But all I want to do right now is go pummel the shit out of Stan, so I block Haze out. And Mason too. Only that’s a lot harder because she sounds scared and worried. I’m already mad at Haze, but I don’t know what to do with scared and worried. Never did. Never knew what to say to my mom when she got that way.

  By the time I reach the bug guys, they’re shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity.

  “Stan!”

  I scan the faces, searching for a blip of familiarity while the echo of work boots landing flat on wooden steps ripples in the air, and the shouts of anger and accusation, of Cam screaming in one ear to get in the fight and Haze in the other telling me to get out of it, and the shatter of a maroon lamp across the brick walkway, and the blood.

  The blood.

  “Stan!” I scream, because I’m ready for this fight. Because I’ve been ready for this fight for a long time. But it doesn’t matter now.

  Stan isn’t here.

  And neither is my mom.

  Only now I’m trapped toe-to-toe with an army of bug guys in gray Dickies, ready to exterminate at will if it should come to that.

  I push my hands into my eye sockets and drop to my knees in the middle of the highway, stunned yet again by what an oxygen-sucking failure I am.

  I finally got the chance to take the guy down, to tell him what I really think of him and his putrid pest-control truck and his carefully concealed ass crack and his utter ineptitude at extermination because he and my mom hadn’t been gone for five fucking minutes before our place was crawling with cockroaches again and everything went to hell and the known ceased to exist.