by Chris McCoy
“Need more antidote?” said Joelle-Michelle.
“As much as you have,” said Ted.
“We have tanks of it,” said Joelle-Michelle. “Our scientists reverse-engineered the formula.”
“Does that mean this might almost be a fair fight?”
“Je ne sais pas. We’re outnumbered ten thousand to one, so it will be difficult,” said Joelle-Michelle. “But we might be able to win.”
“How?”
“We have you,” Joelle-Michelle said. She picked up several boxes of antidote. “Tonight you and I will talk in private about everything.”
Ted watched her pirouette into the quarantine room. He felt a bit like pirouetting himself.
V
“Faster!” yelled the plaid weirdo. “We’ve got three more vents to do today, and you are slacking!”
Carolina was standing at the top of a twenty-story scaffolding tower, stretching to reach an enormous vent. But even standing on her toes and holding the blowtorch high above her head, Carolina couldn’t quite reach the vent. It didn’t help that the work crew had attached a long, thick chain to her ankle so she couldn’t escape.
“I can’t reach it,” she yelled down to the ground.
The members of the work crew grumbled and looked back and forth at each other. They had been eating and drinking while watching Carolina do all the work, and nobody wanted to climb the towering scaffolding.
“Sure you can!” said a tango dancer. “Just, uh, stand on those end posts.”
“If I stand on one of the end posts, I’ll fall,” said Carolina.
“I’ll catch ya!” said a tiny pixie.
“Even if I could balance on the end post,” said Carolina, “I couldn’t hold the steel plate and keep my balance. Somebody needs to help me.”
The members of the work crew shuffled around and shook their heads, irritated that they actually had to do something. And then, all at once, each crew member brought his hand—or whatever he used for a hand—to his nose, or whatever he used for a nose.
It was an abstract-companion version of “Not It.”
The plaid one looked around and saw that the other crew members were holding something against their noses. He was it.
“AW, COME ON!” said the weirdo—whose name was Whamburt—as he threw his fedora to the ground. Unsteadily, he began to ascend the scaffolding, hiccuping and cursing. When he reached the top, Carolina gave him instructions.
“Since you’re taller than me, I’m going to give you the steel plate. Then I’m going to weld the bottom part shut, give you the blowtorch, and you’ll weld the top.”
“Let’s just do it and get back to the ground,” said Whamburt. “I hate heights.”
A few moments later, Carolina was soldering the bottom of the vent shut while Whamburt held the steel plate with his shaking hands.
“So,” said Carolina, “why are you covering all these vents?”
“To make sure nothing comes in and nothing goes out,” said the weirdo. “President Skeleton only wants one vent open for the attack.”
“What attack?”
“Er. Nothing you need to worry about. Though your friends back home might. Here, give me that blowtorch. You’re not doing it right.”
Carolina handed him the blowtorch.
“C’mon, what did you mean, attack? Where is this vent?”
Whamburt flinched. He knew that he had said too much.
“Never mind. You’ll see it when we get there. OH NO! AGH!”
Whamburt had somehow set himself on fire and was batting himself wildly, trying to put out the flames. “HELP! I’M SMOLDERING!” he yelled.
“Stop, drop, and roll!” said Carolina.
“HELP!”
“Stop!” said Carolina.
“WHAT NEXT?” said Whamburt, flames leaping high off his head.
“Drop!” said Carolina.
Whamburt collapsed onto his side.
“WHAT NOW?”
“Roll!” said Carolina. “Roll until the flames go out!”
Carolina watched as Whamburt, following her instructions, rolled off the platform and plummeted to the ground. She hadn’t been entirely wrong: the fall did put out the flames, but it also resulted in the weirdo splatting in front of the rest of the work crew.
Everybody looked up at her.
“Murderer!” said the tango dancer.
“No, no, no!” said Carolina. “He accidentally set him-self on—”
“Murderer!” yelled another worker. “She set Whamburt on fire and pushed him!”
“No, I swear I didn’t do anything like that,” said Carolina. “He was—”
“MURDERER!” yelled the crew, and a sharp pull on her chain sent Carolina tumbling off the platform. She felt her body picking up speed and saw the strange sky whirling above her. Her final thoughts ran through her brain—flashes of her family, and a sharp pang of regret about Ted Merritt.
And then she fell into the arms of the tiny pixie. He was much stronger than he looked.
“Murderer!” said the pixie.
The other workers descended upon Carolina angrily, winding the chain around her body and heaving her into the back of a dark, tool-filled cart. I am having, thought Carolina, a really odd day.
VI
There was an energy coursing through the ACORN tree caves. Hundreds of newly cured abstract companions were in the midst of turning the quarantine cavern into barracks. Others were in the boiler room melting bad video games into VIDGA solution and dipping their armaments in it. Meanwhile, Ted sat around a small fire with Dwack, Vango, and Dr. Narwhal, eating baked beans—ACORN had amassed storerooms of canned goods for fighters who needed to eat. Dwack had found a few bags of blood in the first-aid room. He was sucking on them while everybody else gobbled up dinner.
“What comes next?” said Vango.
“I have a feeling that we’ll know soon,” said Dwack, wiping some blood off his chin.
Nearby, Ted noticed a female golfer flipping through a crumpled newspaper. He thought he saw the word Scurvy in a headline.
“Excuse me,” said Ted. “Could I take a look at that when you’re done?”
“Sure,” said the golfer, handing over most of the newspaper but keeping the funny pages for herself.
Ted looked at the name of the paper:
THE MIDDLEMOST MOSTEST
The front page contained a pair of stories about vents being sealed up throughout Middlemost and a raid made on a processing factory by ACORN “terrorists.” Ted flipped past advertisements and long articles detailing the might of President Skeleton’s army and the sheer number of troops it would be sending to Earth. From the newspaper’s perspective, victory was already assured.
Finally, in the Lifestyle section, Ted found the headline he was looking for.
PRESIDENT SKELETON
AND
SCURVY GOONDA
STILL MADLY IN LOVE
Underneath the headline was a full-color picture of Scurvy sitting on a white couch next to a heavily accessorized bird skeleton. He wore a smile that Ted had never seen him use before. It was a sheepish, forced, creepy grin, as though Scurvy had been given several different instructions on how to smile and had just combined them all together in the most awkward possible way.
Ted was glad to see that Scurvy looked healthy and robust—indeed, he looked fatter than Ted had ever seen him before—but all that was left of the old Scurvy were his boots and his tricorne hat. The rest of him had been groomed, trimmed, plucked, styled, and moisturized. His greatcoat had been replaced with a gauzy, preppy button-down shirt, and instead of his normal striped trousers, he was wearing slacks embroidered with pictures of happy little whales.
“That’s your pirate?” said Vango.
“Looksss like they’re in love,” said Dr. Narwhal.
Ted looked at Scurvy’s eyes in the photograph and knew they were pleading for help. He scanned the article.
President Skeleton and Mr. Goonda met when he
was a pirate sea captain and she was his lovely, trusty bird, sitting faithfully upon his shoulder.
“I loved him from the first moment I saw him,” says President Skeleton. “And he loved me too. Isn’t that right, Scurvy?”
“That’s… right,” confirms Mr. Goonda.
“We could just never be together because of certain circumstances,” says President Skeleton. “But we always wished we could, isn’t that right, Scurvy?”
“That’s right… too,” says Mr. Goonda. “Ha-ha… ha.”
Now that they are together and true love reigns, President Skeleton and Mr. Goonda hope to spend the next few centuries making up for lost time. But first, a wedding that is sure to be the grandest Middlemost has ever seen.
“Everybody is invited!” says President Skeleton. “It’s the perfect way to welcome a new era and introduce Middlemost to my true love. Right, Scurvy?”
“Yer my bird,” Mr. Goonda tells President Skeleton, smiling sweetly. “I just hope nobody tries tah save me BEFORE we get married. Not that anybody would, because tha guards are always around—aside from when they’re changing shifts at 12:30 and 5:30 every afternoon. And it would probably be too dirty tah BREAK INTO A BUILDING through one of those man-sized water pipes that every building is connected tah. Because I really want this wedding tah happen.”
“I know you do, Lurvy-Burvy,” says President Skeleton, giving Mr. Goonda a delicate peck on his nose.
Clearly, love is in the air.
“We’ve got to save him! He’s being forced into this marriage,” Ted explained. “That’s not my Scurvy.”
“Ted, Scurvy’s nuptials are the least of our problems,” said Dr. Narwhal.
“I’ll determine the importance of our problems,” said Joelle-Michelle, standing behind the fire. She turned to Ted.
“Walk with me,” she said.
“Is it possible to go aboveground?” said Ted, crumpling up the newspaper. “I need some air.”
“Come,” said Joelle-Michelle. She offered Ted her hand. “I know a place.”
VII
With the wedding less than a week away, Persephone made the tough decision to move out of her apartment high above Ab-Com City and into the Presidential Palace. She had avoided this arrangement throughout her short term in office because she found the palace too drafty, and she could never quite warm up her bones while she was there. It was a strange-looking structure. Constructed of porous rock, it stood three stories tall and was formed in a square around a large central courtyard that was filled with citrus trees and flowering bushes.
“Cut everything down,” yelled Persephone from her balcony overlooking the courtyard. She had assembled a landscaping crew to rid the courtyard of all the plants prior to the wedding, but a tree-hugging type was refusing to cut down the redwood in the center of the courtyard.
“Just do it!” shouted Persephone. Chairs for thousands of guests needed to be set up! A dance floor needed to be installed! Where would the wedding band set up if there were lavender gardens and water lily ponds in the way? Couldn’t the landscapers see the stress Persephone was under? Did she need to have them all killed?
“Use a flamethrower!” she yelled. “Use an atomic bomb! I don’t care! Just get rid of those plants!”
She stalked off the balcony and went back inside her bedroom, puffing loudly from her nonexistent lungs. “Worthless! Bugslush!”
Bugslush rushed, shaking, into the room, his skinny possum tail dragging behind him.
“Y-y-y-y-y-y—” said Bugslush.
“The word is ‘yes,’” said Persephone. “Say it!”
“Y-y-y-y-y—”
“Oh forget it!” said Persephone. “Just bring in another three space heaters immediately—big ones that have some power. It’s freezing in here.”
“Y-y-y—”
“Away!” said Persephone, sending Bugslush hustling out of the room. She looked down at her feet.
“Scurvy!” she yelled.
No response.
“Scurvy!” she yelled. “My foot massage!”
She stepped back out onto her balcony. Beneath her, the landscaping crew toiled in the courtyard.
“Have you seen my Scurvy?” Persephone asked the land-scapers, who shook their heads silently.
I can’t plan this wedding ALONE! thought Persephone. Doesn’t he know how much this MATTERS to me? She wished she had tear ducts so she could cry. Planning a wedding and an invasion—it was all so much.
Scurvy was also making plans. Just a few minutes before, he had made another escape attempt, this time by hiding in the truck the landscapers were using to haul away the foliage, ducking under a bushel of hydrangeas to cover his head. But the truck had barely rolled out of the palace driveway before it was besieged by guards who poked and stabbed the enormous pile of dead plants. Scurvy was jabbed in the ribs and he caught the end of a pole in the eye.
“ALL RIGHT,” said Scurvy. “I’m coming out, I’m coming out!”
He wiped the dirt and leaves off his body and stepped out of the truck holding his hands above his head.
“Yar gotta stop dis,” said one of the guards, picking leaves out of Scurvy’s hair. “Yar lucky we like yar—if we told Persephone yar keep tryin’ to run, she wouldn’t be so forgivin’.”
“Why haven’t you turned me in?” said Scurvy.
“None of us would want tar marry Persephone either,” said the guard.
“I appreciate yer understanding,” said Scurvy.
“Let’s get yar spiffed up and back dere den,” said the guard.
A pair of guards whisked Scurvy away to the palace basement, where a brigade of dalmatians rinsed him with a fire hose. He was then delivered to a stylist, who tamed and blow-dried his hair, after which he was hustled to a menswear specialist, who outfitted him in a stylish seersucker suit. A few moments later, he was delivered to Persephone’s bedroom, all spick-and-span and perfect husband material.
“There you are,” said Persephone.
“No, there ya are,” said Scurvy. “Always, always there. Right there in front of me, everywhere I go.”
“I was calling for you,” said Persephone, dangling her bony legs in the air. “My feet hurt and I’ve been under so much pressure.”
“I know, Poppy,” said Scurvy.
“Ploopsie.”
“Popsie.”
“Start with the left one,” said Persephone.
Scurvy bit the inside of his cheek and sat down on the bed. Persephone put her feet in his lap. Scurvy popped out the rocks and clumps of dirt that were stuck between the bones, and then began to rub them down, trying to make himself believe that he was rolling Cuban cigars instead of massaging Persephone’s revolting talons.
“Mmm,” said Persephone, “that feels wonderful!”
“But ya don’t have any nerve endings,” said Scurvy.
“I know, but I can imagine,” said Persephone.
KNOCK-KNOCK!
“Bring the space heaters in and leave!” said Persephone. The door opened, but it wasn’t Bugslush.
“I’m sorry for interrupting, President Skeleton,” said a guardsman. “But one of the work crews is here with a prisoner. They’re saying she’s a murderer.”
“And why am I supposed to deal with this?” said Persephone. “I’m sure the work crew has its own notion of justice and can punish the prisoner accordingly.”
The guard nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot, to foot to foot. He had four feet.
“It’s just that the prisoner is … human, President Skeleton.”
“Human, as in, from Earth?” said Persephone.
“Precisely, yes,” said the guard. “Specifically, she says she is from Falmouth, which is a town somewhere on a peninsula called Cape Cod.”
Scurvy stopped massaging Persephone’s bones.
“Bring the prisoner in,” said Persephone.
The door closed and reopened.
“G-got th-the s-space h-heaters!” said Bugslush,
out of breath, dragging the heavy radiators behind him.
“Not now, Bugslush!” said Persephone.
The guard shuffled the shackled girl into the room. She was obviously scared, but she held her head high and kept her posture straight.
Scurvy took one look at the prisoner and flipped Persephone’s feet off his lap, sending the president somersaulting on the bed.
“Carolina Waltz!” he shouted, thunderstruck. “Here is a monster if ever I’ve known one. Tha meanest girl in New England, this ‘un.”
“H-how do you know me?” said Carolina, looking at the strange man who was wearing a seersucker suit and a pirate hat.
“Yes, how do you know her?” said Persephone.
“This lass was tha tormentor of me Ted!” said Scurvy.
“Oh my,” said Carolina, stunned. “You’re Ted’s pirate.”
“She was all Ted ever wanted, this one,” said Scurvy, “and she treated him like something she’d just as soon scrape off shoes. Oh, tha gallows are too good for Miss Carolina Waltz, head executioner of Falmouth High School!”
“Well then,” said Persephone. “There doesn’t seem to be a question of what we should do with her.”
“No!” said Carolina. “Please, pirate—”
“It’s Sir Scurvy Goonda tah you!” said Scurvy.
“I’m sorry, Sir Scurvy Goonda, sir,” said Carolina. “The reason I came here, wherever I am, is because I was looking for Ted because I wanted to apologize to him.”
“A convenient yarn, considering yer current predicament,” said Scurvy. “Ya and I both know Ted is back on tha Cape, just as ya and I both know that there is no room fer remorse in tha roach nest where your heart is supposed to be.”
It had been a long time since Persephone had seen Scurvy deal with a prisoner in such a manner. He was thrilling.
“PLEASE, Scurvy, sir,” said Carolina, babbling and on the verge of falling apart. “I came here because Ted has vanished. He’s not at school or anywhere in Falmouth. I went looking for him at the supermarket, and a disgusting man told me he was crushed in this machine they have that compacts cardboard, and I took a look inside it and found a passage and I ended up here and I think he might have come here too, and everything happened because I wanted to tell him I was sorry.”