The Monster War

by Alan Gratz

  “Fire is a child,” Martine said. “He is not angry or malicious. He is merely a hungry child who gorges himself on everything in the pantry, and then starves when there is nothing left to eat.” Martine put a hand to the winch controls. “Do not be eaten, Hachi Emartha.”

  “Good advice,” said Hachi.

  The winch released, and Hachi shot down into the burning building. The line slowed as she reached the blue-green marble floor, and she unhooked her harness and dropped the rest of the way. The bronze statue of the academy’s founder, Lady Josephine, loomed over her, a book in one hand, a sword in the other. “If I cannot move heaven, I shall raise hell,” said the Latin words on her pedestal. Surrounded as she was by walls of roiling flame, it looked as though she had done just that.

  “Hello?” Hachi called. “Hello? Is anyone still here?”

  A cough answered her, and Amelia Ambrose, the headmistress, staggered out from behind the statue’s pedestal. In one hand she held a handkerchief to her face. In her other hand, she held an empty water bucket. Hachi got to her as she slumped against the pedestal.

  “Miss Ambrose! What are you still doing here? Where’s everybody else?”

  “Gone,” Miss Ambrose wheezed. “Sent them … through the tunnel.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” Hachi asked.

  “Couldn’t leave … Lady Josephine.”

  Hachi understood. She loved the long-dead sword-wielding scholar as much as Miss Ambrose did, but Lady Josephine would have understood when to stand and fight, and when to make a tactical retreat.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Hachi said. She half dragged Miss Ambrose to the line hanging down through the ceiling, hooked herself back on, and gave it a tug. Miss Ambrose went limp in her arms.

  “But what about … Lady Josephine?” she muttered.

  Hachi watched the flames engulf the tall, proud lady as the winch hauled them up past her.

  “We’ll come back for her,” Hachi promised. “We’ll come back and rebuild everything—bigger and better than before.”

  * * *

  Sherman staggered down one of the many streets named Peachtree, setting wooden sidewalks and storefronts on fire. He didn’t have to touch any of them—his purple-hot fire was so intense anything wood or flesh within a ten-yard radius burst into flames. Sherman roared an inhuman howl of pain and rage, his face nothing more than a dark smear with a wailing mouth at its center.

  “I think he is both angry and malicious,” Hachi said.

  Martine tilted her head, watching with Hachi from behind an overturned steamwagon. “Yes. I think you are right. He is displaying characteristics I have learned are associated with both of those emotions.”

  Hachi had dropped Miss Ambrose with an ambulance heading for Grady Hospital, and now she and Martine were trying to figure out how to stop Sherman’s march here in Standing Peachtree. Hachi’s flying circus was loose, and flew around her head chittering warnings and ideas.

  “You two! What are you doing here?” a man yelled at them, running across the street. “You should be long gone! We gave the order to evacuate hours ago!”

  The man was Cherokee or Muskogee, or maybe both, and wore a black uniform with a star on it and a holster with an ivory-handled aether pistol in it. Hachi recognized him from her last time in town.

  “Sheriff Sikwai,” she said.

  “Yes, do I know you?” he said. His face cleared with recognition. “I’ve got it—the Battle of Lady Josephine’s. You and those two boys—the one with the white hair, and the one with the tattoos who saved those people on the train. Fergus.”

  Hachi nodded. “Hachi and Martine. We came to help.”

  The look on Sheriff Sikwai’s face said he didn’t think two teenage girls were any help to him at all. “We’ve got to get you off the street,” he told them.

  “We are out of the burning man’s range,” Martine said, “and this brass vehicle should shield us from much of his heat.”

  “Yeah, but not the water. We’re getting ready to drop a water tower on him.”

  Hachi and Martine ran across the street with the sheriff to an alley, where a number of Cherokee warriors were crouching. Tusker, Hachi’s little flying clockwork elephant, shot away from the rest of her circus and trumpeted around the head of one of the Cherokee men—not a warrior, but an old medicine man from the looks of him.

  “Haha! Yes! Yes, hello, my little friend,” he said. “And where is Archie?”

  “You know Archie?” Hachi asked.

  “I do! And Tusker here too,” the old man said. “I met them both when they fell from the sky.”

  “You’re John Otter!” Hachi said. He was bent and wrinkled, but his eyes sparkled with cleverness. He wore a white shirt and black vest, with a bright red scarf to tie back his black hair.

  “The same,” John Otter said. “And you, I take it, are … the warrior?”

  Hachi blushed. She still wasn’t comfortable with being some prophesied member of a team of superheroes, no matter what she’d seen and done with them. “Hachi Emartha,” she told John Otter. “And that’s Martine,” she said. “Our, um … scientist.”

  Martine certainly looked the part. She stood apart from them down the alley over a smoldering shard that must have been thrown off Sherman, passing her glowing green harpoon over it and reading the small symbols that appeared on the harpoon’s handle.

  “So, you have found more Leaguers then?” John Otter said, delighted.

  “We’ve found all of them. But we had to split up to chase these guys. There’s seven of them too. Have you seen the other one?”

  “Another Manglespawn? Here in Standing Peachtree? Great Hiawatha, no. One is enough. What does he look like?”

  “I don’t know,” Hachi told him. “All I know is there’s supposed to be a pair of them.” She didn’t even bother mentioning the lektric dynamo. Moffett had that somewhere else, she was sure.

  “There it goes!” Sheriff Sikwai cried. “Everybody back!”

  High above them, a water tower creaked and tilted.

  “Water will not help,” Martine said as they joined her farther back in the alley. “In fact, it will make things worse.”

  “Worse?” Hachi said. “How can it make things worse? It’s water, he’s fire. End of story.”

  The water tower’s wooden legs snapped, and it crashed down on top of Sherman in the middle of the street. Ker-sploosh!

  WHOMPH!

  Sherman’s brilliant purple flame exploded out from him, blasting the buildings along the street to splinters. Hachi ducked with Sikwai and the Cherokee warriors, but the blast was too big. Too strong. They were all going to die. Hachi knew it in the horrible moment before the shockwave hit them.

  FOOM!

  The explosion leveled a city block, knocking down all the buildings around them. Hachi felt the heat, but not the flames. She wasn’t dead! The blast hadn’t killed her. Hadn’t killed any of them! But how were they alive?

  Hachi looked up and saw Martine standing calmly above her, holding out what looked like a tall, wide shield made entirely of green aether. Purple-hot flames coiled and spun around it, missing the group but knocking down the buildings behind them. She’d saved them all.

  When the blast was done, Martine pushed a button on a bracelet hidden among the tattoos on her wrist, and the aether shield disappeared.

  Still howling, Sherman the Yankee arsonist stumbled on down the street, glowing as hot and bright as ever.

  “That was—How did you—?” Hachi stammered. She and the others stood, all of them marveling at Martine. If Sheriff Sikwai had doubted they could help, he surely didn’t now.

  “An analysis of one of his cast-off shards reveals that William Tecumseh Sherman has become pure potassium,” Martine told them. “Once ignited, potassium burns so hot it is almost impossible to extinguish. When burning potassium comes into contact with water, it burns the oxygen and leaves the hydrogen to react again with atmospheric oxygen, forming more wa
ter, which burns and leaves more hydrogen, which reacts again with atmospheric oxygen, which forms more water, which—”

  Hachi put up a hand. “We get it.”

  “I don’t,” said Sheriff Sikwai.

  “It’s no good pouring water on it,” Hachi told him. “It just makes him burn hotter.”

  “Okay,” Sheriff Sikwai said. “I got that.”

  “So what can we use to put him out?” John Otter asked.

  Martine tilted her head. “A large amount of liquid ammonia.”

  “And if we don’t just happen to have a large amount of liquid ammonia sitting around?” Hachi asked.

  Martine thought for a moment. “Sand.” She looked at Hachi. “Fire is hungry. To stop it from eating, we must take away its food.”

  John Otter understood. “We have to smother it. Him. In sand. We have to take away all the oxygen for him to burn.”

  “Yes,” said Martine.

  “Where can we find that much sand?” Sheriff Sikwai asked.

  “I know where,” Hachi said. “The Emartha Machine Man Foundry.”

  * * *

  The Cherokee warriors whooped and hollered insults at the burning man, peppering Sherman with raygun blasts while staying just out of range on the backs of their steamhorses. Behind them, the Emartha Machine Man Foundry’s huge blast furnaces roared, melting brass and titanium to mold into Tik Tok bodies. But the heat was nothing compared to the potassium man who chased them, burning purple. The foundry’s big metal doors sagged and bent on their hinges as he passed.

  “Now?” Hachi asked, her hands on the foundry’s fire-suppression controls.

  “No,” Martine said.

  The Cherokee warriors backed farther into the foundry, and Sherman followed.

  “Now?” Hachi asked. The heat from the foundry, plus the heat from Sherman, was almost too much. Hachi wiped the pouring sweat from her eyes.

  The Cherokee warriors backed as far as they could against the foundry’s far wall, trapped between the coke furnaces and the burning man. They still whooped and hollered though, proving their fearlessness.

  “Now?” Hachi asked.

  Martine said nothing.

  The air wobbled. Or was Hachi wobbling? “Now?”

  “… Now,” Martine said.

  Hachi pulled the lever on the fire-suppression system, and sixteen tons of sand poured from a reservoir in the ceiling, thundering down on William Tecumseh Sherman. He roared as the sand buried him, the raging potassium fire that consumed his body fighting for air. But there was too much sand. It poured and poured and poured, Sherman’s bright-hot fire melting it into glass that cooled around him like a clear sarcophagus. The glass and sand cracked and shifted as it cooled, and then the heat and the howling were gone. William Tecumseh Sherman, the Yankee arsonist, had been extinguished.

  Sheriff Sikwai and John Otter joined Hachi and Martine on the foundry floor, where they congratulated the brave Cherokee warriors who had lured Sherman into the factory.

  “We’ll have to dig him out of there, of course,” John Otter said. “Who knows, he might even still be—”

  The earth shook with the force of an earthquake, rattling the foundry’s massive furnaces, and something roared with a sound like a tornado. The Cherokee warriors drew their oscillating rifles and aimed them at the pile of sand.

  “No,” said Hachi, trying to stay on her feet. “No—it’s not him. It’s something else. Something bigger.”

  The tornado-like roar became a piercing shriek, as though the city were being attacked by a giant bird of prey.

  “Tlanuwa!” John Otter said. “No! It must not be!”

  “Out! Out of the foundry!” Sheriff Sikwai told everyone.

  “What? What’s Tlanuwa?” Hachi said as they ran.

  “A giant mythological bird with metal feathers that nests in the flames of volcanoes,” Martine said. “A phoenix.”

  “It’s not mythological,” John Otter said. “Tlanuwa sleeps beneath Standing Peachtree, and is watched over by the Cherokee and the Muskogee.”

  “A Mangleborn,” Hachi said. The ground still shook beneath their feet. “But how? The flames?”

  “No,” John Otter said. “That wouldn’t be enough—”

  “The lektric dynamo,” Martine said. “The other Shadow Leaguer here must have it.”

  “No,” Hachi said. “No. That’s impossible.” It didn’t make sense: why wouldn’t Philomena Moffett keep a weapon like that for herself?

  But Martine was right. Artificial lightning crackled around the top of the tallest building in Standing Peachtree: the Emartha Machine Man headquarters. The second Shadow Leaguer must have taken the dynamo there.

  “We have to get up there and shut that thing down before it raises Tlanuwa,” Hachi said.

  “I will call my airship,” Martine said.

  “There’s no time,” John Otter said. “You two, give them your steamhorses.”

  Two of the Cherokee warriors hopped off their mounts, and Hachi and Martine climbed on.

  “We will do what we can to make sure people are moved to safety,” John Otter told them as they rode away. “Fight well! And tell Archie he still owes me the rest of the story!”

  * * *

  “Miss Hachi! Welcome back to the Emartha Machine Man headquarters,” said a shiny new Mark IV Machine Man in the lobby. There were three of them—one to open the door and two more behind a reception desk. The one at the door was named Mr. Bouncer.

  “What are you still doing here?” Hachi asked them. “Why didn’t you evacuate? Are there people still in the building?”

  “All humans have left, Miss Hachi,” said Mr. Spindle, one of the two Tik Toks behind the desk. “Ms. Sawni told us to remain and put out any fires, should they arise.”

  Of course she did, Hachi thought bitterly. Save your own behind and leave the Tik Toks to die in the fire. The room shook, and Hachi and Martine grabbed each other not to fall. A potted plant fell over and smashed, spilling dirt all over the floor. Mr. Spindle moved to clean it up.

  “No—stop. I’m countermanding Sawni’s orders,” Hachi said. She was the only person who could. “I want every Tik Tok out of this building and on the streets, with orders to see any injured humans to Grady Hospital.”

  “Yes, Miss Hachi,” Mr. Spindle said. He and Mr. Bouncer left immediately, and the third machine man disappeared behind a service door, presumably to relay the message to the other Tik Toks still in the building.

  Hachi and Martine ran for the express elevator.

  “Who is Sawni?” Martine asked.

  “Sawni Emartha, chief executive officer of the Emartha Machine Man Company,” Hachi said as the doors closed. “And my aunt.”

  A long minute’s ride later the elevator stopped with a ding, and Hachi and Martine stepped out into the penthouse office of Sawni Emartha. The lights were off and it was dark, except for the lektric blue tendrils of lightning that arced from the dynamo, which sat in the center of the room. All over the walls and ceiling were swathes of white thread, like stretched cotton, or—

  “Spiderweb,” Martine said, pulling her hand away with the viscous stuff stuck to it.

  “‘Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly,’” a gurgling voice said from above. A man-sized spider hung upside down from the ceiling on a thin piece of web, clinging to it with eight hairy legs. He looked down at them with four pairs of human eyes.

  “Sakuruta,” Hachi said. “The Pawnee kidnapper.”

  Martine’s aether harpoon glowed green, and she aimed it at the dynamo.

  “Ah ah ah—I wouldn’t do that,” Sakuruta said. “Not unless you want me to kill Ms. Emartha.”

  “You’re not killing me,” Hachi said.

  “Oh, you’re an Emartha too? No, I meant this Ms. Emartha.” Sakuruta pulled himself up closer to a bundle of spiderwebs on the ceiling and bared his fangs. Hachi’s aunt Sawni looked out from the web cocoon with wild eyes. So Hachi’s aunt hadn’t run away after all. Or if sh
e had, she hadn’t gotten very far.

  Hachi and Martine shared a look, and neither of them needed Martine’s shells to tell each other what they were thinking.

  Martine hurled the harpoon. Sakuruta shot a stream of silk at it. Hachi hurled a throwing knife. The spiderweb hit the harpoon with a splurch, pinning it to the floor. The throwing knife sliced through the web connecting Sakuruta to the ceiling, and the spider man fell.

  Martine ran behind the dynamo. Hachi ran for Sakuruta. “Circus! Showtime!” she called, and her four clockwork animals burst from her bandolier. “Cut Sawni down!” she told them.

  Sakuruta jumped for the wall, but Hachi grabbed one of his hairy legs. He turned and struck her with another. Hachi ducked and swept her foot at another of his legs, but he lifted it out of the way.

  “I seem to have a leg up on you,” Sakuruta said, his eight eyes flashing. He advanced on Hachi. “It’s eight to two.”

  “You’re forgetting about a couple more of mine,” Hachi said.

  Martine leaped on Sakuruta’s back. He squirmed, but she held fast.

  “Ha! What good are you without your harpoon, Karankawan?” Sakuruta crowed. “It’s still stuck to the floor!”

  Martine tapped the bracelet on her wrist. Vommmm. The aether shield spiraled out from it, slicing off Sakuruta’s head. His body slurched to the ground, its eight hairy legs curling in on themselves, and his head bounced to Hachi’s feet and looked up at her with eight stunned eyes.

  “Nice,” Hachi said.

  Thunk! Hachi’s aunt hit the carpet behind them and clambered to her feet, yanking spiderwebs from her arms and legs.

  “Hachi!” she said. Hachi’s flying circus flew around her head, chirping happily, but Sawni batted them away. “Ugh. My brother and his damned toys. What are you doing here? What do you have to do with this—this monster and this machine?”

  “You’re welcome,” Hachi said. “I’m sure you wish he’d killed me, so you could have the company all to yourself.”

  Martine pulled her harpoon free at last and aimed it at the dynamo.

  “No! Stop!” Aunt Sawni said. “It’s some kind of—some kind of generator, isn’t it? A lektrical generator! The energy it’s putting out—if we could harness that energy, put it inside a machine man, we could make a fortune!”