My Favorite Band Does Not Exist

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  "A chance to do what?"

  "I don't know." Idea stared out the window at a vast corn field. "Like you said before, I don't own the rights to Youforia. Even if I tried to unite with the impostors like your digihoroscope said, I doubt they'd want me."

  "Maybe," said Eunice. "Or maybe not. The important thing is, you're here. You're part of the equation. You might have more impact than you think."

  Idea smiled at her. "Thanks for trying to make me feel better. And thanks for coming with me."

  "Any time." She squeezed his hand.

  Idea swallowed hard, then blurted out something he'd been meaning to say for a while. "I really like you and I hope you like me, too, Eunice."

  A gap opened in front of the Bug, and Eunice eased the car into it. "Remember when the digihoroscope told you to 'unite'?"

  "Sure," said Idea.

  "What if it wasn't just referring to you and the impostor band?" said Eunice. "What if it meant that you should unite with someone else, too?"

  "Like who?"

  Eunice gave his hand a shake and released it. "There's a mystery for you. Let me know if you figure it out."

  Idea felt himself blush. He wondered if she meant what he hoped she did—that he should unite with her.

  Then, afraid to find out the truth right away, he grabbed Fireskull's Revenant from the dashboard and started reading.

  THE unknown army tore through the heart of the Kingdom of Without, crushing all opposition. Johnny's troops were like defenseless sheep, reeling in full retreat to the walls of Castle Vanish.

  Fireskull's forces fared no better. The unknowns massacred most of them and drove the rest back across the border like mice into the Unrepentant Kingdom, ending the invasion.

  And also beginning an invasion of their own. While one of their divisions laid siege to Castle Vanish, another charged toward Fireskull's own stronghold.

  Fireskull had imagined he would be sitting on the throne of his enemy by the end of the day. Instead, he was soon fighting for his very existence on the doorstep of the castle he called home.

  In a spearhead formation, the unknown army raced into the waiting ranks of Fireskull's elite Burning Legion, his last ring of defense.

  Fireskull himself fought above and alongside his men, swooping down on his leathery wings to hack off enemy heads. He battled with rage and grace, efficiently thinning the frontline while dodging barrages of spears and arrows.

  All that he owned and ruled was riding on this one fight. The strangers on ostrich-back who had hurtled down from the hills were now poised to seize control of the seat of his power.

  What truly grated on him was that he had no idea who the unknown army represented. The soldiers carried no banners or pennants. Their armor was uniformly blood crimson but bore no identifiable crests or emblems. Their bodies, when laid bare, had no brands or distinguishing physical characteristics that pointed to a patron or homeland.

  They were truly ciphers, striking with equal savagery at Fireskull's and Johnny's kingdoms alike. They killed everyone in their path with indiscriminate brutality. They made no demands and offered no mercy.

  Even if Fireskull had wanted to surrender, he would not have known to whom to do it.

  A spear flashed toward him from the enemy ranks and he caught it with lightning quick reflexes. Instead of wasting it on one man, he drove it into the chests of one after another, punching it through armor breastplates with his inhuman strength.

  An army of creatures like Fireskull, with strength like his and the power of flight, might have had some hope of turning the enemy. Unfortunately, the only other beings like himself that Fireskull knew of were half a world away or long dead. He had to settle for men to defend his kingdom—men who were exhausted from recent battles with Johnny's forces ... and, frankly, men who would have been outmatched by the unknown invaders even had they been well rested.

  Little by little, Fireskull saw the frontline press closer to his stronghold. Everywhere he turned, his soldiers fell to enemy swords or spears or maces.

  Most discouraging of all, he saw the head of his chief commander brandished overhead on an enemy pike. This was none other than General Shunjoy Undercut, whom Fireskull had seen kill uncounted men with his bare hands, and whom Fireskull had always thought of as unkillable himself.

  When he saw that head on the pike, he made a decision. It was a decision that he could barely stand to consider, a decision that just a few hours ago he could not have imagined ever making.

  Swooping down, Fireskull released a blast of fiery breath that turned Undercut's severed head to a rain of ash. He unleashed another blast after that, cooking a dozen enemy soldiers like lobsters in their armored shells.

  Then he swung around in midair and flew away from the battle. The shouts and screams and sounds of clashing swords and shields and armor faded behind him as he flapped off through the orange sky toward the red forestlands.

  As he retreated.

  And as he went, the words of Scrier echoed in his memory, adding to the shame that he felt. She had warned him.

  And he had chosen, instead of following her advice, to twist her words to justify his own dark ambitions.

  Even now, as he flew in full retreat from the battle and gave up his kingdom to the invaders, he managed to convince himself that Scrier shared the blame. After all, she knew him well enough.

  She must have known he wouldn't listen.

  "THE question now is, how do we get the lead singer to the concert?" said Sundra, swerving the van back and forth in the lane, as if it would do any good.

  Reacher stared wide-eyed at the motionless sea of vehicles laid out before him under the green morning sky. For a band that was meant to be secret, Youforia was attracting the kind of turnout he would've expected for a major star.

  The six northbound lanes of the Maysville beltway were packed solid with traffic, all pointed in the direction of Stowe Amphitheater. It was clear, given the abundance of Youforia stickers, signs, and T-shirts, that most of the vehicles were carrying concertgoers bound for the band's debut.

  "I got another question for y'all," Eurydice drawled from the back seat, still pretending to be Elizadeath. "Is the rest of the band gonna make it to the show?"

  "I have my doubts." Reacher ran a hand back and forth over the bristly white stubble on his head. The whereabouts of the band and its manager were unknown. He hadn't seen them since his abduction, and Eurydice said she hadn't seen them since an hour after that, when she'd left the motel to hunt for him.

  They weren't answering their phones, either. During the drive from Dusty's Wigwam, he'd used the Youfers' confiscated cell phones to make what had seemed like a hundred calls to his bandmates, and not one of those calls had been picked up. The most he'd been able to do was leave messages on their voice mail.

  "I guess we just have to hope they got one of your messages," said Sundra.

  Eurydice cracked her gum. "But if they did, wouldn't y'all kinda sorta maybe expect 'em t' call back by now?"

  "Maybe they were too busy," Sundra replied in a condescending tone. She'd been extra cold toward Eurydice since seeing the kiss in Dusty's parking lot. "Maybe they're already warming up at the amphitheater."

  "Yeah, that must be it." Eurydice pressed her knee into the back of Reacher's seat.

  He felt the pressure but didn't react. His eyes were glued to the six-lane sprawl of vehicles spread out around him.

  He was having trouble getting used to the idea that most of the people in those vehicles were there because of him, that they'd come to see him sing and play with the band for the first time in public as Youforia.

  Every time he imagined performing in front of all those people, he felt cold and nauseous. He pictured himself onstage, staring out at thousands of fans, screwing up the lyrics or the chords of a song while everyone booed.

  It wouldn't be the first time he'd failed. Until he'd left home and gone on the road with Youforia, his life had been a pattern of repeated failures.
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  Since forming the band and escaping the people and places that had kept him down, he'd grown increasingly confident; but even so, it didn't always take much to push him back into the hole. Seeing so many people on their way to watch him perform, all of them expecting something special from the mystery band they'd been hearing about, was more than enough to do the trick.

  What bothered Reacher the most, however, was the absence of the magic feeling. All along, since the band's beginning, he'd said that he wouldn't go public unless he got the magic feeling that the band was ready. Now that he was heading for Maysville, the magic feeling was nowhere to be found.

  That was enough to convince him to try to avoid the failure he expected. "Let's get out of here," he told Sundra. "We'll be sitting here till Dogtober if we stay in this traffic."

  Sundra scanned the broad river of motionless vehicles all around her. "Good idea." She cranked the steering wheel hard to the right and jerked the front end of the van into a gap between cars in the next lane.

  The guy she cut in front of hit his horn, but Sundra ignored him and rolled across his lane. She hit her own horn then, getting the attention of the two girls in the car that was blocking the next lane over.

  "Hey!" Sundra shouted out the window at them, wagging a thumb at Reacher. "Do you know who this is?"

  The skinny blonde behind the wheel leaned out the window and squinted up at Reacher. "Not a clue."

  "Who is he?" asked the brunette in the seat beside her.

  "Reacher Mirage." Sundra nodded knowingly.

  "Yeah, right," said the blonde. "And I'm Gail Virtuoso."

  The brunette wasn't so quick to dismiss the idea. "Wait a minute." She frowned. "That does look like him, Wendy."

  The blonde tilted her head to one side, reconsidering. "I don't know. He looks kind of like the photo on the website of Reacher at the barn jam, but not so much like the photo of him at the campfire."

  "Sing something," the brunette suggested. "Like the chorus of 'Mr. In-Betweener.'"

  Reacher sighed. He was more interested in finding out how there could be photos from the barn and the campfire on the web.

  "Will you let us through if he sings a chorus?" Sundra asked the girls.

  "If it's him," said the blonde.

  "Believe me, we'll know," the brunette chimed in.

  "Go ahead." Sundra gave Reacher's shoulder an encouraging shake.

  He shrugged. "Okay, then. Here goes." He cleared his throat and sang the chorus from "Mr. In-Betweener," a song from his rock opera, Singularity City.

  "Where do I go when you turn the page?

  Am I alive when I'm not on the stage?

  Am I still me when I'm not on your mind?

  Do I still have a name when I'm left behind?

  When the puppeteer lets go of my strings,

  will I simply collapse in the wings?

  And will anyone care what I feel like

  when I'm in-between?"

  When Reacher had finished, the blonde and brunette applauded and grinned. "Very nice," said the blonde. "Nice voice."

  "But you don't sound a bit like Reacher Mirage," added the brunette.

  "Because you tried so hard, though, we're going to let you through, anyway," said the blonde.

  As the girls maneuvered their car to open a path to the side of the highway, Eurydice laughed in the back seat of the van. "Oh, that was sweet!"

  Reacher grinned and laughed, too, the star-shaped port-wine stain on his right cheek dimpling into a crescent. "I just don't sound like myself today, I guess."

  Sundra eased the van through the gap and took off down the shoulder. "I thought you did just fine." She sounded offended.

  "Those girls'll never know how close they came to greatness," said Eurydice. "At least not till ya walk out onstage and they recognize y'all!"

  "Yeah," said Reacher. "When I walk out onstage."

  Even as he said it, Sundra whipped the Tucker down an exit ramp that Reacher hoped would lead to a final escape from the concert that was filling him with visions of disaster.

  He tried not to think about it. Folding open Fireskull's Revenant, he tried to lose himself in the story.

  SOLDIERS of the unknown army tried to execute Johnny Without sixteen times before he escaped.

  Shortly after the end of the battle, they took him to the highest rampart of Castle Vanish to kill him, not that it mattered where they did it. Now that most every citizen of Johnny's kingdom was dead or in hiding, the only people watching were the other soldiers of their army.

  Whoever the unknown invaders were, whatever their homeland or creed, they did not take prisoners. When they tried to execute Johnny, however, the killing machine stalled. Because of his constantly morphing body, conventional techniques were ineffective.

  When the soldiers chopped his neck with an axe, Johnny's head dropped and rolled away, then rolled back and reattached itself. This happened three times before they tried something else.

  When they plunged a sword through his torso, his body split around the blade, each half shrinking to become a miniature Johnny. The soldiers chased the Johnnys around until the tiny replicas finally danced back together and resumed their original, combined form.

  They tried to suffocate him by stuffing rags in his mouth and nostrils, but his mouth and nostrils receded into his face and regrew on the back of his head. They slammed his head against a stone parapet, but it inflated on impact and bounced off without damage. They threw him off the rampart to the ground far below, and his body stretched out flat and floated slowly downward like a slip of paper.

  When one simple plan after another failed, the soldiers turned to more ambitious approaches. They decided to tie each of Johnny's limbs to a different ostrich steed and have the ostriches tear him apart by running in different directions. Things did not work out as planned, though. First the soldiers had trouble tying Johnny's arms and legs because they enlarged and shrank unpredictably. When the soldiers finally managed to secure him to the ostriches and sent them running, the execution at last seemed complete: each bird tore off an arm or a leg, leaving only the head and torso still connected.

  But then each severed limb suddenly turned to solid iron, stopping the ostriches in their tracks. The torso promptly grew new arms and legs.

  By the time the soldiers got to their sixteenth attempt at killing him, Johnny noticed that they were slowing down. He was not surprised when they made the mistake that allowed him to escape.

  With some difficulty, they tied him to a stake and stacked kindling all around him. While he squeezed and squirmed and strained against his bonds, the soldiers lit the kindling. Moments later, a bonfire roared around him, drawing ever closer.

  When the fire was done with him, Johnny was a cloud of smoke and ash drifting into the sky.

  Relieved that their work was finally done, the soldiers clapped one another on the back and went off to find something to eat. They planned to use what was left of the bonfire to cook their food.

  Apparently none of them had considered the possibility that Johnny might yet be alive.

  In fact, Johnny's consciousness survived in the cloud of smoke and ash. When the cloud had drifted far from Castle Vanish and passed over dense woodlands, his pieces flowed back together. His body became whole once more and fell, landing on a bed of leafy red treetops.

  He lay there for a long time, letting the events of the day sink in while he gazed up at the bright orange sky. It was hard to believe that so much had happened in so short a time.

  Although no official ceremony had marked his loss of power, he was no longer a king. An unknown enemy controlled his lands and wealth.

  His armies had been slaughtered to the last man, or close to it. His generals, from Fairforce to Knell to Paladine, had been hanged from the ramparts of Castle Vanish. His great and loyal friend Shut Stepthroat had been killed before his eyes.

  He had nothing left except his own life.

  It was not at all the way he had imagined
things would turn out. He had always thought he would find a way to vanquish Fireskull, regain the Talisman of Integrity, and retrieve his two sons from the future.

  Now, instead, an unknown enemy had triumphed, and Johnny was a fugitive. The enemy would not know that he was alive, but what good would that do him?

  Scrier Inevitas had been right, as always. Johnny shuddered as he remembered her words.

  When next we meet, you will have nothing left but each other.

  At least he could take comfort in the fact that he would see Scrier again ... if not a friendly face, at least a familiar one. On the other hand, her words suggested that he would see someone else again, too—someone very much unwanted.

  You will have nothing left but each other, she had said. Each other, as in Johnny...

  ...and Fireskull.

  "WHAT'S the matter?" said the bearded man who was aiming the rifle at Idea's face. "Aren't you gonna say hi to your big brother?"

  Eyes wide and hands held high, Idea stood in the middle of the men's bathroom at the gas station where Eunice had stopped. He had no idea who the bearded man was, and he was too scared to say anything.

  "Now, that's a shame," the man continued. "I was expectin' a friendlier welcome than this." His beard was as black as the greasy hair curling out from under the band of his bright orange baseball cap. He had a short, upturned nose, big ears, and a wicked glint in his eyes.

  Just then, the bathroom door opened behind him and two more men appeared, framed against an emerald backdrop. Idea blinked hard; was that the sky back there? Since when was it green?

  One of the men was young, short, and excessively muscled, wearing expensive-looking mirrored sunglasses, a silk collared shirt with alternating blue and white vertical stripes, and white slacks. The other man, the one carrying the coil of rope, was ancient, scrawny, stooped, and mostly bald; he could have been in his seventies, eighties, or nineties, for all that Idea could tell.

  "Hey, cuz," said the muscleman. "Long time no see."

  "Surprise, surprise." When the old man sneered, Idea could see that he had no teeth. "Betcha didn't expect to see us, didja?"