by Peter David
Once in the bathroom, Josh carefully stood on the edge of the toilet, reached up, grabbed the latches on the window, and slid it down. It was a half window, designed to slide only a short way. But it was all Josh needed. Carefully he slid his thin body through the opening far too narrow for either Kelsey or Paul, but just wide enough for—
—Mascot. As he contorts his body to get through the opening, he looks right and left and sees the other track below him. Fortunately there is no train coming from the other direction or he’d be in deep trouble. Also fortunately, the bathroom is on the opposite side of the train from the parking lot. He could easily escape into the woods, leaving Large Lass and Waistline behind. But he cannot bring himself to do that…and besides, Waistline is the only one who knows how to get to their destination.
He takes a deep breath, swings his legs up and through, and moments later drops to the ground on the far side of the train. Now…now comes the trickiest and most hazardous part. “Kids,” he mutters, “under no circumstance should you try this at home. It should be left only to the professional superheroes and their sidekicks.”
He runs to the front end of the train, staying low, and then—knowing that the policeman is watching people emerging through the doors—he crawls down under the train. Don’t let it start moving, don’t let it start moving, he thinks as he clambers underneath. He’s grateful that this type of train doesn’t ride on an electrified third rail, but instead an overhead electrical cable, or else he’d be upping the danger quotient even more.
Crawling on his belly, Mascot scrapes up his shirt as he emerges unseen on the other side. He waits to make certain that nobody is looking in his direction, then scrambles out from underneath. He lets out a low “Whewwwww” and takes refuge behind a large trash can. The police officer has now walked away from his police car, and he’s showing the picture to people getting off the train. They’re shaking their heads or shrugging. But it’s only a matter of time before the cop finds someone who has seen them…such as the ninja disguised as a train conductor. Mascot knew they were in cahoots.
Seizing his opportunity, Mascot sprints toward the cop car. He has to move as fast as he can, employing all the stealth technique and ninja skill that Captain Major taught him. He gets to the police car and opens the passenger side door. His plan is to start the car up and send it rolling forward so that the cop will have to chase after it. But there are two problems: The cop didn’t leave the keys in the car, and Mascot suddenly remembers he doesn’t know how to drive. Perhaps, he reasons, he can find some sort of emergency button to push that will simply start the car up. Leaning forward, he begins pushing dials and buttons at random.
An ear-splitting howl rips from the police car. The siren. Mascot has activated the siren.
Okay. That works.
He darts away from the police car, staying low, using other parked cars to shield him from sight as he sees the annoyed police officer heading back to his unit. Mascot keeps moving and gets to the back end of the train just in time to see Large Lass and Waistline scrambling out the door. They give each other a thumbs-up, and Large Lass looks impressed by his ingenuity.
“Come on!” he says. He knows they won’t have long. The three of them dart around the end of the train, come around the other side, scamper across the empty tracks, and head for the woods…
…and stop dead.
There is a mesh fence, about six feet high, right up against the forest that runs the length of the platform. Mascot hadn’t realized it was there because of the shadows of the overhanging trees.
They stand on the very edge of the tracks and study the situation.
“Okay. No problem. We just climb it,” says Mascot.
“Sure,” says Waistline.
Large Lass stares at them as if they have both lost their minds. “You think I’m climbing this?” she demands.
“Why not?”
“I’m not exactly built for climbing, y’know.”
“It’ll be fine. We’ll help you.”
Mascot runs up to the fence, grabs it, and starts climbing. It takes him no time at all. “Now you help her over,” says Mascot to Waistline.
But Waistline is staring off into the distance. “Uh-oh,” he says softly.
“What…?”
Mascot looks to see what Waistline is looking at, as does Large Lass.
There’s a train coming.
They’re standing right at the edge of the track. They’re not going to be clear of it. It’s in the distance, but it’s moving fast.
The train that they arrived on is still sitting at the station on the other track. If Large Lass and Waistline pull away from the fence and try to run back around the train, they might not make it in time. Even if they did, the police officer would then see them for sure.
It’s the fence or nothing.
“Hurry!” says Mascot urgently.
Large Lass desperately plants her feet between the links in the fence and tries to pull herself up. She grunts, frustrated, frightened, casting frequent glances in the train’s direction. “Stop looking at it!” shouts Mascot.
Waistline is behind her and tries to help. He grunts under her weight as he pushes and prods and shoves as hard as he can. Large Lass is now halfway up the fence, and the oncoming train has covered half the distance between itself and the runaway heroes. The train blasts its horn. There’s no way it’s going to be able to stop in time.
It pounds toward them like a great metal monster as Large Lass’s stomach thuds against the top part of the fence. “I can’t do it! I can’t get over!” she shouts.
“Yes you can!” Mascot tells her. “Use your powers!”
“What?”
“Make yourself superlight!”
“I’m supposed to start dieting now?!?”
Waistline continues to push. Large Lass tries to boost herself over. Her foot slips. She sags back down, losing height, and now the train is almost upon them. The horn is screeching at them. Mascot can just barely glimpse the alarmed expression of the engineer as he sees they’re not going to be able to get clear in time. Mascot clambers back up onto the fence, grabs Large Lass’s wrists, and pulls as hard as he can to try to get her over. Even if they manage it, it seems impossible that Waistline is going to have time to clear it as well.
The train is horrifically close.
Large Lass screams.
The fence collapses beneath them.
Not the entire fence: just the section that they’re on. Unable to bear up under the combined force of Waistline’s shoving, Mascot’s pulling, and Large Lass’s weight, the portion of the fence crumbles toward Mascot. Large Lass collapses right on top of him while Waistline is pitched forward, tumbling to the side. The train roars past seconds later, the ground shaking beneath them.
Mascot lies there for a moment and then, once the train has passed and he can hear himself think, he says, “Superheavy works too.”
“We could have been killed!” Kelsey shouted as she scrambled off him. “Don’t you get that? We could have been killed! Do you have any idea what that’s like, knowing that?”
“Of course I do!” Josh shouted right back at her, getting to his feet. “Now you know how I feel!”
He stood there for a moment, seething, his fingers curled into fists, and then he turned and stomped away. He walked about twenty feet into the woods and then stopped and leaned against a tree, his back to them.
Paul scratched his head and shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “What should we do?”
Kelsey looked at him. It felt weird to her, having an adult asking her what should be done. She was used to adults telling her what to do…teachers in general and her father in particular. Kelly knew that Paul wasn’t like other adults…that he was closer to her in his thought processes than he was to her dad. Still…it was just…odd.
Seeing that he was waiting for an answer, she told him, “Wait here.” She strode over to Josh. She didn’t actually have the slightest idea what
she was going to say to him, but she figured that whatever it was, she should sound certain about it.
She stepped over several fallen branches—and almost lost her footing and fell into some brush—before she finally got to where Josh was standing. “Josh,” she began, not knowing what the next words she was going to speak were.
She didn’t have the opportunity.
Usually when Josh spoke, even in normal conversation…or at least as close to “normal” as conversation with Josh ever was…it was from somewhere deep in his chest as if he were on a stage and trying to project his voice to audience members in the balcony. He made big gestures and spoke in broad and sweeping statements. In short, he acted as he imagined a superhero should act, or at least that was Kelsey’s interpretation of it.
He wasn’t acting that way now. His shoulders were slumped and his voice was tinged with something alien to him: defeat. He spoke so softly that at first she didn’t hear him, and when she asked him to repeat himself and he obliged, it was hard for her to believe that this was actually Josh talking.
“I think”—he raised his voice slightly so she could hear him properly—“maybe you should go home.”
“What?” That was what she had said the first time, but at that point it was because she genuinely couldn’t hear him. Now it was from surprise.
“I said,” and for him it was the third time but he didn’t act annoyed that he was being made to repeat himself over and over again, “maybe you should go home.”
“Without you?”
He shrugged.
“Josh, what are you talking about? Why should I…?”
He peered over at her, and to her astonishment she saw that his eyes were wet with tears. He wiped his arm across them hurriedly. “You were almost killed.”
“I told you that.”
“Yeah, and I’m agreeing with you.” He looked miserable. “It was my fault. This whole thing is my fault. Me a culprit, me a maximum culprit.”
She blinked in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“I dunno. It’s something my father would say when Mom was arguing with him and telling him everything that was wrong with him. Culprit means bad guy. I know that from the comics. So I guess it means that I’m the bad guy.”
“You’re not a bad guy, Josh. It’s just…”
He wasn’t listening to her. Instead he got to his feet and said, “Look…the policeman is probably still out there. You go to him, you tell him you want him to take you home. If something happened to you, it would be all my fault, and I just…I can’t deal with that. I can’t. Okay?”
He started to walk away, and she grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. He looked surprised when she did so, startled by her strength. “First of all, dummy, you still don’t know the address where you’re going. Remember?”
“Fine. Paul,” he called, “what’s Mr. Kirby’s address?”
Paul shook his head firmly. “I can’t tell you that. You know I’m not allowed to give out addresses.”
“But you said you were going to take us to him!”
“I am.”
“Then we’ll know!”
“Yeah,” Paul said in a pleased voice, as if he had managed to work out a really tough problem all by himself, “but taking you isn’t the same as telling you. So it’s okay.”
Josh had no idea what to say to that…and his expression was so confused that it was all Kelsey could do not to laugh, despite the seriousness of the situation.
“That’s crazy!” Josh finally exclaimed.
“I don’t think the kid who’s worried that a comic book character dying means he’s going to die, too, gets to say that anybody else is crazy,” Kelsey pointed out.
“Okay, fine,” said Josh. “You know what? I’ll…I’ll find it myself, that’s all. I’ll ask around. I’ll investigate. I’ll figure it out. This isn’t your problem anyway, Kelsey. It’s mine.”
“Look…here’s the thing….”
“There’s a thing?”
“It’s just…” Kelsey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I…I never thought about dying before. I mean, yeah, my mom died…and I know that kids can die…but I never thought about it happening to me because, y’know, mostly it happens to grown-ups. And then I saw that train coming at me, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die,’ and I didn’t because, y’know, obviously, I’m right here, but I think I’m always going to remember how I felt at that moment.”
“Okay,” Josh said slowly. “So…?”
“So…maybe I kind of get how it must be for you, that’s all. Being afraid you’re going to die and everything. I mean…I still think it’s kind of silly, but it’s not silly to you, and if you’re scared…”
Fear? Silly girl! Mascot doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear.
“I’m not scared,” he told her confidently. “I’m not scared, because I’m going to stop it. I’m going to save Mascot and save myself, because I’m one of the good guys, and the good guys always win.”
“Aren’t the police good guys?” Paul asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, that policeman was trying to find you, and he failed, so does that mean he wasn’t really a good guy? Or if he was a good guy, then are you the bad guy, which means that sometimes bad guys do win, and if that’s the case, then maybe Mascot is going to die?”
Josh stared at Paul for a long moment, and then said, “Paul, maybe we should get moving?”
“Okeydokey,” Paul said cheerfully, and he led them through the woods without having the slightest idea of which way he was going.
CHAPTER 10
ATTACK OF THE MERCS
“Mercs? What are mercs?”
Kelsey wasn’t remotely familiar with the term. As she stepped carefully through the forest, trying to keep up with Paul’s longer strides and Josh’s more urgent speed, she said again, “Josh? What are mercs? Why do we have to watch out for them?”
He stopped, waiting for her to catch up. “Because,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “the forest is where they always are. Captain Major and Mascot once had to fight a whole squad of them single-handedly.”
“What, and that hasn’t happened to you yet? How’d you miss that one?” she asked, sounding sarcastic.
“I don’t know,” he replied in all seriousness. “That’s why I’m worried that this is the perfect time and place for it.”
“But what are they? Some kind of monsters or something?”
“Merc is short for mercenary. Guys who are paid soldiers who go anywhere that people will send them if they’ve got enough money for it.”
Kelsey considered it. “If it’s short for mercenary, then how come the word isn’t merses? Why is it a k sound instead of an s sound? It’s not merkenary.”
“I dunno. It just is.”
“Nothing ‘just is,’ Josh,” Kelsey said. She was feeling a little out of breath, and she paused, leaning against a tree. “There are reasons for everything when it comes to words.”
“Oh yeah?” he said challengingly. “Then if stories are biblical, how come they’re not stories from the Bibble? Biblical is said like there’s two b’s in it, but it’s spelled with one? Is it two b’s, or not two b’s?”
“That is the question,” said Kelsey, and then she laughed.
Josh just shook his head and turned away muttering, “Girls.”
“Okay, okay, fine,” she said, moving after him again. “That’s a fair point, I guess. But I still think that—”
“Shhhh!”
Mascot ducks behind a tree, his back against it, and he yanks Large Lass over so that she’s right up against him. They’re both blocked from view behind the tree, although Mascot is feeling a little uncomfortable about the closeness of their position. Waistline is standing several feet away, looking confused, and Mascot quickly gestures for him to take refuge behind some brush. Waistline does so, practically diving behind it, his backpack bouncing around on his back. “Ow!” he cries out, sc
ratching himself on the very overgrowth that he is trying to hide behind.
Then another voice comes from farther away in the woods. “There! I think they’re over there!” It’s a low, harsh whisper, an adult voice.
Large Lass’s eyes widen in shock. She’s not speaking because Mascot has clamped his hand over her mouth to make sure she doesn’t utter a word. She’d been angry with him for doing so at first, but now—with danger imminent—she has bigger things on her mind.
“Quiet! Quiet!” comes another voice, and then a third saying, “You’re making more noise telling him to be quiet than anything he was doing,” and then the first voice says, “All of you, just shut up! I think it’s from over there!” Since Mascot can’t see them, naturally he cannot determine where the “over there” that they’re referring to is. He has an uncomfortable feeling that he’s the “over there” they’re looking for.
There is a faint rustling from about a hundred feet away. Then Mascot sees the first of them. He is about medium build, dressed entirely in army camouflage. He is wearing a black stocking mask over his head that obscures his face. Worst of all, he is carrying a pistol, clearly looking for a target. Slowly two more armed men dressed in similar outfits emerge from hiding behind him.
“Mercs,” Mascot says under his breath.
Large Lass risks a glance around the tree and gasps. “I don’t believe it,” she manages to say, as she looks at Mascot in wonder.
“Tol’ja.” He shouldn’t be boasting; it’s beneath him. Still, as much as he’d like to, he can’t resist the opportunity. “You should start believing me more.”
“Maybe you’re right”—and there is something in her voice that Mascot finds very satisfying. She sounds impressed. Well…good. Mascot is pretty darned impressive.
“They’re coming this way!” Waistline whispers in alarm. “What do we do?”
“We have to take ’em,” says Mascot. He looks around and then up. “Give me a boost,” he instructs Waistline, lifting his hands in the air.
Waistline does as instructed, gripping Mascot by the hips and then hoisting him up, all the time taking care to stay hidden behind the tree. Mascot reaches upward, fingers grasping, and snags one of the lower-hanging branches. Seconds later he is clambering up into the tree.