Girl on a Tombstone

by Mia Strange

  “Yeah? Well Yo Mama must have slept—”

  The door slammed shut.

  I shook my head. Unbelievable. Jin and her repertoire of Yo Mamma jokes. They just weren’t that funny. She would get us all killed. How did that old saying go? Death is easy, comedy is hard? Jin’s comedy? Not hard. It just sucks.

  I stayed on my cot for all of two seconds. I couldn’t stay put. I had to see what was going on. I knew if I moved, my arm would not stay bent. Okay. A compromise. I’d move, and then go back to the bent arm position. Who would know? It’s not like I had a babysitter. And yeah, Eli was probably right. I did need one. If only to kick my ass for doing what I was told not to do. I had agreed. But I couldn’t help myself. If I couldn’t join this fight, I had to at least watch it.

  Just in case.

  In case the Troupe needed, you know, a building or two dropped on these scumbags. Or a hurricane. Yeah. I was pretty sure that even with morphine, I could do a hurricane. Now controlling it. . .

  Sliding off the cot hurt worse than I thought. Plus, the drugs in my system made the smooth cherry wood floor slippery to my unstable legs. So, I did the next best thing. I crawled. And yes, my arm was unbent.

  “Yeah,” I said as I moved slowly across the floor trying to ignore the tiny trail of red spots left by the blood dripping from the crook of my arm. “So, arrest me.”

  Man. Was I ever brave when Dark was not around.

  My ribs pulled hard under the weight of my G.I. Joe crawl. I blew my breath out. Okay. This fucking hurt. I shouldn’t be doing…Oh, what the hell. I’d heard it all before. Let it be known that Skye St John was not a sideline kind of girl.

  I was nobody’s benchwarmer.

  Grabbing the handles of the periscope, I hoisted up. By the time I was standing, a thin sheen of sweat had formed across my brow. But the real task? Was in the cranking. Eli had made it look so easy.

  I set my jaw in determination and tried harder. “It is not easier for you just because you are a guy,” I said through gritted teeth liking the sound of my own pissed off voice. “First, I have your painkilling drugs in my system. Which let’s face it. Make me weak and wobbly and weird.” I paused and thought about that statement.

  “Okay. Okay,” I continued, “I am weird. I’ll give you that. Still. I have bruised ribs and oh, let me see. A knife wound. Plus, a bald spot caused by a zombie. It should be harder for me.”

  I continued to crank. And swear. But then I realized the task was made easier by watching the cogs and wheels turn and fit into each other in perfect alignment as they pushed the scope up into the night sky. For a moment I was so lost in the beauty and timing of the shiny brass movements that I almost forgot why I was standing there. Whoa.

  Now that’s the power of a tall, “Dark” medicine man. I started to giggle at my little joke. And I was so not a giggle kind of girl.

  I focused on my mission. My stealthy spying mission. Mimicking Dr. Dark’s earlier movements, I swung the scope right, then left. I spotted Eli first. Flanked by Dagger, a very scary—looking, hair—raised, fang—bearing, Dagger, Eli faced a mob of what had to be at least two or three dozen men. The Ignored.

  Jin, held back by Pilot, was caught in the grip of his mechanical hand. Broken thumb or not, the brass hand was the epitome of a death grip. She had no chance of escape. And boy, did she ever want to.

  I could see an unlit flare on the ground, surrounded by numerous cans of paint. Jin had been disarmed. And man, was she ever pissed about it.

  I couldn’t hear her, but I could see she was screaming. Born from anger and rage and good old teenage angst, Jin’s actions reminded me of that retro grunge song she loved so much, Smells Like Teen Spirit. Yeah. This tantrum looked like teen spirit, complete with old school truck driver language and stomping, flying feet.

  I read her lips. Wow.

  That insult was just wrong.

  Jin tried to kick Pilot in the shin, and other places further up. I had to give the girl credit. She did manage to land a blow or two.

  Mm. Let’s see. Jin had on Converse tennis shoes with rubber toes. Pilot had on steel—toed reinforced boots. I didn’t need Dru’s crystal ball to know that when Jin went for the instep, and she would, she just might break a toe tonight.

  A smile formed on my cracked lips as I shook my head.

  I caught a distorted glimpse of myself in the reflection of the polished scope. With my black eye and my sinister smile, I looked evil.

  Naw.

  This wasn’t the real me. I didn’t want Jin to break a toe. Had to be the drugs.

  Still? Remembering my shaved eyebrow, I kept smiling.

  The Bone Man stood next to Pilot holding Zombie Phil on a short leash made of thick iron chain links. Phil was rarely kept on a leash. But tonight, it was for Phil’s own good.

  The Ignored kept zombies for the worst possible reasons. They stole them from the Ash Lands to sell on the black market. They hunted them for the sheer sport of it. They used them to practice their survival skills on. Skills like target practice, torture and dismemberment. Yeah, those kind of useful skills. Useful if you’re a psychopath.

  Scanning the crowd, I sure didn’t like the way some of the bad guys were eyeing Phil. I focused on one nasty guy in particular. He was licking his lips at the sight of our zombie.

  “Listen creep,” I shouted. “Leave my Phil alone. Do you know how much trouble I went through to save his gray, spray painted ass tonight? He’s mine.”

  Well.

  That brought me up short.

  Not only because I’d just yelled at someone who couldn’t possibly hear me, but also because I think I had said, ‘my Phil’ along with, ‘he’s mine.’

  Mmm. Maybe I did have a thing for Zombie Phil. Some kind of, post—traumatic zombie syndrome. Maybe, in some perverted way, I thought Phil was, as Jin would say, complete with air quotes, “dead sexy.”

  Naw.

  That was just the morphine talking. He was so not my type. For one, he was damn hard to have a conversation with. And two, he hogged the chicken wings. I giggled again.

  I went back to spying. I mean working. Yeah. Working.

  Eli was talking to two nasty, filthy looking men that I recognized from earlier tonight. I gripped the handles of the periscope, and just like Eli, my knuckles turned white with rage. Better that, I thought, than fainting dead away from fear.

  One had a grimy cloth pressed to his cheek where I had sliced him to the bone. The bastard was still bleeding. Well good. I reached down and touched my bandaged side and frowned. The guy might be bleeding, true. But I was the one who lost the fight.

  The tall, emaciated man with the pierced tongue was most definitely the guy who had knifed me. I could just make out the claw marks that ran from his left eye down to the corner of his mouth. My nails had left a nice deep trail. Still. He was not bleeding. Too bad. I spotted my clockwork watch knotted on his belt held by the broken chain that had been ripped from my neck.

  I wanted to crawl through the scope and kill him. I wanted to bring down a hundred buildings and crush this man, smashing him like a bug under my platform boot. I wanted to send a hurricane to sweep him up, and slam him into a brick wall breaking every damn bone in his pathetic, loser body. And then? I would watch him slide to the ground still alive, still breathing, so he could feel the magnitude of the pain.

  Just before I slit his throat.

  And lastly? I’d take a lesson from the, “Book of Jin.” I’d laugh when I did it.

  The darkest part of my magic whispered all around me. It called for death and pain and destruction. The drugs were weakening my ability to fight back. To fight the black images. To fight the urges. This was the part of my magic that scared me the most. This was the part that bordered on evil. I knew my aura was mostly black. And that frightened me. Every damn day.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and just like Dark had taught me, I conjured up images that were important to me. I pulled out memories that were hidden and private and sacr
ed. I found the Skye that was before. Before I had lost everything to the madness of our world.

  Images of our backyard filled with sunshine and laughter swept into my brain. The memories filled my heart.

  I saw my parents and Emma, my best friend Holly, my scraggly orange kitten, Pumpkin. I saw my school, the finger paintings that hung on our fridge, my Dad’s favorite chair. The images were so poignant that for a moment, I could smell the leather cleaner my mom had always used on his comfy, overstuffed recliner. My magic flared and The Madison filled with the scent of over—ripe lemons.

  Within minutes my pulse calmed down and I let the soothing drugs take a different path. A path to the light.

  I would not let the magic take me anywhere but up. Up and out of these black thoughts that threatened to suffocate me. I was strong enough to do it.

  So far, every damn time.

  Dark had told me so. And I believed him.

  I opened my eyes.

  When I looked through the periscope again and saw the man who had almost taken my life tonight, none of the rage remained that I had felt only moments before. I saw only the wasted shell of a man that after tomorrow night, would simply be no more.

  I broadened my view and looked over the group. They were filthy, mangy men who swarmed throughout our cities like locusts. These were depraved, non—magical men. Bad men. Making a bad world, even worse.

  I knelt and searched around the periscope for the listening tube and found it hanging on an old crystal knob. The hollowed, brass tube was shaped like a Cornucopia. Complete with a feast of exotic fruits etched into the polished metal for decoration. The ornate horn would allow me to hear the world outside.

  When held flush to the periscope, the Cornucopia would usher in the sounds from outside in muted, hushed tones. And while far from perfect, and nothing like the Bose ear buds that plugged into nothing anymore, I could now add eavesdropping to my list of things I wasn’t too proud of.

  “And so my good gentlemen,” Dr. Dark was saying in his rich and elegant theater voice, “as you can see, The Bone Man, one of our resident members, will put on an amazing show with Phillip, our prized, highly trained zombie, who comes to us, all the way frommmm Missouriiiii. . .” Dark did his signature, flamboyant, deep bow, and flipped his cane with the speed of a ninja pointing out the zombie.

  “Zombies can’t be trained. Why not hand him over and we’ll save you the work and carve out his brains now.” The Ignored who yelled the suggestion started to clap his hands and chant, “brains, brains, brains.” He was soon joined by the rest of the crowd.

  I sighed. Zombies and brains. How original. “Now see,” I said talking to myself again. “This is why not just anyone can be on stage. You need to be an original. You have to have some talent.”

  I took a second to let it register that once again Phil was a target. I wanted to see how I felt about that. Mm. Not too bad. I think my morphine—induced crush on Zombie Phil had passed. Of course, I knew Dr. Dark would never hand him over. That had to help.

  Dark pretended to chuckle and clapped along— his rhythm strong and loud. There was magic in those hands. The crowd fell silent.

  “Here, here my good men.” Dark continued in a voice that could calm the angry seas, “we all know our esteemed Gov and the honorable Church of Directions and Guidance does not allow the extermination of zombies that have been licensed. Let’s move on to more exciting things, shall we?”

  “Exciting how?” A nasty voice rang out.

  Dr. Dark turned and motioned to Pilot. “Take a bow, if you will my good young man. This, my friends, is Pilot. The Captain of a remarkable airship, we have christened . . . the fantastical dirigible, the true Queen of the Skies, the incomparable, the amazing, Dark Destiny.”

  Pilot, with his mechanical arm firmly around Jin and his human hand over her mouth, bowed. He took Jin with him. It was crazy funny to see Jin almost turned on her head. Her black ponytail brushed the ground like a mop. I saw a flash of red glitter sprinkling the pavement as it fell from her hair. She kicked her Converse—clad feet wildly in the night.

  I wanted to giggle. But I didn’t. The drugs were wearing off.

  Pilot rose out of his bow, and Jin, like a mind reader, made my prediction come true. She stomped with all her might on Pilot’s instep. She howled with pain through his fingers as her thin sneakers did nothing to protect her toes from the steel in Pilot’s boots.

  I saw the ever so faint shake of Dr. Dark’s head. Pilot tried not to laugh. We all knew the dangers of laughing at Jin. Going to war with a kid armed with spray paint is never good. It’s why the Troupe always had a supply of turpentine on hand. We dubbed it the, ‘VJT tonic.’ Short for, “victims of Jin’s temper.”

  “Hey,” one of The Ignored shouted. “You got a for real airship, boy?”

  Interesting. You could almost hear the envy dripping from the man’s voice. And envy from the likes of an Ignored? Is deadly.

  “I do,” said Pilot grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Come see the show and I’ll give you a close up, personal, tour.”

  A tour. Sure. Pilot, the ‘boy’ would show him his airship all right. The lucky man would probably get a ride. Then his dead cold body would be dumped over the icy waters of Puget Sound.

  “And,” Dr. Dark was saying. “There is more that awaits you, my good men. So much more.”

  “You got any good lookin’ babes in that freak show of yours, Doc?”

  The question came from him. From The Ignored made of pure evil that had slid that tainted knife into my belly. The one who was truly, a dead man walking.

  “Oh yes, my good man. We certainly do.” Dark turned and looked at the roof of The Madison, at the top of the periscope, which of course was me. After all, he had cranked it down before he left.

  Aw, shit. As Jin would say, “freaking busted.”

  I ducked, like that made any sense, lost my footing and landed smack on my butt. The listening horn clattered to the floor. I landed hard. But? I made sure my arm was bent.

  I lay there for a moment with my cheek against the cool floorboards. Well, it wasn’t a total bust, I mean Dark did look toward me at the mention of a pretty girl. That was something, right?

  Breathing hard, I made my way back up. Was there a lesson to be learned in this? If there was, I must have missed that chapter. Because I just couldn’t keep away. I grabbed the horn from the floor and climbed back up instead of going over to my cot. Where the hell was that babysitter when I needed one?

  “I implore you all to come and see for yourself.” I heard Dr. Dark saying as I placed the horn once again against the periscope. “Come and see The Traveling Troupe of Dr. Dark and his amazing cast of Oddities, Misfits and Freaks. Front row seats gentlemen, for all of you.”

  The crowd hung onto his every word. The stage voice of Dr. Elijah Dark was like that. Irresistible. Just like the man himself. However, tonight they would hang on until Dark decided to let them go.

  “Tomorrow night,” he continued. “In the midnight hour. Join us at the fabulous, legendary Neptune Theatre.” He bowed deep and long.

  When Dr. Dark rose, his watch, which had been out of his pocket before the conversation had even begun, still swung to and fro, to and fro. The mesmerizing movements that we all knew better than to look at had hypnotized the crowd, down to every last Ignored.

  This crowd of pure evil was now nothing more than a slice of modeling clay in Dark’s hands. Soon, one by one, each man would peel off and disappear into the depths of the city, no longer a threat to us. At least, not tonight.

  Tomorrow, the men, invited guests to our show, would reappear at midnight and take their place.

  Front. Row. Seats.

  Tomorrow they would meet their fate. A fate reserved for them and manipulated by the powerful magic of Dr. Dark. A fate they deserved.

  Tomorrow?

  They would die.

  Just before I slid to the floorboards, overcome by weakness, I worked to crank the periscope back
down. Hey, I knew how to clean up after myself. I looked at the bloodstained trail on the floorboards. Well. Kind of.

  Just before my view of the outside world cut to black, I saw shadows behind the crowd morph and move. I froze. For one frightening second, I thought the Shades were back. But then, I saw the eyes.

  Dozens and dozens of beady red eyes lined the perimeter of our little party. As each man turned and shuffled away, a pair of crimson red eyes followed. Scurrying against the walls and hiding in the deep shadows, I didn’t know how many Gov rats were out there, but even one was too many.

  However. Tonight? Those damn spying rodents had been hypnotized right along with everyone else.

  “Good riddance,” I whispered. “Good riddance to bad company and the vermin that travels with them.”

  16

  As The Madison pulled in to take her place at the rear of our train, the clocks at The King Street Station rang out a string of three soulful chimes. The chimes sounded like the wail of a ghost. And a miserable one at that.

  It was three o’clock in the morning. Not exactly the witching hour. And yet? The hour was still magical. For that matter, every hour struck from the clock was magical.

  And like so many things are in our world, the clock’s magic was not, how should I say it? Friendly. That was it. The clock’s magic was not friendly.

  Or healthy.

  Or sane.

  The train station, another historical Seattle landmark, was hardly remembered and little used. Long abandoned by the homeless, the curious, and the occasional transient, The King Street Station, once magnificent in its beauty, now stood empty with only the icy November winds for company.

  Until we came to visit.

  We were truly alone here. Other trains routed around this place. Escaped zombies shuffled the opposite direction. Even The Gov bypassed it, pretending the station was simply a decaying piece of history that no one needed or wanted anymore. There would be no creeping, crawling, Gov automatons spying on us here. In The Gov’s mind, why bother? No one was crazy enough to spend time in The King Street Station. Let alone spend a night.