I’m at an angle that should let me see through the hole, but I can’t: it’s just a sheet of blackness. Someone cast a blinder wall to hide the car’s interior. I should have expected that. All four freight cars must be shielded with blinders to block any remote senses the outlaws have.
At the opposite end of the train, a Friar Tuck warthog hits the frontmost freight car with its tusks. Gouts of lightning spark on contact, but the animal doesn’t flinch. Flying along with the same speed as the train, the warthog digs its tusks deep into the car’s roof. The hog yanks its head hard, ripping enough of a hole for the Artful Dodger to get through.
The Dodger and his jet pack immediately go invisible, so I can’t see what happens next. Presumably, though, the Dodger dives through the hole, after which he ducks and dodges any enemies he meets. (I don’t know what powers the Dodger has apart from invisibility—whatever he does, nobody’s ever seen him do it. But let’s assume he’s like his namesake, with the skills of a master thief. If there’s a vault inside that freight car, the Dodger will artfully open it.)
Speaking of people with unknown powers, Middlemarge taps her foot on one of the untouched freight cars. The car’s entire roof lifts like the lid of a box. I see hinges on the side where the roof connects with the car, hinges that weren’t there two seconds ago.
According to expert consensus, Middlemarge is a higher-dimensional being. She doesn’t look like one; she looks like your middle-aged aunt. I mean literally, she looks like your aunt. Whether you’re white, black, Western, Eastern, if you have a middle-aged aunt, that’s who Marge looks like. If you don’t have a middle-aged aunt, you have an uncanny feeling that Middlemarge would be a dead ringer for your aunt if you had one.
Everyone sees her differently. In photographs, she looks like the photographer’s Aunt Marge, whoever that might be. And her powers are unpredictable, except (perhaps) to Marge. Basically, the universe does her favors. Maybe she’s the universe’s Aunt Marge, and it wants to help her out.
Nobody knows. Because Marge doesn’t speak any known language. She natters away when she feels like it, but she’s incomprehensible. Sometimes she seems to say, “Thank you,” after the world transforms itself in response to her desires, but even that sounds different every time. It’s a mystery why she hangs around with Robin Hood, but she showed up one day out of nowhere and she’s been with him ever since.
Maybe she thinks he’s hot. Or maybe it amuses her to help him; she’s not the only otherworldly creature to throw in her lot with the Light for no apparent reason. Whenever aliens come to Earth, they seem compelled to join the conflict of Darklings versus Sparks on one side or the other. No one ever stays neutral and just hangs out.
Anyway, Middlemarge flips the lid of the freight car, exposing the blinder wall below. After a moment, she dabs her finger toward the blinder. She doesn’t actually touch it, she just mimes a tap from a distance. The blank black surface vanishes to reveal what’s below.
Ick. Zombie vultures.
It’s like one of those train cars that transport livestock, crammed full of animals going to slaughter. Except in this case, it’s not pigs or chickens, but vultures who look like they’ve been slaughtered once already. Half of their feathers have fallen off, leaving naked blotches beginning to rot. The birds’ heads are scabby, but their beaks are sharp. They take to the air as soon as the blinder wall vanishes, like a flock of killer geese rising from a pond. In a roar of flapping wings and bone-chilling squawks, they surround Middlemarge and the two closest outlaws, Mistah Kurtz and Tremens.
Which is fine. Mistah Kurtz is a big crazy dude with super-strength and a penchant for going berserk. The only serious threat from the vultures is if he bites off one of their necks and catches a disease. Tremens is a scruffy little guy who’s a one-trick pony, but it’s a heck of a trick. If you come within three meters, you’re hit with DTs: hallucinations, high fever, the shakes, and confusion. Even better, the power is selective—it only affects enemies, not friends, and when you’re confused, you lash out at targets that Tremens wants you to hit.
So when zombie vultures get too close to Tremens, they suddenly start pecking at each other. It’s pretty damned sickening. Like zombies in movies, the vultures keep attacking long past the point where any living animal would be too torn up to move … so we get treated to the spectacle of vultures with guts dangling out of their bellies still flapping around in search of victims. Some birds are missing one or both of their wings; they shouldn’t be able to fly, but hey, it’s magic. Once something comes back from the dead, defying Bernoulli’s principle ain’t no thing.
The biggest weirdness is that when the vultures’ blinder wall disappears, the blinders on all the freight cars go pop. But maybe that shouldn’t surprise me. This is, after all, a trap; when any one part gets sprung, you’d want to set loose the full barrage.
So what to our wondering eyes should appear? The roofs of the freight cars dissolve and we’ve got trouble with a capital “truh.”
One: Winged golems. Like naked Frankenstein monsters that can fly.
Two: Reaper, Stevens & Stephens, and a dozen other dudes in black. They’re packing pistols with a variety of weird shapes and protrusions. Undoubtedly, the guns shoot something more spicy than lead slugs.
Three: And saving the best for last, we have several super villains. They all have pasty white skin and costumes of pale washed-out colors.
Oh, shit, they’re bleached. I’ve never heard of bleaching before this second, but suddenly I know all about it. Well, not all about it; no one knows much about bleaching except privileged bigwigs in the Darkling community. But I know plenty enough to turn my stomach.
The whitening effect suggests that bleaching is done by powerful vampires: an ultrapotent blood drain that wreaks havoc on vital parts of the cerebellum. Another theory centers around parasites of the type used on Chekov in Wrath of Khan—hideous insects that snack on your brain till you’re pliable. Other possibilities include magical lobotomies, demonic possession, or gaggerific horrors from exotic folklore.
But whatever bleaching is, its results are simple. It rips out a Spark’s mind and makes them a puppet for a Darkling master. In the process, either as a side effect or for added intimidation, it makes the Spark’s skin almost white. Just for shits and giggles, Darklings dress up bleached Sparks in faded versions of their original costumes … so a dude who used to wear a bright red outfit ends up wearing a lifeless pink, all sad and wan.
It’s enough to give you chills. And that’s the point. Darklings want everyone to know, “This dude is broken. We can break you, too.”
Legally, bleaching is equivalent to execution. It can only be done after a public trial, and only on Sparks who commit mass murder or worse. But does anyone believe that? What would happen if, say, the Vandermeer family caught the Artful Dodger trying to steal their stuff? Would they turn him over to the cops for an open trial, during which who knows how many family secrets might come out? Or would they consider how useful it would be to have a Spark as a mind-slave?
Lucky for Dodger, he has friends. If the Artful went missing, Robin and the outlaws would look for him. If they found him bleached, they’d raise so much hell, the bleachers would end up regretting it. But plenty of Sparks work alone, especially folks who rob banks and commit similar crimes. What happens to them when they get caught?
Apparently, they end up on a high-speed train, with their skin the color of ashes and their skulls scooped clean by a magical melon baller.
So we got a pale pudgy dude who breathes fire, a starved-looking teenage girl who stretches, a thirtyish woman whose arms and legs are silver, and an old Chinese guy with no apparent powers except being able to fly. All four are obviously bleached: their faces and clothes look like they’ve gone through the laundry a hundred times too many. Their expressions are slack, their eyes are dull, and their hair is ditchwater gray.
Unlike ordinary Sparks, these four won’t bluster or banter during the fight. But th
ey won’t be dimwits, either. Bleached Sparks are super focused on whatever they’re ordered to do. They don’t hold back, and they’re never ever distracted by doubts or second thoughts. Bleached Sparks aren’t stupid, they’re streamlined. Like living torpedoes.
The four that were hiding in the freight cars attack those of us who aren’t engaged with other opponents. Flame-breath dude huffs a blast that I evade by ducking behind one of Marian’s robots. The bot gets hot, but takes no damage—fire attacks are so common in super battles, it’d be professional malpractice if Marian didn’t make her robots fireproof. I could stay where I am and let the bot soak up fireballs, but fuck that shit. I’m a superhero. I don’t hide from fights, not even when the fight is ridiculous and neither side are good guys.
On the other hand, it’s ridiculous just to mill around with no strategy. And I’m Ms. Super Strategy—as good as Napoleon or a dude in his underwear playing StarCraft II. So let me end this as quickly as possible: by finding the bazooka. Grabbing the gun will lead to a nice little cutscene where we all teleport away safely. Then it’s back to the mead hall for backslapping self-congratulation.
Also booze. Surely by then I’ll be ready for booze. It’s impossible to win and not want a drink in celebration.
* * *
STRATEGY MEANS GETTING THE big picture. I leave the lee of the robot and fly higher for a better view.
With the blinder walls gone and the freight cars open, I can see what was previously hidden. It doesn’t take long to start cursing, because whoever set up this trap had an actual brain.
Each of the four freight cars contains several dozen crates big enough to contain the bazooka. Each crate is identical: they’re made of wooden slats, which makes it easy to see that each has an inner blinder wall. We’ll have to smash into every crate and grope around. No, wait, you can’t feel inside a blinder wall any more than you can see. Blinders block neural impulses. So we’ll have to tip over each crate and see what falls out, hoping that we find the bazooka instead of a booby trap. Meanwhile, the bad guys will keep pounding our—
Something grabs me: the scrawny bleached super-stretcher. She’s standing in the freight car right next to the caboose. She’s at least twenty meters below me, but elastic enough to reach the distance and grab me by the ankle.
She yanks down hard: super-strength as well as super-malleability. I’m caught in a tug-of-war between her pull and the power of the jet pack. I can tell I’m the weakest link—with the girl dragging me down and the jet pack holding me up, I’m close to breaking. First my spine will separate; then it’s a question of whether my leg rips off before my guts split in half, or vice versa.
But I have other options. Without even thinking, I find that I’ve drawn my two sabers. I could easily slice at the girl’s outstretched arm. Snicker-snack, off with her hand. Problem solved.
Yeah, no, I don’t want to do that.
It’s irrational, I know. She’s bleached; she’s as good as dead. No, she’s worse than dead. Sparks come back from the dead all the time, but no one has ever come back from bleaching.
So severing the girl’s wrist is no worse than slashing up a zombie. Grisly but safe moral territory.
I still refuse. That girl could be me, except for a bad roll of the dice. Hell, I could be like her tomorrow if the Darklings bring me down. And maybe bleaching isn’t as permanent as everyone thinks. If this poor little Stretchkin ever returns to her right mind, what will she think about the person who lopped off her hand?
But the girl is still pulling me down. And she’s standing right beside Stevens & Stephens, who blast away with their fancy pistols. Their guns shoot incendiary nuggets—not nearly as fast as bullets, but they burst like miniature grenades wherever they make impact. Lucky for me, the Renfields shoot as accurately as Stormtroopers. Shots singe the air around me, but only a few hit home. They feel like stones thrown hard at point-blank range, but they fizzle against my Willow Scarlet costume. It really is bulletproof and flame resistant.
So, yay.
But the costume doesn’t cover my face or that open strip of cleavage. Who thought that the V was a good idea? Sooner or later, as the scrawny bleached Stretchkin pulls me closer to the Renfields, someone will get lucky and it won’t be me.
Okay, fine. Let’s get proactive.
* * *
STRETCHKIN STILL CLUTCHES MY ankle. I bend and grab her wrist in both my hands. I give it a sharp snap, the way my sisters used to do with skipping ropes. In accordance with Physics 112 (which I hated), a sine wave travels fast and furious down Stretchkin’s arm. When it reaches her shoulder, the energy in the wave lifts the girl off her feet like a rat being shaken by a dog.
She’s such a puny kid: maybe fourteen, and underfed. I’d bet good money she was a mutant who manifested powers soon after puberty. The girl left home or got kicked out for being a freak, and eventually ended up living in alleyways. She probably resorted to petty crimes so she wouldn’t starve, until she got harvested by the Dark and bleached to oblivion.
She’s as light as a feather. She’d anchored herself in the freight car by grabbing a support strut with her free hand, but my snap caught her by surprise. It shook her loose and now she’s untethered. I snap her again, this time sideways, and when the wave propagates down her arm, she jerks into Stevens & Stephens hard enough to knock them off balance. Add in the motion of the train, and both Renfields stagger.
It earns me a few free seconds of not being shot at. During those seconds, I tell my jet pack to boogie, and up we go, me with my darlin’ wee Stretchkin hanging from my leg. Between the two of us, we still weigh less than Wrecking Ball, so the jet pack holds us just fine.
Speaking of wrecking balls, I now have one of my own. She dangles below me on an arm twenty meters long. But Stretchkin isn’t as docile as a normal wrecking ball. She flails like a fish on the end of a line, frantic but without any good options.
I feel bad for her. Especially considering what I aim to do next.
I look at all the crates in all the freight cars. Any one of them may contain Diamond’s bazooka. For a moment, I envision swinging Stretchkin like a chestnut on a string, clonking one crate after another to see what’s inside.
But that’s such an obvious thing to do. It feels expected. So I swoop with my jet pack and swing poor Stretchkin at the caboose.
It’s a crack-the-whip maneuver. Surely, it won’t hurt much—as Marian said, Sparks are seldom injured too badly in combat. If they aren’t naturally durable, then they have some other defense: a force field perhaps, or rapid healing like me.
Stretchkin is so rubbery, she ought to be really resilient. When a rubber ball hits the ground, it doesn’t break, it just bounces off. (Physics 112 reminds me that bouncing off isn’t what I want. To smash things, I need an inelastic collision. No, wait, that was Physics 111. No, wait, I’m distracting myself with trivia so I don’t have to admit that I’m using an emaciated street kid to bash through a solid wall. Shit.)
Like an Olympic hammer thrower, I do a swing and kersmash.
The caboose is made of metal. Stretchkin crashes into it harder than I intended, rupturing the caboose like she’s a battering ram. I say, “Oh, fuck,” and fly in fast to see if Stretchkin is still breathing … but when I get close to the hole, I say, “Not important,” and fly away.
I’m halfway across the nearest snowy field before I think, What just happened? I might have just killed a defenseless kid. And I blew it off?
I wheel around and fly back toward the train. But again, as I near the caboose, I think, What’s done is done. If I look to see the results, it will only come back to haunt me later.
I turn away. Maybe I should go beat on someone at the front of the train. That’ll make me feel better. I can smack that old Chinese guy—he’s bound to be interfering somehow, even if I can’t tell what he’s doing.
Maybe he’s affecting my mind. I should punch him in the face.
No, wait. What the living fuck. I head back toward th
e caboose.
But come on, Jools, why this obsession? You’re being irrational. There’s nothing there.
Nothing but an ignorance spell. That has to be what’s happening.
K told me about the damned things. They mess with your mind to make you ignore stuff. Hey, there’s no point in looking in that direction. Nothing to see. You’re wasting time.
Fucking Darkling fuckery.
I point myself toward the caboose once more. I barrel forward. Immediately, I ask myself what’s wrong with me. I’m making terrible choices, like all those times I got drunk instead of studying or doing lab projects.
You know what would be fun? Heading straight for a lab and building something with slime.
FUCK, FUCK, NO, NO, I HAVE TO CHECK ON STRETCHKIN!!!
Something snaps: the mental block holding me at bay. I head for the caboose, zeroing in on the hole I made by slinging Stretchkin.
The hole is just big enough for me and my jet pack. Inside, the girl lies in a heap, like a bleached sheet of melted rubber. She’s shapeless, no bones, just slack flaps of skin. Her sloppy head is enough to make me puke. No sign of a skull inside. Her face is like a mask made from nylon tights, but baggy, not taut.
I can’t tell if the girl is unconscious or dead. She’s like a collapsed parachute. The only thing that gives her any shape is what’s beneath her.
She’s lying like a tarp over Diamond’s bazooka.
* * *
I GATHER UP THE girl and the gun. It nauseates me to use Stretchkin like a canvas wrapping, but I focus on the thought of getting her into the medi-tank. I don’t know if the tank will help her—maybe she’s too far gone—but it’s still worth a shot.
So I make a girl-gun bundle. That’s partly from paranoia—I don’t want to touch the gun, for fear it’s guarded by curses and other magical surprises. Instead, I drape Stretchkin over the weapon, like a blanket around a baby. It’s a big baby and a bigger blanket, but I’m as good as one of those people who wrap Christmas presents as a profession.
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