Another castle tried to lay claim to the house of Dracula. Despite its ghoulish outward appearance, however, it had difficulty convincing anyone of its authenticity since it shared space with Gags ‘N’ Giggles, Niagara Falls’s premiere joke and magic shop.
Pride approached the castle and shivered. It wasn’t the Castle Grayskull visage that served as the front door, or the fierce looking barbicans guarding drawbridges that didn’t draw or cross anything—it was what was inside the building that gave her pause.
Within weeks of seizing power, Invictus had converted the wax dungeon and torture chamber into a very real dungeon and torture chamber. It had a romantic appeal that would be almost impossible for any tyrant to resist. If Invictus wasn’t feeding his enemies to alligators or dropping them out a window, they were sent here to either await their punishment or wither away inside the evil façade of Dracula’s Castle.
Pride walked by the wooden door, passed into the mouth of the giant skull and opened the glass doors to the dungeon that were still clearly labeled as having to remain unlocked during business hours. She closed the door silently behind her and looked around the lobby. The ticket window had been turned into a defensive gun nest, should anyone be foolish enough to attempt a rescue of the prisoners inside. No one had been foolish enough for a long, long time, so the guard manning the position snored away, kicked back in his seat with his feet up on the counter and his helmet cast carelessly aside.
The guard’s dress was no different from his counterparts on the street, although she’d heard that there had once been an interest in dressing the guards like headsmen of old. Those who had drawn guard duty had issues with the decision, as the area grew frigidly cold in the winter, and wearing only leather pants and a hood would provide little protection from the elements. It also ran closer to the S&M motif that so many groups had adopted in the wasteland. It was more for the latter reason that the Great Lord Invictus dropped his insistence on the theatrics.
She watched the guard for a moment before moving silently through the lobby doors into what was once the start of the exhibit. The hallway was covered in cobwebs—at this point it was impossible to tell which ones were real and which ones were fake. The red eyes of bats glowed in the darkness like fading LEDs. Wax mannequins lined the hall in various states of disrepair. It was all fake, but ever since the purpose of the building had changed, even the fake decor took on a more ominous meaning than ever intended.
The hallway took her past several torture exhibits. Once filled with wax victims, the devices now sat empty but covered with real blood, and she wondered if the screams that seeped through the hidden speakers weren’t just echoes of the dead still wailing out for mercy. Much like the cobwebs, no one knew anymore whether the caged skeletons were real or fake. So, wax or not, she did her best not to make eye contact.
At first blush, it seemed silly that any prisoner would be intimidated by a fake dungeon. But once one realized that it had been made very real, it would no doubt add to the unsettling feeling that the prisoner was literally stuck in a tourist trap.
At the end of the hallway was a large wooden door with an iron handle. Some local artisan had been commissioned to make the door appear authentic to the period. It looked and felt like the entrance to a dungeon of horrors. It was the banded iron that truly made it feel like you were in the Middle Ages. And you could see it really well under the glowing red of the exit sign above the door.
Pride reached for the handle. The prisoner would be inside.
“Who goes there!” asked a booming voice.
Pride screamed and turned to face the voice.
The guard looming over her jumped and screamed as well.
She fell back against the wall with a hand against her chest.
“Dammit, Jenny!” The guard had fallen into his own corner. He pushed himself off the wall. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“You scared me first!” she screamed.
The guard started laughing.
She slapped the guard playfully on the shoulder several times. “Shiv! You ass. I hate it when you do that.”
“Serves you right. You could have given me a heart attack. You know I hate working here as it is. Why were you sneaking down the hall all quiet like that?”
“Just lost in thought, I guess.”
“Did you happen to think of a way to get me promoted yet? You were going to help me get out of this stupid dungeon, ‘member?”
“I remember,” Jenny said. “I’m still working on it.
Shiv leaned around her and pulled the heavy wooden door open. It triggered a recorded horror-filled scream.
“I hate that scream,” Shiv said with a sigh. “I’m starting to hate it more than the real ones.”
He let her pass through the door into the holding area. It was better lit, as new lighting had been added for pragmatic reasons. There was a fine line between keeping the prisoner in a state of fear and making sure they were still in their cell.
“I heard we got a new one,” she said, as she pulled off her jacket and hung it up on an extinguished torch attached to the wall.
“Yeah, but you don’t need to worry about him much.”
Pride walked up to the cell and saw Jerry looking back at her. He recognized her. She could see that. But, he didn’t let on. He had to be wondering what she was doing here. A double agent. That much would be clear. But for which side? Was she a spy for the Resistance? Or for Invictus? “Why don’t I need to worry, Shiv?”
“No one is supposed to open that door for anything. Not food. Not to change the bucket. Nothing.”
“So we’ll feed him through the bars.”
Shiv shook his head. “Nothing goes in. Great Lord Invictus said so himself.”
Pride turned back to the guard and put on her cutest pout. “That’s disappointing. I’ve got a new recipe for gruel I wanted to try out.”
The guard bent over and laughed. He slapped his knee “If that’s what you call what you’ve been serving the prisoners, you can bring it to me. You treat these prisoners too nice, girl.”
“Well, it is usually their last meal.
Shiv bent over and slapped his knee again to accentuate his laugh. “It would be for this one. He’s going to ride the Falls.”
“Really? That’s the first time in a while.” She looked back into the cell. Was it really him? “He must have really pissed Invictus off.”
The guard smiled and looked around the room. He knew they were the only ones there, but Shiv liked to build drama. “Can you keep a secret?”
Pride smirked. “You know I can, Sheldon.”
“Ixnay on the Eldonshay,” Shiv said with a smile. He waved Pride over and lowered his voice to a whisper. “He’s the Librarian.”
Pride smiled like he was lying. “You don’t believe that. Do you? Another one?”
“If the Great Lord Invictus tells me he is, he is. And Invictus is convinced. That’s why he’s riding the Falls instead of getting tossed back in the aquarium. Hell, he was up in the throne room. If he wasn’t someone important, he would have been tossed right out.”
“Then I guess you don’t need me today,” she said, and pulled her jacket from the wall.
“I’ll always need you, Jenny,” Shiv said with a playful wink that just came with being Sheldon.
She smiled back and walked closer to the guard. She whispered, “It’s really him?”
Shiv nodded and sat down in a rickety wooden chair facing the cell door.
Pride had already decided that she didn’t care if this man was really the Librarian. But if everyone else was convinced, it would be an easier story to sell to the Resistance. “If it’s really him…that’s an awful risk letting him ride the Falls. Don’t you think?”
“Why?” Shiv asked.
“If he survives, he gets to go free.”
Some people were just born with comedic timing. Shiv wasn’t, and he held her stare for a moment longer than most people would before he started to chuck
le.
Pride chuckled as well and slowly built it into a full-fledged laugh.
Shiv followed suit, and he burst into laughter just before he bent over to slap his knee.
Pride dropped her jacket over his head and brought the torch crashing down on Shiv’s skull. The first strike did little but confuse him, and it wasn’t until the fourth or fifth that the guard finally stopped moving and shouting. She pulled the keys from his belt and walked over to the cell.
“What are you doing here?” the prisoner asked.
“I work here,” she said, and slipped the key into the rusty lock.
“Why are you doing this?”
The lock was giving her problems. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the slip of paper Oliver had found in the dog’s collar. She handed it to him and went back to working on the lock. “I’m not sure if this was meant for me.”
He looked at the paper and then back to her. “So you decided to believe me?”
“No,” she said as the key finally turned. She opened the door. “I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. I need a Librarian. Any Librarian. And you’ll do.”
“That’s flattering,” he said.
“I don’t really care. If Invictus thinks you’re him, we can convince the others. This tyrant’s reign has to end.” She pulled him out of the cell and led him through the dungeon’s back door.
“What about Gatsby? Won’t he be upset you’re speeding things up? Going off plan?”
She stopped at the exit. “You were right about them. The council. They were never going to do anything. They truly hate Invictus, but I think they hate change more. They’ve been making plans forever and never taken any action.”
“Are there any plans?” he asked. “Really?”
“Yes, really. There are lots of plans.”
“Any good ones?”
“There’s Lelawala.”
21
Long before the first intrepid pioneer cast eyes on the majesty of the Niagara Falls and thought, “This place really needs a t-shirt stand,” the Ongiara tribe inhabited the area despite a distinct lack of donut shops. Among the peaceful tribe there was none more beautiful than the maiden named Lelawala.
They say her beauty rivaled that of the Falls themselves and attracted the love of He-No, the God of Thunder. Her love for He-No was immeasurable, but not meant to be, as her father bequeathed her to the king of another tribe.
She refused and set out to find He-No, who lived and lurked in the cave beneath Horseshoe Falls. The wouldn’t-be queen paddled onto the Niagara River in her quest to find her lover and was quickly swept away by the river’s ferocious current. She and her canoe were swept over the Falls and sent plunging toward the rocks and rapids below.
But He-No, hearing his lover’s scream, emerged from his cave behind the Falls and caught her before she could drown in the cold waters of the river. He took her back to his cave, where it is said their spirits still live. He-No, the God of Thunder, and Lelawala, the Maid of the Mist.
The young maiden’s story had all but been forgotten after the end of the war. Mythical elopers with suicidal tendencies were hardly the first thing on anyone’s mind when food and supplies became scarce. But it seemed a fitting codename for the plan that would see the Maid of the Mist IV plated in armor and sent up the Niagara River to once more defy a king.
The tour boat had spent its previous life taking passengers into the plunge pool beneath Horseshoe Falls to hear the thunder and feel the power of the Falls from within the mist itself. For more than 180 years, the Maid of the Mist IV and her sister ships had taken celebrities, royalty and Gorby as well as countless others upriver for a once in a lifetime experience.
Those before her had been retired and sent elsewhere to finish off their days. Some had been brought into service to continue their tours on calmer waters. Another had been sent to the Amazon where it plied the massive river doing the Lord’s work in South America. But the Maid of the Mist IV had been in service the day it all ended, and in the chaos and confusion that often accompanies the end of the world she had been forgotten. Her send-off had consisted of nothing more than a snapped mooring line and a slow drift north down the Niagara until she finally came to rest on the shores of a dairy on Lake Ontario.
“I’ve only ever seen it in Superman II,” Eli said. “I don’t remember it looking like this.”
The Maid of the Mist IV had been pulled up a creek where the Resistance had put torch and toil to the tour boat’s hull. She was now painted flat black with the mouth of a demon on either side of her bow. Armor plate covered the decks and machine gun nests were positioned at six points around the ship.
“Meet Lelawala,” Pride said as the four reunited warriors walked the shore in front of the boat.
“You can keep calling her that, lady,” Lucas said. “But it says Bitch of the Mist on the side and I like that a whole lot better.”
Pride groaned. “That was Herbert West’s idea. We thought it was a little too crude, but, since he’s the head engineer, he painted it on there when no one was looking.”
A hatch in the armor plating squeaked open and a head popped though the opening. A round face beneath a greasy ball cap asked, “Did you call me?”
“Everyone, this is Herbert.”
“The best fabricator in the Resistance or elsewhere,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”
The man disappeared and let the hatch slide shut with a scrape. Clattering and clanging made it easy for those on shore to guesstimate where he was inside the ship right up until he emerged on the shoreline. He shook every hand offered to him and repeated every name as it was given.
“Good to meet you all. I’m Herbert West.”
“What’s the matter, Herb?” Lucas asked. “No codename for you?”
“Herbert West is my codename,” he said.
“That’s a terrible codename.”
“It’s Lovecraftian,” Jerry said.
“Well,” Lucas said with a shrug, “I’m glad you like.”
“He was a mad scientist.”
“That’s right,” Herbert said. “And just like my namesake I’ve brought the bitch back from the dead. She wasn’t in the best shape when we found her moored up on shore. But we got her floating and looking a whole lot better than her old self. She was already tough enough to brave the plunge pool, so we figured why not toughen her up a bit more and see if we can’t sail her right up Invictus’s asshole.”
Pride groaned again and turned away.
“I’m sorry, Pride.” Herbert pulled the baseball cap from his head. “I forgot I was in mixed company. I meant Invictus’s butthole.”
“That’s not any better, Herb.”
The mad scientist gave her a wry smile and threw a wink at Joshua.
“This is impressive work, Herb,” Eli said as he put a hand on the hull. “How much do you have left to do?”
“Nothing. The Bitch has been ready to sail into history for a while. But it seems the plan is to just let her sit there until she falls apart again.”
“We’re here to change that,” Joshua said.
“Yay!” Herbert said with a sarcastic cheer. “And just who are you guys anyway?”
“Bogus Librarians!” Gatsby shouted. He stormed up the shoreline with the Bookkeepers Council and several armed Resistance members in tow. The giant one they called Fahrenheit was right behind him but didn’t join in Gatsby’s raving. “Bullshit artists! Con men! Liars!”
“Oh,” Lucas sang. “You say the nicest things.”
“Fahrenheit, arrest these men,” Gatsby said as soon as he got close.
“Arrest them?” Fahrenheit asked.
“Or take them prisoner or whatever.”
“Leave them alone, Gatsby,” Pride said as she stepped in front of the four men.
“Arrest her, too!” Gatsby screamed. “You’re insane, Pride. You have finally lost it. What were you thinking showing them Lelawala?”
“Hey!” Lucas shouted. “That�
��s Bitch of the Mist to you, buddy.”
Gatsby glanced at the hull of the ship and pointed at the name. “I thought we talked about you removing that.”
Herbert West shook his head as if he couldn’t remember that particular conversation. “No. I remember you saying something about some people might think it’s offensive.”
“Exactly,” Gatsby said.
“Well, I decided I didn’t care what some sniveling shit of a nobody thinks.”
“I want it removed!”
“I’m pretty sure I just explained that I don’t care what you think.”
Gatsby growled in frustration and turned his attention back to the four librarians. He waved Fahrenheit toward the group. “They’ve seen too much, here.”
“So what? It doesn’t change anything.” Pride shot a look at Fahrenheit that made the large man stop in his tracks. “She’s been ready for months. She’s just been waiting for you to grow the balls to act. We have everything we need to take Invictus down. Just not the will to do it.”
“You think it’s that simple. Just ride across the river and kill him. It’s that easy to you? You complain about all of our planning, but it matters. We can’t just take him out. He has to face justice. And some really powerful dramatic justice. Judge. Jury. The whole show put on in front of the city. Otherwise we’re just creating a vacuum. We need—”
Lucas raised his hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt your soliloquy, but this seemed like a good time to point out that you suck.”
“Fuck you. You’re a liar.”
“In his defense,” Joshua said, “I think you suck, too.”
“You’re all liars. No one cares what you think.”
“I think it’s safe to say it’s unanimous on the whole sucking thing.” Eli concluded.
Gatsby turned his rage back to Pride. “You’ve really screwed up this time, Pride. Now we have to kill these men. And you know how much I hate doing that.”
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