by Greg Cox
“Eyes on the prize,” she reminded herself. “Don’t forget what you came for.”
Her free hand groped across the shelf above her head, searching for the right artifact.
It has to be here, she thought. I just put it away a few days ago!
Her fingers closed on a metal hilt.
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Got you!”
Anne Bonny’s cutlass was just what she was looking for. She rescued it from the shelf and spun around to face the berserk lion, who lunged at her, going in for the kill. Claudia swung the cutlass with all her strength.
“Yo ho ho!”
The blade flashed brightly, times fifty. Multiplied two score and ten by the sword’s grisly résumé, the single swing instantly reduced the wooden lion to kindling. Painted wooden shavings flew in all directions. A roar like a buzz saw drowned out the creature’s final growl before trailing off into silence. Sawdust and splinters wafted down the hall.
“Hah!” Claudia laughed. She posed triumphantly atop the wobbly crates. “Take that, puddy-tat!”
The cutlass fit her grip perfectly. A savage exhilaration made her blood sing. A briny smell filled her lungs. A lilting sea chantey echoed inside her head, growing louder and louder, until she couldn’t help singing along:
“Oh, where is the trader of London town? His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown . . .”
She slashed at the empty air with her cutlass.
Just as Artie showed up looking for her. Bushy eyebrows lifted warily.
“Claudia?”
Artie was relieved to find Claudia intact and unbloodied. He was less pleased to spot Anne Bonny’s cutlass in her grip. A manic gleam in her eyes that varied significantly from her usual exhausting impishness sent warning bells ringing at the back of his mind. She held the sword at the ready. Sawdust clung to her rumpled outfit. Artie got the distinct impression that he had arrived a few minutes late. He really needed to work on his timing. . . .
“Er, Claudia?” He nodded at the cutlass. “I think you can put that down now.”
A fifteenth-century French tapestry depicting a unicorn frolicking with a griffin hung from a top shelf a few feet away from where Claudia was perched. With swashbuckling élan, she leaped from atop a rickety pile of boxes and drove the point of the cutlass into the heavy tapestry, which slowed her descent as she rode the sword down the torn fabric. The stunt was an old pirate trick, once known as “sail sliding.” But how had Claudia learned it?
Artie thought he had a pretty good idea.. He kept his eye on the cutlass.
This could complicate matters. . . .
She landed nimbly on the floor at the bottom of the tapestry, which magically reknit itself behind her. The curator in Artie was glad that artifact had not been permanently harmed by the cutlass. Within seconds, it was as good as new.
Too bad he lacked the same ability. He suspected he was going to need it.
Claudia sauntered toward him, cutlass in hand.
“Strike your colors, Cap’n Bligh! This be a mutiny!”
I was afraid of this, Artie thought. He gave her the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t suppose you’re just kidding around?”
A sneer twisted her lip. She brandished the cutlass menacingly. “You’ve dragooned your last luckless galley slave, you dried-up piece of driftwood!”
Nope, not joking. The cutlass had ignited Claudia’s rebellious streak, fanning it into a potentially lethal conflagration. Hackers . . . pirates . . . too much of a convergence there.
He attempted to talk her down.
“Listen to me, kiddo! This isn’t you. It’s the cutlass.” He held up his hands and backed away. “Just put the sword away, all right?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noted an old golf club resting on a shelf to his right. He eased toward it, while trying not to provoke her. This required delicate handling.
“You want cookies?”
“Belay that! I’m done with taking orders from a worm-eaten old tyrant like you.” A lunatic rage twisted her features. Raising the cursed sword high above her head, she charged at him with murder in her eyes. “There’s a new captain at the helm!”
Artie grabbed the golf club, a sturdy nine iron, from the shelf. Holding it upright like a sword, he parried the cutlass before it could relieve him of his head. Sparks flashed where the blade glanced off the long metal shaft. He shouted over the ringing steel.
“Stop this! You’re not Anne Bonny. You’re Claudia Donovan, junior agent and first-class pain in my butt. You have a brother, Joshua. You gave me a T-shirt and a coat for Christmas. Neither of them fit!” He blocked another thrust with the nine iron, almost losing his fingers. Sadly, golf clubs did not come equipped with hand guards, only rubber grips. And the club’s special properties only extended to guaranteeing holes in one. “I know you, Claudia. You don’t want to do this!”
“Don’t ye dare tell me what I want, you high-and-mighty muckrake!” She drove him back, slashing wildly with the sword. Her voice held a southern lilt that had never been there before, almost as though she had been born and raised in Charleston. “I’ll have you keelhauled and fed to the fishes!”
“What fishes?” he protested. “We’re in the middle of the Badlands!”
“Don’t try to confuse me!”
Cutlass clanged against club. She feinted, then thrust at his heart. The solid iron foot of the golf club weighed it down, but he managed to block the attack in time. She stabbed at him again, keeping him on defensive. The club was longer than the short sword, which helped to keep her at a distance, but his arm was already getting tired. Nine irons weren’t meant for fencing!
Claudia showed no sign of letting up.
“I’m sticking to my course,” she declared, “come fair weather or foul!”
She said so, but did she really mean it? Despite her colorful invective, she hadn’t actually run him through yet. Did that mean that, deep down inside, she was resisting the sword’s piratical influence?
Artie wanted to think so.
“Fight it, kid! Don’t let that cutlass do your thinking for you. You’re smarter and more independent than that! And don’t I know it!”
The gleaming blade sparked off the club’s shaft, jolting his arm fifty times a blow. His muscles ached; the club felt like it weighed a ton. Its foot drooped for a second, and she lunged at him again, but he deflected the thrust to the side. This wasn’t his first duel; he knew what he was doing. The trick was to always remain aware of your surroundings and take advantage of the terrain. Between parries, he glanced around for a way to defuse the situation bloodlessly. Wasn’t there an emergency rinse around here somewhere?
Yes! There it was.
An industrial-looking showerhead, of the sort installed in nuclear reactors and college chemistry labs, was mounted on a metal track running across the top of a tiled alcove. A glass pane guarded a bright red metal lever, labeled IN CASE OF CONTAMINATION. He looked away from the label to avoid betraying his intentions. Giving ground, he let himself be backed into the alcove, trying to lure her in. “What are you waiting for?” he baited her. “It’s not a mutiny unless you dispose of the old skipper!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, you grumpy, bushy-eyed old walrus!” She pouted as she slashed at him repeatedly. “Stand still so I can gut you proper!”
He found himself cornered in the alcove, his back against the wall. He risked a peek overhead. Claudia wasn’t quite under the showerhead yet.
Her sword whipped in and out, sneaking past the golf club. A button went flying from his vest. He flung himself sideways to avoid being skewered. Gulping, he wished he had another brick from Berlin.
Instead he took another tack.
“We don’t have time for this!” he barked. “Pete and Myka need us!”
“Pete?” She wavered. The tip of the cutlass sank toward the floor. “Myka?”
“That’s right. You remember, don’t you?” He lowered the golf club slightly, ready to t
ake up arms again at the first hint of another attack. He tried once more to get through to her. “Pete is sick. He’s going to die . . . unless we help find Clara Barton’s gloves!”
For a second he thought that might be enough to snap her out of it, but the cutlass was too strong. The defiant bloodlust that had made Anne Bonny a legend gripped her again.
“Hold your tongue, you lying sack of bilge! I’ll swab these decks with your blood!”
She came at him, rushing directly under the showerhead. Her blade scraped against the foot of the golf club, sending up a shower of sparks. Artie felt the blow all the way down his arm. At the same time, he shattered the glass pane with his elbow. Broken fragments rained down onto the tiles, exposing the emergency lever. He seized it with his free hand and yanked it all the way down. He threw himself back against the wall.
“Sorry about this. You’ll thank me later.”
A huge shower of purple goo poured down on Claudia, sliming her. The blinding flash forced Artie to avert his eyes. Golden sparks, as bright as any pirate booty, flared along the length of the cutlass before blinking out. Liberally bedecked in purple, she sputtered and wiped the gunk from confused, brown eyes that no longer looked quite so intent on tossing him overboard. She spat out a mouthful of goo.
“Artie?”
The neutralizer bath had done the trick, snapping her out of the trance like a bucket of cold water to the face. The last vestiges of Anne Bonny’s seductive fury washed down the drain at her feet. Claudia stared aghast at the gooey cutlass in her hand, then dropped it like the proverbial hot potato (which, Artie recalled, was actually located four annexes away). Purple goo dripped from her hair and ran down her face.
“Careful,” he warned. “You don’t want to swallow any of that.”
Neutralizer was not to be taken internally. Ingesting it made you see . . . things, the nature of which was better left unspoken.
“Holy smokes, Artie!” Guilt showed through the goo. “I nearly . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to finish. “I swear, I didn’t mean it!”
Overcome with emotion and drenched to the skin, she rushed forward and gave him a very messy hug. Fresh neutralizer squished between them. He felt it soak through his clothes.
“You know, this probably could have waited until after you toweled off.”
“Shush.” She squeezed him tighter. “Don’t make me rethink not eviscerating you.”
He awkwardly extricated himself from the hug, being careful not to slip on the puddle forming beneath them. He stared down at himself and sighed wearily. Secondhand goo dripped down the front of him, pooling at his feet. He shook it from his fingers. The purple castoff fell on the discarded cutlass, which waited to be bagged. He cautiously nudged it with his toe.
“On second thought, maybe Leena was right: that cutlass might belong in the Dark Vault.”
Claudia gave him a look. “You think?”
A fierce squawk announced that the thunderbird was still flying free. A winged shadow fell over them as the avian artifact circled high above them, cawing angrily. Artie clutched the golf club with both hands, but the creature kept its distance. Had it sensed the destruction of its leonine brother? Probably, he speculated. They had both been carved from the same log after all.
“Careful!” Claudia ducked under the dripping shower head. She tugged on Artie’s arm, pulling him to safety. “There’s a grisly grizzly around here somewhere too.”
“All walled up,” he updated her. “But the bird is going to be a challenge. It’s the most dangerous of the three.” Eyewitness reports of the 1848 massacre, based on the testimony of a single half-mad survivor, made chilling reading even after more than a century. He knew precisely what they were dealing with. “A vicious man-made creature, driven only by an unquenchable appetite for vengeance.”
“As opposed to its more cuddly playmates?” Claudia shuddered but made no move to retrieve the cutlass, not even in self-defense. She peered up at the bird. “You got any ideas on how to bag that canary?”
“I’m thinking!”
The thunderbird chose the better part of valor. Perhaps hoping to avoid the lion’s fate, it soared toward the ceiling, where an old skylight offered a fuzzy glimpse of morning. The bird’s timber wings flapped strenuously, carrying it higher and higher.
“Watch out!” Artie took shelter beneath the shower. He plopped his hard hat onto Claudia’s skull instead. “It’s making a break for it!”
The bird monster smashed through the skylight on its way out. Cubes of safety glass rained down on them. Artie raised an arm to protect his eyes. The glass cubes pelted him like hail. They bounced off Claudia’s hard hat.
“Whoa!” she said. “That’s what I call an exit.”
Alarms sounded all over the Warehouse. Spinning red lights imitated the tops of cop cars. A stentorian voice, immediately recognizable as belonging to Mrs. Frederic, boomed from the PA system.
“Red alert! Warehouse security breach in progress. Repeat: security breach in progress.”
“Tell me about it.” Artie silenced the alarms by clicking a remote device in his pocket. He glowered at the shattered skylight. “That glass was supposed to be unbreakable. Do you know how much it cost?”
“Never mind that.” Claudia took off the hard hat. Her hair was still plastered with goo. “Big Bird has flown the coop.” She sounded like she didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. “Where do you think it’s winging to now?”
Artie already knew.
“The thunderbird is a bird of prey. Its predatory instincts will surely drive it to attack the nearest populated settlement, just as it did over one hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Populated?” Claudia didn’t need to consult a map. “Ohmigod. You don’t mean . . . ?”
Artie completed the thought for her.
“Univille.”
CHAPTER
18
“UNIVILLE”
It wasn’t even noon yet, but the UnFounders Day celebration was already under way. The town had lucked out, weatherwise, with a clear blue sky and temperatures climbing toward the eighties. Not a single cloud threatened to dampen the annual festivities. A bustling street fair extended the length of Main Street, which had been closed off for the duration. Temporary booths hawked lemonade, cotton candy, and roasted corn on the cob. Local businesses offered special UnFounders Day bargains. A high school band performed in the town square, their bombastic renditions of the latest Top 40 hits benefitting more from enthusiasm than execution. Clubs and charities raised funds by selling homemade birdhouses, ceramics, bonsai plants, and other crafts. Bake sales competed with the snack stands. An inflatable moon bounce had been set up for the kids. A papier-mâché replica of Mount Rushmore gazed from atop the bandstand. The street and sidewalks were packed with locals. Getting into the spirit of things, various townsfolk had dressed up in frontier garb. Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill mingled with Laura Ingalls Wilder. Leena counted at least three Crazy Horses.
Most everybody looked like they were having a good time. Shining auras commingled, creating a dazzling prismatic effect. At least, for those with eyes to see.
Leena wished she could enjoy it more. As a local business owner and card-carrying member of the Univille Chamber of Commerce, she’d felt obliged to make an appearance, but her heart wasn’t in it. How could it be, with Pete dying of typhoid fever thousands of miles away?