by Joel Ross
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
MY NAME IS CHESS, and I was born inside a cage.
Imagine a wooden platform jutting from a mountain cliff. Now picture a chain falling from that platform and vanishing into the Fog, a deadly white mist that covers the entire Earth.
That’s where I was born: locked in a cage, at the end of a chain, inside the Fog.
And I would’ve died there, too, if Mrs. E hadn’t saved me.
When she saw my face for the first time, wisps of Fog swirled inside my right eye, shimmering white shapes that marked me as a freak. That’s why I’ve spent thirteen years keeping my head down, staying quiet and afraid—but now Mrs. E needs help, now she needs saving.
It’s time to stop hiding. Everything is going to change.
1
AFTER A LONG MORNING searching the woods, I spotted a school bus through the Fog. The broken windows looked like rotten teeth as I edged closer, hoping to salvage hubcaps or engine parts.
Then a growl rumbled through the swirling mist. A low, warning sound, maybe a mountain lion or a jaguar. Probably just telling me to stay away.
I wasn’t about to argue.
My heart clenched and I reached for the hand brake on the harness buckled around my chest. A long cord—my “tether”—rose three hundred yards upward from the harness. If I squeezed the brake, my crew would reel in the tether, heaving me to the safety of our raft, which floated in the clear blue sky high above the Fog.
But when I touched the hand brake, the growling stopped.
Hm. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one. I peered toward the rusty school bus, but even I couldn’t see ten feet through the dense foggy whiteness. And the Fog muffled sounds, so for all I knew the big cat was padding closer, paws crunching through the leaves.
People died in the swirling mist, but animals thrived. They ran wild in the forests and the rubble. Packs of ferocious boars and troops of rowdy monkeys didn’t even notice the whiteness. Only humans were blind and deaf in the Fog, stumbling around like accidents waiting to happen.
Or tasty treats.
Sweat trickled down my forehead and pooled on my goggles. I wanted to squeeze the hand brake and flee, but I needed to stay in the Fog. I needed to stay strong and brave. My crew was counting on me. So I took one slow step backward, then another and another. Two minutes later, I slumped in relief. I really needed to find a better place to search for valuables than a school bus where a jaguar made her den.
My crew and I lived in the slums of a mountain-peak empire called the Rooftop, one of the few places not covered by Fog. We flew our rickety air-raft over the endless white vapor every day. As the “tetherboy,” I dove into the Fog and searched the ancient wreckage for stuff we could sell back in the slum for food and clothes and rent.
But these days, we needed more. These days, we flew deep into uncharted Fog, hoping to find something big—something huge—to save Mrs. E’s life. We were running out of time.
I spent the rest of the afternoon prowling through Fog-covered hills, keeping my tether free of tree branches, rummaging in heaps of concrete and searching the husks of pod-cars. I wasted an hour digging through rotting planks, hoping to find pipes or plastic, but all I unearthed was thousands of beetles. Then the hand brake on my tether jerked: three fast yanks.
It was a message from Hazel, the captain of our ramshackle raft, signaling me from above the Fog. Come back, she was saying. It was getting late, and nobody survived a night in the Fog—even I was afraid to stay after sunset.
I started to sign back okay, then stopped when I heard something in the distance, a muffled eee-huuurk.
I smiled at the sound and squeezed the hand brake. Not yet.
Come back.
Not yet, I told Hazel again.
Not the most fascinating conversation, but cut me a little slack. We couldn’t say much with a hand-brake cable connected to a bell on the raft deck.
After a minute, she signaled, Okay.
“Cool.” I peered at the sky. “Dinner’s on me.”
I didn’t expect to find salvage this late in the day, but I hoped to find food. Meals were scarce in the slum, and that eee-huuurk had sounded like a goose. Like delicious roast goose for dinner.
Adjusting my goggles, I headed downhill through the underbrush. Wisps of whiteness surrounded me. The Fog felt like cool breath against my skin, with the faint pressure of air before a big storm. Leaves crunched under my boots, and my tether unspooled with a whirr-click-whirrr.
Eyes wide and ears pricked, I stalked through the Fog. I crossed a meadow full of dandelions and smelled water. I listened for the burbling of a stream as I edged past some brambles . . . and an animal lunged at me through the mist.
My pulse rocketed. I yelped and leaped straight upward—eight feet into the air—and spun like a bat chasing a moth, feeling the world slow down around me.
On the raft or in the slum, I moved like an ordinary kid, but inside the Fog, I was fast. Rattlesnake fast. I jumped like a kangaroo, tumbled like a monkey, and climbed like a squirrel. That was me, a rattlaroo squirbat.
My body felt weightless as I flung myself through the mist, tracking the dark shape of my attacker with my gaze. Then I fell to the ground in a crouch and saw it clearly. It wasn’t a mountain lion or bear or baboon—I’d been assaulted by an angry goose.
“Okay, feather-face,” I said. “Come and get me.”
The goose glared with beady eyes—it didn’t even notice the billowing Fog—and made a hissing sound like a broken valve: hhhhhhh, hhhhhhh. Uncoiling its neck, it beat the air and snapped at my face.
But this time, I was ready, and I trapped its long feathery neck under my arm.
The goose struggled and thumped my chest with its wings. Mee-hurrrrk-ee!
“Ha!” I clamped its wings tight. “Gotcha.”
It hissed and wriggled, and its webbed feet pedaled in the air.
“Sorry,” I said as I started to wring its neck. “But we’re hungry, and you’re dinner.”
Then I heard a faint eep.
Eep eep eep eep!
I looked down and saw four fuzzy little goslings waddling toward me through the haze. The one in front tilted its downy yellow head upward and stared at me with big eyes, lik
e it was begging for mercy.
“You’re out of luck,” I told him, gripping the mother goose’s neck harder. “We’ve got to eat.”
Eeep, he informed me.
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “Shoo!”
Eeep, he repeated.
“Go away!” I stomped, trying to scare the goslings off. “I can’t do this with you watching!”
Honk, the mother goose cried.
Eeep eep eep! the little ones said, bumbling closer like puffballs on webbed feet.
The crew needed food—we always needed food—and we never ate anything as tasty as roast goose. But something about four defenseless babies who needed a mother stopped me cold.
“Fine!” I sighed, loosening my grip. “But if we starve, it’s your fault.”
I set the mother goose down near her babies, and she said hooooork! and whacked me so hard with one of her wings that I fell on my butt. Then she led her goslings away, honking and hissing.
“You’re welcome!” I called after her.
I sat there feeling like an idiot. We were hungry all the time, and I’d let a perfectly tasty goose get away. I didn’t even want to think about what Swedish—our raft pilot—would say. And I couldn’t stand the thought of watching Bea—our mechanic, and the youngest member of the crew—go to sleep hungry again.
After a while, I pushed to my feet and started plucking dandelion greens from the meadow. They were bitter, but they’d fill our stomachs. I was shoving one last handful into a sack when a breeze blew a perfumed scent toward me. Flowers? Maybe roses.
A grin tugged at my lips. I’d learned that roses meant fancy gardens and houses, which were good places to scavenge.
I followed the scent uphill, and a shape loomed through the Fog: dark bars in the whiteness. I edged closer and saw an iron gate, a row of black posts with sharp points. Good, thick, valuable iron, only slightly rusty.
I smiled. “Now we’re talking.”
I reached for the hacksaw in my leg-sheath, and the hand brake on my tether jerked three times: Hazel was saying Come back.
Not yet.
Come back, she signaled. Come back, COME BACK!
I frowned. That was pretty bossy, even for Hazel.
Then I noticed the Fog darkening around me. I’d lost track of time. Dusk was falling and long shadows were creeping across the field.
“Yikes,” I muttered. Hazel was right, of course. Sometimes she was more “boss” than “bossy.”
I signaled back: Ready.
A moment later, my tether straightened in the air above me. With a tug at my harness, it lifted me off my feet and reeled me upward.
I rose into the air as white clouds billowed around me. Higher and higher until finally, in an instant, the Fog fell away and my full weight returned. The harness dug into my chest, my arms and legs turned to lead, and even my boots felt heavy, like they were suddenly filled with mud.
The endless Fog spread below me, touched by the rays of the setting sun. It looked more like a cool mist than the plague that had almost destroyed humanity. And that still hid the treasures we needed to survive.
2
OUR SALVAGE RAFT WAS a hodgepodge of mismatched parts and tattered patches. It floated above the Fog, dangling from three balloons lashed together with fraying ropes. A wicker basket swayed in the tangled rigging beneath the balloons, the “crow’s nest” where Hazel usually stood.
Below that, the raft itself was a weather-beaten deck of canvas, wooden floorboards, and copper pipes. The winch for my tether rattled beside my diving plank and, farther back, Swedish spun the ship’s wheel and clattered at the steam organ that controlled the rudders and propellers.
Under the deck, Bea tinkered with the clockwork engine that powered the fans and pistons and vents. And hanging below the whole thing, the empty cargo net swayed in the stiff breeze. It wouldn’t be empty for long. That iron gate would cover food for a week or two, even after the bosses took most of the money.
But we still needed a much bigger score to help Mrs. E.
The tether winched me toward the underside of the raft, bringing me close enough to grab the boarding ladder.
“Chess!” Bea called to me, with a smile on her freckled face. “You’re okay!”
“Of course!” I struck a pose on the ladder. “For I am Freakula, Lord of the Fog.”
She giggled. “You’re a chucklebutt! How come you stayed down so long?”
“I found something,” I told her. “Float a buoy!”
She flashed a salute and disappeared into the gearwork. It was too late to grab that iron gate today, so she’d mark the site with a buoy and we’d return tomorrow, after drifting all night. We couldn’t hover in one place overnight, not without a pilot at the wheel, and even Swedish needed to sleep.
I climbed on deck, shoved my goggles to the top of my head, and started unbuckling my harness.
“Next time come up when I tell you to!” Hazel called from the crow’s nest. “Look at the sun.”
From above, the Fog usually looked like an endless ocean with motionless white waves. But now, the orange light of sunset brushed the high crests.
“Sorry,” I said. “I got busy.”
“Doing what?” she asked. “You look messed up.”
“Chess always looks messed up,” Swedish said from the wheel.
“I got into a fight,” I admitted.
Hazel frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Was it wolves?” Swedish asked. “Baboons?”
“Worse,” I told him.
“Not driftsharks,” Hazel said, giving me a worried look.
“Of course not,” I said. “You don’t fight driftsharks, you just . . . die.”
“Hyenas?” Swedish guessed.
“Um . . .” I didn’t want to tell them I’d lost a perfectly tasty goose. “I found an iron gate that’s in good shape. And I’m pretty sure I smelled roses nearby.”
“Finally!” Hazel brightened, forgetting that I looked a mess. “I knew that flying this far would pay off. We’ll grab everything in sight, and make enough to help Mrs. E!”
“If the troopers don’t arrest us first,” Swedish grumbled.
“Nobody’s going to arrest us,” Hazel told him.
“They will if Lord Kodoc hears about Chess.”
I swallowed. Lord Kodoc was more than the tyrant who ruled the Rooftop and commanded the roof-troopers—he was the reason we lived small and quiet in a remote corner of the slum. Everyone with half a brain was scared of Lord Kodoc, but it was different for us. He was the bogeyman Mrs. E had scared us with since we were little. The monster in all our nightmares. She said that if Kodoc found us, he’d tear us apart.
“Yeah,” Hazel said, “but he won’t. He doesn’t even know Chess exists.”
“Not yet,” Swedish muttered darkly. “You’ve heard the rumors.”
I ducked my head. Swedish was right. We needed to escape the slum to find a cure for Mrs. E’s fogsickness—but also to get far away from Lord Kodoc. He thought I’d died thirteen years ago, after he’d lowered my mother into the Fog. Recently, though, we’d heard terrifying rumors about a kid with a Fog-eye. If Kodoc found out I’d survived, he’d hunt me down. He’d lock me to a tether and dangle me in the white until the Fog killed me.
Hazel shot Swedish a dirty look, then turned back to me. “So what’d you get in a fight with?”
Apparently she hadn’t forgotten about me looking messed up.
“Here.” I tossed my sack to Swedish. “Dinner.”
He peered inside. “You got in a fight with dandelion greens?”
I sighed. “Fine! It was a goose. I got in a fight with a goose.”
From behind me I heard Bea’s familiar giggle, and she teased me while Swedish started dinner. He soaked the greens in rainwater, tossed the last of our seagull jerky into the broth, and simmered the whole thing over an exhaust vent.
I plopped down under the balloons while the soup cooked, feeling drowsy and content. I’
d follow the scent of roses tomorrow, and with any luck I’d find a drawer of silverware or even—in my wildest dreams—a cabinet full of unbroken wineglasses. Rich people on the upper slopes of the Rooftop paid huge for stuff like that.
Hazel sat beside me, gazing at the sunset, her braids falling around her shoulders, as Bea fiddled with a handful of wires. She made figurines out of cables and wire, what she called “twistys,” miniature people, airships, and animals.
She handed me a twisty of a cute little bird. “Here!”
“What’s this?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. “A chickadee?”
“A silly goose,” she said. “Like you!”
Swedish poured the soup into bowls and handed them around. “A rabid goose. Nothing else could beat Chess.”
“It probably had fangs,” Hazel said. “And glowing red eyes.”
Bea wiped her mouth with her sleeve and asked, “What really happened?”
“She had baby geese with her,” I admitted. “They kept looking at me with their big eyes. I just . . . couldn’t.”
“You fog-face,” Swedish grumbled. “We could be eating roast goose right now.”
“Of course Chess couldn’t kill her!” Bea told him. “She’s a mother! She had babies.”
Swede grunted. “They’re probably all adopted.”
“We’re all adopted!” Hazel reminded him.
“Sure,” he said. “But we’re not delicious.”
3
NIGHT FELL, AND a million stars freckled the dark sky. We climbed into our hammocks to sleep as the engine ticked and the rigging fluttered. When a cool breeze rose, my hammock began swaying.
“In the old days,” I said, pulling my blanket to my chin, “before the Fog came, people used to see shapes in the stars.”
“You already told us that,” Swedish said. “They called them constipations.”
“Constellations,” Hazel said with a soft laugh.
“That’s what I said!”
Gazing at the stars, I almost told them the old tale of “Skywalker Trek,” about a space war between the Klingons and the Jedi, set in a future when people lived on distant planets, and fought Tribbles, Ewoks, and Borgs. I decided to stick with constellations, though, because sometimes my stories got a little garbled.
