by Matthew Cody
I didn’t see a single Explorer—not alive, anyway. A few had been piled up against buildings to clear the walkways, but most were just left where they’d fallen. Some still held weapons in their dead hands. The grand marble columns of their ancient Academy were mostly toppled and blackened with scorch marks. Only the rose-stone Tower Library appeared intact, but ominous wet stains fouled the steps leading to its doors.
I swallowed the urge to get sick and hunkered down behind an overturned column while we waited for the patrol of Grave Walkers to pass. Once they were out of sight, I whispered to Merlin. “Okay, which way to the Captain?”
The bird surprised me by pointing his beak away from the Library, to the main promenade that led out from the Academy and into the old part of the Hidden City. The deserted city of the monks.
“What?” I began. “Why would Scott head that way …”
Then it dawned on me. The High Father. The High Father’s Inner Chamber was out there. Upon seeing the masses of Grave Walkers patrolling the Academy grounds, the Captain had decided to check on the High Father, hoping his remote Chamber might have been overlooked.
But he hadn’t made it that far.
With Merlin perched on my shoulder, I made my way out of the Academy and into the winding streets beyond. Unlike the straight lines and tall arches of the Explorers’ classical Earth architecture, the Hidden City was a twisting maze of enormous, inverted ziggurats. It looked like someone had uprooted all the pyramids of Egypt and balanced them, precariously, upside down on their points. As I snuck my way through the shadows of that alien place, I couldn’t help but fear that the whole thing would come toppling down at any second. It just wasn’t … natural. But then, few things were anymore.
Soon I was thoroughly and completely lost, although Merlin insisted that we were headed in the right direction. We rounded a bend and stopped at a gated trapdoor set into the floor of an open square. Empty crates and barrels were stacked nearby, and I wondered if this might have been some kind of grain silo once used by the monks. The cultists, however, had apparently decided that it’d work better as a place to store the leftover bits. In the dim moonlight I could see that it was full of dead Grave Walkers. They must have been using the place as a sort of mass grave for their fallen comrades. I’d just started to back away when Merlin began digging his claws into my shoulder. Someone was coming. I listened closely and heard footsteps. There were two streets out of this square, and cultists were coming down both of them. I was caught, with nowhere to run. Already I could hear the heavy, tired breathing of their horse-skull masks getting closer. I had only one choice.
I’d barely closed the trapdoor above me when the first Grave Walker appeared. I clung to the underside of the grill, my hands and feet wrapped around the bars like a sloth. Merlin held on next to me, but it was easier for the little bird. Below us was a twenty-foot drop that ended in a pile of bodies. I just prayed that I wouldn’t be adding my corpse to it.
Above us, the first of the Grave Walkers stepped onto the trapdoor. His heavy-booted foot missed my fingers by less than an inch. Already my hands were burning from the strain; after a few minutes my biceps started to tremble. Another joined his companion up top.
As the second cultist joined his friend, I had to unwind a foot from the grill or get stepped on. Now I was dangling by my hands and one foot. My fingers felt like they might snap, but still the Grave Walkers wouldn’t move. I heard their muffled voices hissing to each other from behind those grotesque masks. In a ridiculous, idle thought I wondered what cultists’ small talk consisted of. The cleanest way to cut open a sacrifice? Funereal fashions? At least it was a way to keep my panic at bay.
“Tommmmy …”
Something spoke my name in a low moan, barely audible. At first I thought it came from one of the Grave Walkers, but when it spoke a second time, I realized it was coming from below. From the pile of corpses at the bottom of the pit.
“Tommmmmy …” Something was crawling around down there as it called out to me. The dead were moving and they knew my name.
“Tommmmy …” The voice grew louder, more desperate.
I closed my eyes tight, but I could picture it reaching for me, waiting for me to fall.
A Grave Walker took a single step to the side and onto my left hand. My fingers crunched beneath his heel, but to my credit I managed not to cry out. I did not, however, manage to hang on.
I landed on what felt like a pile of wet leaves. But I knew that there were no leaves down here, just bloated, rotten bodies underneath rotten clothes. Hands grabbed me, pulling at me. I couldn’t bear to look, so with my eyes still shut I kicked with all my strength. I wouldn’t go without a fight.
“Tommy—oof!”
I stopped kicking. That “oof” sounded familiar. I’d heard it several times before—often in the moments before having to rescue my mentor from yet another tight spot.
When I opened one eye, my fear was quickly replaced with a mix of joy and sinking guilt. There was Captain Scott, purpled and yellowed with bruises and cuts, but alive. He’d obviously been beaten badly, and he was dabbing at a fresh cut on his lower lip where I had just kicked him.
“Ouch,” the Captain said.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Thought you were a corpse.”
“Perfectly all right. I probably look the part.”
The Captain’s voice had a wet, wheezing sound to it that I didn’t like, like someone on the edge of a cough. That voice worried me more than all the cuts and bruises. I started to look around.
“Don’t,” Scott cautioned. “Just focus on what’s above you. Try not to think about what’s beneath.”
I nodded, then winced as something gave way under my foot. A pop and a squishing sound.
“How’d you get here?” I asked, trying to keep my mind on other things.
“I should ask the same of you,” he said, eyeing Merlin as he fluttered down from his perch and rested on the Captain’s shoulder. The bird innocently set about cleaning a bit of grime from its shining feathers.
“I should’ve left Bernard in charge,” he said.
“Wouldn’t have stopped me,” I answered, and I was glad when he smiled.
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”
He shifted his weight and groaned suddenly in pain. He was hurt worse than he looked.
“I found the High Father, but then the Grave Walkers found us both. I fought them off until he’d had a chance to escape. Then they threw me in here. Probably think it’ll soften me up for a bit of interrogation. They’re after Merlin, Tommy. They think we delivered him to the Council, but they’ll soon realize their mistake.”
“So it’s begun?” I asked. “The Dead Gentleman is really coming?”
The Captain nodded. “This was just his first move. The opening skirmish in a much larger war.”
“Then we have to go,” I said. “We have to get out of here, now!”
“Tommy.” The Captain put his hand on my shoulder. “Before we were separated, the High Father said something to me. He told me to ask you a question.”
“Me? I don’t even know him!”
“All the same, he mentioned you by name. He said to ask you, Are you the flea that skitters or the flea that bites? Do you have any idea what that means?”
“What? No! It’s a bunch of gibberish! A flea, for crying out loud.”
“Tommy, the High Father is the wisest mind in the universe. He knows the past, the present and the future! His words should never be taken lightly.”
Scott looked at me for a long moment, then he took a small folding comb out of his breast pocket and set about smoothing his tangled mustache. He looked absurd sitting there atop a pile of dead bodies, covered in filth, tending to his out-of-place whiskers. But that was the Captain. I figure you don’t get to be his age, and see the things he’s seen, without earning a few eccentricities along the way.
“Well,” he said after a time. “How to get out of here, then? We still need to esca
pe from this hellish place. Any ideas?”
I stood up, careful to keep my balance on the unsteady “ground” beneath my feet. “Do you have any rope?” I asked.
“Always,” Scott answered. “Ah, I get your point—Merlin can fly the cord up to the top. But even if we can climb out, there are those guards up there. They wander off every now and then but they’re never gone for long. How do you propose we deal with them?”
I pulled the Tesla Stick from my belt and gave it a flick of the wrist, extending it to its full length. Cool, crackling electricity shimmered up and down its length. Despite the mess of corpses under us, and the horror all around us, I found myself grinning.
“Let’s answer the High Father’s question,” I said. “I’m the flea that bites!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE DEAD GENTLEMAN
THE HOLLOW WORLD, 1902
The Learner boy had help. The Gentleman could feel it—the increase of life, a slight tipping of the scales in the other direction. All he had to do was taste the air to know that the delicate balance between life and death here in this Hollow World, a balance he’d spent a considerable effort to weigh in his favor, had shifted.
He opened his cadaverous mouth and let the subterranean air drift in again, let it flow through his hollow-boned cheeks and across desiccated nasal passages. A female. It was a female helping the boy, which was disturbing news. Another Explorer, perhaps? He’d brought their pathetic Academy down on top of their heads. He’d filled its streets with blood while searching for his prize. Had someone escaped? Whoever she was, like Learner, she was not of this world.
The Gentleman reached for the rail of his ship, the Charnel House, and scraped his bony fingertips across the dark, lacquered wood. The five ragged claw marks that he left there, deep-cut grooves in the banister, were the only outward signs of his displeasure. Today’s face, a clean skull bleached white by time and the elements, could show no emotion. His latest incarnation was less expressive than some of his others, and not as outwardly grotesque as the Freshly Hung Corpse or Rotted Man shapes that he sometimes wore, but the Skeleton in Black had a certain motivating effect on his minions. And being a creature of tastes, the Gentleman wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the same outfit two days in a row.
He tilted back the brim of his top hat and stared up at the molten core with empty eyes. A voice to his left spoke up.
“I wish we could do something about that bloody fireball. Leave it to you to trap Learner in a place where the sun never goes away. Not as bad as real daylight, of course, but I’m still lobster-red, not to mention it’s murder on the eyes.”
He turned to consider Archibald Macheath, First Mate of the Charnel House and the Gentleman’s bloody-minded lieutenant. What possessed the Gentleman to make the uncouth, complaining vampire his number one was something of a mystery. Perhaps it was because out of all the Gentleman’s groveling followers, Macheath was the single being who didn’t care about anything or anyone other than Macheath. That, and Macheath’s skill with a knife.
The slowly baking Macheath dabbed at his brow with a dingy white handkerchief. When it came away it was pink with bloody sweat. “You hear the boys brought down that lizard?” said Macheath. “Last one this side of the valley. Won’t be long now. Learner’s running out of places to hide.”
“You think so?” asked the Gentleman in a voice that sounded like wind through a hollow reed. The Skeleton in Black had no vocal cords.
“Sure. The beasties out there are getting desperate, and he’d make a nice bit of snack. If he dies he becomes your property anyway, so it’s a win-win. And I’ve been having the boys spread the word among the natives that if Learner’s caught and turned over to us, we’ll lift anchor and leave the Hollow World in peace. After all, we can always come back and clean it out later.”
The vampire grinned and showed a mouth of missing teeth. Vampires were useful, impervious to pain and nearly unkillable unless confronted with direct sunlight or a stake through the heart. They were tough creatures, but that also made them hard to discipline. Ever the problem solver, the Gentleman had found that pulling one of Macheath’s teeth every time he displeased him was an effective way of keeping the vampire in line. But poor Macheath had had a string of bad luck recently and was down to two single fangs.
Nevertheless, Macheath attended his master’s side like a beaten dog hoping for a scratch behind its ears, but the Gentleman didn’t feel in the mood for compliments. This new female presence was disturbing. Alone, Tommy Learner would surely have perished, but if he now had a companion …
“We have a new wrinkle. Someone is with Learner. Someone from the outside.”
“Eh? How’d he get here? We’ve got every known portal covered.”
“She might have discovered a new one, though it’s unlikely. But however she managed to get in, we can’t take the chance that Learner will use the same route to get out.”
The Gentleman surveyed the deck of the Charnel House. Everywhere, black-robed Grave Walkers tended to the masts, the rigging. Guards walked lookout patrols along the rails. All hands made a careful and obvious effort to steer clear of Macheath. He had a reputation for going on binges among the crew—or, more accurately, binging on the crew.
But, despite Macheath’s overindulgences, the Gentleman still had an army at his disposal. The ship’s hands numbered in the hundreds. On the ground, Grave Walkers rode their skeletal mounts in formation drills, eager for the hunt. And since landing here in the Hollow World, the Gentleman had been making special additions to his forces. They all came to serve the Gentleman in the end.
Just beyond one small range of hills was the verdant valley. Somewhere there was Tommy Learner, inching ever closer to escape. Somewhere there was the key to the Gentleman’s plan—a delicate bird of clockworks and gears who possessed a secret that, in the Gentleman’s hands, would spell the end of everything. He’d opened the throat of every Explorer in the Academy looking for it, only to find that it was still in the possession of that thieving boy. He’d been sure the Explorers had reclaimed it. So sure that he’d struck them with all his might, revealing his strength earlier than planned. There was no going back now. The warning would go up across a thousand worlds. The war had begun and he needed the artifact to win!
“There is no more time,” said the Gentleman, his voice carrying across the deck like the rattle of leaves in the wind. “We can no longer afford to wait him out. Pull up anchor and set sail for that ridge—tonight we invade the valley. Kill everything in our way!”
Macheath smiled as he called out the order, which was picked up and repeated throughout the troops. The Charnel House began to scurry with activity as the ship was made ready to sail. Coal fires were fed and billows of hot air and acrid smoke filled the giant airbag. Such a force took time to mobilize, time the Gentleman feared he would not have. What if this new companion knew the way out? What if she was here to help Tommy Learner escape?
“You said the Walkers made a new kill?” asked the Gentleman, outwardly calm amid the cacophony.
“Yes sir,” answered Macheath. “Biggest one yet. It’s stowed away, down in the bilge.”
“Show me.”
Macheath led the way as the pair descended into the bowels of the vessel. The deeper they got, the fewer Grave Walkers they encountered; in the lower decks dwelt the things that would not or could not abide even the weak light of the Hollow World. The dark down here was thick with crouchers and ghouls and things that had yet to be named. They gathered about the Dead Gentleman as he strode along the planks, simpering and groveling for their master’s benediction, for his blessing upon their miserable existence.
Macheath struck out at them with his lash. “Get back, you lot! The Gentleman doesn’t need your grimy paws spoiling his fine attire.”
The throngs parted and the pair continued unmolested to their final destination. There, on the concave floor of the lowermost cargo hold, was a massive shape. The air here was rank with the sme
ll of putrefying flesh. The Gentleman’s presence combined with the heat of the lava sun overhead had sped up the decaying process. Macheath covered his nose with his bloody handkerchief. For one of the undead, he was unusually squeamish, or perhaps it was just habit.
“There he is,” said Macheath, his voice muffled by the sodden rag. “A real beaut, isn’t he?”
The Gentleman stepped forward and gently ran his hand across the shape’s hide. He loved the chill of death as a child loves the warm sun on her face. Rigor mortis had already come and gone, and in places the flesh had begun to split and crack as the decomposition caused gases and fluid to burst forth into the open.
“A terrible beauty, yes,” said the Gentleman. “But a beauty nonetheless.”
The Gentleman followed the curve of the beast’s neck all the way to its blocklike head. The lips had receded and the teeth were shut like the bars of a cage. The Gentleman leaned close and, from his own mouth, exhaled. The Skeleton in Black had no lungs to hold air, so what it was that he actually expelled was something else. It was shadow and frost, the quiet of the grave.
A convulsion racked the body of the dead beast. Something stirred deep inside as the parts that had given up were called upon to move again. Its massive heart began thumping once more—a fierce, staccato rhythm—but no blood flowed in those veins. The will of the Gentleman sustained it and that was all.
