by Charlie Wood
With his eyes wide and his hand pressed against his beating heart, the boy sat on the floor and looked up. There was now a man standing in front of him, dressed in a black suit and black tie. The man’s face was hideous—it was rotting and moldy, blotched with grey spots like old beef, and also slightly moist, as if he had been dead for days. The bone of his right cheekbone was completely exposed, due to the fact that there was no skin in that area, and through a long gouge along the man’s jaw, Tobin could see dead muscle.
“Did you really just use Orion’s name in the middle of the train?” the corpse asked, stepping toward Tobin. “Did you really just ask me if I was Orion’s contact, in the middle of the train?”
Tobin scooted away on the ground. “I...I...” As he looked up, the boy saw a slug crawl out of the man’s eye socket. Like an inchworm, it slithered across his face and disappeared back into his ear. “Who are you?” the boy asked with a whisper, growing nauseous.
“You really are that stupid, apparently.” The corpse stepped around Tobin, walking toward the cabin’s bed. “I’m Orion’s contact, you moron. You’re lucky you didn’t just completely blow our cover.”
Tobin still couldn’t catch his breath. “What—what—why did you—why did you look like a girl?”
The dead man opened a briefcase on the bed. The black foam on its inside was lined with strange knives and shining laser pistols.
“It’s my power. I can look like anybody. I can change my face, my body, even my clothes. Look.” The dead man changed back into Hannah. “I chose this identity because I’ve never used it before, and I knew it would get your attention. I just didn’t realize you weren’t smart enough to instantly see through it and realize what I was doing.”
The dead man changed back into the rotting corpse. As he began removing the laser pistols from the case and placing them on the bed, Tobin stared at his hands; they were also covered in dead, grey skin, with two of the fingers on his right hand completely exposed, appearing like white, skinny bones sticking out from his palm.
“Why do you—why do you look like this now?” Tobin asked. “This...zombie thing?”
The dead man turned to Tobin. “Because this is what I really look like.”
Tobin looked to the ground. “Oh.”
The dead man took a silver laser pistol from the bed and attached a long, black attachment to the handle. The attachment had blue stripes along it, like a caution sign. The barrel of the weapon also looked different than any other laser pistol Tobin had ever seen: there were three blue rings around the barrel, like a ray gun from an old sci-fi movie.
“My name’s Agent Everybody,” the dead man said, as he twisted the black attachment onto the ray gun. “I’ve been working with Orion for years. As soon as he needed someone to break into the Dark Nebula and live there for a while, he knew who to go to.”
Tobin nodded. It was starting to make sense. As much as speaking to a living corpse could make sense. “Because you can change your image.”
“Yes. Permanently. Not temporarily like those ridiculous fakers you guys use.”
Agent Everybody turned to Tobin. His face squished and morphed again, this time changing into a green-skinned Rytonian man.
“This was me, for about a month and a half. I lived, worked, and slept inside the Dark Nebula. That’s why I was able to get you guys in and get you those fake identities.”
“Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. That was insanely helpful.”
Agent Everybody turned back into his corpse form. “No problem. You wanna help pay me back?”
Tobin shrugged. “Sure.”
“Take this.”
Agent Everybody handed Tobin the ray gun with the black-and-blue attachment. Then he took an identical ray gun from his suitcase for himself.
“What is this?” Tobin asked, inspecting the weapon.
“I’m guessing you didn’t notice the guy on the train who re-read the same newspaper four times in the last thirty minutes.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t. But I did. That’s why Orion called me. You got a tail on you.”
“I do?”
“Yup. Followed you right on the train. Rigel and his goons must have put out an all-points bulletin on you. Does Rigel know you’re in Capricious?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I can only imagine what kind of bounty he put on your head. But regardless of who’s after you, we can’t have them following us. Not where we’re going.”
“Who is it? Who’s following me?”
“A guy who was sitting a few rows behind you. I was hoping to sneak by him and get in here before he saw which cabin we went in, but I doubt that happened. We should—”
Agent Everybody spun around toward the door. He stared at it, then motioned “shhh” with his bony finger. As Tobin mouthed back “what?,” Agent Everybody stepped to the door and looked into the peephole.
“Krandor, it’s him,” Agent Everybody whispered. “The guy who followed you onto the train. You ready?”
“For what?”
“I’m gonna open the door.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. How else are we gonna get rid of him? I’ll be quick. Quicker than him, anyway. But, just in case I’m not, be ready.”
Tobin gripped the ray gun in his hand. He didn’t even know how to use the bizarre, ringed weapon. “Uh, okay.”
Agent Everybody counted to three on his fingers, then quickly flung open the door. Tobin saw a man standing there, but before the man could reach to the gun on his belt, Agent Everybody stepped out from behind the door and fired his ray gun.
The instant the blue, circular ray beams hit the man, he disintegrated into billions of specks of multi-colored molecules, floating in a cloud above the train car floor. Then, with a soft “whirring” sound emitting from Agent Everybody’s ray gun, the billions of floating molecules were suddenly sucked across the private cabin and into the gun’s black-and-blue attachment, flying through the air and disappearing into the ray gun like dust being swept up by a vacuum cleaner.
Within seconds, any trace of the man who had followed Tobin was gone, and Agent Everybody closed the door.
Tobin was shocked. “What the hell?”
Agent Everybody turned to him. “What?”
Tobin held his hand out. “What the heck was that? You disintegrated the guy?”
“No. Well, not exactly.” With a flick of his exposed-bone finger, Agent Everybody opened a metal hatch on the side of his ray gun. From inside the weapon, a small blue pill popped out and into Agent Everybody’s hand.
“This is our bad guy,” Agent Everybody said, showing the pill to Tobin and holding it in between his forefinger and thumb.
“What?” Tobin pointed to the pill. “That’s the guy?”
“Yup, in here.” Agent Everybody brought the pill to his suitcase on the bed. “These ray guns we’re holding deconstruct matter. They take whatever the target’s made of, rip it apart, shrink it, and put it all back together in this little pill.”
Agent Everybody retrieved a small black box from inside his briefcase. When he opened the box, Tobin saw that it was cushioned with dark red material, and also filled with about ten other multi-colored pills.
“Are those...other bad guys?” the boy asked, his lip curled.
“Yup. When I get back to agency headquarters, I’ll put these little guys in water, and then: poof. Our criminals grow back to normal size. Right in their own little jail cells.”
Tobin shook his head. “That is...messed up. Whoever invented that is seriously messed up.”
“You’re friend Wakefield Junior invented it.”
Tobin nodded. “That makes sense.”
“But I gave him the idea.”
Agent Everybody closed his briefcase and carried it across the cabin. “Now we just hope no more bad guys desperate for money followed you onto this train.” He looked out through the peephole. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“There’s a whole bunch of bad guys desperate for money who followed you onto this train outside our door.”
“What? Didn’t you see them before?”
“Oh, I saw them. I was just hoping I was wrong.” Agent Everybody grabbed his ray gun from his briefcase. “Problem is, I’m never wrong. Are you ready?”
“To take care of them?”
“Yeah. You wanna use the ray gun or your powers?”
“My powers. I don’t feel like accidentally shrinking innocent people on the train today.”
“Suit yourself. Luckily, Orion told me to come prepared.”
Reaching into his briefcase, Agent Everybody pulled out a small, silver wand. When he pushed a button on its side, it grew with a metallic shint! into a long bo-staff. He threw the weapon to Tobin and Tobin caught it.
“There you go. You lay ‘em out with electricity, and I shrink ‘em down?”
Tobin tied an extra mask from his pocket around his face. “Sounds good to me.”
Agent Everybody hooked his briefcase onto a loop on his belt, gripped the door handle, and then turned to Strike.
“You know,” he said with a smile, “I used to work with your dad, when I was first starting out. Let’s see how you do.”
Strike twirled his bo-staff in front of him and shrugged. With a chuckle, Agent Everybody opened the door.
As soon as the heroes stepped out of the private cabin, they were greeted with seven sneering, wild-eyed, jumpy thugs, each of whom had their index finger on the trigger of an automatic rifle. With a hail of bullets barraging the private cabin and the train’s silence being ripped apart by the passengers’ screams, Strike leapt off his feet, flipped over the group of thugs, and went to work, taking out the thug in the back of the pack with a roundhouse kick to the back of his head. Before that thug even hit the floor, Strike flung a ball of lightning to his right, sending another thug careening down the train’s center aisle.
“Be careful not to hit the pedestrians,” Agent Everybody said, as he fired his ray gun and dove behind the train’s snack cart.
“You don’t have to tell me that. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this kind of thing, ya know.”
Even though they were outnumbered, the two heroes had skills that far outmatched their opponents; these were low-level criminals, too scared and frantic to focus on the heroes, and they were quickly taken down—within fifteen seconds, two of the thugs were deconstructed into billions of molecules, while two more were thrown against the train’s ceiling in one uppercut swing of Strike’s blue, electrified bo-staff.
“Any idea how many guys we’re dealing with here?” Strike asked, as three more thugs joined the fray from the dining car.
“More than we want,” Agent Everybody said. “Look up there.”
Strike looked into the upper corner of the train; a small, frog-faced gremlin was perched in the corner near the ceiling, sticking into the wall with its clawed hands. It had long pointy horns protruding from the sides of its head, a lime-colored, scaly body with a yellow stomach, and a pointed, two-pronged tail that was whipping wildly in circles behind it. As it looked down at Strike, it hissed at him, with long, frothy drool dripping from its lips.
“What the hell is that?” Strike asked, as he cracked his staff across the nose of a charging thug.
“One of the Gremlin Wizard’s gremlins,” Agent Everybody replied. “Which means, apparently, the Gremlin Wizard is interested in securing that bounty on your head.”
“Are these other guys working for the Gremlin Wizard, too?”
“Yup. He’s got a whole fleet of regular idiots, in addition to his gremlins. And if he’s working the way he usually does, these poor saps are just here to distract us while the gremlins do the real work.”
“Which would be?”
“Who knows. But I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later.”
Swinging his bo-staff like a baseball bat, Strike sent a wave of scorching, blue electricity across the train, and it barreled along the carpet like a speeding tsunami. As it made impact against the legs and chest of a lone thug, it exploded in a blinding flash, throwing the thug across the aisle, where he crashed through a closed door and went tumbling into the train’s bathroom.
Looking around and catching his breath, Strike realized that was the last thug—no more were coming in through the dining car.
“What do we do now?” Strike asked.
Agent Everybody checked the settings on his ray gun. “We wait until we hear somebody scream because the gremlins are doing something horrible.”
“Aaaaaaaaahhhh!” a man shouted from the front of the train.
“There we go,” Agent Everybody said, as he dashed off toward the sound of the scream.
As Strike followed Agent Everybody through the train cars, they soon reached the train’s conductor at the very front of the locomotive. He was sweating and frantic, desperately trying to get the train back under control.
“What’s going on?” Strike asked.
The conductor pointed ahead. “They’re switching the tracks!”
Strike looked out the train’s front windshield. He could see a group of gremlins up ahead, in a small wooden booth that rested on the side of the train tracks—the maniacal creatures were pulling levers and wildly pushing buttons in the booth, jumping up and down on the control board.
“How are they doing that?” Agent Everybody asked. “Isn’t there anybody in that booth?”
The conductor reached across and pulled on the train’s emergency brake, but there was no reaction. “We just got a report—they overwhelmed the agent and forced him out. They are in control now and they’ve changed the track!”
“So what’s that mean?” Strike asked.
The conductor’s face was awash with fear. “We’re off track. We’re heading into the caves.”
“And what’s so bad about that?”
“We don’t have permission to enter the caves right now,” the conductor said, staring blankly ahead. “And they’ve messed with my controls. I won’t have enough time to stop us.”
“Dammit,” Agent Everybody snapped, before heading back toward the commuter cars.
Strike followed him. “Can someone please fill me in on what exactly is happening right now?”
“We need to unhook the passenger cars from the train,” Agent Everybody replied. “Right now.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t have permission to enter the caves. And if we don’t have permission to enter the caves, the spirits inside won’t be happy.”
“The spirits?”
“Yes. The cave is haunted. The locals get permission to use the cave for transportation once every few weeks, but they have to ask for permission first. If they don’t, the spirits inside don’t react well.”
Strike shook his head. “Haunted train caves. Gotta love Capricious.”
Agent Everybody opened the door that led to the first commuter car. “Let’s go. We gotta head outside and make sure we don’t bring these passengers in there with us.”
Stepping outside, Strike braced himself from the rushing wind. The train was speeding along the track now, faster than ever. The hero could feel the vehicle listing as it went around a bend, and judging from the sound of its engine frantically pumping its wheels, he knew they were traveling at a rate the train was never supposed to reach. Looking down, he could see the hitch where the front car connected to the passenger cars, and beyond that, he could see the blur of the track zoom
ing by.
“We need to get these pedestrians away from the train,” Agent Everybody said, as the conductor dashed past them, leaping onto the exterior of the next car before dashing inside. “Ever unhook passenger cars from a moving train before?”
“Oh yeah, all the time. It’s how I spent my April vacation.” Strike looked down at the steel hitch that joined the cars together. “Could I just blast it with my lightning?”
“I don’t see why not. I don’t care how we do it, as long as those cars get stopped where they are. Jump across and—”
Suddenly, a gremlin leapt down from the train’s roof, landing on Strike’s shoulders. It knocked the hero back and he fell onto the metal grating floor of the exterior of the train car.
“Dammit!” Agent Everybody shouted. As he looked to the roof, eight more gremlins jumped down on them from above. Strike blasted the two-foot-tall pests with lightning as they scratched and clawed at him, and while the creatures weren’t doing much damage, they were enough of a distraction to keep Strike from unhooking the train cars.
“Oh, I see what you’re trying to do here,” a voice said from the train’s roof.
Strike looked up. A skinny, gangly, dark-haired man with glasses and a pointy nose was standing on top of the train, directly above them. He was wearing a brown, dusty, ancient robe on top of a tattered white shirt, which looked just as old as the robe. Unlike his clothes, however, the man appeared young—no older than twenty-five.
“You’re concerned about the spirits,” the grinning man on the train’s roof said. “I don’t blame you—they are awfully upset if you enter without permission.”
Strike knocked a gremlin off the train and onto the speeding tracks. “Something tells me that’s the Gremlin Wizard.”
The Gremlin Wizard laughed. “I’m insulted, Strike! Acting like you don’t know who I am. How rude. Everyone knows the Gremlin Wizard!”
“Sorry,” Strike replied, “but I’m working my way down the super-villain ladder. Something tells me you are somewhere between F and G-list, so I’m sure I’ll be meeting you soon.”
