Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb

by D. R. Martin

  Up the avenue stood a big, ornamental gate encrusted in sinuous, climbing dragons in red enamel and gold leaf. A green metal roof the shape of a witch’s hat crowned the structure.

  This was one of the four ceremonial entrances into Jadetown—looming right over General Tang Boulevard. Johnny had read about them in a tourist magazine at the hotel. The two youngsters marched beneath the gate, half a dozen ghosts trailing behind—most of them immigrants from the Jade Kingdom.

  For an hour, Johnny and Nina wandered through narrow, winding streets. Vivid aromas of spices and cooking oils wafted from the open-air restaurants. Roosters crowed here and there. It seemed almost every window had someone leaning out of it, waiting for the new dawn.

  The two friends talked in spurts. About the murders. About the trip. About Mel’s interest in Danny.

  As Nina had observed, Johnny and she were practically cousins. But they hadn’t gabbed this much in a while.

  Johnny would never forget the day Nina came to live with them.

  At first she had been shy and clung to Uncle Louie. But she’d lost both parents, too. So they had that in common. By and by the two kids began to talk, and they talked a lot about having no mom, no pop anymore. Before long they were hiking the woods together. Nina tagged along when Johnny took pictures, and he hovered over her shoulder when she monkeyed around with her radios. She impressed the heck out of him by actually flying the little floatplane that Uncle Louie owned—making her first solo flight when she was only eleven. Johnny had seen her do it.

  Both kids were fascinated by gizmos, gizmos of any kind. And they sure did enjoy having adventures. But small adventures. Nothing like this, Johnny thought, nothing that could get you killed. And since he wanted to live to be a hundred, he preferred adventures that were exciting but not lethal.

  “Hey, Johnny,” Nina said, as they studied a shop window full of exquisite ivory figurines. “Did you worry you were going to die on the Night Goose?”

  Johnny regarded her with surprise. Could she read minds or something?

  “Uh, not really. I just did what I figured needed doing. I had to keep that Steppe Warrior away from Mel as long as I could. If the colonel hadn’t arrived…” He shrugged. “I’d have done anything to stop that ghost.”

  “But you could have gotten killed,” Nina said. “Both of you could have gotten killed.”

  “Guess so. I could get hit by a truck this afternoon. Better to die for a good reason than no reason.”

  Nina kept staring in the shop window. “Do you think we’re going to get through this whole thing alive?”

  “Listen, Sparks,” Johnny answered, trying to sound self-confident. “Everything’ll be fine. No one’s gonna try to hurt us again. Promise.”

  * * *

  After taking some pictures in a market, Johnny paid for two bowls of rice, vegetables, and fish. He never could handle chopsticks, so the smiling cook found him a wooden spoon. Of course, Nina had no trouble with chopsticks.

  The two youngsters gobbled up every bit, sitting on a couple of overturned wooden boxes. That’s when Johnny remembered to look at his pocket watch.

  “Jeez Louise!” he exclaimed. “Almost seven. We’d better get back.”

  It didn’t take Johnny long to realize that he had no idea exactly where they were. But he knew how to find out. Turning around, he addressed his troop of ghostly hangers-on. “Am I going in the right direction to get back to the Paragon Hotel?”

  “No, young master,” said a pretty girl ghost, bowing. She could have been thirteen when she died, or eighteen. Johnny couldn’t tell. She had on a blue silk gown and elaborate headdress with dangling pearls. “The Paragon Hotel is on the other side of Jadetown, almost a full mile and a half from here.”

  “Will you take me there?”

  “Certainly, young master.” The dead girl lifted her daintily painted eyebrows. “May we know your name?”

  He blinked. “Oh, pardon me. I’m Johnny Graphic. I’m a news photographer. This is my friend, Nina Bain.”

  The wraith smiled and bowed modestly. “My name is Su Li.”

  Johnny bowed in return, and then poked Nina in the ribs. She bowed as well, following his lead.

  So off they marched, Su Li leading the way. Soon they found themselves in a larger marketplace. Johnny and Nina wove their way through gaggles of people. More ghosts had joined them.

  They walked by a woman who had a table full of handsome watercolor paintings. Landscapes, flowers, that sort of thing. Her face revealed Steppe heritage. Johnny wanted to stop and look at the pictures, but he had no time to spare. He thought the woman stared at him a little oddly.

  The two youngsters were halfway across the square when the watercolor painter came running after them, shouting, “Johnny Graphic? Are you Johnny Graphic?”

  Johnny pivoted around—surprised to be recognized so far from home—and said, “Yeah, ma’am, I am. What’s the problem?”

  “Big problem, Mister Graphic. Steppe Warriors on the other side of the square. No one’s seen them here since they killed my father.”

  Johnny had to think for a few seconds, then his jaw dropped. “You’re one of Monkge Eng’s daughters?”

  She nodded briskly. “Yes, Betty Mongke.”

  “Steppe Warriors, you said?” he gasped. “Where?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing.

  Johnny was far too flustered to say “Pleased to meet you.” He twirled around again and saw the warrior wraiths at the far side of the square. Among them was the very same female, Checheg, who had dueled with Mel in the upstairs hallway. She gripped her saber in the only hand she had left. Somehow, she had followed them halfway across the continent. With her were two other Steppe Warriors. And behind them came a rank of ghostly thugs—surly hatchet men who looked eager to use the bloody weapons in their hands.

  “Not good, Sparks,” Johnny moaned to his friend. “Now we’re really in a pickle!”

  Chapter 23

  “You have to run,” Betty Mongke whispered to the two kids, as one of the Steppe Warriors swaggered toward them. “Go into the laundry over there. Out through the back. Go right. To the golden ginseng on General Tang Boulevard. Then left.”

  Then Johnny heard Su Li’s reedy voice behind them. “You are not alone. Ask us to fight.”

  Johnny and Betty Mongke turned around. Su Li and several of her ghostly companions had produced axes and swords of their own.

  Of course, Johnny thought. How could he be so dumb? If he asked, and the Jadetown ghosts agreed, they became real warriors with real weapons.

  “Fight them for me!” implored Johnny, looking right at Su Li. “Please.”

  Every single ghost nodded and bowed. “To defend you and to avenge our friend Mongke Eng will be an honor,” Su Li said.

  “Follow me when I tell you to,” said Betty Monkge. In her right hand she held a broad, bloodied cleaver, just snatched from a butcher’s stall a few feet away.

  Most of the people in the square had melted away. Windows all around had cracked open and people were peeking out.

  One of the Steppe Warriors came forward, leading his pony, stopping a good twenty paces before the boy and his friends—right in the middle of a table full of colorful squashes.

  “I am Unegan,” he said, in a voice that sounded like a dozen hissing snakes. “You will come with us, boy. No harm will befall you or your friends. We only want you to take us to your sister.”

  “To kill her,” Johnny snarled. “You’re gonna use me for bait.”

  “The boy’s right,” Betty Monkge said, her voice simmering with anger. “No one can trust foul murderers like you.”

  Betty touched Johnny and Nina’s shoulders, and drew in a deep breath. “Into the laundry. Now!”

  Johnny and Nina dashed after Betty Mongke, dodging between abandoned stalls and carts. He could see the gaudy red-and-gold sign for “Wing’s Fine Laundry.” The clatter of ponies’ hooves and throaty shouts of anger erupted in the square. Th
en came terrible screams and the clanging of metal on metal. The battle of the ghosts had begun.

  Johnny, Nina, and Betty had almost made it to the laundry. Just as they were about to dive in through its front door, two hideous wraiths bearing axes popped out of the grimy window of the restaurant next door. It was hard to say who was more surprised—the living or the dead. For a few seconds they stared at each other, slack-jawed.

  The first to collect her wits was Betty Mongke, who gave Johnny and Nina their marching orders in an urgent exclamation. “Off with you now and good luck!”

  Before Johnny could utter a peep, Betty shoved him and Nina in through the laundry’s door, and charged the hatchet men.

  With Nina right behind him, Johnny pushed his way through a forest of packed clothing racks. Somewhere in there a wool overcoat stripped away his camera bag. But he managed to hang onto his Zoom 4x5. Two scrawny, shirtless men hand-ironing trousers shouted at them as Johnny and Nina rushed out the back door.

  They emerged into a dim, filthy alleyway. The smell of chemicals, rotten food, and ripe human odors assaulted their noses. The only light came from a ribbon of sky many stories overhead.

  “She said ‘right,’” Johnny panted. “Far as the golden ginseng. What’s a ginseng?”

  “A root kinda shaped like a deformed human figure,” answered Nina, her eyes full of dread.

  “Root,” said Johnny. “Human shape. Got it. Now let’s go.” He grabbed Nina’s hand and off they charged to the right, up the alley. They breathlessly hopped and skipped, trying to avoid stepping in mysterious seepages and decayed items of food. Johnny kept looking back over his shoulder. Maybe we got away, he thought hopefully. Maybe this won’t turn out to be a disaster after all.

  Then, right after they crossed a narrow street and pounded back into the alley, Nina caught a toe on a protruding cobblestone and sprawled face-first with a yelp of shock. Right into a puddle of unknown, slimy, green-colored crud.

  “Nooo!” she howled, struggling to get back on her feet. She turned and glared at Johnny—as if this somehow was all his fault.

  He glared right back and grumbled, “Don’t look at me! You’re the one who wanted to come!”

  Before Nina could sputter a reply, he grabbed her hand again and hauled her away at an urgent trot. A few minutes later they saw a bright, busy street dead ahead. Maybe General Tang Boulevard. Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. Almost there, almost safe.

  “BOY!”

  Johnny stopped in his tracks, his blood turning to ice water. He turned around and saw the Steppe Warrior who had addressed him in the square. The wraith was forty paces behind them, legs spread, with an arrow nocked and aimed.

  “You will come with me,” the specter said.

  Johnny gingerly took a step backward. Without looking at Nina, he whispered, “Run, Sparks. Now!”

  The sodden, bedraggled Nina gave him a desolate, conflicted look.

  “Go!” Johnny ordered.

  With a grimace, Nina dashed off toward the busy main street.

  Feeling a terrible dread, Johnny waited for the TWANG of the bowstring. But the ghost let Nina live. She had escaped.

  “I can kill you whenever I want,” the Steppe Warrior said, walking toward Johnny. “Come with me and I won’t hurt you.”

  Livid with anger, Johnny spat, “Nuts to you!” and bolted for the street.

  This time there was a loud twang and a ghostly arrow slashed through his pant leg, grazing the outside of his right calf. He felt a searing flash of pain, then heard the zwwwing of a sword coming out of a scabbard.

  Johnny took off, half limping, half running. In a window up ahead he could see a giant ginseng root—shaped like a deformed human, just as Nina had described it.

  In a wink, he figured out what he had to do. The instant his feet hit the boulevard’s sidewalk, he darted a dozen feet to the right and squeezed his back against the brick wall of the Third Jadetown National Bank. He knew his pursuer would have seen which way he’d gone.

  Sure enough, the bandy-legged specter burst out of the alley and cut right, without looking.

  A mistake.

  A huge mistake.

  Johnny charged the specter the way he had seen cricket bowlers do it in newsreels, with a looping, powerful overhand pitch. But instead of grasping a cricket ball, he gripped the leather strap of his Zoom 4x5 and swung it up over his head—putting every drop of centrifugal force into it that his 75-pound body could provide.

  The ghost’s eyes snapped wide open. He put up his curved blade to parry the blow. It was too late for anything else.

  The camera smashed through the Steppe Warrior’s hands.

  It broke his etheric fingers and wrist with a terrible cruuunch.

  The sword went flying.

  Then the heavy black box caught the warrior wraith full in the face, shattering a dozen bones—from the eyebrows down to the jaw.

  Johnny landed on top of the Steppe Warrior, crushing him to the pavement. All around them, people scattered in every direction, screaming.

  His heart pounding like a steam locomotive, his vision going red, Johnny pinned down the wounded ghost. He lifted up his heavy camera and smashed it down into the ghost’s face again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Johnny wanted to crush this Steppe Warrior into jelly.

  He held the smashed, ruined camera high, for another blow, but oddly his arm was quaking, shaking.

  Suddenly he felt very, very tired. His calf was beginning to throb and burn where the arrow had sliced him. A dark bloodstain spread down his trouser leg.

  He stood up all wobbly—still gripping his wrecked Zoom 4x5—and started to limp away, toward the grand entrance gate he and Nina had walked beneath two hours before. Odd, how the world was spinning around.

  Just before crumpling to the sidewalk, Johnny thought he saw blue-clad cavalrymen galloping toward him.

  Chapter 24

  “This job is way harder than I thought it would be.”

  Johnny was sitting up in the hotel bed in his pajamas—feeling washed-out and still a little shaky. They had cleaned his leg wound at the hospital, and stitched and dressed it with a big, uncomfortable bandage. But it continued to throb something awful. He didn’t like pain. Pain hurt.

  “I’ve got news for you, John, old man,” said Uncle Louie, towering over the foot of the bed, arms crossed. “Jobs usually aren’t that easy. That’s why they call ’em work.”

  Uncle Louie still didn’t look very happy about Nina and Johnny’s Jadetown adventure. But he and Mel had simply asked Johnny to think about what Lydia Graphic might have told him. That, Uncle Louie said, ought to be lecture enough. And it was. Johnny could almost hear his mom’s voice telling him what a foolish thing it had been, going into Jadetown without the colonel. But Johnny knew that if a good story demanded it, he probably would risk his neck again someday. Any news photog would do the same thing.

  “Hey, Johnny, there’s a picture of you on the front page,” Mel shouted from the sitting room. She came into Johnny’s bedroom, holding up the new edition of Silver City’s Evening Standard. Nina followed, hard on her heels.

  “You’re being bundled into the ambulance,” continued Mel. “It’s a swell shot.”

  Johnny grunted his displeasure as he peered at the photo. The only thing worse than not having his own pix on the front page was having a shot of him out cold and supine on the front page.

  The big black headline proclaimed:

  Two of the four photos showed the market looking as if a tornado had ripped through it—carts and stands tipped over, windows broken. Another showed Betty Mongke, her right arm in a sling, her other hand proudly showing off a battered cleaver. The last shot, at the bottom of the page, depicted Johnny on a stretcher, being put into an ambulance. He could only shake his head when he saw it.

  Mel and Nina sat down on the edge of the bed. “What’s the matter, Johnny?” Nina said, grabbing the paper from Mel. “This’ll be
great for your career.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve had kind of a bad day,” Johnny sputtered. “Fighting hand to hand with an etheric killer. Smashing my favorite camera. Getting thirteen stitches. The nurse had to take my pants off. Cut the pant leg and yanked ’em right off. Pretty embarrassing. And I don’t think having a front-page photo of me knocked senseless on a stretcher will exactly help my career.”

  Then Uncle Louie cleared his throat. “There’s something else we have to talk about. Something you don’t know about yet.”

  Uncle Louie looked uncomfortably serious and a cold lump formed in the pit of Johnny’s stomach. “Yeah? What?”

  “Two telegrams came in after you went to bed last night,” said Mel. “Both from Mr. Cargill.”

  Johnny gulped. “Uh-huh?”

  “A judge has forbidden the Clarion, or any news outlet, from publishing our stories in the Plains Republic.”

  Johnny scowled. “Well, that stinks. Nobody at home’s gonna see our stuff. Without our stories, the Clarion’s circulation numbers won’t go up, like Mr. Cargill wants. So what’s he doing about it?”

  “I guess the Clarion’s attorneys are going to court to try and get the government’s ban overturned,” said Uncle Louie. “But there’s no telling how long that’ll take.”

  Mel and Uncle Louie and even Nina still looked pretty grim. That must mean the second item of news was even worse.

  “And you know that Dame Honoria went to hide out on her island in Rotonesia,” Mel said.

  Johnny nodded. “Yeah. Gorton Island. Her favorite place in the world outside of Gilbeyshire.”

  Mel sighed dismally. “She’s vanished.”

  “You mean she might be dead?” Johnny yelped.

  Uncle Louie jumped in. “We don’t know that for a fact. Authorities searched all over the island. There wasn’t anybody there. No living people. No ghosts. The police talked to folks on nearby islands, but no one knows a thing.”