“I wanted to say thank you for saving me back on Solis,” Zykeiah began.
She waved her off. “We are a team.”
“There’s more. I wanted to say that I understand and support your decision to be with Marion.”
Sarah waited for her to go on as she tried to figure out what Zykeiah was talking about. Finally, she decided to ask her.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know that he’s in love with you. I also know that you are in love with him. I respect that.” Zykeiah stepped back, close to the fireplace with an expression of amusement at Sarah’s confusion.
Sarah stood up slowly and held Zykeiah by the shoulders. “Did you just say that Marion was in love with me?”
“Yes, didn’t you know?”
“Are you sure?” Sarah’s heart started to pound and she could hear the thump-thump-thump speed up the more she thought about Zykeiah’s words. “How do you know?”
“I know him. I have known it since you first arrived. Plus, I could read it in his eyes. Even just a few moments before in the hallway, his eyes still held love for you.”
Sarah shook Zykeiah lightly before letting her go. “He was in the hallway?”
“Yes,” she replied, surprised.
Sarah stepped back from Zykeiah and opened the door. “Where is he?”
“He left,” she said calmly.
Sarah didn’t bother to ask where as she raced into the hallway, down the stairs and down the main hallway to Marion’s quarters. She had no idea that he would be up and about today. Not only that, but if what Zykeiah said was true, he was still in love with her. The urge to talk to him, to sort out his feelings and hers was too great to delay.
She ran down the hallway, too eager to walk politely. His door had been closed and she knocked hard and waited for him to beckon her in.
No answer.
Again and again she pounded on his quarters’ door without success.
She checked the Great Hall.
He was not there.
She checked the queen’s quarters. Octiva told her that Marion had not been to the Queen’s room that day.
“Are you well, child?” Octiva asked.
“Yes. I need to find him.” Sarah panted for she had been running around searching for him.
“Is he in danger? You are out of breath.”
“No.” Sarah smiled. “He is not in any danger.”
She left the queen’s quarters disheartened. As she emerged from the Great Hall, Zykeiah came out from her quarters.
“No luck?”
“No,” Sarah said sadly.
Just as the two were talking, Kalah and Amana were coming up the stairs from the stables. Amana trailed behind Kalah and they soon joined them.
“Zykeiah, good to have you back on Veloris.” Kalah playfully punched her in the arm.
“Have either of you seen Marion?” Sarah asked heatedly.
Kalah raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had never heard her tone become so irritated and forceful. “Yes. He said he was going to Stocklah.”
Stocklah.
Sarah pushed past them and fled down the stairs to the stables. She picked Majaga, climbed on and hurried out into the residing afternoon day. He could not have gotten far. Zykeiah had only been in her room for a few moments.
She encouraged her Majaga with hard, stinging shots of the whip. She howled in protest and pain, but sped up.
Sarah could see him as she approached. His broad back, dark shiny skin and black pants made a stark contrast to the blankets of white, puffy snow. She called out to him.
“Marion!”
He turned around. She saw he had on his tinted glasses. She remembered how he looked the first time she saw him with those glasses and her heart pounded hard and fast against her chest.
She finally reached him at the base of the trail to Stocklah. The wind had picked up and it blew with force and strength, scattering her hair and giving her chills.
“Kalah said you were headed to Stocklah?” She smiled, as her stomach grew nervous. What would he say to her now?
“Yes, I need to clear my head. How is Zykeiah?”
She thought it odd that he would ask about Zykeiah. “She’s fine.”
He nodded gravely. He had not smiled since seeing her and Sarah began to wonder if Zykeiah had lied to her.
“I’m glad to see you’re out and about,” she said lightly.
Marion merely nodded and gave a half-hearted shrug.
“What’s the matter? Do you need me to go get Octiva?” she asked as she placed her hand on his arm.
“I am fine,” he replied, as he felt her hand on his arm; it was soft and warm. He was not fine. He fought back the urge to kiss her.
Sarah gazed up at the heavy cloud coverage and their darkened state. “It looks like a big storm is approaching. Perhaps you should not go to Stocklah alone.”
“I plan to move to the Southern Forest…alone. I might as well get used to it,” he sighed. “Besides, Stocklah clears my head.”
“What?” She felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. Fear took its icy fingers and squeezed her heart. “Why? Aren’t you happy here?”
“I – I,” he faltered and turned away from her. “It is what I want.”
“Is it?” Sarah muttered. “I love you. Don’t do this.”
He turned back to her. “What did you say?”
“I said don’t do this,” Sarah said slowly.
“No, before that,” he pleaded.
Sarah tried to remember for it seemed extremely important to him. He had shoved his tinted glasses to the top of his head and his eyes burrowed into hers intently.
“I think I said, ‘I love you. Don’t do this’.”
Marion’s face seemed to crack into a smile as he reached for her, bringing her into his embrace and covering her with kisses. “Oh, Sarah. I love you, too!”
He picked her up and swung her about as if she was a three-year-old child.
“Did you mean it Sarah?” Marion asked as he let go of her.
“Yes,” she said with a laugh.
He joined her and was soon laughing, too. If felt good to laugh, to feel, again. He took her hand and helped her onto her danker beast, making sure to allow his hands to linger about her waist. “I love you, Sarah.”
He appeared to walk on clouds as he made his way back to his danker beast and climbed on. Joy seeped from him as he smiled and kept his eyes on Sarah.
They rode back to the castle and arrived just in time for evening meals.
Queen Zoë sat at her familiar spot at the front of the Great Hall and Octiva stood behind her. The Minister Knights, Sarah and Amana took their customary seats at the table closest to the queen.
Queen Zoë raised her glass. The Minister Knights did the same. “Dear loyal servants, knights and guests. Valek has been defeated, the enslaved souls set free and the war between Earth 3012 and Saturn Four a thing of history. Raise your glasses, cheers and voices in celebration of the Minister Knights and Sarah.”
Cheers erupted and the celebration was underway. Sarah danced with Marion throughout many songs. Kalah and Amana drank ale and danced some as well.
Zykeiah found herself cornered by both Mary and Tate, who wanted to hear the stories of the rescue mission.
Queen Zoë watched all carefully with joy.
Epilogue
On the moon of Chaka, Manola covered her body with another blanket. The sun never reached the western side of Chaka, so the air was cold and all other life had been cut short or failed to exist at all.
She cursed the darkened night sky. It could be morning for all she knew; it was always dark on Chaka.
The abandoned wooden shack had been ideal. There were blankets and several stoves to cook food and warm the room. She didn’t need that, nor was she in danger of starving to death. She had died many centuries ago, but her powers kept her spirit alive.
Her wounds had closed up shortly after Zykeiah had made them.
She could not be killed. She smiled as she thought of how vigorously her precious had fought.
She got up from the floor and reached into the empty cabinet. She removed the orange-colored box that once belonged to Valek. She placed it on the makeshift table constructed of various discarded parts and garbage.
She peered inside and winked.
Valek’s soul spun around to face her and floated closer to the glass.
“Get me out of here!” he roared.
Manola licked her painted lips and said, “Soon, my precious.”
The End
NOBODY GETS THE GIRL
A Superhero Novel
James Maxey
Copyright © 2003 by James Maxey
Nobody Gets the Girl now has a soundtrack!
Singer/songwriter Jonah Knight has recorded an EP of six songs inspired by the novel.
For links to the songs and more information about Jonah, visit his website, www.jonahofthesea.com.
For Tony St. Clair,
even though he’s wrong about Thor being stronger than the Hulk.
Prologue
A Damn Fine Act of Terror
Seattle burned. The night sky smoldered a hellish red, as flames reflected off dust and steam. The horrible smoke rendered most senses useless. People stumbled over debris on the sidewalk, unable to see through teary eyes. The fumes burned their lungs, and filled their mouths and noses with a sickening chemical stench of burning carpet. There were too many noises. People were screaming, sirens and alarms blared over the waterfall roar of the inferno. Glass shattered and crashed upon the city streets.
And above it all, explosions. Just when the roar of the last blast fell silent, another would follow, throwing people to the sidewalk. The Earth shook as if a giant were stamping its feet.
Which, in fact, was exactly what was happening. Those people who through luck, good or bad, had a vantage point above the smoke and destruction were greeted with a disturbing sight this night. Waddling through downtown Seattle, with a swaying, tottering rhythm, was a one-hundred-foot-tall baby doll. Where the doll’s head should have been was a pistol, a gleaming Saturday night special the size of school bus. The doll would toddle forward a few blocks, knocking down walls and shattering glass as it swayed, then, bracing itself, would turn its gun-gaze on a nearby skyscraper and let fly with an enormous bullet.
The doll had been wandering the streets for half an hour. It seemed to have no plan or purpose other than destruction. It was impossible to say whether it was by chance or design that it arrived at the most famous structure of the Seattle skyline, the Space Needle. For a moment, it waddled past the Needle, seemingly oblivious to its presence. Then it turned its horrible muzzle toward the structure.
Half a world away, a man with his feet kicked up on the coffee table chuckled with pleasure as the Needle tumbled to the ground. His name was Rex Monday.
“That, my friend, is a damn fine act of terror if I do say so myself,” said Monday, waving toward the TV.
His “friend” was an old man, very thin, dressed in clothes so worn and dirty any civilized person would have burned them. The old man watched the carnage playing out on the screen as he crunched on the unpopped kernels he’d dug from the bottom of the bag of popcorn in his hand. “I reckon. Sure. But what’s in it for you? I’m grateful for the job, Mr. Monday. Not much work for a carny geek these days. But, as long as you’re going to be tearing up buildings, shouldn’t you be stealing stuff? Send me in. I bet I can find a bank to chew into or something.”
“You think small, friend,” said Monday. “What’s in it for me is that he hates it. He hates that he can’t outthink me, that he can’t predict me, that he can’t protect the world from me.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Know. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Oh yeah,” said the old man, who held the bag up to make sure he’d finished the contents. Seeing that he had, he wadded up the bag, and ate it in one mouthful. As he chewed, he said, “Your, uh, enemy. Still think it couldn’t hurt to scoop up some jewelry or something.”
“Petty baubles,” said Monday. “Worthless. Meaningless. There’s a grander prize at stake in this game.”
“What’s that?” asked the old man.
“The world.”
None of this had anything to do with Richard Rogers. Richard would read about the rampage in Seattle on the internet tomorrow, just like the rest of the world. The news these days sometimes seemed like an unending chain of tragedy and despair. But by lunch he’d be firing off e-mail jokes about it to his friends, feeling only a little guilty. He was the first to admit there was nothing funny about it, nothing at all. Richard knew that in the wake of these attacks there were people left homeless, spouses widowed, children orphaned. Only an insensitive clod would be writing jokes before the dust settled. Still, gee whiz, how could you not laugh at the idea of a freakin’ giant doll tearing down the Space Needle? It helped that these things always seemed to happen far away, in cities a lot bigger than his. They didn’t touch his life directly.
At least, not yet.
Chapter One
Nobody Home
“Yeah, all my life I’ve been lucky,” Richard said, transitioning from driving jokes into current events jokes. “Lucky I don’t live in D.C., for one thing. You been following this? The Dome?”
There were maybe twelve people in the audience now. A few were still laughing from the last punch line. A handful nodded their heads at the mention of the Dome.
“I mean, talk about a waste of money,” said Richard. “Seventeen billion dollars this thing’s costing. Gonna put a big old dome over the entire city. Climate control year round. There’s, what? Two million people living under this thing? Three million? You could buy umbrellas for everybody for a lot less than seventeen billion. Or maybe not, if the Pentagon was in charge of it. Then we’d be buying the XJ-11 combat ready umbrella. Not only rainproof but bulletproof. They’d weigh forty-five pounds each.”
He wielded the mike-stand like a very heavy umbrella and staggered a few feet across the stage, grunting under its weight. The audience laughed hard. One of the first lessons Richard had learned about stand-up comedy was that he could make anything seem funny if he attached it to a silly walk.
He straightened up and put the mike back into the stand. “Thanks! You’ve been a great audience! I’m Richard Rogers! I’ll be back here next month!”
He bounded from the stage and shook a few hands. He felt wired, buzzing, full of the same manic energy that always hit him after a set. The charge was the same with twelve people in the audience as with a hundred. This is why he’d drive four hours on a weeknight to perform at the Stokesville Ramada’s comedy club’s open mike.
Making his way through the small crowd, he arrived at the bar.
“Good set,” said Billy the bartender, who was already filling a glass with Richard’s usual beer.
“Thanks,” said Richard as he took the glass. “Small crowd though.”
“Eh,” said Billy. “It’s raining. Never a big crowd when it’s nasty out.”
“Maybe I’ll start driving to D.C.,” said Richard. “Not many nasty nights there anymore.”
“Thought you didn’t like the Dome,” said Billy.
“Ah, who cares. It’s too weird to get really worked up about. Every day I watch the news and think, ‘They’re just making this stuff up.’ They’ve got a bunch of ex–comic book writers sitting in the back room cranking out these crazy stories. Probably cheaper than hiring reporters. I mean, right now the government is telling us that the most wanted terrorist in the world is somebody named Rex Monday. Excuse me, but didn’t he fight Dick Tracey?”
Richard grew aware of a presence behind him stepping a little too much into his personal space. He looked over his shoulder. It was a woman. She’d caught his eye a few times when he was onstage. She was tall, good looking, maybe a few years older than him, but very attractive.
“You were good up there,�
�� she said, taking the stool next to him. “My name’s Rose.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m Richard.”
“So what are you doing here on an open mike night?” she asked. “You’re better than most of the pros I’ve seen in here. You should be paid for this.”
“Thanks again,” said Richard. “I don’t suppose you’d happen to be an agent, would you?”
“No. I’m the district sales rep for Oxford Financial. I travel a lot. When I’m in town I usually come here. Really, I’ve seen a lot of comedians, and you’re very talented.”
Richard shrugged. “I’ve thought about turning pro, but it’s not likely to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you know. I didn’t really discover I enjoyed doing this until I was already neck deep in something else. I head a tech support unit at FirstSouth. I can’t afford to quit that and hit the circuits in hope of some big break. For the time being, the Stokesville Ramada’s as far as I travel.”
“I wish this was as far as I traveled,” said Rose. “My counterpart in the Carolinas quit so I’m covering four states now. But it’s not all bad. Some parts of life on the road I really like.”
“Such as?”
“Meeting new people,” said Rose, moving even closer to Richard. “I feel more like who I want to be when I’m talking to someone for the first time.”
“Hmm,” said Richard.
“You must understand,” said Rose, lightly touching his arm. “You’re a different person when you’re onstage? On the road, you can be anyone you want to be.”
Richard nodded. “Yeah. I do feel like a different person up there. Only it’s not really different. It’s like who I really am. It’s everywhere else in my life I feel a bit out of place.”
She touched his arm again. “So you do understand. Funny people are often the most insightful.”
Richard looked at her hand which was lingering on his arm. He suddenly felt rather warm.
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