Everwild (The Skinjacker Trilogy)

by Neal Shusterman

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  "Fine!" The Ripper went over to Johnnie-O, who was now whimpering in a corner, clutching his intensely empty head. "Who needs it?" said the Ripper. "Probably got worms anyway." Then he pushed Johnnie-O's brain right back inside him.

  The Ripper then scrambled over the vertically mounted chairs and reached up toward the spacecraft's control panel--then hit a button.

  A hatch popped open like a trapdoor right beneath poor Johnnie-O, who was still just recovering from his brain-ripping ordeal, and he plunged through the open hatch into darkness. Nick could hear him tumbling down a tunnel, and crashing into whatever filled the cargo hold of the shuttle.

  "Was that really necessary?" shouted Nick.

  "You're next!" threatened the Ripper.

  Nick was angry enough to pull the pin on the grenade and blow them both to smithereens, but he fought the urge, found a foothold, and climbed toward the Ripper.

  "We're just here to talk! Why can't you calm down long enough to listen!"

  "I warned you!" said the Ripper, and he reached in through Nick's chest, gripped his grubby hands around Nick's memory of a heart, and tugged.

  To the amazement of them both, the Ripper did not get Nick's heart at all. Instead his hand came out covered in chocolate.

  It surprised Nick as much as the Ripper, but he tried not to show it.

  The Ripper stared at his hand, then at Nick, and for

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  the first time the cranky Confederate Afterlight was truly frightened. "What ... are you ... ?"

  And although Nick never, ever used the words himself, seeing the Ripper's cocoa-coated hand brought home a growing reality he could no longer deny.

  "I am the Chocolate Ogre," Nick said. "And you've made me very ... VERY ... MAD!"

  The look of terror on the Ripper's face was the most satisfying thing Nick had seen for a very long time. The Ripper's eyes were locked by Nick's angry gaze, and all the fight drained out of him. There was something about the Ripper's eyes--something about his face that wasn't quite right. Nick wasn't sure what it was, so he filed it away in his mind.

  "What are you going to do to me?" the Ripper asked.

  "Nothing. If you let my friend go."

  Despite his fear of the Chocolate Ogre, the Ripper hesitated ... but he did quickly glance to a particular green button on the console--a button covered by a clear plastic flap to prevent it from being pressed accidentally.

  This, Nick knew, was a "tell." The Ripper's eyes had just given away exactly which button to push that would free Johnnie-O. All Nick had to do was press it. Nick reached up and flipped open the clear plastic cover.

  "No! Don't!"

  Nick savored the look of terrified helplessness on the Ripper's face for a moment. Then he pressed the green button.

  Upon taking up residence in the shuttle many years ago, the Afterlight known as Zach the Ripper had gotten rid of the

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  craft's original payload--a bunch of satellites and experiments that weren't doing anyone in Everlost any good. Besides, the massive cargo hold was the perfect place for the Ripper to store Everlost's finest weapon collection.

  The Ripper had weapons and artillery of all kinds. Having developed an intimate knowledge of every military base within a hundred miles, the Ripper knew exactly where to find the best arms, and was highly skilled at ripping items--even heavy, awkward ones--from the living world, and into Everlost.

  Living-world news reports regularly told of weapons disappearing. "Military mismanagement," the reports would say, because the rational world demanded rational explanations. The one time an unlucky marine dared to tell the truth of what he saw (a hand that reached in through a hole in space, waved to him, then disappeared with an AK-47 rifle), nobody believed it. The man was sent for psychological evaluation, and then promptly discharged from military service.

  The Ripper did not know or care about such consequences. All that mattered was the collection, which filled two thirds of the cargo hold ... until the day Nick opened the cargo hold doors.

  To Johnnie-O, it began as a loud mechanical grinding, echoing in the massive hold around him. He had come down on the piles of weapons, but, still reeling from his brief empty-headed ordeal, he hadn't yet realized the nature of the Ripper's "collection." The cargo hold door opened like a parting curtain, revealing a million-dollar view of the

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  Atlantic Ocean. Then the pile beneath him began to shift, and that's when he realized he was sitting atop a nasty rats' nest of guns and explosives.

  In the flight deck, Nick had, for one crazy instant, thought the cargo door motor was the boosters igniting, and that by hitting the button, he had just blasted them all off into orbit.

  "Now you done it!" said the Ripper, hitting the button again and again, but the opening sequence couldn't stop once it started. "Those doors'll swing open wide--and it's all your stupid fault!" He peeked down into the hold, groaning, then ran for the entry hatch. Nick followed. They scurried down the unwieldy scaffold as the craft's huge cargo doors slowly, slowly opened. Once they reached the bottom, and Nick had a view of the cargo hold, he could see that it held a tottering haystack in shades of khaki and gunmetal gray. Gun muzzles and rifle butts stuck out every which way, but far worse than those were the rounded tips and tail fins randomly poking out of the weapon pile.

  "Are those ... bombs?"

  "Mortar shells, surface-to-air missiles, smart bombs," the Ripper said, with a hint of pride. "You know--the good stuff."

  The pile shifted as the doors continued to swing open. Several rifles fell out and toppled to the earth hundreds of feet below. Kudzu jumped out of the way, barking madly. And on top of the pile of weapons sat Johnnie-O, looking a little bit worried.

  "Don't move!" screamed Nick.

  "Kudzu!" screamed the Ripper. "C'mere, boy!" The dog

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  came running to the Ripper, its chain clanking on the deadspot tarmac. The Ripper knelt down and tried to unhook the dog from his chain, while up above, the pile swayed precariously in the wide-open cargo bay of the mystically suspended spacecraft.

  "It's okay," Johnnie-O shouted down to Nick. "It's okay, it's not gonna fall."

  But he didn't have the view Nick did. Nick could see the shifting of gun muzzles and rifle butts. Everything was starting to slide.

  Then Nick thought of something.

  "Your coin!" Nick shouted.

  Johnnie-O should have had it in his back pocket. So it would be there when he finally felt the urge to move on. Right now would be a good moment to feel that urge-- because just as Nick told the Ripper, Everlost physics was not an exact science, and not even Mary had written about what happens to an Afterlight that gets blown up.

  "Take your coin!" Nick said. "Hurry!"

  "I don't got it! I put it back in the bucket."

  "What? Why did you do that?"

  "For safekeeping!"

  Meanwhile the Ripper was in a panic as he struggled to free Kudzu. Nick went up to him, and the Ripper looked at Nick wild-eyed. "You stay away from my dog!"

  Nick ignored him, knelt down, and quickly unhooked the chain from the dog's collar. "Now run!" ordered Nick.

  The Ripper didn't need a second invitation. He took off sprinting, putting distance between himself and the tottering stockpile of artillery, with Kudzu at his heels.

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  "Just jump!" Nick called up to Johnnie-O, but instead of jumping Johnnie-O leaped from the stockpile to the wall of the cargo hold, and found a metal ridge to cling to--but the force of his jump set the mound of guns and explosives toppling. It all began a long cascade, out of the shuttle, to the ground below.

  Now Nick was the one in danger, and he ran for cover-- afraid to dive into the underbrush of the living world, for fear that diving would take him into the ground, where he'd begin the long, slow sink to the center of the earth. And so he ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

  He was barely twenty yards away when the first bomb hit the ground.<
br />
  One of the basic natural laws that one learns early in Everlost is that things that cross over always do what they were meant to do. Boats float, airships fly, and appliances run even if they're not plugged in. Unfortunately the same thing goes for bombs. They explode--especially bombs that were ecto-ripped, and had no good reason to be in Everlost in the first place.

  If anyone had been watching they would have thought the shuttle was lifting off. Flame and smoke blasted from the ground beneath the great spacecraft, expanding as the explosions multiplied and merged into a single massive blast.

  Nick was blown off his feet, and sent soaring through the air. Shrapnel tore through him--jagged, burning pieces of metal that left huge Swiss-cheese holes all over his body-- and still the explosions grew louder behind him.

  He landed, embedding in the living world so deep that

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  he almost went under. With little more than his head aboveground, it took all his will to push himself out of the earth. Had he been in any deeper, it would have been hopeless, and all his thrashing about would have done nothing but take him farther down. But bit by bit he hauled his shrapnel-blasted body upward. Perhaps the holes helped. Perhaps they made him lighter.

  The explosions had stopped by the time he pulled himself out of the ground, and he looked at his own damage. As always the wounds were painless, but that didn't mean the sensation was pleasant. He watched as the wounds healed themselves closed. Even though they were gone, they left a haunting memory of their presence, like the lingering feeling of nightmares.

  Nick turned back to the spacecraft to see what was left of it--and of Johnnie-O. To his surprise, the shuttle, the fuel tank, and boosters were all still there suspended in midair, completely undamaged. Perhaps the ship had been designed to withstand such explosions or perhaps its memory was too proud and permanent to ever be troubled by an attempt to take it down, whether intentional or accidental. Of course the same could not be said for the Ripper's rickety scaffold. It was completely gone, which was no surprise. Nick suspected the thing would have fallen if someone had blown on it too hard.

  Up in the now-empty cargo hold, Johnnie-O still clung to the inside of the hold, the structure of the shuttle having shielded him from the worst of the blast. Unable to hold on anymore, he slipped and fell, yelling all the way down. He hit the lip of the cargo hold, and bounced off it, tumbling

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  down the tail and careening off the shuttle engines, until landing face-first on the all-too-solid deadspot tarmac, a hundred and fifty feet below the spaceship.

  "Johnnie!" yelled Nick, racing to him.

  Johnnie-O sat up, dazed. "Am I blown up?"

  "No," said Nick, "you're okay."

  He looked no worse off than the shuttle itself, except for one thing--the cigarette that had perpetually hung from his lip since the moment he died was now gone--the only part of him incinerated by the explosion. Nick helped him to his feet and decided it was best not to point that out; best to let him discover it for himself once he was in a state of mind to notice.

  Then from behind them came a wail of absolute and utter despair.

  "My collection!" screamed the Ripper. "Look whatcha done to my collection!"

  Nick looked around him; twisted gun barrels and unrecognizable pieces of tortured metal littered the deadspot-- and beyond the deadspot even more destroyed weaponry was sinking into the ground of the living world.

  "Look whatcha done! Look whatcha done! It's all gone!"

  Nick had no sympathy, and stormed up to him. "What kind of idiot keeps a collection of live ammunition and armed bombs?"

  "I ain't no idjit," screamed the Ripper. "You're the idjit! I got nuthin' now, thanks to you!"

  And that's when Nick realized something.

  In truth he had realized it before, only it hadn't fully registered. It was there in the Ripper's eyes, in the shape

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  of the face, and in the lilt of the voice. Nick reached for the Ripper's Confederate cap, trying to pull it off, but of course it didn't come. Just like Nick's own tie, it was a permanent part of the Ripper.

  "Get yer hands off!" Zach the Ripper said, slapping Nick's hand away.

  But Nick knew this was no "Zach" at all.

  "You're a girl!"

  The Ripper's eyes narrowed, boldly staring right at him. "You got a problem with that?"

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  CHAPTER 7 A Fistful of Forever

  It was not uncommon once war was declared between the North and South for boys to lie about their age so they could serve. Nor was it uncommon for battle-ambitious girls to cut their hair and lie about their gender. Few got away with it, though.

  Fourteen year-old Zinnia Kitner was one of those few.

  Named after her mother's favorite flower, she had always hated her name--hated the fact that so many Southern girls of their day were named for such passive things as flowers: Violet. Rose. Magnolia. She shortened it to Zin, and allowed only her father to call her Zinnia.

  She was not a girl of privilege--no Southern belle. She knew little of fancy things and delicate education. In fact, she had no schooling, and hated the prissy girls of the South's high society. She had no love of slavery, either, but she did love her father and brothers who all hated the North.

  Then the South seceded from the Union, and war was declared. With her mother long dead, she knew she would be the only Kitner left at home; a Confederate War orphan left in the care of weepy neighbor women who wrung their

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  hands raw in vain attempts to worry their men home.

  Zinnia would have none of that. So she cut her hair, and practiced jutting her jaw and shifting her stance so she would look more like her brothers and less like herself. She became Zachariah Kitner. Then, through a combination of the exhaustion and nearsightedness of her recruitment and training officers, she somehow passed for male.

  Little did she know she would be stuck passing for a boy for a very, very long time.

  She was killed in her first battle, as so many inexperienced soldiers were. A single cannon blast. It was mercifully quick and painless. Zin's trip down the tunnel into the light should have been quick and simple; however, halfway there, she was struck by the sudden realization that her father and brothers would have no idea what had happened to her. There are few things that can cause a person to resist the gravity of the light. Thinking about one's self can't do it, because self-centered thoughts are weak when compared to the call of eternity. Thinking of others, however, can be a very powerful thing indeed, and can give a strong-willed person the strength to resist just about anything.

  Zin knew what the light was. She knew she had died, and knew there was nothing she could do about that. Going straight into that light would be the easiest thing to do. But she couldn't stop thinking about her family, tormented by her mysterious absence.

  And so she stopped falling forward, and found herself lingering at the threshold between the here and hereafter. Then she did something of such incredible audacity, the very universe was both insulted and impressed at the same time.

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  Zinnia Kitner reached into the light, grabbed the tiniest bit of it in her fist, and pulled her hand back again, taking a fraction of the light with her. Then she turned and ran from the light, thus entering Everlost.

  What she didn't know was that taking a bit of eternity in her hand would give her a very special power.

  Like most Afterlights, the details of her life on earth became hazy, but she did remember the war. For more than a hundred and fifty years she served her part. Collecting weapons gave her a sense of purpose--and woe be to any Afterlight who tried to tell her the war was over--for then what purpose would her existence serve? In spite of her uniform, she never forgot that she was a girl, for she never had a desire to be a boy, only to be treated as one. She still cursed the fact that the hat would not come off and that her hair would not grow--and she hated that they called her "Zach the Ripper." Like the uniform,
however, it served a purpose for her, so she lived with it.

  That is, until the day the Chocolate Ogre came and stripped everything away.

  Zinnia fell to her knees in mourning. There was nothing left, nothing at all. All those years of collecting, and now what was there for her? Kudzu nuzzled up to her, trying to comfort her, but she would not be comforted.

  "You've ruined everything... ." She would have reached into the fudge-faced kid right then, and ripped him good, if she thought she'd get anything more than chocolate.

  Nick chose to keep his distance. He knew any chance for an easy alliance with the Ripper was gone ... but that didn't mean there couldn't be a reluctant alliance, if he played this right.

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  "Come on," he said to Johnnie-O, loudly enough for the Ripper to hear. "We came here for nothing. She couldn't be any use in the war."

  "That's right," snapped the Ripper. "Get lost!"

  Nick turned to go then did a little mental countdown. One ... two ... three ...

  "What war?" asked the Ripper.

  Nick grinned--it was like waiting for thunder after lightning. He turned back to her and looked her over, shaking his head. "Not the one you're fighting."

  The Ripper looked away, her face betraying an odd mixture of shame and fury. There was a definite sense of craziness in her, but perhaps that could be dealt with. Perhaps it could be refined and directed.

  Johnnie-O pulled Nick aside, and spoke to him quietly. "I got this really bad feeling about her," Johnnie-O whispered.

  "That's just because she ripped you."

  "What if she does it again?"

  "I'll make sure she won't."

  All the while, Zin kept watching them, trying to hear what they were whispering about.

  Nick went back over to her. "After careful consideration," Nick said, "we've decided you're army material."