She looked at Nick warily. "What's my rank?"
"Private first class, in charge of tactical field operations." Nick had made it up on the spot, of course, but it sounded sufficiently impressive to make her consider it.
"Do I get to rip weapons?"
"You'll rip what your superior officers tell you to rip, or
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you can go back up in that spaceship and launch yourself into orbit for all I care."
The Ripper scowled at him, but her scowl faded. She turned and looked up at the shuttle. "I tried that once, but it didn't work," she said. "I think they launch it from somewhere else. Someplace that ain't in Everlost yet."
She considered the massive ship for a moment more, then turned back to Nick. "So do I gots to call you 'sir'?"
"Yes," Nick said, figuring it might help keep her in line. "As I am your general, you will address me as sir. This is Mr. Johnnie-O. He's a sir too."
"I'm Zinnia," said the Ripper, "but people call me Zin."
Johnnie-O folded his arms. "I won't shake her hand."
Zin curled her lip in disgust. "I wouldn't shake your hand anyway. Your hands are ugly."
In response Johnnie-O made two even uglier fists.
Nick got between them before it could escalate. "Your first order is to rip something for us."
"She already did rip something," said Johnnie-O. Disgusted, he put his hand to his head, maybe to make sure that his brain was still there.
"I mean something from the living world," Nick said.
Zin chuckled. "I thought you'd ask me to do sumpin' hard."
She looked around, then saw a tattered tissue tumbling in the living-world wind. Casually she reached out with her right hand. With a faint shimmering of light, her hand poked a hole into the living world, she grabbed the tissue in midair, and pulled it back through the hole into Everlost. The portal into the living world closed almost instantly.
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"Whoa," said Johnnie-O. "Abra-freaking-cadabra!"
She handed the tissue to Nick. "There," she said. "Maybe you can use it to wipe off all that chocolate ailing your face." Then she added, "Sir."
Nick looked at the tissue in his hand, thinking it would take a lot more than a tattered Kleenex to get rid of his particular skin condition. "I'm impressed."
"So you gonna tell me about your war?"
Nick considered how to answer her. "What do you know about Mary, the Sky Witch?"
Zin looked at Nick, then to Johnnie-O, then back to Nick again. "Who?" She looked to Kudzu, as if the dog might know the answer, but Kudzu just wagged his tail.
Nick sighed, pretending to be exasperated, but in truth he was relieved that she had never heard of Mary. It would make educating Zin the Ripper easier.
"Let's go," Nick said. "I'll tell you all about Mary on the way."
Just then, Johnnie-O finally touched his lip and said, "Hey, where's my Camel? What happened to my Camel?"
"What's he talkin' about? I don't see no stinkin' camel."
"My cig, you half-wit tomboy freak!"
Nick ignored their bickering, turning to take one last look at the Challenger. Without the rickety scaffold, there was nothing at all to mask the bald-faced fact that the shuttle was fixed in midair, resting on the invisible memory of its launchpad. Memory in Everlost was a far greater force than gravity. It could hold a thousand-ton spacecraft in the air, and could slowly turn a kid to chocolate.
"What'll I do without my Camel?" whined Johnnie-O.
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"Maybe Zin can rip you a nicotine patch," said Nick. He had already begun to consider quite a few other things Zin might do with her powers as well--but they were things he wasn't ready to share with anyone--at least not yet.
"I wouldn't rip you the time of day," Zin said to Johnnie-O, and added "sir," as snidely as she could.
"Prob'ly because you can't tell time," Johnnie-O spat back.
Nick tried to keep his laughter to himself. Clearly Johnnie-O and Zin were a match made in heaven, so he let them squawk freely at each another as they set off, leaving behind the great spacecraft that stood in patient anticipation, forever pointing toward the stars.
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PART TWO Dancing with the Deadlies
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In her book Everything Mary Says Is Wrong, Allie the Outcast has this to say about the criminal arts:
"Skinjacking, and ecto-ripping, along with all the other so-called 'criminal arts,' are not criminal at all when in the hands of someone with a brain and a conscience. Calling them criminal arts is just one more way Mary Hightower puts a negative spin on things beyond her control."
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CHAPTER 8 Treasures of the Flesh
The living world was habit-forming to a skinjacker. There was no question about that. Allie tried to limit her skinjacking to the times she absolutely had to, but she only had so much self-control. The pull of the living world was hard to resist, and got harder each time she jumped into a fleshie.
The girl she now skinjacked was about her age, maybe a year older, with drab clothes, tight shoes, bad teeth, and acne. She was not someone you'd particularly notice if she suddenly became possessed by a different girl.
Allie had skinjacked her in a music store, and now stood a block away at a newsstand, on the small main street of Abingdon, Virginia. Allie's purpose was research. With all the time that had passed since she had left the living world, she had lost track of things. Who had won the last two World Series? What was the state of global warming? What movies had she missed and what bands were at the top of the charts? This was the reason for today's skinjacking. That's what she told Mikey. That's what she told herself.
So she stood at the newsstand, scouring various
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newspapers and magazines, but as she did, she found herself completely uninterested in news of the living world. What interested her more were all the things she could feel in this borrowed body. The consciousness of the girl who owned it had been easily pushed down into mental steerage, leaving Allie to luxuriate in her senses. An unexpected heat wave had rolled into Western Virginia, and the humidity that might have been oppressive to the living, was wonderful to Allie. Feeling the warmth, feeling herself sweat, feeling uncomfortable in a very human way--these were just a few of the many things that Everlost denied her.
And hunger! Allie had no idea how long it had been since this girl had eaten, but she was certainly hungry--her stomach was even growling. She caught the dizzying, yeasty aroma of a bakery a few doors down. A bell jingled as a customer opened the door, and the smell became so intense for a moment, it could have lifted Allie off her feet. She didn't dare go in; how completely wrong would that be to indulge in cookies and pastries? For all she knew the girl was diabetic or had a deathly allergy to nuts. She had to remind herself that skinjacking was a privilege, not a right.
"Are you buying that magazine, miss?" asked the newsstand clerk, "or are you just going to read them all for free?"
Embarrassed, Allie reached into the girl's purse, pulled out a couple of dollars, and bought the tabloid in her hand. Only after she opened the purse did she realize she had opened her own personal treasure box. She gazed in at the trappings of this girl's life. There was a set of keys with a heart-shaped key chain that said "I Love VA." There was lip balm--the kind that smelled like strawberry. There was
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a pack of tissues to blow her wonderfully stuffy nose--and nestled in the midst of it all: a Snickers bar. It had always been Allie's favorite ... and after all the girl was hungry. Besides, the candy bar was in her purse already--which meant she must not have some unknown medical issue that would prevent her from eating it. What harm would it do to take a single bite?
"I shouldn't ..."
"Shouldn't what?" asked the news clerk.
Allie hadn't even realized she had spoken aloud. "I'm not talking to you."
The clerk gave her a funny look and Allie walked away. Crossing the stre
et, she found a bus stop bench in the shade, and sat down.
I've been in this girl for at least fifteen minutes, she thought. The girl would be frightened once Allie let her have her body back. She'd never know that Allie had been there, but she would certainly miss the time. On the other hand it was only fifteen minutes--and it hadn't been like the girl was doing anything important. She was browsing in a music store, and seemed to be in no great hurry. What was a few more minutes?
Allie pulled out the Snickers bar and slowly ripped the edge then peeled back the paper. The outside layer of chocolate had melted from the heat. It was already getting on her hands and that immediately made her think of Nick--which made her need comfort food all the more.
She raised the Snickers bar to her lips and took that single small bite, feeling her teeth sink into it, feeling the flavor rush over her taste buds. Life is wasted on the living,
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she thought. They take all this for granted. The feel of the weather, the taste of a candy bar, the inconvenience of time, and the nuisance of uncomfortable shoes. To Allie all of these things were wonderful.
Once she had started the Snickers bar, there simply was no way to stop. One bite became two, became three, and soon the entire bar was gone. Now that the deed was done, she felt guilt that almost, but not quite, outweighed the pleasure. She would go back to that newsstand and buy another candy bar for the girl and put it in her purse. That's what she would do.
"Was it good?" said the high-pitched voice of a child.
She turned to see a very young boy and a very old man standing beside her. The boy, who couldn't be any older than three, stared at her with an expression that seemed a little too cold for such a small child. The old man held his cane with a palsy shake and leered at her with a twisted kind of grin. There was something about the two of them that gave her the creeps.
"He asked you a question," said the old man. "Aren't you going to answer him, huh? Huh?"
"Yes," Allie said. "It was good. It was very good."
"Next time," said the little boy, "you should get some milk to wash it down." He held his cold stare for a moment more, then suddenly he burst out laughing and so did the old man. The moment was too odd, too unsettling. Allie could feel gooseflesh bristling on her borrowed body. She excused herself and crossed back to the newsstand, where she bought another Snickers bar, and dropped it in the purse before returning to the music shop. She would leave the girl
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exactly where she had found her, browsing in the alternative rock section. Only this time the girl would have to make sense of the twenty minutes missing from her life.
Mikey waited. He waited because he had no choice. He couldn't skinjack, and although he could follow Allie, and watch what she did in the living world, he didn't want to. There was something unpleasant about seeing her disappear into someone else's body.
What made it even worse was her choice of hosts. Mikey couldn't understand why she always chose the sorriest-looking fleshies to skinjack. If you could jump into anyone, why not choose someone you'd want to see in the mirror? Unless of course you were a monster, as he had been, and took pride in an unpleasant appearance. Allie, however, was anything but a monster, so her choice of homely hosts baffled him.
Perhaps I'd understand it if I were more human, Mikey thought. He had spent so many years as a monster, he was still trying to get the hang of thinking the way humans think again. Considering the feelings of others, holding his temper, digging down to the deepest part of himself to find patience.
He had very little patience when Allie skinjacked. He paced and grumbled, he complained to their sad-eyed horse. He steamed and stewed, and wished he were the McGill again, because it was so much more satisfying to be discontent when he was physically repulsive. Now, according to Allie, he was somewhat cute. He often wondered if she said that to punish him.
"I AM NOT CUTE!" he shouted to the horse. The
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horse tossed its head and whinnied like it had just been shown some sort of great kindness. It just irritated Mikey even more. Although he didn't wish to be a monster again, neither did he want a condemnation of cuteness.
He looked to his right hand. It had once been a deformed claw, covered in growths too unpleasant to mention. He had made it that way himself, for he had the power of change. Of course that was before Mary showed him that blasted picture of himself--the memory-in-a-locket that forced him to remember who he was. He turned his hand over, looking at his palm, his fingertips. They glowed with his faint afterglow, but otherwise, they were plain and human, and they hadn't changed since that day he violently and unexpectedly transformed back to his human self.
Forcing change, however, had always been a different matter. It didn't happen in an explosive burst of memory, it was slow, imperceptible. It took weeks to make the smallest of physical changes stick--but no one else he had ever met could do it. Sure, everyone changed over time as they forgot their lives on earth, but Mikey could choose how he changed. He could make himself into whatever he wanted.
But not anymore. Ever since becoming his former self, he hadn't physically changed in the least. "It's your fault!" he had told Allie in one of his weaker moments, but Allie had just shrugged it off. "Don't blame me for your morphing issues," she had said--but it was her fault in a way ... because for Mikey to change, he had to truly want it. And since Allie liked him just the way he was, he simply didn't want it enough.
But Allie was off skinjacking, wasn't she? She was
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practicing her unique talent, so why shouldn't Mikey practice his? And if he changed just a little, at least it would prove that he still could do it! It would prove that being Mikey McGill, the all-American Afterlight, was a choice, and not a sentence. So as he waited for Allie at the edge of the small town, he concentrated on his hand, training his thoughts on forcing some new reality upon himself. It didn't matter what the change was, as long as it happened. He concentrated so hard he could swear the sun dimmed slightly in the sky.
And something happened!
As he stared at his fingers, the skin between them began to grow. He watched in building excitement, as the fingers of his right hand became webbed! True, it was only down at the lowest knuckle, but it had happened--and much faster than ever before. This kind of change would take days to cultivate, when he was the McGill. And it occurred to him that perhaps having been nonhuman for so long, had made him more elastic.
All it took was half an hour away from Allie!
It was that thought that brought his euphoria to a sudden end, because as illuminating as the moment was, it also cast a chilling shadow.
Does this mean I'll turn back into a monster if I'm not with her?
Through the space still left between his fingers, he saw Allie, hurrying across the street toward him. The second he saw her, he reflexively hid his hand behind his back. He could have cursed himself for not being more subtle about it.
"We're done here," she said.
"You took way too long!"
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She shrugged. "Lots of articles to read." Mikey thought he had gotten off easy, until she asked, "Why are you hiding your hand?"
"I'm not." Still he held it behind his back.
Then she got a troubled look in her eye, perhaps thinking about something she had seen or read during her little skinjacking expedition.
"Let's get out of here," she said. "I don't like this place."
Mikey glanced at the horse--and that's when she grabbed his wrist, pulling his right hand into full view. He grimaced, realizing he had been caught red-handed--or web-handed, as it were ... But to his surprise the flaps of skin linking his knuckles were gone.
"Hmmm," said Allie. "Nothing. I guess you were telling the truth."
He folded his fingers over hers, interlocking them. "What reason would I have to lie to you?"
Allie squeezed his fingers tighter and smiled. "You're human now; lying is a favorite human pastime."
/> As they climbed onto the horse, Mikey decided he must be more human than he thought--because not only had he lied, but he had gotten away with it.
The town soon gave way to countryside, and they came across an old rural route that was no longer a part of the living world. Here, Mikey dug his heels into the horse and the horse took off in a cantor that was so much more efficient, something it couldn't do while plodding through that soft stuff that made up the living world. With Allie so close to him on the horse, Mikey wished he could read her mind,
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for even with her so close behind him, she felt miles away. He was still frustrated by the time she spent skinjacking, but he knew better than to make an argument of it. Allie was the sharpest, most argument-winning girl he had ever met. He knew she would make a convincing case for why she had every right to skinjack whenever she felt like it, and leave him waiting. After all, it wasn't her fault he couldn't do it.
"If I understood how it worked," she had once told him, "don't you think I would teach you?"
Well, maybe she would, and maybe she wouldn't. After all, he had been a monster and who knew if such power in his hands would be a good thing? Now as he rode up and down the hills of Virginia and into Tennessee, he had to admit to himself something he had been avoiding for all their time together. He was very good at being a monster-- but as a boy he was mediocre at best.
As it happens, Mikey's sense that Allie was a bit distant was right on target. At that moment, her thoughts were wandering far from the horse they rode. Her mind kept being drawn back to the town they had just left, and the one before that, and the one before that. She was relieved to be away from civilization, and yet in her thoughts, she couldn't leave it all behind, because the taste of the living was becoming too tempting--and it was a taste--an inner hunger that was powerful and all-consuming. She felt herself becoming like a vampire, feasting not on blood, but on experience. The silky smooth sensation of flesh. The flavor of other people's lives. Even now she longed to be wrapped in the living--but she could share none of this with Mikey. He wouldn't understand. Empathy was not his strongest point--even the nature
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