Ascending the Boneyard

by C. G. Watson

  “You’ll do anything to keep me out of the Boneyard, won’t you?”

  He smiles, adjusts his knit cap, tosses the baggie at me. I catch it in a tight grip so it doesn’t slip out of my hands, offer the bird a silent apology in case I hurt it by grabbing too hard.

  Out back the old man’s got an overgrown junk heap, but I can’t find anything useful enough to dig a hole with. Just old tuna cans, a rust-covered slotted spoon—nothing that’ll dig deep enough or fast enough to get this over with and make the whole bird thing go away.

  I know we have a long-forgotten shovel around here somewhere.

  I eventually find it camouflaged in a pile of rotting lumber.

  Haze holds the bird while I start digging. I don’t talk, just kick out shovelfuls of dirt. It would be accurate to say that Haze is less of a stranger to physical labor than I am, but this one’s on me. Still, I’m a panting, sweat-spewing mess before I’ve managed to dig anything deep enough to bury a bug in, let alone a bird.

  I don’t understand why it had to go and die. I mean, it must have known that someone was coming to save it; otherwise, why would it have fought so hard? What good does it do to stay alive through all the crap stuff only to give up right at the end, just when things are about to turn around?

  The sky will fall and death will beat its wings against the ground.

  They called it. Whoever sent me that message totally called it. Was it the commandos? Did they intentionally lure me to Goofy Golf so I’d get back on this map? For all I know, the interrogation they put me through earned me Ascent Credits. It freakin’ should have.

  “Yo, Tosh,” Haze says. “That’s probably deep enough.”

  I look down at the two-foot hole I dug without realizing it, pull my arm across my face to wick away the sweat, only to find a big line of snot across my sleeve.

  Luckily, Haze doesn’t point out that I’m standing here crying over a dead bird in a plastic bag.

  “What are you going to bury it in?” he asks instead.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you can’t just throw it in the ground. That’s kind of disrespectful.”

  “How is that disrespectful?”

  “It was a living thing, Tosh,” he says. Like I need to be reminded. “It deserves a proper burial.”

  “It’s in a bag,” I say.

  “It won’t be able to decay like that.”

  The word eats through my body—I close my eyes against the unexpected sensation of the ground shifting from solid to semisolid.

  “Look,” Haze says, “just bury it in this.”

  He hands me the crushed drink cup. As it passes from his hand to mine, I hear the roar of go-karts off in the distance, feel the thrill of freedom as he and I scramble into the bucket seats, hear him slurp the tail end of a soda, watch the cup arc in slow motion onto the track just as we accelerate.

  My mom begged the old man not to have my party there. She said she had a bad feeling.

  I take the cup, turn it over in my fingers, force my eyes to unblur so I can read the words.

  Subway. City Hall Station.

  . . . the note. My mom’s note.

  big city

  Yeah. Big city.

  Where the City Hall Station’s located.

  Which is probably a subway entrance.

  Subways go underground.

  UnderGround. UnderWorld.

  The mission starts to come into focus right before my eyes.

  This is exactly why I got the expansion pack. Thanks to ASCEND: Armageddon, I can go back, fix my biggest mistake. Sure, it’ll take me longer to level, but if it keeps me from letting Stan take my mom, it’ll be worth it.

  I can do that. I can find my way UnderGround, now that I understand how to get there. I’ve already made it to that map enough times. I can start this rogue mission without my platoon. No doubt they’ll join me once they see how close I am to finding Turk, to killing the shit out of him, to becoming Worthy.

  The phone buzzes in my pocket. I throw down the shovel, pull up the message.

  The world beneath will weep blood.

  Whoa . . .

  It’s all coming together.

  The commandos didn’t jack that yellow car to flee to the UpperWorld, like I first thought.

  They did it to show me how to get UnderGround.

  That’s where the mission starts. UnderGround, in the big city, like my mom said.

  I toss the bird into the hole, cup and all, use my tattered Kmart specials to quick kick the dirt back over it.

  “What’re you doing?” Haze says. “Tosh. You look deranged.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Go?” He steps over the shovel handle, follows me back inside the trailer. “Go where?”

  I beeline for my room, grab my messenger bag, stuff it full of socks and underwear, my phone charger, a half-eaten bag of cheesy snack mix. And the gum pack with my mom’s note inside.

  “Where are you going?”

  “UnderGround.”

  “What?”

  I dash back down the hall, out the door, hop down the steps toward the street.

  “What underground?” Haze calls after me.

  “New York,” I tell him, because if I say the Boneyard, he’ll restrain me to a chair with plastic zip ties until I come to my senses. Besides, it’s not a lie to say New York. That’s where the entrance to the UnderWorld is. I know that now.

  Haze grabs my arm. “Dude, you are crazy!” he shouts within an inch of my face. The word swipes at me, stings across my skin. “You’ve barely even left your house since—”

  I shove against him to keep him from finishing the thought, watch through the goggles as he stumbles backward.

  He’s surprised, I can tell, surprised and maybe a little hurt. But I don’t care. He doesn’t seem too worried about who he hurts by saying stupid shit like that.

  Even though he’s pissed, Haze follows me as I stumble-run down the street.

  As he barrages me with questions I have no intention of answering, I spot what I’m looking for. There, on Clinton just off Buchanan. Not the same yellow car, but a taxicab-yellow Termi-Pest truck with its mutantly larger-than-life cockroach on top and the company motto painted along the side.

  COCKROACHES ARE OUR SPECIALTY.

  Yeah. Only now cockroaches are my specialty.

  I swallow my disgust at the sight of that four-foot-long fiberglass bug perched on top of the truck, channel my inner ninja warrior, and approach the driver’s-side door all stealth-like.

  “Whoa. What are you doing?”

  I make a visual sweep of the perimeter before peeking inside the window. Just as I figured: the keys are in the ignition.

  I reach for the door handle, but Haze tackle-pins me to the truck.

  “Whatever you’re thinking about doing?” he says. “Don’t.”

  I try a Roundhouse move to get him off me. But he pushes harder, hard enough to make my shoulders burn against the siding.

  “This is a bad idea, Tosh. You’re not thinking this through. You don’t even know how to drive.”

  “The hell. We took drivers’ ed together.”

  “We never actually drove a car.”

  “We used the simulators,” I hiss through my pain. “Same thing.”

  “No, it’s not.” He leans into the shove, and I clench my teeth to keep from grunting in agony. The mantel clock is ticking down on this mission, and I’m starting to panic.

  “You’re being totally irrational, Tosh.”

  “You’re wrong, Nate.” Little droplets of spit fly out of my mouth as I utter that one unforgivable word—his real name. We’ve been last-name-only since fourth grade. “I’m being totally rational. I’m doing what you said. See the world. Live in the now.”

  Haze’s face goes blank.

  His grip slowly eases from around my arms.

  He backs away from me, and even though I know it makes me the biggest dick-friend in the UpperWorld, I turn, unlatch the ha
ndle, open the door. Just before I get in, I hear a quick whiz, feel something strike my back and then fall to the road at my feet.

  It’s his face mask. Haze threw his face mask at me.

  Good. I may need it.

  I bend down to pick it up.

  “If you get in that car and drive away,” he says, “you’re crazy for sure.”

  I swing into the seat. “If I stay here, I’m even crazier. I can fix this, Haze.”

  We stare at each other for a few tense seconds through the open window. I don’t want him to try to talk me out of anything. Because he’s right—there are potentially hundreds of reasons I shouldn’t do this and only one solid reason why I should.

  To Ascend.

  I throw the truck into drive and screech off toward the UnderWorld.

  5.5

  The commandos made it look so easy when they hopped in that fat yellow car and shot off down the abandoned highway. I fix the scene in my mind exactly the way I saw it on the computer, try to copy their moves to the nth degree.

  I mean, it’s just driving.

  How hard can it be?

  6

  Cruising down the empty streets of Sandusky is pretty snap.

  Taking the turns? Nothing snap about that. I’m gonna need special ops just to keep the truck in the center of the lane.

  My eyes drift over to the passenger’s seat, catch sight of my cell phone and Haze’s painter’s mask sitting where his ass would be if he were any kind of friend. At a stop sign, I take the mask, place it over the empty headrest. There. Now it’s more like Haze is riding shotgun. For some reason, that calms me down.

  Do you have any idea how far it is from Sandusky to New York?

  I cast another glance at the mask before peeling away from the stop sign.

  “Five hundred and seventeen miles,” I say. “It’s for a good cause, though.”

  You just committed grand-theft auto. How could that possibly be for a good cause?

  “I’m a first timer with no criminal record. What’s one little felony?”

  One little felony means spending the best years of your life in jail.

  That’s the thing about jail. You can already be locked up in a certain way and no one else would ever know.

  This better be important, Tosh. You’d better be on a mission to save the world.

  “Something like that.”

  And while we’re on it, could you have stolen a more conspicuous car? I mean, you’re driving a bright yellow truck with a gigantic bug on top. And you have five hundred and fifteen miles to go. Does that not alarm you?

  “Actually, no,” I say. It’s true, too. There’s no way to articulate how not alarmed I am at this moment. Haze is with me—my posse, the real one, the guy who knows the hell I’ve been through for the past 1,586-plus days. Who saw the first signs of cataclysm from the go-kart seat next to mine. This is one raid I need him with me on. Cam is loyal to the game, sure; he knows the Boneyard like his own backyard, and that’s worth something. But Haze knows me, and that’s worth everything.

  I reach for the knob on the radio.

  Keep your eyes on the road.

  “It’s too quiet. I need something in my head.”

  Well, that’s accurate.

  It’s not accurate, though. My head isn’t empty; it’s full of chaos right now. I usually pour some Motor City or Bunny Puke into my ear to solve that problem.

  I take one hand off the wheel, unwrap my headphones, pop a single earbud in, and hit play.

  What are you doing?

  “Clearing the fog.”

  I’m pretty sure that everything you’re doing right now is against the law.

  I don’t tell Haze, but wearing an illegal earbud is the least of my worries. If I were him, I’d be more concerned that I’m chasing a cockroach on a quest to turn back the clock. Me, Caleb Tosh, trying to become Worthy so I can keep the UpperWorld from self-destructing.

  If that doesn’t have “superfail” written all over it, I don’t know what does.

  By my math-lame calculations, it’ll take about nine hours to drive five hundred and seventeen miles to New York City, and since I’ve never done anything for nine hours except game, I’m pretty sure that the next leg of my life is going to drag solid ass. Bunny Puke helps drown out most of the unwanted noise: the sounds of a raid I couldn’t finish, the screams of grim panic, the click-and-report of my worst fail ever, the eruption and fallout of a total wipe.

  I squeeze my eyes together, lift the goggles to clear the beads of fog off the lenses.

  That’s when my phone starts going nuts on the seat next to me. I tick my eyes at Haze’s face mask, knowing what he’d say if he were really here, then grab the phone anyway and open my messages by rote memory. My eyes dart between the screen and the road so I can see who it is, as if I don’t already know. It’s either the cockroach or the commandos, and if it’s them, I’d like to read their instructions without pile-driving into a guardrail.

  Avoid the toll.

  That’s it? That’s the big instruction, avoid the toll? How do they expect me to do that? There’s pretty much one way to get to New York from Ohio, and it’s a straight shot. I look back at the screen to make sure I read it right.

  Yep.

  You’re texting behind the wheel?

  “Well, you weren’t gonna answer it.” I thumb through the app icons on the screen.

  What are you doing, Tosh?

  Devin. The go-karts. On a mission to save—

  “I need to figure out how to avoid the tolls.”

  Man, I can’t believe you’re texting. You don’t even have a license!

  “You’re not exactly being helpful right now, Haze. Besides, I need to get off this highway, fast. Can you at least tell me when I get to the app with the car on it?”

  I don’t know how to use that thing.

  “You don’t have to. Just tell me when I hit the right icon.” My thumb dances across the screen.

  You don’t have the best track record behind the wheel, Tosh. Watch the road.

  “I am, but just tell me when I get to the car.”

  There.

  I sneak a peek.

  “Not the map,” I say, leaning over. “The car!”

  Damn it, Tosh. Keep your eyes on the road!

  “I need to get off this highway, now!” I take the phone back into my own airspace, watch the icons as I zip through them to get to the car app. I don’t know where it is since I don’t drive and therefore have never needed to use it.

  Tosh, the road . . .

  “I’m almost there.”

  Tosh! The road!

  The world outside the truck hovers for a few seconds, then kicks into stop-motion. Trees and asphalt and truck and sky flash-flicker past. I have no idea how long it takes for the Termi-Pest truck to finish rolling and come to an upright stop on the side of the highway, but eventually it does.

  I may have blacked out for a second or two.

  When I manage to get my eyes open, my head fills with dense fog. It’s the truck, I realize; the truck is belching smoke from under the accordion-fold of the hood. For a split second I think I may have forgotten to use my seat belt, which would be bad . . . very bad. I could be ejected, injured, lying on the highway having a surreal, out-of-body experience.

  A frantic dig reveals the belt strap tangled up in my T-shirt.

  And then I look over, see Haze twisted into an impossible shape against the door. I barely remember him coming with me, but he must have, right? Yeah. Riding shotgun, giving me all kinds of crap about using my phone while driving . . .

  I rush to unbuckle before spinning around in a panic to see if he’s okay.

  His head is tipped back at a weird angle against the window.

  “Oh God . . .” I rip the gas mask off his face, slap his cheek as hard as I can. I don’t know what that’s supposed to accomplish, but they do it on TV all the time.

  Haze doesn’t react.

  Instead of being conc
erned that he might have a broken neck or some other potentially paralyzing injury, I do what any clear-thinking person would do in a moment of crisis. I slap him again.

  Because I should have . . . with Devin . . . I just couldn’t move.

  This can’t happen again. I need Haze. I can’t let him—

  “What the hell?” he sputters.

  He’s all green. I got him back just in time.

  “You passed out during the accident,” I say.

  “What accident?”

  The question echoes dull and flat in the too-still air.

  We both sit up, look around in a daze.

  I wonder why we don’t hear sirens yet.

  As the smoke starts to clear, I peek in the rearview mirror, expecting a squadron of cop cars and ambulances to roll up behind us any second. But all I see is the cockroach, dislodged, lying on its back, several yards behind us. Good. The best kind of UnderWorld mob is a dead one.

  Plenty more where that came from, though. I can’t allow the confusion of the moment to distract me from the very real need to brace myself for the coming battle.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Haze asks.

  The question pushes the little hairs at the back of my neck into their full upright position. I don’t know what happens now. I look down at my phone, hoping the commandos will dial in any second with further instructions.

  Haze’s breath wheezes through those filtered chambers so hard I feel my own lungs starting to burn.

  “Tosh?”

  “Grab your things,” I say.

  “What things?”

  “There’s an overpass up ahead.”

  The highways in the Boneyard are full of overpasses, but you have to be careful; they’re prime hideaways for minion soldiers. They can also lead UnderGround, but that’s dicey too. A lot of those tunnels are traps.

  I pull my messenger bag out from behind the seat and open the driver’s side door, which immediately sags off its now-broken hinges. Haze just sits there, staring at me openmouthed while I head down the shoulder of the highway.

  He breaks the brittle silence by launching into a rant about how dangerous this joyride is and how reckless I am, his words chasing me down from all the way back at the truck. He keeps on ranting as he slides off the seat, as he slams the door behind him, as he marches down the shoulder and around the curve in the road. Phrases like “completely lost your mind” and “undeniably insane” collide in midair with the jagged puffs of smoke drifting in our direction.