Ascending the Boneyard

by C. G. Watson

  “Got some ID?”

  My heart starts slam dancing but Haze just reaches into his pocket, cool as shit, and hands Bubba his ID card.

  “And you’re . . . Rutherford Hayes?” Bubba asks, his gaze ping-ponging between Haze and the card.

  Rutherford? His name is Nate. Rutherford Hayes was a—

  “When’s your birthday?” Bubba asks.

  That’s easy. June 24, 1996, exactly two weeks before mine.

  “May fourteenth,” Haze says, “nineteen ninety-two.”

  He’s lying, of course. I should know when the dude’s birthday is. I’ve eaten Hostess cupcakes with him in my living room every year on that day since fourth grade. But here’s my man Haze with a fake ID I’ve never seen before, spouting off his fake birthday like it’s for real.

  Bubba doesn’t believe him. He leans over till he’s halfway out of the cage.

  “May fourteenth, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s your sign?” he says, and that’s the moment I realize we’re jacked. Totally and completely busted. Game over. Fail. Wipe.

  “Taurus,” Haze says.

  My eyebrows lift over the tops of my yellow goggles, eyeballs pivot from Haze to Bubba. I’m awed as Bubba nods in satisfaction.

  “Very well, Mr. Hayes. Two thousand sixty-four dollars and fifteen cents.” He shakes his head. “Biggest payout I’ve ever seen on a coin slot machine. By about two thousand sixty dollars!” He tips his head back, hurls a sonic boom of a laugh into the air, then stops suddenly and lowers his eye beams at us one last time. “I’m calling maintenance to fix that goddamn machine.”

  “Okay,” Starlight says. “Bye, Bubba!” She lifts a hand, graceful as all hell, and waves, and I get the strongest sense of déjà vu I’ve ever had. Is this girl a hostage? Have I seen her before, maybe tried to save her? I bet I tried, and failed, and now I’m getting another chance to free her. That’s why I got the expansion pack. Extra chances to show I’m Worthy.

  But I don’t have time to linger on the thought. As Starlight leads us through the casino, she whispers, “Don’t look back,” only it’s more like a stage whisper because of how noisy it is in there. But of course, the minute someone says don’t do something, that’s invariably the first thing you do. Haze and I both shoot a look over our shoulders, and I’ll be damned if those buttoned-tight security ninjas aren’t following a safe distance behind us.

  “What do they want?” I ask.

  “They might just wanna make sure you guys leave. The casino doesn’t like it when someone cashes out big.”

  “That was hardly a big cash-out for a place like this,” Haze says. “What do they really want?”

  “What did Bubba mean by that machine being off the grid?” I cut in.

  Haze turns on Starlight. “Did you do something illegal?” he demands, and I’d say his tone is starting to make me nervous except that I’m nervous as all hell already.

  “Did we do something illegal?” I ask.

  “Shut up, the both of you,” she says, every ounce of sweetness evaporating from her words. “Just come with me, and for God’s sake, quit asking questions for one single minute, would ya? I can’t even hear myself think.”

  I avoid looking in Haze’s direction, double-avoid telling him I think this girl’s in trouble for real. He’ll say we’re in trouble too, and he’d be right of course; but if Starlight is a hostage, she’s probably trying to escape, which definitely means we’re here to free her.

  My heart races at the thought.

  Starlight’s jaundiced wig and flouncy skirt aren’t helping to keep us incognito as we push our way through the casino and out a set of doors that dumps out at some side street, not onto the busy avenue we entered from, like I was expecting.

  We follow her into a multilevel parking garage, where she rushes up to a rimless sedan that might have been light purple at some point but is now just a vague shade of gray. That car looks rode hard and mistreated—a lot like its owner, I bet. My terrified heart begins to soften for Starlight once again. Unless, of course, she’s about to clobber us and take the two large we just won—in which case my sympathy for her will lie dying next to me on the concrete floor of the garage.

  “Get in,” she says, and Haze freezes on the spot in a move so abrupt it would be comical if the whole thing wasn’t so terrifying. “Get in!”

  This time, Starlight’s the one who sneaks a glance over her shoulder.

  “Oh Jesus,” she says, panicking now. “Get in or get left behind!” She scrambles behind the wheel, fumbles with the keys as Haze and I do a Three Stooges routine, trying to get ourselves into the car before the security detail catches up with us.

  “I guess they didn’t just want to escort us out,” I say.

  Starlight doesn’t answer. She jams the car into gear and screeches out of the parking spot, leaving security behind in a puff of exhaust and terror. The tires squeal around every corner until we reach the exit of the parking garage, and without stopping or even looking, she hits the road, forcing the car that’s already in our lane to swerve into the next lane to avoid a collision. The driver blasts his horn at us.

  “Life or death, buddy!” Starlight shouts, flipping him the bird. I wish she’d pull her arm back inside before we incite the guy’s road rage.

  Haze is panting hard against his face mask.

  “How is this life or death?” he asks, but she doesn’t answer. She grips the wheel, eyes locked and loaded on the road ahead.

  “Where are you taking us?” I ask.

  “Me?” she says. “I’m not taking you anywhere.”

  Right. Cuz she’s a hostage.

  Haze’s mouth twists into an almost-sneer. “You’re seriously gonna tell us you’re not taking us anywhere?”

  “Then what are we doing here?” I ask.

  She finally turns away from the windshield and flashes the most dazzling smile I’ve ever seen.

  “How ’bout a trip to the park?” she says.

  14.5

  Starlight’s real name turns out to be Starla Manley. She’s eighteen—was only seventeen when she ran away from home with a guy named Scab, who dumped her as soon as they hit town. That, she says, is how she ended up broke and homeless and working at the casino. Of course, she had to lie about her age to get the job, but she says she had no choice.

  As we merge onto the highway, she tells us she’s done everything to survive, short of prostitution.

  I wish she’d take that damn yellow wig off so I can see who she really is.

  15

  “Why would you tell us that?” Haze asks.

  “Tell you what?”

  “All that personal stuff. You don’t even know us.”

  She kicks a stealth glance at Haze in the rearview mirror. “You seem like nice guys.”

  “Yeah. And, bonus, we’re loaded.”

  A flicker of amusement crosses Starla’s face, but it lasts only a nanosecond.

  “I don’t want your money,” she says.

  My eyes drift to her chest, to the rise and fall of each quick breath she takes. I want to appreciate the moment for what it is: the hotness of a girl’s half-naked breasts pushing against the superlow cut of her blouse. But I can’t. This girl’s scared as hell and I know it.

  I look away.

  “Why’d you give me that coin?” I ask her, my breath flash-fogging the window.

  “Why’d you take it?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Yes, you do. Why are you so afraid of the truth?”

  I shoot her a gritty look. “Hey, you don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m afraid of.”

  “I know you’re afraid of cockroaches,” she whispers, and the blood drains straight out of my face. I take out the phone, open the pulsing envelope icon I didn’t even know was there.

  Yeah. It’s him.

  “It’s no mystery,” she says as I try to blast the cockroach on my wall screen with hate rays. “I saw it on your fac
e at the casino. That last spin on the machine—”

  I swing on her. “Who are you?”

  “I told you, I’m Starla.”

  “Fine. Starla. Why do you think I took that coin from you?”

  “Same reason you came here to start with. You’re hoping it’ll do something for you that you can’t do yourself.”

  “Is that right?” I practically spit.

  “That’s right, cowboy. You know how desperate people can get. You’d be amazed at what some folks are willing to do to save their own lives.”

  “That’s pretty rich, coming from a girl who’s running away from her—”

  “Whoa.” The tip of Haze’s finger cuts right through the tension between me and Starla. “I hate to interrupt this witty banter, but look.”

  We all lean toward the windshield, staring into the distance, where, half a mile or so down the long, flat road ahead of us, the highway seems to just . . . end.

  My face goes numb for a second or two. “What is that?”

  Starla’s mouth pulls into a one-sided smile. “That, my friends, is fog.”

  “We’re from Ohio,” I tell her, fighting to keep my voice steady. “We get fog. And I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Haze leans all the way forward. “Me either.”

  She turns, gives me the once-over, then Haze. She shakes her head.

  “It’s just weather, boys. Nothing to get crazy about.”

  But the closer we get, the more obvious it becomes—this is not your typical Midwest weather. This is biblical. It has all the appearances of a solid object, like concrete, like if we hit it at this speed, we’ll bust into a million pieces of rust-worn car and human flesh. The memory ricochets through my entire body with a deafening gunfire report. Devin . . . the go-karts . . .

  “Weird,” Starla says.

  “Ya think? Slow down,” Haze tells her, and to my surprise, she does. She slows to a crawl just as we pass through, and not to sound overly dramatic or give the impression that I’ve watched too much stupid crap on TV, but it’s a little like going through an interdimensional portal or something.

  On the other side of the fog wall, we’re instantly swallowed up. The road disappears, the dried grass off the sides of the road disappears, the other cars . . . We can’t even see the hood of our own car anymore, much less a single fender of another.

  “Whoa . . . ,” Haze says, blowing the word through the chambers of his mask.

  “We’ll have to pull over till it passes,” I tell her.

  “No need. I’ve got lenses.” She leans over, opens the wobbly glove box, pulls out what looks like a pair of gamer glasses identical to the ones I’m wearing. She puts them on, settles back, and breathes a contented sigh.

  My hand shoots up to my face.

  They’re gone. The goggles are gone.

  “Are you kidding me?” I swing back to look at Haze, but he just gives me a baffled shrug.

  Starla is unruffled. “We get some pretty crazy fog around here. Not like this, mind you, but it’s always pretty soupy.”

  “Where’d you get those?” I demand.

  “From my father. He developed these lenses. They really work, too. Cuts the glare, makes it easier to see. Maybe you’ve caught the infomercials—they’re usually on late at night.” She kicks me a look, takes in my confused shock. “They’re patented and everything,” she adds, adjusting the frames against her face. “That’s more like it,” she says, then presses down on the gas until we’re pushing forty, fifty, sixty, and beyond.

  “Can I see them?” I ask, still a little lock-jawed.

  “Not while I’m driving, potato chip.”

  The tiny little hairs on my arms prickle. I rotate, slow and cautious, to where I can see her whole face, and I’m hit by another supreme sense of déjà vu. My hand bolts toward her head, but before I can lay a finger on the goggles, her hand shoots out and grabs mine by the wrist. Damn, she’s strong. And fast!

  “Now, why on earth would you try something like that at a time like this?” she asks, cool as gazpacho.

  “I’m positive we’ve met before.” I jerk my chin over my shoulder. “Haze, doesn’t she look—”

  Skip it. Haze is out.

  I spin the other way, press my face against the car window, squint hard. How can she see anything but fog out there, even with her so-called special lenses? The world outside is an ocean of white on white so dense, even the jet stream can be seen contorting inside the swirls of mist.

  The known will cease to exist.

  I swivel around again, slowly this time. Study her. Not her chest, not her wig, not her makeup, but her. Starla Manley, or whoever she is. Is she in trouble? Does she have any idea how right she was when she said this was a life-or-death situation?

  “Why the sudden, desperate urge to escape?” I ask her.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” she shoots back.

  The freezing subatomic particles of fog absorb into my skin, chill me to my cellular core.

  Whatever. I don’t even care anymore.

  The phone buzzes in my hand. Hopefully it’s the commandos, chiming in once and for all with some assistance.

  It’s Turk.

  And my battery’s going dead; the low light is winking in the corner of the screen. Great. Even my phone is stacking the odds against me.

  “Do you have a cigarette lighter?” I ask.

  She banks a look of skepticism in my direction, right through the lenses of the gamer glasses she jacked from me.

  “You don’t seem the type,” she says. “Bad habit, though. You really should quit.”

  “I don’t smoke. I just need to charge my phone.”

  “Oh. Sure. Let me light one up first, would ya?” She presses the lighter in and pulls a cigarette out of her apron pocket.

  I fish my car charger out of my bag and plug it in when she’s done, lean my head against the cool window and stare out. If you look close enough for long enough, you can see that the fog is made up of individual dots of supercondensed wet air. It’s mind-boggling to consider how many dots surround us at this very second. Beyond trillions, beyond gazillions, whatever the biggest possible number is this side of infinity. There must be non-water-based particles floating around in the fog too: subatomic bits of what used to be something else, something tangible. Microscopic particles of decayed bird cells. Bits of departed souls. Things mixed up in the fog that were once real, that can’t be seen or recognized anymore as anything remotely similar to what they once were.

  The known will cease to exist.

  I seriously hate this head noise.

  “Can we turn on the radio or something?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer, just reaches out and clicks the knob over. The way she keeps taking her eyes off the road makes me nervous.

  “Let me do that,” I say.

  She leans back and lets me pick a station without arguing the point.

  I turn the knob. Most of the stations are either fuzz or partial fuzz, and after going through the entire dial twice, I realize the only thing coming in clear enough to hear is talk radio.

  If Haze were awake, he’d be in news-junky heaven, but instead he’s passed out cold in the backseat. The sight of him lying there, inert, camouflaged in his knit cap and his glasses and his face mask leaves a life-sized dent in the middle of my chest.

  A news break punches through the monotonous spew of chatter. Not that I’m even listening. I mean, the radio was just meant to be a filter for my brain noise anyway, but the words “I-Tech” jump through the speakers, and I quick hit the volume.

  “A stay of execution was granted today for the building formerly housing the Industrial Tech High School.”

  “Hey,” Starla chirps. “That’s just down from the casino.”

  “Shhh.”

  “Demolition crews rolled into place this afternoon, only to find a protest in progress. An unidentified spokesperson rallied the mob to a fever pitch before disappearing into t
he crowd. His speech, however succinct, was enough to open talks between local officials and members of an underground coalition movement. In spite of a brief but volatile counterprotest, coalition members say their mission to prevent the destruction of the abandoned building was a success and has inspired them to take up the cause elsewhere.”

  A wash of relief pours over me, water-bucket style. I was invited to join that raid, maybe by Tenth Warriors and maybe by some other platoon, but I was tested, that’s for damn sure. And I nailed it. Okay, so I failed the bird, but I nailed this mission. I’m well on my way now. This is going to rack up some serious Ascent Credits. I’ll get a few more like this under my belt, but ultimately I’m going after Turk’s lair. I can smell the victory as I unbuckle, lean over the back of the seat, wrangle Haze by the arm of his jacket to snap him out of his narcolepsy.

  He grunts into semiconsciousness. “Wha—”

  “Wake up!”

  He shakes his head, scratches the back of his neck. “What for?”

  “The old—dude, are you listening? We saved I-Tech, man. We saved it.”

  Haze sits all the way up, looks around. “Where the hell are we?”

  I slowly turn around, lower myself onto the seat, buckle up again.

  “Yeah,” I ask Starla. “Where are we?”

  She smiles. “Xanadu, boys.”

  I no longer recognize the map we’re on. Starla Manley is purposely taking us off course. Maybe she’s not really a hostage; maybe she’s a minion cleverly disguised as a hostage.

  “Listen,” I say, digging my heels into the floorboard. “It’s been nice of you to give us a lift and everything, but . . . we really have no need to go to Canada.”

  “Xanadu,” she corrects me. “And you most definitely do.”

  “We really don’t.”

  “We have shit to do.” Haze mumbles what appears to be our new mantra from the backseat.

  “Then tell me,” she says—only the way it comes out sounds like a challenge. “Where do you think you need to go?”

  Regrettably, I haven’t unlocked that part of the mission yet.