The End of the World Club

by J; P Voelkel

  At his words, a cheer went up, but still the old ladies held his coffin high.

  A bell was tolling as a church came into sight at the top of the hill.

  They headed past the church and into a graveyard at the far side. It was lined with gray stone tombs. Some tombs were like ornately carved miniature houses with wrought-iron front doors; others were more like rows of school lockers, with empty slots waiting to receive new tenants.

  Max’s blood ran cold.

  At some invisible signal, the pallbearers set the coffins down.

  Max tried to get up, ready to run, but the old women pushed him back with surprising force. One of them brandished a spade.

  Was that to dig his grave?

  A hush fell over the crowd, broken only by sobs and wails.

  Max’s old women regarded him lovingly, while holding him down with muscles of iron. They took turns letting go of him to dab their eyes.

  All he could see were their faces and the gray sky. And the vultures wheeling overhead.

  Firecrackers exploded like gunfire.

  People screamed and laughed.

  A Gypsy band began to play.

  Finally the old women released their grip, and Max scrambled out of the coffin. All around the graveyard the recently arrived corpses were sitting up and waving at one another. Then, encouraged by their mourners, the living dead leapt out of their coffins and began dancing to the band.

  Max’s personal pallbearers urged him to do the same.

  It seemed rude not to obey after they’d lugged him up the hill.

  An old lady clutched him to her and led him in a spirited tango. Feeling extremely self-conscious, he tried to channel the Gypsy in his soul and dance wildly in the churchyard, while the spectators clapped and threw flowers.

  He caught a flower and tucked it behind his ear.

  The old women hustled and jigged and twirled him between them, cackling like witches, until their cardigans fell off their shoulders and their woolen stockings bunched at the ankles.

  Max was aware of tourist cameras clicking and flashing. At least he was still wearing stage makeup from the night before, so there was a good chance no one would recognize him if the footage turned up on YouTube.

  “Mac? Is that you?”

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Please, please, no.

  Not Nasty Smith-Jones.

  Not here.

  Not now.

  Max tried to hide behind a conga line.

  “Mac! It is you! Don’t you remember me?”

  Nasty cut in on the old women and started dancing with him. She seemed genuinely happy to see him. She even took his flower and put it behind her own ear.

  “Wow!” she said. “I love your black hair! And what’s with the makeup? Are you wearing guy-liner? It’s so great to see you, Mac! I haven’t talked to anyone my own age since we’ve been in Spain!”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” replied Max, noticing again her big blue eyes. “But my name is Max. It’s short for Massimo. My mother’s Italian. From Venice.” (Was this too much information? Was he babbling? Stay cool, man, he told himself.)

  “Got it! Max short for Massimo!” repeated Nasty, giggling. She noticed his shirt. “Is that a Plague Rats T-shirt? I haven’t seen that one before.…” She studied it more closely. “You know it’s a fake, right?”

  Max nodded ruefully.

  “Still, it’s a cool souvenir,” said Nasty. “I was right, though: the real Plague Rats are still in Japan. Those guys at the airport must have been some kind of tribute band. Pretty convincing, huh?”

  “They sure fooled me,” agreed Max. “I heard they played a private party last night and the drummer was really good.”

  “That’s a first,” said Nasty, laughing. “So what are you doing here, Max-short-for-Massimo?”

  “I’m on vacation, like you.”

  “No, I mean, what are you doing in a graveyard, dancing with old ladies?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I fell asleep in an old wooden box full of straw and when I woke up this morning I was being carried along in this parade. I don’t even know what town this is.”

  Nasty laughed. “You’re at the Fiesta of the Near-Death Experience in Santa Marta. Anyone who’s had a close call and lived to tell the tale gets to ride in a coffin.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Nasty pulled a guidebook to northwest Spain out of her pocket. “So did you?” she asked.

  “Did I what?”

  “Have a near-death experience?”

  My whole life is a near-death experience right now, Max wanted to answer. But he didn’t want to frighten her away, so he answered as flippantly as he could. “Yeah, I guess so. My cab ran over a goose.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.” She smiled at him. “I like the hair, but your makeup’s a bit messed up. Want a Kleenex?”

  They sat on a wall, and Max wiped away the greasepaint with tissues and bottled water.

  “What have you been doing in Spain?” he asked Nasty.

  She groaned. “We’ve visited every historic building between here and Madrid.” She pulled out the guidebook and opened it at random. “ ‘The pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela is famous for its Romanesque cathedral,’ ” she read. She looked over the top of her sunglasses and put on a schoolmarm voice. “The Romanesque style has rounded arches, whereas Gothic arches are pointed, don’t you know?”

  He laughed. “I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m hating every minute of it. What have you been doing?”

  She wouldn’t have believed him if he told her.

  “Not much,” he said.

  “Well, I’m glad I ran into you.”

  “Ditto!”

  They grinned at each other.

  It felt great, Max realized, to be with someone from the normal world, someone who’d never heard of Jaguar Stones or hellhounds or Death Lords. It felt so great that he had an overwhelming urge to tell her everything—just to hear how silly it all sounded.

  “You won’t believe this—” he began.

  “Anastasia! There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  Nasty’s parents trooped over, loaded down with flowers, postcards, plastic coffins, skeletons, shawls, umbrellas, soft toys, and everything else the opportunistic souvenir sellers had been able to unload on them.

  “Who’s this?” asked her mother, regarding Max with suspicion.

  “This is … Massimo,” said Nasty.

  “He looks familiar,” said Mrs. Smith-Jones.

  “You’ve probably seen him in the society pages,” said Nasty, winking at Max to warn him to play along. “He’s an Italian aristocrat.… His family has a palace in Venice.…” Her eye fell on the guidebook. “We were just discussing architecture.”

  Nasty’s parents exchanged a smirk. Max could tell from their faces that Massimo was exactly the kind of blue-blooded boy they’d been hoping their daughter would meet in Spain. So much more suitable than that red-haired punk she’d been talking to at the airport.

  “Won’t you join us for lunch, Massimo?” asked Mrs. Smith-Jones. “The guidebook recommends a place down the street.”

  He attempted a charming smile. “Grazie, signora,” he said in his best Italian accent.

  Mrs. Smith-Jones giggled and nudged her husband. “We’re lunching with an Italian aristocrat,” she said. “Imagine.”

  Nasty rolled her eyes. “My parents are driving me crazy,” she whispered to Max as they walked down the street together. “They keep trying to talk to me.”

  “What about?”

  “Anything. They want to have, like, conversations.”

  Max grimaced in sympathy.

  “Here we are,” said Mr. Smith-Jones, holding open the door of a restaurant. “This place is renowned for its local cuisine.”

  “Don’t forget the Italian accent,” Nasty whispered to Max as they went inside.

  Before the rest of
them had even looked at the menu, Mr. Smith-Jones ordered the house specialty for everyone. “Let’s walk on the wild side,” he said. “I always say that trying new foods is half the fun of traveling.”

  “He does always say that,” sighed Nasty. “He says it everywhere we go.”

  The house specialty, when it came, was a foul-smelling vat of octopus, stewed in its own ink.

  “Mmmm, looks good,” said Mr. Smith-Jones without conviction.

  “It looks disgusting,” Nasty corrected him.

  Mrs. Smith-Jones tucked a napkin into her husband’s collar to protect his impeccably ironed designer polo shirt, then half turned her back so she wouldn’t have to watch as he attacked the bowl of tentacles in front of him. “How long have you been in Spain, Massimo?” she asked, trying to ignore the slurping sounds coming from her husband.

  How long had he been in Spain?

  It felt like weeks, but it was only three days.

  Three days in which everything had gone from bad to worse.

  Lola was about to get married.

  Lord 6-Dog was dead, and Lady Coco was missing in action.

  And as for Max Murphy, who’d once thought he could outwit the Maya Lords of Death, he was on the run from the Spanish police and wanted dead or alive for murder. But as the Death Lords would be executing him in two days time, that seemed like the least of his worries.

  What a mess. What a huge, stinking mess.

  He groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “Are you all right, Massimo?” asked Mrs. Smith-Jones. “Is something wrong?”

  “You’re giving him a headache with all your questions,” said Nasty.

  “I bet it’s the sight of that octopus that’s made him ill,” said Mrs. Smith-Jones.

  “Nonsense,” said her father. “I’m sure they eat octopus all the time in Italy.”

  As Nasty and her parents bickered about the cause of his groans, Max took stock of his situation.

  He’d blown it big-time.

  There was no way he could make this okay.

  It was all over. His adventure. His game plan. His life.

  When he looked up, heavy rain was lashing the windows of the restaurant, and the families of the living dead were crowding inside, laughing and joking with one another.

  Max wanted to see the people he loved one last time.

  “I have to go home,” he said, forgetting to sound Italian. “Are you going anywhere near the airport?”

  “Sorry,” said Mr. Smith-Jones, “but that’s south, we’re headed east to Bilbao.” He winced as if someone had kicked him under the table.

  “What my husband meant to say,” explained Mrs. Smith-Jones, “is that we will be delighted to take you to the airport, Massimo. We’ll drop you off at the airport and carry on to La Tomatina, the festival of overripe tomatoes in Valencia.”

  “But Madrid is six hours away,” pointed out her husband.

  “Good,” she replied. “It will give Anastasia and Massimo a chance to get to know each other better.”

  For the first time in their vacation, Nasty gave her mother a big smile.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SHELL-SHOCKED

  Have you noticed,” said Max to Nasty, “that almost every woman we go past is pushing a wheelbarrow? Don’t they have purses in Galicia?”

  “Around here,” said Nasty, “it’s the women who work the land, while the men go out on the fishing boats.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Max, genuinely impressed, “you read it in your guidebook.”

  He’d long ago dropped the Italian accent, but Nasty’s parents didn’t seem to have noticed. They were too busy navigating their way through the leafy, dripping lanes of Galicia, trying to find the highway to Madrid and the airport.

  “Watch out for those people!” shrieked Mrs. Smith-Jones. “They’re walking in the middle of the road.”

  Mr. Smith-Jones honked his horn, but it didn’t do much good. The approaching hikers had their hoods up and their heads down. Some of them wore earphones, all of them were wet and miserable, and none of them were in a mood to huddle on the side of the road for the occupants of a dry, warm car to sweep past them.

  As Mr. Smith-Jones maneuvered slowly by, Max noticed that each hiker wore a large white scallop shell on a string around his or her neck. (It was impossible to identify genders in the soggy throng of yellow rain ponchos.)

  “What’s with the shells?” asked Max.

  Nasty waved the guidebook at him. “It’s the symbol of Saint James. It shows they’re pilgrims, walking to Santiago. If you’re wearing a scallop shell, they feed you when you get to the cathedral.”

  “What do they feed you?” asked Max. He was starving. He hadn’t eaten anything in that octopus restaurant.

  Nasty shrugged. “I don’t know. We were there yesterday, but we weren’t wearing scallop shells. I’ll tell you what’s gross, though: they have an old statue of Saint James behind the altar, and everyone lines up to kiss it.”

  “Yeuch.”

  “I know, think of the germs,” agreed Nasty. “But what’s cool is the world’s biggest incense burner. They fill it with burning coals, then hoist it up on ropes and swing it to and fro, like a crazy yoyo. It’s supposed to disguise the smell of sweaty pilgrims. Everyone oohs and aahs because it looks totally out of control, like it’s going to shoot through the window or fall on somebody’s head.”

  “Has it ever killed anyone?” asked Max.

  “Probably,” said Nasty. “Here, you can read about it in the guidebook. Have it. Keep it.”

  “I’m flying home; I don’t need a guidebook.”

  “Oh, yes you do,” insisted Nasty, scrawling her e-mail address and phone number on the inside cover.

  “Cool,” said Max. He tried to shove the book into his backpack, but it wouldn’t fit. Max pulled out the brown bag Lola had given him, to make room.

  “What’s in there?” asked Nasty.

  “Food,” replied Max. “I’d forgotten about it. Do you want some? It might be a bit squashed.” He looked inside the bag. “There’s some cookies, some bread, some cake … Wait, what’s this …?”

  As Max’s fingers burrowed down, he found something hard at the bottom, nestled on napkins.

  What the …?

  He pulled it out.

  It was wrapped in a piece of scorched paper.

  He knew what it was before he opened it.…

  The Yellow Jaguar.

  There was a note hastily scrawled on the paper.

  Hoop, go back to palace, find throne (look in bedroom), activate Yellow Jag, open portal. I’ll keep Landa and AP busy in Santiago. Good luck in Xibalba! MG

  Max sighed.

  Bossy, bossy, bossy.

  Oh, Monkey Girl, he thought, what have you done?

  While he’d been hanging with the Rats, Lola had risked her life to put the mission back on course. She’d defied Landa and Ah Pukuh for him; they would kill her when they found out that she’d given him the Yellow Jaguar.

  He remembered how she’d clutched a shawl tightly round her the last time he’d seen her. Now he knew that it was not to keep her warm, but to hide from Landa the fact that she no longer wore the necklet.

  How could he ever have believed that his Monkey Girl was in love with that creepy count? He should have trusted his instincts. They were a team, and he’d abandoned her just like that in a smoking, burned-out library. Meanwhile, she was going to marry Landa, just to give Max time to get to Xibalba.

  The question was, had her deception been discovered yet?

  “Are you okay?” asked Nasty. “You’re making strange groaning noises.”

  “I have to go to Santiago,” he said

  “Honestly, the incense burner isn’t that exciting—”

  “No, it’s this necklet; I have to get it to my friend today. She’s supposed to wear at her wedding. She’ll die if I don’t get it to her.…”

  Nasty inspected the yellow beads. “It’s a nice pie
ce, very unusual, but she won’t die without it. Can’t she wear something else?”

  “Nasty, I’m sorry; I know we’ve only just met and this must sound crazy, but I have to go to Santiago now.”

  “But it’s in the opposite direction.”

  “Please help me. I promise I’ll explain everything back in Boston.”

  Nasty looked at him. She took in his sweating brow and his shaking hands. She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “But I want the best pizza in Boston and a movie of my choosing, and you buy the popcorn.”

  “Done,” said Max.

  “So where’s the invitation?”

  Max pulled the crumpled card that Odd-Eye had given him out of his back pocket and passed it to her.

  Nasty studied it for a moment. “Mom! Listen to this!” she exclaimed, excitedly. “Massimo has just told me that a friend of his, a real live Spanish count, is getting married in the cathedral in Santiago today. Can you believe it? I’ve persuaded him to miss his flight and take us to the wedding! Oh, this will be the highlight of our vacation! Imagine the people we’ll meet.…”

  “I’m not going back to Santiago,” said Mr. Smith-Jones, “and that’s final.”

  “Now, dear,” said his wife, “it’s not every day we get invited to a society wedding in Spain! We’ll be rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy! This could be the start of a whole new life for us. The bridge club will be green with envy!”

  “No,” said Mr. Smith-Jones.

  “Not even if I throw away my list of museums and let you spend the rest of the vacation on the golf course …?”

  With a squeal of brakes, Mr. Smith-Jones executed a perfect U-turn. Ignoring the blue skies that beckoned them south to Madrid, they doubled back and set a course toward the black storm clouds looming over the old city of Santiago.

  Chapter Twenty

  LOLA’S WEDDING

  Despite the gathering storm, Santiago was abuzz with wedding preparations. Bells rang out from the medieval towers, their honey-colored stones shining gold in the rain. The arcaded galleries on the main square were decorated with garlands of yellow flowers that danced in the wind. Yellow petals blew through the streets like confetti and stuck on the rain-slick cobblestones. Damp white ribbons and bows fluttered from lampposts. And looking down on it all was the great stone cathedral, immense and immovable, its three-story facade more ornate than any wedding cake.