Jed and the Junkyard Wars

by Steven Bohls

  “And that is?”

  “Get me a can and I’ll show you.”

  “Someone get me a pineapple juice!” Captain Bog hollered.

  Pobble trotted over with a can. Jed clamped the tool to its rim, then sliced off the lid.

  “Where did you—” Captain Bog’s jaw slackened, but he stiffened before too much excitement could creep into his face.

  “You like it?”

  “Fine. Give me your little toy and my crew will search the ship for survivors. Two hours. That’s my offer. We’ve got two hundred scopes to cover in two days. If we miss our rendezvous with the tinker and Riggs doesn’t get his defluxor core, I’ll have mutiny on board. Is that clear?”

  “But what if we don’t find anyone on the steamboat?”

  Captain Bog shrugged. “It’s all I can offer. Take it or leave it. This boat’s not a transport, and it sure isn’t some scrap orphanage. So unless you’ve got a pocket full of batteries I don’t know about, that’s the deal.”

  “If no one is aboard the steamboat, I’ll need a ride.”

  “Nope. Out of the question. We’ll barely catch the tinker as is. And then we’ve got a dig site in Skova a hundred scopes from there. I won’t miss either for some can slicer.”

  Jed nodded. He knew when people were willing to give, but he also knew when they weren’t.

  “Give me three days on board. Lock me in a closet if you want. You don’t even have to feed me.” Jed winced as the words left his mouth. Captain Bog seemed the type to hold to such agreements. But Jed didn’t offer something he couldn’t handle. He’d gone four days without food in Kenya. With water, three was easy. “You can drop me at the nearest town when you’re ready.”

  Captain Bog studied Jed. “No food, huh?”

  Jed cringed. He’d hoped the captain would take his offer just for the sake of entertainment.

  “And three days in a closet?”

  “That’s right.”

  Captain Bog stepped forward. “I’ll drop you at a township, but here’s the new deal. No closet nonsense. Each day when we land, you’ll have two hours to hunt for twenty-one cans to feed the crew. Twenty-one cans. No less. You find the cans, you buy a day’s passage. You’re one can short, don’t bother trying to board. No amount of blubbering will convince me otherwise. And if you want food for yourself, find more than twenty-one cans, or expect to live on cloudy mop water.”

  Captain Bog snatched the can opener from Jed, then walked away.

  The faint scent of blackened wood and melted metal made Jed’s throat feel smaller. If the steamboat was empty, then he was alone in the world.

  The tug approached the charred steamboat. A low buzz hummed from its hull, and a flash of activity caught Jed’s eye.

  “Wasp!” Sprocket shouted.

  Captain Bog followed her gaze. “Ready weapons!”

  “Aye!” Kizer yelled, punching buttons on the bridge.

  A small brassy device wobbled inside the steamboat’s cargo bay. It rose and swayed unsteadily in the air.

  “Lock shatterkegs,” the captain said. “If it takes aggressive posture, fire.”

  “Aye,” Kizer called.

  The wasp was barely able to fly. It turned toward the tug, then drifted backward.

  “Run away, little copper,” Captain Bog mumbled. “Don’t make me blow you to bits.”

  As if it heard the captain, the wasp’s engines flared; then it spun and rocketed away.

  Captain Bog nodded. “Stay sharp down there,” he said to Kizer, “in case there are any more stragglers.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Rear up. Raise the sky propeller.”

  “Rear prop up,” Kizer responded. “Sky prop engaged.”

  Thin shadows moved across the deck at Jed’s feet. Fastened to the top of the smokestack, five blades lifted into place. As the hum of the tail propellers faded, the sky prop began to spin until it was a blur. Violent wind from the whirling metal gusted down against Jed, nearly knocking him off-balance.

  “Set us down on the main deck,” the captain said.

  “Aye!” Kizer shouted over the noise.

  The tug hovered over the steamboat and began to lower. The deck of the steamboat dwarfed the tug.

  The tugboat’s engine sputtered to a stop.

  Sprocket hopped down from the stack’s nest and tossed a rope ladder overboard.

  One by one they climbed down the ladder to the wide, empty steamboat deck.

  “Let’s look around, shall we?” Captain Bog said.

  Before Jed could follow the others to explore the ship, Riggs put a hand on his shoulder. “Given any more thought to our conversation?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say. I didn’t steal it. It was—”

  “A gift. Right. Sooner or later you’ll cooperate.” He motioned to the deserted ship. “We both know everyone here is dead. I’m guessing we’re about to find out you’re all alone. You might need a friend—especially considering Kizer’s opinion of you.”

  The sick, lonely fear punched at Jed’s gut again.

  Riggs’s dark grin widened. “Captain told us about your little can-scrounging deal. We’re taking bets on how many you’ll find. Most said under five. Pobble must like you, because he guessed all the way up to nine. We all know you’re not making it back on board. You’re going to die here.”

  “Why are you saying this?”

  “Tell me about that watch and I might remember a secret passage through the ship that leads to a stowaway cabin hidden under the mess. Access to food and barrels of water…I’ll even throw in a blanket.” Riggs outlined the square edges of a panel in the tug’s hull with his finger. “What do you say?”

  The captain wouldn’t show leniency if Jed couldn’t find the cans, but Jed couldn’t offer information he didn’t have.

  “I swear. I don’t know anything about this watch. If you could just tell me why it’s so important, maybe I could help.”

  Riggs scratched his wrinkled forehead. “Listen. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t know how to use relic junk. I’d even believe that you don’t know what it does. I’m willing to negotiate. Tell me who you stole it from and we have a deal.”

  “I didn’t steal it! You want the truth? My parents gave it to me. Okay?”

  “Ah…your parents. Why not mention it earlier? It’s a simple enough answer.”

  “Maybe I don’t trust you.”

  “Then where are your parents?”

  “They’re missing. This watch is the only piece I have left of them.”

  “Convenient.”

  “No, actually, it’s not convenient. I’m stuck on this scrap tugboat, and now I find out that my grandpa—the last person who can help me—is probably dead. What about that sounds convenient to you?”

  “The part where you’re lying about all of it.”

  “Whatever. I don’t care anymore. I can’t help you if you won’t believe me.”

  Riggs continued as if he hadn’t heard a word Jed had said. “If you won’t tell me who, then tell me where. What township cluster? Did anyone else have watches, or was there only one? Did they know how to make them work? Give me something, Jed. Anything. I’m quite reasonable. But I need to know that you’re willing to talk.”

  “If I knew anything else, I’d tell you. But I don’t.”

  “What about your parents? Who are they? What are their names?”

  Jed thought about the letter telling him not to mention his last name. “I—I can’t tell you their names.”

  “That’s what I thought. Tough to come up with names on the spot for imaginary parents.”

  “Why do you care? It doesn’t even work.” He tapped the glass face and showed Riggs the unmoving hands.

  “Maybe you don’t know how to use it.”

  “And you do? Then tell me what it does. Because it seems useless.”

  “Useless?” Riggs smiled. “Look around! You’re in the middle of a war zone. How many ships do you think are
lying in pieces around us? Two hundred? Three? All for pieces of scrap that are just as useless as the one you’re wearing. I know people who would kill a ship full of men just for a peek at that scrap on your wrist.”

  “It sounds like you should know different people,” Jed said.

  Riggs nearly laughed. Nearly. “Probably true. But if you don’t tell me the truth about where you found it, I’ll tell Sprocket what you have, and after we’ve left, she’ll return for the answers. With a bit more coercion.”

  “First you accuse me of stealing it, then you blackmail me, and now you’re just going to torture and rob me?”

  “Who said anything about robbing?” Riggs said. “The captain doesn’t tolerate stealing. Not one bit. I’m perfectly happy with you keeping what you’ve rightfully…acquired. I’m not interested in one little trinket. But a shiny piece like that has brothers and sisters.…”

  “Well, good luck with that. Nothing I say is going to help. I didn’t even find this in the junkyard.”

  “I thought someone gave it to you. Now you found it?”

  Jed rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean….I didn’t get it from the junkyard.”

  Riggs smiled. “Oh. That’s right. You’re from the fringe. You must have gotten it from your glittertale home. Clearly. Listen, if you won’t respond to reason, I guess I’ll wish you luck when Sprocket returns. And don’t try to sneak in here.” He patted the stowaway panel. “I’ll have my eyes on you the whole time. And you have cans to find.”

  Jed’s stomach swirled at the mention of cans. He wondered if what Riggs had said was true. Had they really bet on how many cans he’d find? The charred junk blended together in a sea of black. Finding even five cans was going to take a miracle.

  “Jackpot!” Pobble shouted. The crew swarmed around him.

  “We got ourselves a caseful!” Sprocket whooped, drew a shatterbox, and fired a shot in the air.

  “Pobble, grab that end,” Captain Bog said. “Riggs, help him.” They gripped the edges of a plastic crate, then shuffled closer. Jed peeked into the crate at more than a hundred cans. When they passed, he pulled the captain aside. “Is this why you wanted to ‘help’ search? To scavenge for supplies?”

  “A man’s gotta eat. Besides, no harm in poking around while we look for a crew that doesn’t seem to exist anymore.” He took a swig of pineapple juice from a yellow can. “But you should get started hunting. Twenty-one cans is a tall order.”

  “Twenty-one cans? What do you mean? You just found a whole crateful.”

  “Exactly. We found them.”

  “Only because of me. Those should count!”

  “Did you find them?”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  The captain shook his head. “A deal’s a deal. I’d get started, if I were you. Wasting time running your mouth.”

  “But what about my grandfather? You haven’t even looked!”

  “I’m a man of my word. The crew will search every room of this scrap of charcoal. I doubt they’ll find more than a pocketful of batteries and a nest of gollug slugs, but they’ll do it all the same.”

  “A nest of what?”

  “Time’s running out. Twenty-one cans. Two hours.” Jed glared at the captain. “Oh, I’m sorry. Where are my manners?” He held up the pineapple juice. “Sip?”

  Jed pointed to the wreckage. “What about the dread?”

  “What about them?”

  “Sprocket said there could maybe be dread down there.”

  Captain Bog patted Jed on the back. “Don’t worry. They’re more scared of you than you are of them. Or maybe I’m thinking of slugs. Yup, that’s right. Dread will slurp you up and wear your nose before you can spit. But good luck trying to spit, because they’ll be wearing your lips too. Tick-tock.”

  Jed stalked off to the lower decks. The ship was an eviscerated corpse of shredded steel and splintered wood. He leaped over a broken pipe and a twisted shoot of rebar. Always watch your feet, his dad had warned him once after they’d set a half dozen traps around their campsite.

  “Watch your feet,” he whispered to himself.

  The captain was probably right. The empty ship was a skeleton in a graveyard. If anyone had survived, they were long gone. Or worse.

  No bodies.

  No voices.

  Nothing.

  A porthole led to the junkyard floor. Out of reflex, he glanced at the broken watch on his wrist. Two hours.

  He lifted a metal grate and began searching. He stacked a shovel and a basketball on the top of a barbecue, then tossed a checkered sweater over his shoulder. As he pulled a lawn chair free, his heart leaped. The first can. It couldn’t have been more than a minute and he was already one can closer. He brushed the smoky black from its surface. Kidney beans.

  He pulled a plastic crate from the junk and tossed the first can inside. Water chestnuts and diced peaches quickly followed.

  Three cans in less than ten minutes. If I keep this up, I’ll be back on the ship in an hour.

  And then…nothing.

  Jed searched under a cast-iron bathtub, in a hand-carved wardrobe, around a dusty chimney. His heart beat faster as the minutes passed. He slipped on a red pool ball and rammed his knee into a bedpost. He swore, then grabbed a fire poker and slammed it into junk. Bits of plastic from a sewing machine scattered around him. He whacked the junk until the pain in his knee dulled.

  Focus. You can do this.

  As he stared at his feet, a dark shape moved under the gaps in the junk. He scrambled backward and fell.

  He hadn’t actually seen anything.

  Had he?

  Jed curled up and inched forward. He studied each dark cavity.

  And then he saw it.

  A dozen layers deep.

  A dread. It had one eye and one empty socket. Crooked wires fused the eye to a mechanical face patched with dead, leathery skin.

  Jed stood there, frozen, as the dread watched him. Still and ready like a spider.

  A red light appeared on the side of its head and began to pulse.

  “Slippery boy,” it said through the junk. “Tucked away in secret places. Secrets, secrets, secrets! You’re Secret Boy, aren’t you? I can smell it. I can taste your secrets!”

  Jed stepped back.

  It skittered through the junk underneath him like a shark circling a defenseless boat. It crawled through impossible crevices, twisting its body this way and that.

  “You smell soft and frightened. Frightened makes soup drizzly. I like drizzly. I want to slurp drizzly from your belly and play scratch with your bones.”

  Jed backed away, but the dread followed beneath him.

  He picked up a baseball and chucked it into one of the gaps. “Get away from me!”

  The dread slipped to the side of the ball. And then it began to make its way upward.

  Jed scrambled back, but he was too slow.

  The dread surfaced from the junk. Its legs were bars of iron, and its rotting chest was held together with swatches of chain-link fence. One arm limp—almost dead—flopped at its side. The other was outstretched and clawed at the air in anticipation. “Father says no slurp up Secret Boy! Secret Boy off-limits. But I want Secret Boy. Secret boys taste like winning and defiance!”

  “Get away from me!” Jed yelled again.

  He ran.

  The dread skittered forward, its metal legs clacking unevenly against the junk.

  When its twisted shadow had nearly reached Jed’s, a crack filled the air, and the dread burst into a clatter of metal parts.

  A cobalt-colored trail of smoke stretched from the dread to the end of Sprocket’s shatterlance. She gave Jed a fluttery wave with her fingers, then scrawled her signature in the smoke.

  Jed slumped to the pile and gave Sprocket a thank-you wave.

  The metal pieces of the dread were still. All except for the green eye, which still rotated on its gear, blinking and watching him.

  “If you’re going to find twenty-one cans
,” Captain Bog called from the ship, “you should probably spend less time frolicking around with those things and more time searching the piles.”

  Jed sucked in a deep breath. “Thanks,” he called back, his voice shaking. “Appreciate the concern. Really thoughtful of you.”

  “That’s what I’m known for,” the captain said. “Thoughtfulness. That and warm hugs.”

  Jed stood and limped over a pair of garden gnomes and a dentist’s chair. His muscles jittered and his knee throbbed. The more he walked, the more the key in his shoe pressed into his foot.

  Don’t think about the dread. Just find cans.

  He studied the junk, soaking in the scene, and managed to scrounge four more cans from the pile.

  “One hour!” the captain called. “Then we’re gone!”

  Jed’s heart banged against his ribs. He scrambled around and found a can of lima beans, three cans of soup, and a can of tomato paste.

  Ten more, he thought. Only ten more.

  He glanced back at the steamboat, realizing for the first time how far he’d ventured. The farther he walked, the farther he’d have to walk back.

  But with still ten cans to go, he didn’t have a choice. Captain Bog’s voice burned in his ears: One can short, don’t bother trying to board.

  As he scampered up yet another pile, he was grateful for every Himalayan rock-climbing trip his parents had forced him on. The crew couldn’t have known he had that kind of experience—especially with their low guesses. Jed spotted another few cans and added them to the crate. He smiled. He would make it. The look on Captain Bog’s face would make every cut and scrape worth it. The thought gave him the boost of energy he needed to lift a small airplane wing and snatch a hidden can of asparagus.

  He plowed through a wheelbarrow, an electrical box, and a trampoline, finding several more. Minutes sped by. He raced faster, tearing his palms on loose nails and fractured concrete.

  “Ten minutes!” Captain Bog yelled.

  The voice was too quiet. Too far away. Jed dropped the bicycle seat he was holding and looked in horror at the distant steamboat. He studied the milk crate. One…two…three…four…five…six…Wait, no…four…five…six…no! His hands shook as he shoved cans from side to side. Counting…recounting. He tilted the crate to dump it out, but hesitated, eyeing the gaps in the junk.