by Steven Bohls
Sprocket lifted the mower, revealing a wide cavity. They crawled inside and covered the opening.
Brown pleather seats and small windows lined the wall of the cavity. It was a school bus, toppled on its side and buried under a heap of junk.
“We couldn’t reach the captain,” Sprocket said.
“I can,” Shay said. “I’m a sneaky mouse.”
Sprocket shook her head. “Too dangerous.”
“Sprocket’s right,” Jed said. “We just have to hope the dread don’t find him.”
He crawled to the window and shifted the lawn mower to see. They were barely a hundred feet from the tug. He could still see Bessie’s smokestack and Spyglass’s head, chanting into the open air.
“Send down the lines!” it shouted. “So I can slurp up the soup inside these pink flesh bags!”
Something above them popped, and a cable shot from a dreadnought. A spike at its tip impaled the junk, and the cable pulled taught. As soon as the first cable landed, hundreds more followed. Lines whistled through the air, anchoring into the piles all around them.
The cables began to quiver as dread crawled from the ships and began to descend.
They were like Pobble’s story: Limping figures sewn together with twisted patches of metal. Scraps of steel wired to skin. Spinning gears in place of muscle.
They hit the ground like rain on a tin rooftop. One crunched into the junk by the mower. It had a mop for one of its legs, a birdcage for a chest, and a garden trowel for a hand. Two other dread had limbs made from fire extinguishers, broken axles, metal beams, and crude, rusting scraps. They hobbled along the uneven junk with a clatter.
The dread turned toward Spyglass and began to creep aboard the tugboat. They piled at the ship’s base, climbing on top of each other to board.
“Spyglass,” a dread muttered. “It’s Captain Spyglass.”
The word spyglass trickled through the mob, each of them chanting it and peering over the dread in front to see.
“Everyone stop mumbling and one of you weevil-eating maggots get me a body!” Spyglass shouted. “Now!”
An unseen dread in the center of the swarm screeched, and metal parts scattered in the air.
A dread lifted a headless body into the air. “Here, here! This one! Right here! Take this one!” it shouted.
“Too short,” Spyglass called. “And not ugly enough. Pick again.”
Another dread screeched, and a moment later its headless body was lifted above the crowd for approval. “This one! He’s a good one, I swear! Was my deck mate. Strong bones. Tall. Ugly as slug snot. I would’ve stolen his body for myself if I didn’t want you to have it!”
Spyglass studied the offering. “Very well. Bring it up here and get me off this post.”
The dread dragged the headless body to the deck while others scampered to the smokestack to retrieve the head mounted to the stack. One of them touched the red, flashing button. It stopped flashing, and the spyglass retracted.
Spyglass was quickly fastened to his new body. He stretched his new limbs and examined himself. He pulled a shatterbox from his boot and nodded. “Who found me this body?”
A dread scrambled forward. “I did. Name’s Grom.”
“You said you wanted to steal this body for yourself?”
“Well, yes, but not now. Now it’s yours. I wanted to—”
Spyglass aimed the shatterbox at Grom and fired. Metal parts burst along the deck. “Sorry, Grom, I can’t have crew wanting to steal my new legs. Did anyone else want this body? Anyone?”
“Him! Him!” a dread shouted. “Doozok here wanted it too!”
“You liar!” Doozok yelled, swinging the shovel that was his arm into the dread’s face.
Spyglass lifted his shatterbox and shot them both. “Anyone else?” He waited, but no other dread spoke. “Good. Now where’s your captain?”
A dread, its body at least as tall as Spyglass’s, walked forward.
The swarm parted as he approached.
“Captain Lurg,” the dread said with a nod. “I’m captain of dreadnought 188.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Spyglass said. He raised his shatterbox again and pulled the trigger. A crack filled the air, and black smoke snaked up from the barrel. Lurg crumpled to the floor. “Because it looks like I’m captain of the 188.” He looked at the nearest dread. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Aye, Captain,” the dread said without hesitation.
Spyglass nodded. “Good. Any of you chin scabs hear differently? No? Perfect,” he said, not waiting for a response. “Now listen up. I’m starving, and there’s three little flesh bags hiding about the piles that I’m particularly interested in. One is a duck-kneed shoe wipe with a broken leg. The other is a sweet little darling I made a promise to. And the third is a special boy I’d like to get to know better. Find them.”
The swarm slipped off the ship and began digging. Searching.
“There’re thousands of them,” Jed said. “They’re going to find us.”
“Quiet!” Sprocket said.
As one of the dread searched the junk near the tug, its back leg snapped in half; then something launched it skyward.
“There! There!” the dread chanted. “Found one, there!”
Three dread scrambled into the space and hauled Captain Bog to his feet. They carried him up the mound and delivered him to Spyglass.
The crowd chittered in excitement.
“Ah, the mighty Captain Bog,” Spyglass said. “Such a big and brave spit weasel. How strong and brave are you now?”
Captain Bog lunged forward and struck Spyglass in the face. Dread scrambled to yank him back and restrain his arms. The captain snorted and spit onto Spyglass’s cheek. Even at this distance, Jed could see the wad of saliva splash against the leathery forehead and roll down the nose. Spyglass didn’t flinch. He didn’t even wipe the spit from his face.
“Your face looks better mounted on a stack,” he said.
“Perhaps yours will too,” Spyglass said.
“I want his arm!” a pirate shouted, waving the mangled rolling pin attached to his elbow.
Spyglass shook his head. “This bladder-scabbed cockroach is mine. First I want him tied to the mast and baked in the sun just like I was, thanks to him. Take him to the ship! And find the others!”
Dread scampered from the tug and returned to the piles to dig. A small group stayed to stuff Captain Bog into a tight, black sack and drag him along the junk floor to one of the hanging lines.
They tugged on the line, and it lifted Captain Bog and the dread into the ship.
Jed, Shay, and Sprocket stayed silent inside the bus. The dread dug under them, to their left, to their right, and walked right over them—but none noticed the three silent mice in the school bus.
Then one of the burrowers turned around. And headed straight for them.
“We need to get out of here,” Jed whispered to Shay. “Now.”
She shook her head. “They’ll see us and snap! put us straight into mousetrap bags like Ugly Mouse. I don’t want to go into a mousetrap bag.”
The tunneling dread burrowed closer.
“That’s why we need to find somewhere else to hide!” Jed said. “They’re almost on top of us!”
Sprocket nodded. “We need to go.”
The lawn mower flipped aside. A dread—both eye sockets empty and black—stared at them.
“Run!” Jed said.
He jumped up and shoved the creature. The three climbed from the bus and sprinted. Dread closed in on them from all angles. They were everywhere—as if they were the fog itself.
“There’s nowhere to go!” Sprocket yelled.
Jed looked in every direction. She was right. There was nowhere to go.
A hand grabbed his elbow and yanked.
“Get off me!” Jed kicked at the dread. His foot collided with a copper pipe and broke it from its shoulder. But another dread was already holding his arm again. And his legs.
They carried him to the tugboat and dumped him and Sprocket before Spyglass.
Jed looked around for Shay. Where was she? Had they found her?
“Hello, darling,” Spyglass said to Sprocket. “If I recall, we had plans for a date, you and I. That is, if ever I managed to find new legs.” He looked down. “Which I now appear to have. I want you to know how much I’m going to enjoy this.”
Spyglass grabbed Sprocket’s arm and opened his mouth.
His jaw unhinged itself, revealing every yellowed tooth in his gums.
He clamped his teeth around Sprocket’s arm and tightened his jaw.
Her skin dimpled under the bite. She held her breath, and her eyes squeezed shut.
Spyglass bit harder, savoring the moment.
His jaw flexed, and Sprocket screamed.
She tried to yank her arm away, but Spyglass’s grip was too strong.
As he bit harder, a familiar whistling sound cut through the air. The tail of one of the dreadnoughts exploded in a cloud of fire and smoke.
Far away, silver dots appeared on the skyline. Falcons.
Trails of violet smoke shot from their noses and headed for the ring of dreadnoughts. More explosions rattled the ships, and one dreadnought began to sink to the junk. The dread returned fire.
Spyglass released Sprocket’s arm, and the lens on his eye protruded—focusing on the wing of falcons.
“Bag these two and bring them to my ship! Tell the forward three vessels to engage the falcons. Tell the rest to return to the fog.”
“Three dreadnoughts won’t be enough to fight that flock,” one of the dread said. “They’ll just get blown to bits.”
“Fligg is right,” another added. “We have more than enough dreadnoughts. We can win.”
“We got what we came for,” Spyglass said. “We’re not here to knock birds out of the sky.”
“What if the other ships refuse?”
Spyglass grabbed Fligg by the neck. “Then you tell them the order came directly from the Galleon. We’re to gather the cargo and leave.”
“What cargo? I never heard of any message.”
“That’s because you’re a worm. Now get it done!”
Three dread grabbed Jed and stuffed him into a black sack. The material was stringy and felt like a tight, sticky web. A dread grabbed Jed’s legs and pulled him to one of the cables. In unison, the circle of dreadnoughts flared their engines. All but three ships turned in retreat and began to accelerate. Jed rose into the air, passing the black shroud of smoke engulfing the ship. He landed on a metal floor. Hydraulics hissed as the bay doors closed, sealing him inside the heart of the dreadnought.
Orange light glowed around Jed. The dread who’d carried him into the ship hurried off.
The sack around Jed’s body was impossibly tight. He squirmed, but the sticky material barely stretched. He flexed his arms and neck. They wouldn’t move more than a couple of inches. He tried his fingers. Nothing.
And then the tip of his pinky grazed against something in his pocket.
The can slicer.
His lips curled into a web-squished grin. Bit by bit, he slid the tool up and out of his pocket. Once it was free, he pressed the round blade against the webbing and made sawing motions.
A satisfying rip sounded in the quiet chamber.
His heart beat faster.
He continued sawing.
Jed finished cutting away the sack and peeling off the sticky material.
“You’re not a very sneaky mouse, are you?” a voice said behind him.
“Shay? Is that you?” The orange light pulsed and glowed against her face. “You’re okay! How did you escape?”
“You’re not the only mouse with tricks.”
“Do you know where the others are?”
He searched the empty floor.
Shay hopped over clumps of junk. “Over here, silly.” She pointed at another body.
Jed sliced away the webbing. A foot tore free and kicked toward his face. He lurched backward. “Sprocket!” he half whispered, half shouted. “It’s us!”
“Us?” she asked, ripping off the rest of the webs. “Golden Boy? Is that you?”
“And Shay.”
“How did you get free?”
Jed held up the can slicer.
“Right.”
Shay cleared her throat. “We should go, yes? Before scritchets come scritcheting around and find empty scritchet sacks?”
“Yeah,” Jed said. “Where are the others? Where’s the captain?”
“In another scritchery,” Shay said.
“How do you know?”
She examined each of his eyes. “Weren’t you watching?”
“Watching what?”
“When the scritchlees heave-hoed him into the other scritchery. That one!” She pointed up and to the left of where they stood.
“You can find him?” Jed asked.
“Of course!”
She bounded to the far wall, then pushed against a panel. A door opened, spilling orange light into the room.
“How did you know that was there?” Jed asked.
She gave a disapproving scowl. “You should learn to look better.”
The door swung open, revealing a dim corridor. Shay skipped through the opening. Jed and Sprocket followed tentatively.
“Slow down,” Sprocket whispered. “You’re going to get us caught.”
“Oh yeah? Wanna bet? Five batteries says I can make it to the end of the hall without a single scritchbug seeing me. Ready? Go!”
She turned and sprinted. “Shay, stop!” Sprocket whispered as loudly as a whisper could get. “Get back here!”
Jed had never seen someone run so fast. Shay’s thin body floated with each stride, though she made the motion look effortless as a morning jog.
“Shay!” he whispered. “Wait for us!”
Shay wasn’t at the end of the corridor. “Shay,” Jed said again. To his left a thin shadow darted away. “Stop!”
They ran after her, but whenever either of them got too close, she’d giggle and skip away.
Each corridor was as black and indistinguishable as the last. Jed ran so fast the lefts and rights escaped his mind until they were deep inside the mazelike ship.
The patter of Shay’s footsteps disappeared.
“Shay?” he whispered.
No shadow—no sound.
“Where’d she go?” Sprocket asked, sucking in labored breaths.
Jed looked to the left, then to the right, where he spotted a tiny form crumpled on the floor. His heart thumped. Shay’s arms were twisted awkwardly, her body limp and her eyes closed.
Sprocket rushed to her side. “Shay? Can you hear me?” She touched her shoulder.
“Boo!” Shay said, jumping up.
Sprocket lurched back, and her hand jerked toward her shatterbox.
Shay clapped her hands, then bit her bottom lip.
“Are you crazy?” Sprocket snapped. Her shoulders relaxed.
Shay nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes. Quite.”
“Well, don’t do that again,” Sprocket said.
“Where do we go from here?” Jed said.
Shay pointed left.
“How do you know?” Sprocket asked.
She shrugged.
Jed and Sprocket looked at each other. When they turned back to Shay, she was gone.
“Great,” Sprocket mumbled.
They ran in the direction she’d indicated, but before the end of the hallway, Sprocket grabbed Jed and pushed him against a wall.
“Shh!” She held a finger to his lips.
Three shadows flickered on the corridor floor ahead.
Sprocket shoved a shatterbox into Jed’s hand. She then unstrapped the shatterlance from her back and pulled a lever into place.
The shatterbox was heavier than Sprocket’s finger spins made it look. “How do I—”
“Just pull the trigger.”
“Okay, but what if I need to—”
�
��Jed”—she winked at him and patted his shoulder—“point and pull the trigger.”
“Yeah.”
Sprocket smiled and stood. They stalked down the corridor, but the shadows were gone.
Something snapped, and metal clanged against the iron deck. Jed’s finger twitched, sliding against the trigger.
Sprocket knocked his arm to the side. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing.” She made a series of hand signals.
Jed shrugged. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sprocket repeated the motions, and Jed shook his head.
Another sound echoed through the hall. Metal smashed into metal. Something twisted and snapped. A group of struggling shadows flickered against the wall ahead. “Shay!” Jed called, full volume. He ran ahead toward the movement. “Shay, I’m coming!”
Shay popped out from around the corner, wide-eyed, and touched a finger to her lips. “Shhh! When you’re trying to sneak around, you’re not supposed to yell.”
“Are you okay?” Jed’s voice bounced against the walls. “We saw shadows—heard fighting. I thought someone was attacking you.”
“They were attacking me, silly.”
Jed rounded the corner. The scattered remains of three dread lay strewn across the corridor.
“You—you did this?”
“What was I supposed to do? They attacked me.”
A mix of relief and fear trickled through him. Who was she? Captain Bog could barely fight off a single dread.
“But how did you—”
“Whoa,” Sprocket said, catching up to them. “What happened?”
Shay rolled her eyes. “Come on.” She waved them forward. “Every scritch probably heard you two. Not sneaky at all.”
Three dread scampered toward the noise—toward them. When they found the bodies, they scurried back the way they’d come.
“We can’t let them sound an alarm,” Jed said.
Sprocket drew her shatterlance. A crack filled the air. One dread exploded, gears showering the deck. Sprocket cocked a lever, aimed, and fired again. Another dread burst into tinkling bits of metal.
Jed raised his shatterbox and pulled the trigger. Blue particles skimmed past the ear of the third. He fired twice more and hit the dread in the back.
Shay shook her head. “Not sneaky one bit…”
Sprocket swirled her finger through the lingering smoke in a signature. “They’ll probably send more than three next time.”
