Jed and the Junkyard Wars

by Steven Bohls

  “We need to find a place to hide,” Jed said. “We can’t fight them all.”

  Sprocket readied another battery in her shatterlance’s chamber. “Speak for yourself.”

  Shay crossed her arms. “Yeah, speak for yourself.”

  “You can’t leave us behind,” Jed said to Shay.

  “Then run faster.”

  She spun and sprinted through the corridors, weaving left and right with seemingly no direction in mind.

  “She’s going to get us all killed!” Sprocket said through gritted teeth.

  Around the next corner, a red light pulsed above them, and a foghorn blared with a grinding screech.

  “They found the bodies,” Jed said.

  Sprocket shrugged. “What was left of them, at least.”

  Up ahead, Shay jolted to a stop.

  “Here.” She pointed at a door.

  “What is this?”

  “The most fun place to hide,” she said, pushing it open.

  They entered a carpeted room with a leather sofa, a four-poster bed, a carved oak desk, and a chest filled with cans and batteries. Jed pulled open the heavy window curtains. The sunlight stung his eyes. “Is this the captain’s quarters?” he asked.

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Shay, how did you know this was here?” A chill ran up his back.

  “I’ve been on lots of ships. They’re all the same.” She plopped onto the sofa. “Yep, best place to hide.”

  “Hiding in the captain’s quarters? You’re not serious!” Sprocket said.

  “Oh—I’m very serious.”

  The plush bedsheets and pillow were unwrinkled as if never used. “I didn’t picture dread having rooms like these. Even Spyglass.”

  “Spyglass? That scritch with the back-and-forth eye? No, silly. Not that captain. The captain of all the scritchens. Captain Mouse King.”

  Jed’s stomach tightened. “We’re in the mouse king’s room?”

  Sprocket looked from Jed to Shay. “Mouse king? What are you talking about?”

  “The king of the dread,” Jed said.

  Shay waved a hand. “Oh, hush hush. Mouse king has a fluffy room on every scritchum boat. Just in case he flies on one.”

  “How could you know that?” Sprocket asked.

  Shay shrugged. “Doesn’t it sound like something he’d do?”

  Sprocket gave Shay a dramatic shrug. “How would I know? I’ve never met him! How do you even know the dread have a king?”

  “Because he’s a mean mouse! Tells me I’m a bad mouse! ‘Bad mouse, Shay!’ Not a good mouse. Not ever a good mouse. I try and try and try and try and try to be a good mouse, but always, ‘Bad mouse, Shay! Bad mouse!’”

  Sprocket gave Jed a wary glance.

  “Aren’t the dread going to look in here for us?” Jed asked.

  Shay nodded. “Oh, definitely. In fact, they’re coming right now. We should probably hide.”

  “They’re what?” Jed said. He and Sprocket stared at the door. Hobbled footsteps clattered lightly behind it.

  “Under the bed,” Sprocket whispered, shoving Shay to the floor.

  Jed dropped and scrambled as fast as his hands and knees would allow. The door opened just as he tucked himself under the bed. Feet clomped into the room.

  Two were Spyglass’s. Four were not.

  The other two dread searched the room, opening cabinets and closets.

  “If you don’t find them before we reach the barge,” Spyglass said to the dread, “I’ll melt you both into doorstops!”

  “We’ll find them, Captain,” one of the dread said.

  “Yes. You will.”

  The three finished their search and left the room.

  Jed, Sprocket, and Shay waited for the sound of footsteps to disappear.

  “Well…” Shay said. “Now we know where we’re going.”

  “What do you mean?” Sprocket said.

  “The barge. Those scritchnobs said we’re going to the barge.”

  “What’s the barge?” Sprocket asked.

  “Scritcherdom! Where all the scritcherbugs are.”

  “Like another moving township?” Jed asked.

  “Oh, no. Not at all. It has wings like other townships, but it’s bigger than mountains and mountains. Fly and fly for hours to reach the end.”

  “Hours?” Sprocket said. “You’re telling me it’s a sky town that takes hours to cross?”

  “No. I said hours and hours.”

  “And where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “The barge.”

  “You already know, silly. All mice do. You talk lots and lots about it.”

  Sprocket shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Of course you do. You just call it something else.”

  “Then what do I call it?”

  “The fog.”

  They took turns listening by the door, but Spyglass didn’t return. And so they waited. Sprocket cleaned her shatterlance, Shay sat on the floor playing with a piece of lint, and Jed held the lemon. It was barely a lemon anymore. The rind was stiff and shriveled. Orange blotches stained the peel. Any hint of citrus was gone, replaced by the smell of pocket and decay. But it was his last connection to home, and he would keep it until he found his parents or it withered away to nothing.

  Eventually the light from the window outside dimmed. Black clouds stretched along the horizon. They didn’t swirl like the funnel of a junkstorm. They didn’t shift with the winds or float or fall. They hovered—still, like a wall at the edge of the world.

  “The fog…” Jed said.

  No one spoke as they slipped into its shadowy mass. Smoky particles danced along the windowpane until the glass was as black as night.

  “How do they know where they’re going?” Jed asked.

  “They listen,” Shay said, tilting her ear to the window, “for the sound of engines, and ovens, and clinking, and growling.”

  Sprocket’s brows were tight with apprehension—or fear—or both. But the look wasn’t directed at the blackness or the smoke they’d entered. Her body shifted ever so slightly away from Shay’s—first a shoulder, a foot, a small turn of a hip. And soon she was two steps away from her.

  Shay flattened her palms against the glass. Her gaze was fixed on the black window. “Clink, clink, clink, clink, whoosh,” she whispered. “Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, whoosh!”

  With each whoosh her eyes widened, then slowly returned to normal.

  For an hour, maybe longer, they watched.

  Nothing changed.

  Nothing appeared.

  Shay stood transfixed by the black glass, quietly whispering. And then Jed heard something outside. Small at first. Barely noticeable. Tap, tap, tap, tap…

  He stepped to the window.

  What was it?

  “Clink, clink, clink, clink, whoosh,” Shay whispered.

  Jed froze. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  Sprocket’s hand hovered over a shatterbox at her knee.

  “Shay?” Jed asked again.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on the window. She let out a low, eerie growl.

  A deep moan coursed through the darkness. Shay growled a second time, as if answering the moan.

  Jed’s cheeks burned. “Shay!”

  She flinched and looked at him. “What? What did you say?”

  “What is going on?”

  “I’m…” She looked at the floor as if trying to recall. “I’m not sure.”

  “Have you been here before?”

  Her face twisted. “Think, think,” she said to herself, slapping her forehead. The confusion drained from her eyes, and she looked up. “Yes. Yes. I think I have.”

  “Here?” Sprocket shouted. “You’ve been here? To dread territory? And you didn’t tell us? What’s going on, Shay?” Sprocket’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her shatterbox.

  Jed gave Sprocket a small head shake. “Tell us what’s going on, Shay,” h
e said. “You knew exactly where to go, where the dread king’s quarters were. How? How do you know this place?” He motioned to the window.

  She chewed on her lip. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I can’t remember all the things. Only bits. Little bits. Little, tiny bits.” She pinched her fingers together to show how little.

  “Think,” Jed said.

  Her head shook, concentrating. “I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  “Jed,” Sprocket said, pointing at the window.

  The black fog thinned as the dreadnought passed through the wall.

  A world of night stretched before them.

  Far below, tens of thousands of dread swarmed. Ships floated around them in all directions—some as small as Bessie, some large enough to make the dreadnought feel like a rowboat. Warships lined the ground below in neat rows.

  “That’s not the ground,” he said, leaning closer to the window. “That’s a ship’s deck.”

  Sprocket laughed. “No,” she said. “That’s impossible.”

  “He’s right,” Shay said. “One big boat. The biggest. It’s going to clean the junkyard—like a cleaning boat. Clean, clean, clean. Pick up all the junk. Pick up all the people. Until no more junk. No more people. All clean.”

  Whenever Sprocket looked at Shay, her jaw tightened.

  “Let’s get the captain and get out of here,” Sprocket said.

  “That’s him.” Shay tapped on the glass. “The mouse king.”

  Jed’s heart jumped. He swiveled and searched the darkness outside.

  “There.” Shay pointed. “Behind that ugly boat. Wait. You’ll see.”

  A distant dreadnought drifted to the right, revealing a spot of striking red. Untarnished, in the center of the smog-stained world, was a crimson boat.

  It was a three-masted sailing ship, like the kind Jed had read about in history and seen in movies about the Revolutionary War. It was like nothing in the junkyard. Long, golden planks bowed around its surface in a bricklike pattern, every plank matching its neighbor. The gold surface shimmered in the darkness like the dawning sun. Three red sails billowed on each of the tall masts.

  “My grandfather—you said they took him there. I have to find him. I have to get on that boat.”

  “What?” Sprocket spun around and looked at Jed. “You can’t possibly have said what I just heard.”

  “I’ve been trying to find him since I got here. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Good, because I don’t !”

  “I’m not asking you to come. We’ll get the captain and you off the ship. But I’m going there.” Jed stabbed the window.

  “All that will do is get yourself killed,” Sprocket said.

  Jed didn’t respond. He just stared at the red and gold shimmering in the darkness, thinking of how to get on board.

  Sprocket opened the door to the captain’s quarters and peeked out. “Clear.”

  One by one, they darted into the corridor.

  Jed nodded. “Okay, Shay. Show us.”

  She smiled and bolted down the hallway.

  “Great,” Sprocket said. “This again.”

  Shay stopped by a door and opened it to reveal a mop and a bucket.

  Jed assessed the closet. “This should work.”

  They squeezed inside, and Jed opened the door just a crack. Before long, a group of dread hobbled past.

  Sprocket swung open the door, slamming it against the first dread. It toppled to the floor. Jed leaped on a second dread, swinging his fists.

  Shay danced around the third as if it was a game. The dread slashed at her. She smiled and bent over backward. Her left foot kicked the blade from the dread’s hand. The dread lunged forward, but she dodged and ran. It stumbled, and Sprocket cracked the butt of her shatterlance against its head.

  Once all three dread were motionless on the floor, Jed pulled a pair of boots off one of them and measured them against his own feet.

  Sprocket took off her perfectly maintained trench coat, folded it neatly, and set it beside the dread. She cringed as she removed the creature’s oil-soaked shirt and pulled it over her own.

  Jed pointed to the trench coat. “You won’t pass for a dread wearing that. You have to get rid of it.”

  Sprocket shook her head. “I’ve been around more corners of the junkyard than anyone. Never seen a coat I liked as much as this. If it’s not dready enough for them, then I’ll just deal with it.”

  Jed nodded. “Okay. Then just know that I’m heartbroken for having to do this.”

  “Having to do what?” she asked.

  Jed pulled a knife from a dread and slashed a gaping hole in Sprocket’s coat.

  Her eyes stretched wider even than Pobble’s Ping-Pong ball stare. She reached for the coat but Jed slashed again.

  “You clunk piece of—!”

  Jed swiped a third time, then nodded. “That should do it. Now it’ll pass for a dread coat.”

  Sprocket shook with rage. “I’m going to strangle you with your own shoelaces!”

  “See?” Jed said. “You even sound like a dread now.”

  Sprocket’s hands clenched into fists, and her eyes burned with murder.

  Shay stuffed pipes and scraps of metal into a baggy set of tattered clothes. When she was dressed, she twirled in front of the others. “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” Jed said.

  Sprocket mumbled something to herself and pulled on the rest of her clothes.

  They moved what was left of the bodies into the closet. Then, in their best hobble, they shuffled down the corridor after Shay.

  “You know where Captain Bog is?” Sprocket asked.

  “Mm-hm,” Shay said.

  “You seem to know a lot—” Sprocket said.

  “Oh, yes.” Shay nodded. “I do know a lot. I know that when you pull gollug slugs, they can stretch twice their body length before they snap and all the goopy stuff inside them falls out. I know that white paper doesn’t taste good after two sheets and brown paper after three. I also know that—”

  “That’s all fascinating,” Sprocket interrupted, “but how do you know where you’re going? I want a real answer, not a Shay answer.”

  Shay paused and thought for a moment. “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen?”

  “Yes, fourteen.” Shay nodded once, then turned around and kept walking.

  “I hate her,” Sprocket mumbled.

  “Shay, stop!” Jed called. He raced to catch her.

  When they caught up, Shay stood next to a staircase.

  Sprocket grabbed her by both shoulders. “This is important,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of dread up there, so we can’t run, okay?”

  “Of course not,” Shay said. “That’s not very sneaky. We’re dread! Remember?”

  Sprocket nodded. “Yes. We’re dread.”

  Shay wagged a scolding finger at Sprocket. “So no running around, all right?”

  “Yes,” Sprocket agreed. “No running around.”

  “Good dread.”

  They climbed to the main deck. The fog hovered around them like a misty sky.

  The deck was a patchwork of compressed junk, stacked like bricks. A warped plunger, a broken fishing pole, and a scuffed paintbrush were all embedded into the junk around Jed’s feet.

  Dozens of smokestacks jutted out from the dreadnought at crooked angles with no particular order. Some were feet apart from one another, while others were isolated.

  “Are we sure the captain is out here?” Sprocket asked.

  Shay smiled. “Of course not, silly. That’s why we’re looking. But you didn’t really mean to ask that, did you? You’re just a lazy mouse, that’s all.”

  “I—” Sprocket opened her mouth.

  “Either that, or a scaredy mouse.”

  Sprocket closed her mouth and kept walking.

  Shay nodded.

  At the next stack, Shay pointed to a la
rge grate on the deck. They walked to the grate and peered inside.

  A gray sack lay under the deck in a small, boxy pit.

  “Captain!” Jed whispered.

  The sack squirmed. “Jed?” a muffled voice answered. “Is that you?”

  “And me!” Shay squeaked.

  “Hold still, Captain,” Sprocket said. She removed the shatterlance from her back and aimed it at the lock.

  “Don’t!” Jed said. “The dread, they’ll—”

  A crack sounded, and a beam of white dust splashed against the deck. The lock burst into three pieces.

  Sprocket lifted the grate, then dove into the pit and cut the captain free.

  “Where’s the rest of the crew?” he asked, pulling the strands away from his face.

  “It’s just us,” Jed said.

  Captain Bog nodded. “Well, now that every dread on the ship knows where we are…”

  As if his words had called them, the deck clicked with the uneven gait of dread.

  “Let’s find a life raft,” Sprocket suggested.

  Captain Bog shook his head. “They’d just blast us out of the sky. We need another way off this ship.”

  “I’m not leaving the barge,” Jed said. The others looked at him.

  “Stop saying that,” Sprocket said. “We’re all leaving. And that includes you.”

  “Not until I find my grandfather.”

  “What’s he blathering on about?” the captain asked.

  “Shay told me that when the steamboat was attacked, they took my grandfather to the Red Galleon.” Jed pointed at the red ship hovering in the distance. “To the dread king.”

  The captain’s face went rigid. “Jed…I know firsthand what the dread king does to people like you and me and…your grandfather. He calls us meat sacks. And you know what he does to meat sacks?”

  Jed’s heart thudded. “Shay said he makes people drink engine oil.”

  The captain lifted his brows as if surprised that Jed knew. “He does. I’ve seen it.” His throat quivered.

  Your daughter, Jed thought. A sick feeling prickled through him, and it was suddenly hard to swallow.

  “I have to try,” Jed said. “Just like you had to for your daughter. And you’d do it all over, wouldn’t you?”

  Captain Bog was quiet for a long moment. “Okay.”

  Sprocket’s jaw slackened. “Okay? Did you just say okay?”