Scurvy Goonda

by Chris McCoy

  “Then come over here.”

  Scurvy scooted his chair over to the other side of the table and reluctantly draped his arm over Persephone’s bony shoulder.

  “Both arms,” said Persephone.

  Scurvy awkwardly complied.

  “Press your face against mine,” said Persephone. “It will be so cute.”

  Her skull bones felt hard against Scurvy’s cheek.

  “As much as I like planning this wedding,” said Persephone, “I can’t wait until it’s over.”

  “Aye,” said Scurvy. “It’ll be tha best day of me life when this is over.”

  “Oh, Scurvy,” said Persephone, pressing her face harder against Scurvy’s. “You’re so sweet.”

  Scurvy didn’t say anything. Persephone waited.

  “Sweet… on you?”

  “Aww,” said Persephone. “But do you know the real reason I want this wedding to be over?”

  “Not sure I do.”

  Persephone leaned close to Scurvy’s ear.

  “Our honeymoon,” she whispered.

  Scurvy’s stomach lurched.

  “Tha honeymoon,” he said. “Where we have tah spend weeks and weeks together?”

  “Please!” said Persephone. “Ours will be months long. Years. I’ve planned everything for after the invasion.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The coast of Brazil. I want to try out a new bikini,” said Persephone.

  Scurvy shuddered.

  “You’re shaking,” said Persephone.

  “Just a wee bit chilly,” said Scurvy. “We wouldn’t be going on this vacation for a while, though, right? Because ya need tah get things in order here in Middlemost?”

  Persephone laughed. “Things are well in order here in Middle most,” she said. “No, we’re going the moment the ceremony is over, and everybody is coming with us.”

  “I don’t think I’m completely understandin’.”

  “Bugslush!” yelled Persephone. “Telescope!”

  Bugslush hustled into the room, carrying an enormous brass telescope on his back. With a great grunt he set it up on the edge of the balcony.

  “Very good,” said Persephone. “That will be all.”

  “One th-thing I h-have to ask,” said Bugslush.

  “Well?” said Persephone.

  “Th-the raid on the ACORN hideout w-was a s-success,” said Bugslush.

  “That’s not a question,” said Persephone.

  “W-what do you want to be done w-with the p-prisoners?”

  “Oh, just have them taken to a factory and recycled,” said Persephone. “There’s no need to interrogate them if we’re all leaving tomorrow anyway.”

  “V-very good,” said Bugslush. “I’ll tell the g-guards.”

  Bugslush shuffled away from the balcony.

  “What do ya mean, we’re all leaving tomorrow?” said Scurvy.

  “Look through the telescope,” said Persephone.

  Scurvy placed his eye against the end of the telescope. The horizon came into focus, but all he saw was a field of straw and a quiet lake.

  “Pan left,” said Persephone. “Next to the bust of our heads I had carved into the mountainside.”

  Scurvy rotated the telescope until he spotted a mountain that had been chiseled into a sculpture of Scurvy and Persephone locked in a passionate lip-lock.

  “Ya had us carved?” said Scurvy.

  “Of course,” said Persephone. “I had to have my soldiers do something while they were waiting around. Now look next to our faces.”

  Scurvy saw it. Persephone’s entire military had gathered next to the mountain, armed and ready to move. Scurvy had never seen so many weird creatures together in one place. On the other side of the mountain was an enormous vent. It looked the same as the one he had crawled through underneath the Crusher, but it was twenty times as tall and hundreds of times as wide.

  “That’s the last open vent,” said Persephone. “The one we’re all going through. When I had all the other vents sealed, I had that one enlarged.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” said Persephone. “Our vents always lead to supermarkets and shops and those types of places. So our largest vent leads to the world’s largest store.”

  “Which is?”

  “Macy’s. It’s in New York City,” said Persephone. “We also considered a Home Depot in Michigan, but I wanted to pick up some perfume. You’ll adore me in Chanel No. 5.”

  VII

  It was the middle of the night, and it was the first time that the courtyard had been silent all day, aside from the slight whimpering coming from underneath the mahogany bar. Swamster, who had chewed up a tablecloth to make himself a bed there, was lying down, drinking a mint-ini.

  “Oh,” he moaned. “You stupid Swamster. You should have known better.”

  He couldn’t believe that all the years he had spent with President Skeleton had meant nothing. A rumor had spread that the ACORN prisoners were going to be transported to processing factories tomorrow morning, and what with ACORN being wiped out and the attack on Earth, Swamster now realized that during the years he’d spent working for a promotion, he had turned a blind eye to Persephone’s true nature.

  “Here’s to me—a total idiot,” said Swamster, taking another gulp of his mint-ini.

  He closed his eyes and tried again to fall asleep. This time, it wasn’t only his thoughts that distracted him. Cutting through the silence of the courtyard, he could hear a pair of female voices echoing up from the palace basement.

  “Slug!”

  “Porc!”

  Swamster climbed unsteadily to his feet and stepped out from behind the bar. He walked to the center of the courtyard, following the voices.

  “Ted, tell Joelle-Michelle to place her head in the crack of the floor and wait for a steam blast!”

  “Ted, tell this she-swine to find someplace else to flap her snout!”

  Swamster realized he wasn’t the only one listening to the catfight. He gazed up at the balcony, where Scurvy Goonda stood in his red pajamas.

  “You should be resting for your big day, sir,” Swamster called out.

  “Can’t sleep,” said Scurvy. “Did ya happen tah hear—were those girls mentioning tha name Ted?”

  “Sounded like that to me.”

  Scurvy considered this.

  “How big are ya?” said Scurvy.

  “Maybe five feet tall.”

  “If I was tah jump off this balcony, do ya think ya could catch me? Can’t go out through tha room, ’cause there are guards outside tha door.”

  “I’m not sure I could,” said Swamster. “You’re quite a bit heftier than you were when we first met.”

  “Aye, but fer a man my size, I land like a feather,” said Scurvy.

  Swamster hesitated.

  “Please,” said Scurvy. “I need tah see if tha Ted they’re talking about is me friend.”

  “All right,” said Swamster, walking a little unsteadily beneath the balcony. “Leap!”

  Scurvy swung one leg over the balcony and then the other.

  Swamster looked up at the pajama bootees covering Scurvy’s feet.

  “I’m gonna let myself fall,” said Scurvy.

  “I’m not sure—”

  WHOMP! Scurvy cannonballed into Swamster from above, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  “Not tha best catcher,” said Scurvy, holding his hand out to Swamster. “But a better cushion, I’ve never met.”

  “Errgh,” groaned Swamster. “Thanks.” Scurvy pulled Swamster to his feet.

  “Which way is tha entrance tah tha basement?”

  Swamster pointed with his paw just as Persephone’s voice was ringing out into the night above them: “GUARDS! GO GET MY SCURVY!”

  VIII

  Scurvy knew that once Persephone spotted him sprinting toward the cellar stairs in the courtyard, it wouldn’t be long until the guards tackled him and brought him back to her b
edroom or perhaps somewhere worse.

  Scurvy ran, barreling through the basement doors and down the stone stairs, Swamster running beside him. Their footsteps whacked the stairs in unison—clop! clop! clop! Scurvy had just enough extra wind to tell Swamster, “This might get hairy!”

  BANG! They ran into the first wave of guards rushing up from the cellar. Without breaking his stride, Scurvy snapped a tooth out of a goblin’s mouth and plunged it into the shoulder of a tweedy professor. Both fell to the steps in pain. Then he head-butted a harpy and kneed a Neanderthal. A few seconds later, he and Swamster were making their way down to the next staircase, where another swell of guards was dashing toward them.

  Scurvy stole a staff from a wizard and cracked it over the head of a fashion model; he took a baker’s saltshaker and dumped it over a huge snail; he wrenched a dagger from a sultan and used it to burst a man whose head was a red balloon (which had made him a very impractical choice for a guard).

  Swamster had never seen a fighter as brash and fearless as Scurvy, but he could tell that the pirate was running out of gas when he started to gasp and slow down. The guards kept coming, and soon they were leaping all over Scurvy, tearing at his hair and his pajamas and dragging him away up the stairs.

  “You were helping him escape!” accused a sheikh, who seemed to be in charge.

  “No, I wasn’t, I was chasing him!” said Swamster.

  Nearby, Scurvy managed to break away from his captors and take off running, yelling over and over, “I AM NOT GETTING MARRIED TO A PILE OF BONES!”

  In the chaos of chasing down Scurvy, the guards let Swamster slip past. While more guards rushed up the stairs, Swamster made his way deeper into the basement, down one flight of stairs and then the next, where the landing leveled out into a long block of jail cells.

  “Oh dear,” said Swamster.

  Cell after cell was packed to the brim with wounded ACORN fighters crammed tightly together. Tacked next to each cell was a command:

  THIS ONE FIRST!

  THIS ONE LAST—NICE GUYS IN HERE.

  MAKE SURE TO GET RID OF THESE GUYS RIGHT AWAY!

  Swamster realized that the commands corresponded to the order in which ACORN fighters would be taken to the factories.

  All of these ab-coms would be exterminated, because of him.

  “Hey, over here!” said a voice, and Swamster saw a teenage boy inside the cell marked THIS ONE FIRST!

  “You’re the hamster-swimmer-thing we captured at the factory,” said the boy.

  “I am a Swamster. And I’m ashamed to admit that I ratted you out.”

  “You can make up for it by getting us out of here! The guards are coming back. We have to stop this wedding and stop the attack.”

  “I know,” said Swamster. “Where are the keys?”

  “There’s an office built into the wall a few cells down,” said Ted.

  Swamster hustled down the hallway and found a key ring hanging on a hook, abandoned by a guard who must have run to join the Scurvy fight. Swamster ran back to the THIS ONE FIRST cell, flicking through the keys to find the right one.

  He had his head down when he heard Ted shout, “Look out!”

  BANG! Scozzbottle hit him over the head with a rock. Swamster crumpled to the floor, keys clanging next to him.

  Scozzbottle bent over and picked them up.

  “Traitor!” he said.

  IX

  Scozzbottle stood outside the cells, staring in. ACORN was totally at his mercy.

  “Lookie lookie. Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Scozzbottle. “Not since you offed my friend Wockgrass, I believe. You know, it’s almost daybreak upstairs. Almost time to load you into a truck and send you on your merry factory way.”

  It was silent on the cell block.

  “The sad thing,” continued Scozzbottle, “is that this whole ACORN business didn’t end up doing much at all, did it? You got together in a tree cave, you were discovered, and here you are in jail, a temporary stopover on your way to being ripped apart. It seems like a lot of wasted effort, doesn’t it?”

  Scozzbottle grinned wickedly. And then something peculiar happened. The cell block echoed with the same coughing that had been bouncing off the stone walls all night long. But this time, the coughing turned into violent hacks peppered with booming, wet eruptions.

  Scozzbottle opened his mouth to continue mocking the prisoners, but each time he did, he was interrupted by more retching.

  “So you see—”

  HACK!

  “The transport trucks are—”

  HACK!

  “ACORN has been defeated—”

  HACK!

  Scozzbottle snapped around in the direction of the noise.

  “Would you shut up?!” roared Scozzbottle. “I am trying to destroy morale!”

  That was when Scozzbottle saw it.

  When everybody saw it.

  A pale … sickly … birthmarked … arm.

  The markings on the forearm were the same as Ted’s, and the hand had the same shape. Ted looked down at his own limb to make sure it was still there. It was.

  The arm hovered in the air three feet from Scozzbottle and then rapidly fabricated a giant flannel-shirt-wearing fur trapper, probably Canadian. The trapper held a huge cage in one hand and a Taser in the other. He calmly reached forward and zapped Scozzbottle, knocking him unconscious.

  The trapper stuffed Scozzbottle in the cage, nodded to Ted, and said, “Gonna make me a nice coat out of this one. Eh.”

  The trapper walked up the stairs hauling his catch, while the arm floated down to the ground and picked up the key that Scozzbottle had dropped. Calmly, the hand unlocked the door, and Ted pushed it open.

  “Thank you?” said Ted.

  The arm held the key out to Joelle-Michelle, who accepted it.

  “It wants you to unlock the other cells,” said Carolina.

  The arm patted Joelle-Michelle on the shoulder and pointed to Carolina.

  “It wants me to help you,” said Carolina.

  As the arm began to float back the way it had come, Ted knew that he was supposed to follow it. He could barely breathe as he walked down the corridor. He made brief eye contact with Dwack.

  “Be careful, dear boy,” said Dwack.

  Each cell Ted passed was smaller than the last, and the corridor was far longer than he had realized. The arm glided steadily along. Finally, Ted and the arm came to a forgotten part of the cell block, where the candles barely burned and the air smelled like mold. Ted was thinking he was going to have to turn around and fetch a torch to help him see, when the arm stopped in front of a dank, lichen-covered cell barely big enough to hold one inmate.

  The arm floated through the bars of the cell.

  Ted crouched down to see inside.

  “Hello?” said Ted, nervously.

  The arm reattached itself to the elbow of a man leaning against the wall. Dressed in dirty rags, his hair wild, a scraggly beard covering his face, the poor man seemed in danger of crumbling to dust at any moment. A tin cup of water sat in a corner next to a single slice of bread.

  The man coughed violently: HACK! HACK!

  “We’ll have you out of here in a second,” said Ted. “A girl is coming with the key.”

  The man nodded feebly.

  “Who are you?” said Ted.

  The man’s rheumy eyes flicked from Ted’s face to his arm and back to his face. He wiped spittle from his lip and smiled weakly.

  “I’m your dad,” he said.

  X

  By the time Joelle-Michelle and Carolina had finished unlocking all the cells, Ted had barely recovered enough from the shock of learning about his father to tell all ACORN fighters to stay where they were. Guards would be returning to their posts soon. The time wasn’t right for an attack—he and Joelle-Michelle had to figure out a plan. Meanwhile, Brother Dezo dragged Swamster out of the corridor while Ted helped his father walk back to his own cell.

  Declan Merritt couldn’t sto
p hugging his son. Though Ted’s childhood memories of his father were hazy—he had left when Ted was seven, after all—there was no doubt that this was his dad. They had the same eyes and the same color hair. They were about the same height, and their arms were identical.

  After seven years, Ted wasn’t sure what to feel about his father hugging him. He barely knew him.

  “Ted,” said Declan. “My Ted. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “I thought you never wanted to see me or Mom or Adeline again,” said Ted.

  Declan released Ted and looked at him.

  “I swear to you—I didn’t walk out on my family, if that’s what you think,” said Declan. “Look where you found me.”

  “But if you could have imagined yourself released at any time, why didn’t you come home?”

  Declan shook his head. “This is the first time in seven years I’ve had enough strength to do that,” said Declan. “I heard what was happening, and I thought it might be you. If I’d managed to find Middlemost, maybe you had too.”

  “You should have tried to get back to Mom, Addie, and me,” said Ted.

  “You have no idea how many times I tried,” said Declan. “It killed me that you might think I left you and your mother. I was chained to a wall for five years. My arm was placed in a steel box. The only thing that kept me alive was thinking I might get to see you and your beautiful mother again. Before I left, I wrote a message on the back of one of your glow-in-the-dark stars.”

  “It said ‘here,’” said Ted.

  “That’s right. It said ‘here.’ If I didn’t come back, I thought you might find it when you were old enough to help, and figure out where I was.”

  It was a lot to absorb.

  “But why did you come here?” said Ted.

  “To stop my insane cousin, Lloyd Munch, from running amok,” said Declan.

  “You failed,” Joelle-Michelle pointed out.

  “I did,” said Declan. “If I had succeeded, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”

  “Well,” said Ted, “now you’ll get another chance to fight.”

  “I’m too weak.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Ted. “We can still use you, Dad.”