The Monster War

by Alan Gratz

  “You got somewhere else to go?” Gonzalo asked.

  So Archie told him. About how he’d been carved out of stone and bathed in the blood of a hundred men and brought to life by the lektric sorcery of Edison and Blavatsky and the green fire of the Mangleborn buried at Chuluota. And then he explained about the Mangleborn, and the Septemberist Society, and the League of Seven, and how he couldn’t be a part of it anymore after learning where he’d come from and how he’d been made.

  Gonzalo stayed quiet the whole time. He sat and thought for a while after Archie was finished, and finally leaned over and unlocked Archie’s handcuffs.

  “What are you doing?” Archie asked.

  “I’m letting you go,” Gonzalo said.

  “Thank you,” Fergus said. “At least I’m not the only sane person here.”

  “But—but all those men. All the villagers who died that night—” Archie said.

  “Died because somebody else killed them,” Gonzalo said. “They’re the guilty ones, not you.”

  “But I’m the reason they were killed!” Archie said.

  “Just ’cause you put your boots in the oven don’t make ’em biscuits.”

  “I don’t … understand what that means,” Archie said.

  “It means that just ’cause you feel guilty over all them people dying don’t mean it’s your fault.”

  “See?” Fergus said. “Even a blind man can see you’re not responsible for what happened.”

  “And you believe it?” Archie asked. “All of it? About the Mangleborn and everything?”

  Gonzalo sat quiet for a moment. “Señor X told me some of it. He knows all about these Mangleborn you’re talking about. Dealt with them in the long-ago past, best I can tell. And I know you’re telling the truth.”

  “How?”

  Gonzalo shrugged. “Just can. Got a nose for it. And if it’s the truth, I gotta believe it all, tough as that might be.”

  “All right,” Fergus said. “Now that Archie’s free and you know what all this is about, maybe we can think about getting out of here.”

  Gonzalo leaned back again and closed his eyes. “Señor X’ll get us out of here.”

  Fergus stood again. “Well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for a raygun to come save me.”

  The bathysphere rocked, and Fergus had to put a hand out to keep from falling over.

  “What was that?” Archie asked.

  The bathysphere rocked again, the metal bolts groaning. Fergus kept his arms out wide and looked around without moving his head. “That’s bad, is what that is.”

  “Did we hit bottom?” Gonzalo asked.

  “No,” Fergus said. “We may be at the end of the chain, but we’re still swinging.”

  Thunk! Something struck a glancing blow to the bathysphere, and Archie saw a massive row of pale white suckers slide by the foggy quartz window.

  “Did you see that?” Fergus squeaked. “Did you just slagging see that?”

  “No!” Gonzalo said.

  “A tentacle. A big tentacle,” Archie said.

  “With suckers as big as your head,” Fergus said.

  Archie looked up at Fergus. “That girl said the Deep Ones were stirring.”

  “Yeah. And there’s a tasty lektric treat waiting for them in Galveston. We gotta get out of here,” Fergus said, wild-eyed. “Archie, you can bust your way out, right?”

  “Yes,” Archie said. “But then what? I sink to the bottom, and you and Gonzalo drown.”

  “I hate the ocean,” Fergus said.

  Something growled in the water outside. There was no other way to describe it. They all froze, waiting for it to pass.

  THOOM! Something batted the heavy steel bathysphere like it was a rubber ball, and it went spinning. Archie and Fergus and Gonzalo fell all over each other as the sphere tumbled and swung, the chain tethering them to Galveston groaning in complaint.

  The bathysphere jolted again, coming to an abrupt stop. Suckers fixed themselves to the thick quartz window as a tentacle wrapped itself around the bathysphere.

  Crick! Crack! Ping! Cracks opened in the steel walls of the sphere, spraying them with seawater.

  “It’s going to crush us like a walnut!” Fergus cried.

  Archie spread his arms out wide to push the walls back, but he was too small, slag it. He couldn’t reach both sides at the same time.

  The Deep One was going to burst their bathysphere, and Fergus and Gonzalo were going to die.

  The bathysphere suddenly lurched upward.

  “Hey!” Fergus said. “Hey, that wasn’t the Mangleborn! That was the chain!”

  “Señor X!” Gonzalo said.

  Archie still wasn’t so sure about that, but someone was trying to pull them up. The Deep One held on tight though. The chain connecting them to the winch in Galveston screeched and groaned.

  “We have to get it to let go,” Archie said. “Fergus, you got any juice back?”

  “Oh!” Fergus said. He rubbed his fingers and got a spark. “Yeah! Archie, pick him up!”

  “What? Whoa!” Gonzalo cried as Archie lifted him off the bench with one hand, like picking up a doll.

  Fergus put a hand to the metal wall and sent a jolt of lightning through it. Kazaaaaaaack! The Deep One roared and let go of the bathysphere, and they shot up through the water.

  “Take that, you overgrown guppy!” Fergus yelled.

  Sploosh! The bathysphere burst from the water back into the light of the brig, tossing them all to the floor. As they stood, they heard someone taking the bolts off the hatch. They all smiled and breathed a sigh of relief until the hatch fell away and they saw Gonzalo’s raygun pointed at them by one of the Lafitte’s tall, gray, tattooed guards.

  “Hold it right there,” the guard said. “Nobody gets out until you tell me where the treasure is.”

  “Treasure?” Fergus asked.

  “This gun,” the guard said, glancing at the serpent-shaped turquoise raygun in his hand, “this gun talks! It—it told me one of the prisoners knew where there was sunken treasure. That you?”

  “That’s me,” Gonzalo said. “But I’m afraid there isn’t any treasure.”

  Gonzalo started to climb out of the bathysphere.

  “Stop, I said! Stop!” the guard said, backing away. “I’ll shoot!”

  Gonzalo hopped out of the bathysphere, and the guard pulled the trigger.

  Click!

  The raygun didn’t fire. The guard blinked. He pulled the trigger again. Click! Click! Click! Nothing.

  Gonzalo pointed to the mouth of the raygun. “There’s your problem right there.”

  The guard turned the gun around to look at the barrel. KaPOW! The raygun shot him in the face. He flew across the room, slammed into the wall, and slumped to the floor.

  “Ouch,” Fergus said.

  Gonzalo picked up his raygun as Archie and Fergus climbed out of the bathysphere.

  “He made one big mistake,” Gonzalo said. “He trusted Señor X.”

  “You’re lucky he did,” Señor X said. “Yours was the only bathysphere we could get to come up.”

  All the other winches had broken chains dangling from them. The Deep Ones had taken the rest.

  Archie knelt by the guard. “Is he dead?”

  “Señor X?” Gonzalo asked.

  “Just stunned,” the raygun said sadly. “One day you’re going to have to let me kill someone.”

  “That day may come,” Gonzalo said, “but not today.” He spun the raygun on his finger and slid it into its holster with practiced ease.

  “Where exactly did Señor X come from?” Fergus asked.

  “And when did he fight Mangleborn before?” Archie asked.

  “Thirty days hath September,” Señor X said from his holster.

  “Seven heroes we remember,” Archie said automatically. “You’re—you’re a Septemberist?”

  “Kid, I was a Septemberist before there were Septemberists.”

  “What’s tha
t supposed to mean?” Archie asked.

  The floor beneath their feet shifted, and they staggered across the room.

  “Later!” Gonzalo said. “The Deep Ones are done with the bathyspheres and they’re coming for Galveston!”

  9

  An enormous pinkish-white tentacle slithered past one of the brig’s small glass windows, and the room shuddered.

  “We have to get out of here!” Archie cried.

  “Where?” Fergus asked. “We’re still underwater!”

  “The girl,” Archie said. “The one who told the pirate king about the Deep Ones. She has a ship! The king said so. She’ll help us!”

  “If she’s even still here,” Fergus said.

  “Scanning,” Señor X said. Gonzalo pulled him back out of his holster. “Got her,” the raygun said. “She’s still here. Eight domes over and down. She’s on her ship. Leave this room and go right.”

  Archie held Gonzalo back. “Hold on! We have to get Mr. Rivets first! Señor X, do you know where he is?”

  “I can’t detect inanimate objects, kid. Not without some kind of tracker on them. You’re going to have to leave him.”

  The city lurched again. Out the window, they saw one of Galveston’s lektrified domes implode under a lobster-like claw the size of the Emartha Machine Man Building in New Rome. A massive air bubble burst from the busted dome like a mushroom cloud, casting off bodies and debris as it raced to the surface.

  “No!” Archie said. “He’ll end up on the bottom of the ocean! We can’t leave him!”

  “He’s just a machine, kid.”

  “Says the talking raygun,” said Fergus.

  “Where’s the main hall?” Archie asked. “That’s where we last saw him!”

  “We really ought to be getting to that submarine, G-man,” Señor X said.

  Archie looked imploringly at Gonzalo, then remembered the ranger couldn’t see him. But apparently he didn’t need to see Archie’s desperation to understand it. “Main hall first, Señor,” Gonzalo said. “Plot me a route.”

  The raygun sighed. “Okay. Go five steps forward and turn right.”

  “What’s that expression about the blind leading the blind?” Fergus said. He and Archie followed Gonzalo into Galveston’s maze of domes and the round metal passageways that connected them. There were guards and pirates all through the city, but none of them cared about Archie, Fergus, and Gonzalo anymore. They’d seen the things that were rising from the deep, and were driven insane by them. Some of them fought each other to get on board submarines. Others looted storerooms for supplies. Some of them sat along the round domed walls and cried. One room was on fire, and Señor X had to reroute them. Another room was flooded and sealed off, and Señor X rerouted them again.

  “You know, if every steamhorse had something like that raygun on the dash, nobody would ever have to get stuck in traffic again,” Fergus said.

  “If every steamhorse had one of me, we wouldn’t need drivers anymore,” Señor X said.

  Archie ached to go faster, but Gonzalo walked through Galveston like he was out for a stroll in the park. It had to be because he couldn’t see, and again Archie thought about what an incredible handicap that must be. Archie had never thought about how much information he got from his eyes. He didn’t know how Gonzalo did it, even with Señor X’s help.

  “I thought you said not to trust Señor X,” Archie said.

  “I don’t,” Gonzalo said.

  “This is why I hang out with this kid,” Señor X said. “He’s smart.”

  “Where’d you get that thing, anyway?” Fergus asked again.

  “Found him,” Gonzalo said simply.

  Trustworthy or not, Señor X got them to the main hall. A handful of pirates were there fighting over the treasure they’d taken from Houston, and the Lafitte still sat on his throne, ranting to no one in particular about how the Deep Ones were still just a myth.

  All that mattered to Archie was that Mr. Rivets was still there. He ran across the room and hugged the machine man, then pushed him away.

  “Mr. Rivets, you lied to me! You told me you were taking me to the post office, and you got me kidnapped instead!”

  “Yes, sir. I felt it necessary to get you involved somehow,” Mr. Rivets said. The machine man stood taller. “It was my first ever lie. How did I do?”

  “Mr. Rivets can lie?” Fergus asked. “Since when?”

  “Long story,” Archie said.

  Something went boom near the main hall, and water rushed in from one of the doorways.

  “One we don’t have time for,” Señor X said. “We gotta go.”

  “Yeah, no offense, Gonzalo,” Archie said, “but we’re going to have to move faster than a brisk walk.”

  “Got it covered,” Gonzalo said. He put his fingers in his mouth and belted out an ear-splitting whistle, and a steamhorse came galloping through one of the passageways.

  “Wondered where you’d got to, boss!” the steamhorse said.

  Gonzalo swung up onto his back.

  “Hey, I don’t want to freak anybody out,” the steamhorse said, “but I think the city might be sinking.”

  “A talking steamhorse,” Fergus said, clearly impressed.

  Gonzalo helped Fergus climb up. “His name’s Alamo.”

  “Well, that ought to be easy to remember,” said Fergus.

  Gonzalo held out a hand. “Archie?”

  “Mr. Rivets is too slow to keep up, and too heavy to ride,” Archie said. “I’ll carry him.” Archie picked up the thousand-pound machine man and threw him over his shoulder.

  They made a strange parade, the two boys on a talking steamhorse, guided by a talking raygun, followed by a small boy carrying a Tik Tok over his shoulder. But hardly anyone noticed. There wasn’t anyone left to notice. Everywhere they went, the city had been looted and abandoned or destroyed. Lektric wires that lined the corridors crackled and popped.

  “That tall lass was right about the Deep Ones,” Fergus said. “And about the city being destroyed.”

  “It’s good to see you at long last, Master Fergus,” Mr. Rivets said from Archie’s shoulder.

  “You too, Mr. Rivets.”

  “And how is Miss Hachi?”

  Fergus gave Archie a look over his shoulder. “She’s been better. Not that I’ve seen her in a while.”

  “I hope that we are soon reunited,” Mr. Rivets said.

  “Yeah, Mr. Rivets,” Fergus said. “Me too.”

  Archie missed Hachi too, but he didn’t share their desire to see her again anytime soon. Just the thought of her sent him back to that corner in his hotel room.

  “There it is!” Señor X announced. “She hasn’t left yet!”

  “That’s a submarine?” Archie asked.

  They’d run into a large glass dome with row after row of what looked like swimming lanes, but which Archie realized at last were submarine berths. The submarines entered from below, rising up into the dome to sit atop the water and unload along the long metal docks. All the lanes were empty save the last, which held something that looked more like a giant squid than a submarine. It was made of metal and riveted all over, but it was painted red like a squid. The main body of it was long and cone-shaped, with a pointed fin at the front like an arrowhead. Toward the rear of the cone was a huge glass window that looked like the thing’s giant eye. But what really made the submarine look like a squid were the massive mechanical tentacles that swarmed out the back of it, picking crates up off the dock and loading them into a hole where the squid’s mouth would have been.

  “Crivens,” said Fergus. “It’s beautiful.”

  Archie couldn’t agree. But beautiful or ugly, it was their only ticket off the sinking city of Galveston. He didn’t see a door anywhere, so he set Mr. Rivets down and ran to the window, jumping and waving his arms. “Hey! Hey in there! Let us in! Please! Help!”

  The others started making noise with him. Archie was about to start pounding on the hull when the tall, gray, tattooed girl ap
peared in the window. She moved as slowly and deliberately as Gonzalo did, but could clearly see them. She tilted her head and stood staring at them.

  “Hey!” Archie yelled, not sure how much she could hear through the window. “Help! We need a ride! We know all about the Deep Ones! We’ve been fighting them on land too! Please, let us in!”

  The girl tilted her head the other direction and kept studying them, and Archie was reminded again of a bird. The ship’s tentacles finished loading the last of the crates, and the girl left the window. In a moment, the ship began to hum.

  “She’s not going to let us in,” Fergus said.

  “G-man, point me at the hull. I’ll blast our way in,” Señor X said.

  “Forget that,” Archie said. “I’ll just punch my way in.”

  “And what good’s a submarine gonna be with a hole in it?” Gonzalo asked them.

  Crick-crack! The pinkish-white tentacles of a Deep One had found the glass dome overhead, and were squeezing it. Water sprayed from a dozen cracks, and the metal struts that supported the dome groaned.

  “It’ll be better than a glass dome with a thousand holes in it!” Archie said. He swung a fist at the hull, but it moved away from him. No, wait—he was moving away from it. Archie looked down and saw one of the ship’s tentacles had wrapped around him, and was lifting him into the air. Everybody else had been picked up by tentacles too, including Alamo and Mr. Rivets.

  The tentacles carried them toward the submarine’s “mouth,” where the crates had been loaded in. The girl was bringing them inside! The tentacles set them down gently in a cargo hold and retreated outside as a heavy door closed and bolted behind them. Glowing green lights along the floors flickered on so they could see, and the ship shifted and rumbled. They were moving.

  “Now what?” Archie asked, his voice echoing in the big round metal cargo room.

  “I suggest we seek out our host and thank her for her hospitality,” said Mr. Rivets.

  The door from the cargo room led to another large room dominated by two huge round windows like the one they’d seen from outside. The ship had already sunk below the waterline and left the Galveston dock behind, and as the submarine descended into the murky depths they got a slow, close-up look at the body of the Mangleborn attacking the dome. First came the massive tentacles, twisting and writhing with a life all their own. Then its tail, segmented like a lobster and finned like a flying fish. Then its scaled, barnacle-encrusted thorax with its pulsing gills, and then, at last, its long, hideous head, like a fanged horse. The thing’s eyes followed them as they drifted down past it, mesmerizing everyone but Gonzalo.