Chapter Forty-Seven

“So this is a car, huh? Oh, man! I totally understand the appeal now. These things are amazing! Wow! You just push a button with your foot and it burns dead animals, and you push it harder and it burns more dead animals to go faster? Marvelous!”

Somehow, we decided it would be a good idea to let Jerry drive the only functioning cruiser left in the lot. That gave O’Brien the chance to keep her eyes on the dark god in the back seat while I sat shotgun, reminding him how to get to the old school. The unactivated Benjamin clone was following behind in my old Nissan (just to be safe, we wanted the potentially explosive monster to stay in a separate vehicle).

I’ll be honest, this war ended up being way more one-sided than I expected. The resurrected dark god was a true game changer, and overpowered as hell. We left the gas station on heavy-duty lockup (inside a dense cocoon of interlocking tree trunks spanning thirty feet into the air). On a couple of occasions, mimics tried to block our way and were immediately torn to shreds. Two of the clown bodyguards met us at the front gates of the old school. The dark god used thorn vines to pull their brains from their eye holes. This fight was a level 100 character doing a level 2 mission. It wasn’t even fair, and despite the grotesque violence of it all, I loved being on the winning side for a change.

It wasn’t a challenge. It wasn’t sportsmanlike. And I didn’t care. We were going to keep going like this until we couldn’t anymore. Benjamin kept out of blast radius, but otherwise our group stuck together (no splitting up and letting the bad guys pick us off one by one). In no time, we found what we were looking for in the old school gym. We found… the collection.

There were dozens of them crammed in here, each in a cage uniquely suited for their forms. An old man, barely more than a skeleton and hair, sat in a red recliner. He was hooked up to an IV and following us with his eyes. I walked towards him, but O’Brien caught my arm before I stepped inside the perimeter of the circle drawn on the ground around him in blood. There were archaic symbols inscribed every few feet along the circumference.

“Don’t go near that one. He’s still got enough fight to consume your tasty soul.”

Close by, there was a giant tank of water, longer than my arm span and at least ten feet tall, but the only thing inside was a round, humanoid head the size of a beach ball. It was connected to hundreds of metal wires like hair. I touched the tank and suddenly felt it in my jawbone. A Slavic voice. A signal. “They have reached the old school… The final battle has begun… The end is upon us…”

Next to it, a small cage of silver bars protected a child with no hair, giant black eyes, and purple skin. “Hello, Jack. You should have wished for my help when you had the chance.”

There were more prisons. Cages, kennels, boxes, some things I was physically incapable of looking at. We passed them all, following the dark god’s lead, heading deeper into the lion’s den.

I froze momentarily once I noticed the man in the cowboy hat and boxers doing Tai-Chi from inside a giant steel cage. He smiled at me and said, “All we ever see or seem is Betty Boop and Charlie Sheen.” With that, he pulled a cigarette from behind one ear, a lighter from behind the other, and offered them to me. I politely declined.

I was wondering where he went. 

As we passed a giant box made of glass, the sole occupant looked up from his chair and said, “Jack.” I looked at the old man, trapped in a straitjacket, legs harnessed to the wooden chair. He hadn’t shaved in at least a week. His dapper hair hung messily in front of his eyes.

I approached the glass partition. “Doctor Howard?”

“Go ahead and gloat, kid. I deserve it. I should have known better than to trust any man willing to kill to be king. It was only a job, Jack. I’m sorry.”

The others were getting away from me, so I finished the conversation in a hurry. “I have to go. Sorry you got double-crossed, but you did kinda deserve it.” I jogged back to where the entity controlling Rosa was floating past cages and said, “Hey, dark god?”

“I have a real name, you know.”

“Oh. I did not know. What’s your name?”

“Shhh.”

“Are you shushing me? Or is that your real name?”

“That’s my real name.”

“Okay then, Shhh, I had a question. What is this place?”

“The collector has been harnessing the powers of these gods, absorbing each of their abilities. Experimenting on them. Stealing blood. Squeezing them like orange juice from whatever that fruit is called that you get orange juice from. Doing mad science. Telepathy, immortality, time dilation, matter manipulation… These are all powers he stole. Powers that don’t belong to him.”

“And where are we going?”

“To the only one who can help us. The Guardian.”

At the end of the gym, past the basketball goals, there was another cage set apart from the others. Four walls made of steel bars and a single door. In the center of the cage, a hospital bed. In that bed, a tiny, frail old woman hooked up to a respirator. 

I knew her. Or, at least I’d seen her before. This was the final form the shapeshifter had taken before Spencer shot her through the torso, and now she was laying comatose in a makeshift prison.

“Now comes the hard part.” Shhh pulled the jewel-encrusted knife from Rosa’s chest and announced, “We must transfer the Guardian’s consciousness into another body.”

“Is that safe?” O’Brien asked.

“The process will be like cramming an exploding star into a plastic bag. The Guardian will feed off the spark of energy left in its host’s mind, but there aren’t any bodies strong enough to contain the force of such a powerful entity.”

Benjamin, who’d been keeping his weapons trained behind us, asked the practical question. “Why don’t we just put her inside Rosa with you?”

“I’m afraid her capabilities as a vessel have been extended to their limits.”

Jerry walked up to join us smoking a cigarette. Without missing a beat, he declared, “I’ll do it. Always wanted to intertwine consciousnesses with a deity. Number three on my bucket list, right under ‘Pet a capybara’ and ‘Pose nude for an art class.’”

“A kind offer, but not an option. Your mind is, to put it nicely, unusable.”

I sighed. I already knew where this was going. If someone needed to sacrifice themselves to save the world, then there was only one obvious choice here.

“It’s gotta be me,” I said.

“Nuh uh,” Jerry snapped back. “What about Benjamin? He’s a dead man walking anyway. We all know it.”

Benjamin responded, “The boy says he wants to do it. We ain’t got time to fight. Now make your goodbyes fast so we can get out of here before the Collector figures out a way to stop us.”

“He’s right,” I said. “I’ve spent years now getting ready for death. I’m the only one here whose absence will have nearly zero impact. It makes so much sense. It’s honestly like I was born for this.”

Jerry shook his head, “No way, dude. There’s gotta be another solution here. I mean, I’m just saying, Benjamin is right freakin here.”

O’Brien surprised me. “No, they’re both right,” she said. “And we sure as hell can’t waste any more time discussing it. In terms of lifespans, one of us has the least to lose.” It hurt to hear her say it out loud, but I agreed. She walked up to me, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Don’t be. I’m just glad I got to spend this last bit of my life with real friends. How many people get to be so lucky?”

She grabbed me and pulled me into a hug, repeating herself again, softer. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m really, truly sorry.”

“It’s okay, I said, lifting my arms to return her hug. But my left hand snagged on something. Then I heard the sound. Crrrnnnkkk. Crrrnnnkkk.

She let go and stepped back with tears running down her cheeks. I looked down to see that she had handcuffed my hand to one of the bars of the Guardian’s cage. When I looked back at O’Brien, she was holding the key in front of her face. I tried to grab it, but she stepped out of range, popped the key into her mouth, and swallowed it.

I pulled and pulled and pulled until my wrist was bleeding. I screamed and begged for her to cough it up. I called for the others to help me out, but they’d already seen the reality, weighed the options, and moved on. While Shhh handed O’Brien the dagger and explained what to expect, I shouted at Jerry to “LET ME OUT OF THIS STUPID THING!” He looked at me, and for once didn’t have a quippy comeback.

Shhh snapped open the cage door. O’Brien followed inside, all the way to where the shapeshifter—the Guardian—lay sleeping.

“You will have to focus hard. Once the Guardian claims your life force, you will have but a few seconds where your minds coexist before yours is extinguished forever. The Collector hasn’t yet stolen the Guardian’s powers, so we still have a chance—”

“Hang on,” I interrupted. “The Collector already has the same powers as the Guardian.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because he tried to use them on me back at the gas station.”

“Really?” I didn’t like the look on Rosa’s face. But I really didn’t like what came next. “Oh fu—”

Rosa’s body collapsed to the ground, followed by the rest of them. O’Brien and Benjamin dropped gracefully to the floor, while Jerry smacked his head against the cage on the way down. Thankfully, his cigarette rolled out of his mouth instead of falling down his throat. For no good reason, everyone but me had passed out.

I tugged at my chain. I stretched as far as I could, but none of them were in range. And then I heard the clapping. It started from the other end of the gym, slow and mocking, and continuing as the Collector closed the distance between us. He didn’t look so intimidating, standing there in his “Margaritaville Resort and Casino” t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. I guess the worst monsters are the ones you don’t see coming.

“Dang it to heck, Jack. You guys almost blew up my whole operation here. I couldn’t believe it. You know how many of my bodyguards that Mexican chick ripped up? Do you have any idea how long it took to grow them? I guess it doesn’t matter. Now that I have the dark god right here where I need her, I’ll just make my own handplants. I’ll grow a whole new army. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Okay, seriously B.R., I get it. I understand why you want to take over the world and all that, but what I don’t understand is the gloating. You know what you are? You’re a sore winner.”

“Aw, don’t be like that. I’m seriously gonna miss you. You always were an interesting character. But now it’s time for you to die.”

I leaned as close to him as the chain would allow. “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do, talk me to death? I already know you can’t hurt me yourself, and Shhh wiped out every other creature in sight.”

“Not every other creature.” With a wave of his hand, the explosive collar around Benjamin’s neck turned into a black snake and slithered away into the shadows. The Collector seemed awfully proud of himself. “When he wakes up, he’ll have a whole new head of memories. And unfortunately for you, those memories don’t paint you in the best light.”

He laughed like a true villain.

Then he stared at me, waiting for a response. I didn’t have one.

Then he stared at the unconscious Benjamin.

Then he checked his watch while I sat down and got comfortable.

A moment later, he nudged the unconscious man with his foot.

“How long are they going to stay like this?” he asked.

“How the hell would I know? Last time this happened, they slept for like six straight hours.”

“Six hours?! Are you serious?! I don’t have that kind of time. I’m trying to take over the world here.” He sighed, materialized a bean bag chair, fell into it, and said, “Well, what do you want to talk about? Ooh, how about this? How about I let you in on a terrible secret? Do you want to know the truth about Jerry? It’s quite the doozy.”

“No.”

“Do you want to know what Mammaw and Pops were planning to do with Rosa?”

“I think I already figured it out.”

“Do you want to know which one of your friends here isn’t really who they say they are? Here’s a hint, it’s not the one you’re thinking.”

“No, I don’t really care about that. And I assume you can’t tell me without my permission because you know it would hurt me, right?”

“You are absolutely no fun. I’m bored. I’m so bored right now. This is boring me to death.” With a heavy sigh, he stood up and said, “I know this might not be the best time to ask, but do you think you could do me a small favor?”

“What is it?”

“When the Benjamin wakes up, before he massacres you and your friends, would you ask him to give me a call on my cell phone to let me know?”

“Yeah, I think I can manage that.”

“Great. Thanks so much, Jack. You’re the best. I’ll miss you.”

I waited until he’d made it all the way out the door, then got to work trying to figure out exactly how I was going to cut off my hand.