“I’ve read his books,” Camaro explained.
“You don’t look like his typical groupies.”
“I’m not,” he said. “But I give credit where credit is due. And Grimsby had the answers even before anybody knew the questions.”
Her eyes roll back of their own accord. “I take it back. You sound exactly like the wide-eyed country girls that used to show up at the farm.”
“And just how wide-eyed were you?”
“No more than the rest,” she said, “But I figured it out. I figured him out.”
“And what about Enzyme Seven?” he asked.
“What about it?”
“I know what the biologists say, but what do you think it really is?”
Her lips quivered before she answered, like she was trying to decide whether to share a secret with him. “Memory.”
Nancy was no true-believer despite the ceremonial trappings she cloaked herself in, making her philosophical answer…unexpected.
“Memory?” he said. “A memory of what?”
“A memory of what we are before we are.”
He could tell she was serious by her unfocused gaze, but that didn’t mean she was making any sense. “Save the fortune cookie mumbo-jumbo for your strung-out…”
“Wait!” she said. “Listen…”
He cocked his head to the side but to no avail. “I don’t hear...”
“You don’t hear music?” she asked.
“What kind of music?”
“Something like a billion voices singing all at once?”
The wind shifted from a whisper to a roar, spinning the sand into nebulous tendrils spiraling out across the amphitheater.
“This part of the show?” Camaro asked, but blackened clouds rolling across the horizon held Nancy spellbound.
The lens appeared at the nexus of the maelstrom, rotating into position above them. Light trapped within the angled facets bounced back and forth until the build-up could be contained no longer. The crystal flared, doubling in size before unleashing a wide band of black light from its aperture.
“Not yet!” Nancy pleaded, “We’re not ready!”
Camaro yanked her out of the way just as the highway cut through the amphitheater’s floor.
The porous rock collapsed around the incision, dust and soot billowing out of the fissure. The Stinger climbed out of the pit, diffuse running lights glowing blue through the burning haze.
Movement inside the cockpit alerted Camaro to the pilot’s presence. And though there was no rational reason to explain the sensation, he felt the weight of the pilot’s stare even through the smoked glass canopy.
The Blue Stinger recoiled, holding its elongated pose for an instant at the farthest part of its prelaunch trajectory--then rocketed up the highway.
***
Deneese checked over her shoulder as they lanced through the clouds. “You see him?”
He couldn’t hear her over the music blaring through the cockpit, so she asked again. “You see him?”
“Got ‘im!” Drew said.
They swam through the phantom images symptomatic of their velocity, tuning the ghosts out to focus on the Red Stinger running parallel and just behind them.
“Concentrate,” Drew muttered, but the warning song made focusing tough. “Where’s the damn volume knob…”
They ripped through another layer of atmospheric vapor. He looked back again, but the Red Stinger was gone. “Where’d he…”
“There he is!” Deneese shouted.
The clouds parted and the parallel highway flexed, shooting the Red Stinger toward them like a bullet from a gun.
The monocycles bumped, the alien material screeching in pain where they scraped together.
“Bet his guns won’t work against our armor!” Drew shouted “Bet ramming us is his only shot!”
The Red Stinger broke off to gather momentum for another pass, his highway flexing in response.
The maneuver fit a pattern, and the pattern fit a profile Drew timed out. “One-one thousand…two-one thousand...”
He yanked the handlebars back on three.
Their highway shifted, looping over and under the parallel strip.
The confluence warped the space around it, the spectral images the highway invoked bleeding together like a molten watercolor.
Drew rolled through the twisting corkscrew expecting his tire to buckle from the stress, but the wheel held the line through the turn.
He looked back, certain the turbulence shook their pursuer…It hadn’t.
The Red Stinger added their momentum to his. He swung wide and cut back sharp.
“We’re gonna hit!” Deneese screamed. “We’re gonna hit!”
But another highway arced up from the ground before they connected. The third monocycle zoomed toward them, running lights leaving a long blue streak in its wake.
The third highway split the distance between them, pushing Drew one direction and the Red Stinger another.
The Red Stinger lost traction and skipped into the swirling clouds. The highway it rode telescoped back toward its point of origin on within the Hive, leaving no sign it’d ever been there.
Drew watched the Blue Stinger climbing higher and higher until losing sight for good.
“Whoever that was just saved our butts!” Deneese said.
He couldn’t disagree. But while they’d lost their pursuer, they weren’t out of trouble yet.
“That other highway is pulling us toward it!” Drew shouted.
The merging strips forced the confused Stinger to jump between them. Their singular wheel slowed their speed with each bite of warped asphalt but he couldn’t get enough traction on either highway to regain control.
“We’re gonna crash!” Deneese shouted.
The curved horizon flattened more and more with each second, bringing them closer and closer to their catastrophic end. Drew pulled the handlebars back hard, but the highway fought him for every inch.
“Breathe,” he reminded himself, but he was already doing that, though much too fast.
He pulled again and their highway adjusted but didn’t separate from the other, twisting around it like a helix instead.
“What now?” Deneese asked.
He didn’t know. But then the clouds parted and Sandcastle City appeared like a mirage. “If I can break us loose, maybe we can skip across the valley!”
She wasn’t as optimistic. “If…”
At least the narrow valley was something to aim for. He pulled and they slowed but they were still coming in too fast and steep.
But then the Stinger twitched…
He pulled harder. “A little more…”
Their angle decreased…
He pulled as hard as he’d ever pulled.
“It’s workin’!” he grunted, “it’s workin’!”
***
The last thing Old Man Hoyt remembered before passing out was the eerie song that led them to Sandcastle city blasting through the Speaker Wall.
He checked his watch, but the hands stopped just past midnight. “Musta been out for a few seconds…or maybe a few minutes.”
Tattered fabric danced in the air like ghosts, buoyed by the shifting wind and the heat rising from the flames engulfing the tent remnants. He staggered through the smoke and fog, feeling his way around the periphery.
“Blondie? Where ya at Blondie?”
Shell-shocked Acolytes wandered past him in the confusion. Those still standing, rendered aid to those who weren’t.
“Over here…”
He followed Molly’s echo to the edge of the stage where she cradled Ivan’s head. “Help me get him up!”
“What happened?” Hoyt asked.
“We got separated,” Molly explained. “He musta caught some shrapnel somehow.”
Ivan stirred, a soft moan escaping from his bloodied lips. A good sign, but what caught the Old Man by surprise were the tears welling in Molly’s eyes.
> Hoyt knelt beside her. “He’s still conscious, we just gotta keep ‘im that way.”
“What happened?” she asked.
Hoyt traced the hole bored through the rock back to where the Stinger clipped the transformer on its way down. “Something came in about Mach six…Maybe a missile.”
“Can you walk?” Molly asked.
“Think so,” Ivan grunted.
They looped around the stage, but the transformer’s smoldering wreckage blocked their path. The top section separated from the base during the ritual, collapsing across the winding steps and claiming the only victim.
Hoyt kicked the snarling Thingamajig away from Camaro’s body. He checked for a pulse, but the broken section crushed the Doctor’s ribs on impact.
“He’s dead isn’t he?” Molly asked.
Nancy lifted the hem of her garment and stepped around the burning embers. “He will be missed.”
“Yeah,” Hoyt said, “He was a real prince.”
“I was being sarcastic,” Nancy said.
“So was I,” Hoyt said.
She stumbled past them, climbing the stage steps before stopping halfway up. Something stirred atop the tiered platform, a perturbation rising within the smoky tempest drawing her attention away from the surrounding chaos.
Lazy-Eye Susan’s features came into sharp focus when she stepped out of the hazy confusion. But if seeing her old nemesis alarmed her, Nancy didn’t let on.
She tap-danced her way up the stairs, each step amplified by the amphitheater’s resonant architecture. “You’re just in time…Sorry I didn’t welcome you in person when ya got here, but as you can see…we’re right in the middle of rehearsals.”
“Thinkin’ of getting the band back together, are ya?” Susan asked.
Nancy stopped to catch her breath. “Nostalgia acts sell a lot of records these days.”
Susan cocked her right and held it, trying to come up with a clever catch-phrase but couldn’t. Disappointed with herself, she unleashed her left instead.
Her punch connected, sending Nancy tumbling down the steps. She staggered to her feet. While she’d escaped serious injury, she’d been shown up in front of the Acolytes, and that was far worse.
“That’s for blowing up my house!” Susan said.
Tasha emerged from the crumpled DJ’s booth, casting her broken mask aside. Blood trickled down her cheeks from cuts in her scalp but she fought through the pain. “Your kung-fu mighta been all that once upon a time grandma, but the odds favor the house.”
“Ya might wanna try counting again…”
The Acolytes turned toward the defiant voice in their midst. Penelope threw her mask aside, clearing a wide swathe around her.
“Who’s that?” one of the Jens asked, though none of the other Jens could tell who asked.
“Two against one?” Tasha snorted. “Bring it!”
Lucy unmasked just as dramatically, stepping out from behind a broken column on the other side of the pavilion. “That’s three against one by my count.”
Their audacious appearance skewed the odds even further against Tasha. But what she lacked in wisdom, she made up for in hubris. “Still ain’t enough.”
The Blue Berets were as confused as the Acolytes. And with Camaro dead, Captain Bell wasn’t sure how to proceed.
He aimed his pistol at Susan. “Not sure what kinda telenovela we stepped into, but I’m gonna need everyone to stand down ‘til I sort this out.”
He stepped toward the stage but the ground beneath his boot exploded in a cloud of sand and needles. His men took cover, but cover was sparse inside the open pavilion.
“Good shot!” Bell shouted, but he wasn’t convinced of the shooter’s marksmanship. He took another step.
The first blast was close, but the next three were even closer, well-spaced and well-placed, each coming from a different direction, impossible to pinpoint.
His men aimed in every direction, confused by the overlapping echoes bouncing around the pavilion.
“They’re either really good shots or really bad ones,” Bell muttered.
“Hit the deck,” Susan ordered.
Bell gave the signal and the Blue Berets dropped their weapons.
Tasha dismissed all of the Smiley-Face nonsense as the cost of doing business, but now it threatened her livelihood. She clenched her fists and lowered her head, climbing the stairs toward Susan.
“Those heels can’t be easy to walk in,” Molly muttered, and stuck her foot out as Tasha strutted past.
Down went Tasha, tumbling down the spiral incline until she hit the bottom of the stairs. She propped herself up on her elbows, but collapsed back down with a groan.
The Acolytes waited for Nancy to answer the usurper, but she was far too wily to risk a direct confrontation against one of the sisters, let alone the three of them together. She opened her mouth to speak, but decided she could only make things worse.
Susan looked out at the bewildered Acolytes trying to come up with some kind of grand proclamation to mark the shift in power, but it was late and she was tired and she didn’t have the strength. “Show’s over.”
Newton helped Clementine down from the stage. “Nice shooting Katniss. You good?”
“I’m good, she said, but pumped her bellows, anyway. The Needle-Guns Penelope supplied only fired one shot at a time and she wasn’t taking any chances.
Newton called out to the others. “Grady?”
“I’m okay…”
“Spider?”
“10-4…”
“Looks like our plan worked,” Newton said.
“Looks like Penelope’s plan worked,” Clementine said.
He was loathe to give her credit after the way she’d dispatched Clark Bent, but was grateful for her help, nonetheless. “Did ya see how close we got to that Blueberry’s feet without hitting ‘im? We’re getting good at this.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Clementine said.
They kept their weapons aimed at the Blue Berets but the confused mercenaries were the least of their worries. They were almost to the edge of the stage when cracking glass and tearing metal cut through the ambient chatter and silenced the crowd.
“She musta started when the lens appeared,” Susan muttered, “She musta finished the spell ‘fore the…”
The Clones crawled out of the broken pods gaining confidence with each shaky stride. Muscles twitched and nerves spasmed, lingering symptoms of their alchemical baptism.
“Get back!” Newton shouted, and opened fire on the mute golems. The blast should have turned their leathery hides into hamburger but the needles only buried themselves halfway in, sticking out like quills.
“Ain’t workin’!” Clementine shouted, and pulled Newton up on stage beside her.
Grady fired while Spider pumped, then pumped while Spider fired. The storm of needles ripped the scenery to shreds but didn’t slow the Clones.
“No use!” Grady said, and followed Spider up the steps.
Bell marshaled the Blue Berets, but they were no match for the Clones hand to hand. A few of the men got to their guns, but the bullets were just as ineffective as the needles, angering the Clones but not slowing them down.
They regrouped and retreated, scrambling back through the twin Sphinxes toward the choppers while they could.
A handful of Acolytes broke for the ruined Speaker Wall, but the jumbled black blocks impeded their getaway. Those that remained climbed the stage, crawling over each other like ants in a desperate attempt to escape.
The Clones crashed against the edge of the stage, a torrent of flailing fists and gnashing teeth breaking and parting like waves before starting all over again. Born into confusion, they wanted answers for questions they didn’t know how to ask yet.
“What’s that sound?” Penelope asked. “Where’s it coming from?”
Lucy strained her ears to listen. “I hear it, too. Sounds like…”
“Track thirteen,” Susan said.
The crippled Stinger wobbled through the pavilion’s fragmented colonnade, blasting the song through its hissing speakers.
The alien hymn tore through the Clone’s ranks, triggering something akin to an allergic reaction.
“They’re goin’ plum crazy like last time!” Susan said, “Just like when Jamphibian heard ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ at the Windmill way back when!”
Even in their altered states, their instinct for self-preservation remained. The Clones fell back, retreating into Sandcastle City’s tunnels rather than endure another agonizing second.
The Stinger’s speakers crackled and hissed and the song wound down. Gas vented from the engine, the dying breath of a dying machine.
The canopy opened with a mechanical groan and Drew climbed out of the pilot’s seat. He took a few steps before exhausting the last of his adrenaline and slumped to the ground on one knee.
***
The raggedy parade limped past the sphinxes, a procession of skittish refugees anxious to put as much distance between themselves and Sandcastle City as possible. The ex-Acolytes comforted each other while trying to understand what happened. They complained. They sobbed. But most of them just wanted to go home.
While they were despondent, a handful of survivors scattered among them were anything but.
“Who grabbed ya?”
“Did they torture ya?”
“Where were ya?”
“Where’d ya get the sweet ride?”
Drew wasn’t sure where to start, so they started for him.
“Dude, tell him ‘bout Lazy-Eye Susan’s house exploding!” Grady said.
But Spider favored the intervention. “Better start with how we scared Mickey-D straight.”
“Tell him ‘bout the dogfight with the choppers!” Clementine said. “That’s totally the best part!”
Newton bowed his head in remembrance. “Don’t forget ‘bout Clark Bent, may he rest in peace.”
They chronicled their time apart in breathless bursts, starting with their bus-stop escape and ending with his spectacular crash-landing inside the amphitheater.
It was quite a story, and all of it might have been true. But Drew had his own unbelievable story to tell. “After Runyon grabbed me…”
“Runyon?” Newton said, “That mustache jerk from the island?”
“Yeah,” Drew said. “After he grabbed me, I woke up in the chair…”
“Like at Bixby?” Clementine asked.
“Like at Bixby,” Drew said. “Then everything blew-up. Crawled outta the basement into this ghost town. And then…”
“And then?” Spider asked.