Jack sharpened Doctor X against a twist of metal lying in the grass. It was a nervous habit.
“All right. Rust trolls. Seven of them. Hard to kill. Hard as hell.” Through the boom box speaker, his voice was emotionless. “Ever killed a tick? Same thing here. It’s either fire or a sharp point. We’re not going to set this joint on fire so sharp points it is. Jim, your sword. ARRRGH!!!, your claws. Blinky, you’ve got plenty of arms and there’s plenty of scrap here, so find something pointy and get to it. We gotta pin these suckers to the ground till they stop twitching.”
“How long do they twitch?” I whispered.
“Anywhere between ten seconds and forty-five minutes. Depends on age.”
ARRRGH!!! was crouched over us to provide cover, and I found her gazing at me with what looked like affection. From deep in her throat came a low purr that somehow communicated that she would look after me. She bowed her head until the boulder embedded in her skull was within touching distance. I ran my fingertips across it for luck just as troll children had been doing for half a decade.
One of her orange eyes closed in a playful wink. I had no idea what to make of it until her mouth split open to reveal a hundred jagged teeth and she let loose with the kind of earsplitting roar that had me imagining nearby rats and raccoons falling dead from fright. Even Jack covered his ears and pressed his face in the dirt. I saw seven glints of light as the rust trolls perked up their rawboned heads.
With one incredible lunge, ARRRGH!!! leapt thirty feet through the air, and upon thunderous landing she stabbed a thick yellow claw through one of the Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý. Jack swung his face toward me, his dirty-blond hair flopping across eyes alight with excitement. He pushed himself to standing position and raised both swords over his head.
“Trollhunters!” he bellowed. “Attack!”
I was the kid who hung back when they picked sides in gym, the kid who hid behind his book while Pinkton searched for new blackboard victims. But at that moment I detected the rust trolls’ poison. It was redolent with the rotten-fruit smell of a hospital that stored its dying people in rooms like separate stomachs; it smelled of the underarm sweat of bedraggled middle schoolers on the run from bullies; it carried the sharp stink of the pissed beds of children waking up in their latest foster homes. I coughed out these toxins before I heard the battle cry rumbling up my throat. There was evil in the world and I needed—I wanted—to stop it.
It was a battle both brutal and inspiring. Chaos was the rust trolls’ chief defense. Just as we entered their acrid yellow mist, one tried to sever our feet by coiling itself into a sharp snare. Another writhed like a crackling live wire too dangerous to approach. Still others slingshotted themselves from car antennae. All the while they produced an asthmatic laughter that smelled of tar. But Jack proved himself with the tireless, inventive lancing of hearts and softies, while Blinky fended off several at once with shanks of scrap metal and ARRRGH!!! tore apart vehicles as if they were but papier-mâché nuisances.
Three hours later, the junkyard was a slapdash cemetery. Various serrated objects pinned rust trolls to the dirt as they sniggered their way through their drawn-out deaths. Only two remained. One was eight feet tall and so lean it disappeared when viewed from the side. Its cackle scratched at your brain like nails, and I’d seen ARRRGH!!! slap her ears to drive away encroaching madness. Jack and Blinky came to her aid, cornering the troll against the pulverized hull of a tow truck.
The other rust troll yet to be speared was the same rogue I’d been working on all night. There was nothing notable about the beady-eyed creature aside from a cross-shaped scar on its flat chin. It had drawn blood from me a dozen times, snapping its body like a whip, but for every hit I took I gave back two more, remembering my lessons: rabbit, bull, python. At last my opponent could take no more. With a sputter of laughter, it dove beneath a hill of tires.
Rust trolls, I’d discovered, left an oily black trail in their wake, and I followed it through the center of a tractor tire and over a pile of motorcycle wheels until I was deep inside the mountain of rubber. I spotted my foe pressed against an impermeable stack of tires, spit dripping down its cross-scarred chin. In the distance, I heard Jack’s victorious cry—his battle was nearly won. I surged forward on my knees and brought up Cat #6, the perfect weapon for close quarters.
A quake knocked me off balance. I would’ve discounted it as a passing semitrailer if not for the reaction of the rust troll. Its gasping laughter heightened into a strangulated mewl, and its twiggy arms flapped in a state of blind ecstasy. Oil coated every one of its scales, and in seconds the troll was gleaming with black liquid.
The rumble grew stronger. The tires stacked around me began to jar apart. A section of the rubber cave collapsed. I put my chest to the ground and covered my head with both arms just in time—a tire landed on my back, knocking the wind out of me. While I heaved for oxygen, an orchestra of groaning metal struck up from the junkyard. Glass shattered, steel whined, and heavy objects avalanched from the car-part foothills. My rust troll gibbered with delight because he knew what we’d hear next.
Gunmar the Black’s scream shot from a thousand different metal mouths at once. It howled through exhaust pipes, blasted from defunct car radios, gurgled through battery acid, and blared between truck antennae like the prongs of the devil’s tuning fork. The entire junkyard was being played like a pipe organ.
Scrambling on my elbows, I shouldered aside each tire that battered me. I made it out into the open and flopped onto my back, only to see two tons of mangled vehicle parts sliding at me like snow from a roof. I shrieked and ran into a world that was raining scrap, burying all of us. Engine hoses slapped my cheeks; windshield wipers stabbed my ribs; edges of license plates sawed at me like teeth; and headlight lamps dropped and fractured, each of them glaring like an Eye of Malevolence.
The Hungry One’s echo gave way to the sound of him chewing on his tongue, each moist squish piped up from the underworld, softer and softer, until there was silence and the dissipation of dust. What was revealed was a prison of tangled metal. Jack fought for the necessary leverage to cut himself free. Blinky’s eyes bobbed above the surface of the rubble like eight periscopes. Trapped beneath several entire vehicles, ARRRGH!!! frothed with frustration, which at least told me that she was fine.
Rust trolls had none of these problems. Their slim forms easily snaked through the entanglements, and the two that had not yet died were on the move. I tried to make myself invisible, but the one with the cross-shaped scar sniffed me out, asphyxiating itself with hoarse laughter. A long vertical slit opened along its stringy torso, revealing teeth that circulated like a rusty chainsaw. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the first bite.
The jabber of a police siren interrupted my death. My eyes opened and I saw the slithering shadows of the fleeing rust trolls. Beyond the hill of dirt we had crossed earlier, I could make out the lazy oscillation of cop lights. A door slammed and I heard a familiar stutter.
“This is the p-p-p-p-p-police! Please disperse!”
Perhaps San Bernardino’s top cop had been staking out the meth hub of Sunny Smiles when he’d heard the avalanche. After all, Sergeant Ben Gulager knew better than anyone the after-hours teen parties held at the junkyard. He looked pretty dang heroic atop that hill of dirt, his gun pointed at the ground in the standard double-hand grip, his mustache in full bloom, his cap covering the worst of his lopsided hairpiece. Even from a distance I could see the junkyard lights gleaming off the scar tissue at his temple.
His eyebrows knotted when he saw the fallen debris.
“K-k-kids? Hello? Everybody o-kuh-kuh-kuh-kay?”
I wanted to cry out but the flash of Jack’s goggles beneath the ruin warned me to keep quiet. I grimaced beneath the weight of the trash and wondered how long I could hold out.
Gulager began moving down the side of the hill, sweeping the wreckage in search of trapped teenagers. He did not notice the rust trolls slithering away through the
weeds a few feet to his right.
“Make a n-n-n-noise if you can hear me! Bang on something!” He pressed the radio button at his shoulder. “B-b-base, this is three hundred. I’m ten ninety-seven at K-K-K-Keavy’s Junk Emporium on Grimes. I’ve got a code three st-st-st-structure collapse here, possible eleven forty-sevens. Request eleven eighty-nine and eleven forty-one as soon as p-p-p-p-p-p-p—”
The word went forever unfinished. His thumb slipped off the radio button, leaving the pygmy voice on the other end to repeat its follow-up questions. With a clatter like the biggest pieces of silverware in history sliding from the biggest plate, ARRRGH!!! rose from the rubble. Engine blocks, transmission systems, windshields, even entire vehicles tumbled off her back and shoulders. Slowly she rose to a full standing position and shook her head as if to clear it. A tire had been speared by one of her horns and held tight.
Emotion drained from Gulager’s face and his jaw dropped. The gun, forgotten, hung at his side as he took in the full height of the monster with an expression of naked fear. But then his chin locked into the defiant position to which San Bernardino had become accustomed. His eyes narrowed and his hands curled around the gun. It flew upward, pointed in the neighborhood of the softies.
ARRRGH!!! crumpled a motor scooter in her fist and exhaled threateningly. In the foul-smelling gust, Gulager’s cap sailed away and his hairpiece spun around so that the back was in the front, covering his eyes. He used a free hand to whip the thing into the weeds and looked even more heroic: bristled hair disrupted by a nasty scar, face folded into a resolute frown, gun barely shaking at all.
“Now,” Jack hissed. “Follow me.”
From beneath the tangle I saw him crawl on his stomach toward one of the still-standing hills of junk. I disengaged from the scrap and followed, wincing at the razor edges that drew long scratches across my skin. Blinky had already made it to the safety of the hill and was beckoning with a dozen appendages. My sinuous path took me right beside ARRRGH!!!, who remained locked in a standoff with Sergeant Gulager.
I reached the safety of the junk heap and collapsed against a knot of tentacles.
“You’re bad luck,” Jack said. “You know that?”
“Fault lies elsewhere,” Blinky soothed. “The boy acquitted himself quite well.”
“No gallbladders? Again? We’re losing this war and it’s barely begun.”
“Let’s go back to the cave,” I panted. “We can come up with a better plan.”
“The cave? Those were rust trolls. The cave belongs to them. They’re following our scent there right now, and believe me, they’ll bring friends. We wouldn’t last five minutes if we went back.” Jack’s shoulders sunk in defeat. “We have no home.”
“Volumes twenty-three and twenty-four of my dissertation were left on the credenza!” Blinky gasped. “Those vulgar blackguards shall tear my heartrending prose to confetti just to watch it fall. True, true, it should not take me more than eight or nine years to rewrite. Nevertheless I feel a loss—my calligraphy today is not what it once was.”
“The weapons,” Jack groaned. “So many weapons, all gone. And we’re supposed to stop the Machine? Oh, this is bad.”
From several blocks away came the blare of police sirens. Jack crawled to the edge of the junk heap and snapped his fingers at ARRRGH!!!. The tacks on his gloves made loud clicks.
ARRRGH!!! snorted her understanding and ballooned her chest. By now I knew enough to cover my ears. The roar detonated like a bomb. Dozens of windshields shattered at once, and I didn’t have to look to know that Gulager had dropped to protect his body. The trollhunters made a run for it down a dark aisle. Somewhere up ahead was a bridge—there was always a bridge—but for once that was not part of the plan.
Jack grabbed me by the front of the shirt. My medallion tightened around my neck.
He searched the sky for signs of dawn.
“Shelter,” he growled. “It won’t be night for long.”
Tub didn’t look happy to see me. He glowered from his bedroom window.
“Unacceptable, Jim. It’s four. In the morning.”
“Back door,” I whispered. “Now.”
He was even unhappier to find me in his backyard alongside two trolls throwing anxious glances at the sky while Jack struck a menacing pose next to the decrepit swing set. Tub leaned against the doorframe and exhaled morning breath, scratching at his bed-head bouffant.
“You kids have fun tonight?”
“It’s going to be light soon,” I said. “They’ll turn to stone.”
“See, that sounds like something worth seeing.”
Jack shifted just enough so that his scabbards clattered intimidatingly.
“No jokes,” I said. “There’s no time. I need you to…” There was no other way except to just say it. “I need you to take ARRRGH!!!.”
Tub laughed once.
“The gigantic ape-monster? In Grandma’s house? You need to have your head X-rayed, kid.”
“You can hide her from Grandma way easier than I can from Dad. Just help me out here. I’m taking the others. I’m doing my part.”
“It’s all your part, Jim. You’re the big-deal trollhunter, remember? I’m just some kid who, I don’t know, is pretty good at video games, I guess? Why would a big, famous hunter like you want the help of an amateur like me? Thanks, anyway, but I think I’ll pass.”
“Then don’t do it for me! Do it for her. It’s not her fault she’s stuck out here. But if we don’t get her inside in two or three stones—a half-hour, I mean—she’s going to die. You want to live with that? You want to come out here in the morning and see the pile of rocks?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Call me whatever you want. Just take her in.”
ARRRGH!!! tilted her head.
“Boy human. Have peanut butter. For eating?”
Tub’s lips closed around his thick braces as he deliberated.
“I’m going to go ahead and assume she said something about my great prowess as a warrior. In that case, fine. For her, I’ll do it. Just get her inside before the neighbors wake up.”
Getting through the door was the easy part. ARRRGH!!! popped her arms out of place and didn’t restore herself to full girth until we were inside the house. There was an optimistic moment during which we thought this was going to go well. It didn’t last. ARRRGH!!! began reaching for every knickknack in the living room with a delighted look on her face. An entire shelf of ceramic children plummeted to the floor. Tub started mumbling about glue, where was the glue?! A row of delicate wicker decorations was the next casualty, ripped to shreds by a single curious claw. Tub’s focus switched to the vacuum cleaner—somebody get the vacuum cleaner! When ARRRGH!!! started munching on a vase of plastic flowers, I gave her a push toward Tub’s bedroom. She got the message, but on her way punctured a vinyl sofa cover with a toenail.
I pointed at a spot on Tub’s carpet for ARRRGH!!! to sit.
She did so with a smile and set about tasting everything within reach.
“Game controllers!” Tub cried. “Not food! Bad troll! Bad troll! Wait, wait, no, don’t—don’t eat—those were my favorite shoes! You can’t—no, I need—oh, man, you gotta be kidding me! You know how much that hard drive cost?”
Tub bolted from the room without explanation. In the meantime I did my best to wrench Tub’s possessions from ARRRGH!!!’s paws before they were popped between her grinding teeth. Blinky was no help; he was enraptured by a shelf of sci-fi DVDs and enthusing about the historic importance of this library of human/alien contact. Jack, meanwhile, had yet to move from the front door. He regarded the homey family room as if it were a jungle concealing its predators.
Random objects began sailing through the open window. It was Tub, hurling junk he’d collected from his neighbors’ backyards: a bundle of chicken wire, a couple of jolly lawn gnomes, three upended flower pots, an entire bush ripped out by the roots and dripping dirt. Then he crawled over the sill and I pulled him in.
/> “Stuff for her to chew on,” he grunted. “This is worse than having a cat—”
He froze. I did, too.
A feline screeched.
We caught only a glimpse of calico tail before it vanished down ARRRGH!!!’s throat. Tub pressed the back of his hand against his forehead like a Victorian damsel.
“Cat #20! Jim! That was Cat #20! Sweet lord, Jim, she’s eating Grandma’s cats!”
ARRRGH!!! licked her lips and plucked up another cat as if it were a peanut.
“Cat #36! No! Not Cat #36!”
A short-lived yowl later, Cat #36 was history. Tub clutched his skull in despair. For reasons we couldn’t understand, the cats were drawn to the snack-happy troll and kept winding about her legs, stroking their whiskers against her stiff black fur.
“Cat #23! Shoo! Shoo! Cat #40, for the love of all that’s holy! Run!” Tub grabbed my arm. “This isn’t going to work! They only respond to their real names!”
“Then use their real names!”
“You know I lost the list!”
“Find it!”
“It’s in here somewhere—oh, no! Please, anyone but Cat #39, that’s Grandma’s—”
ARRRGH!!!’s long tongue smacked at the furry remnants of Cat #39.
Tub dug his fingers into his scalp.
“Why do the stupid cats keep coming into this den of death?!”
Jack leaned into the room. His barbed gloves carved four scrapes through the paint by Tub’s light switch. He nodded at Tub’s TV set.
“Turn it on.”
Tub and I fell over each other in a race for the remote. A minute of fumbling commenced, during which at least one more cat met its untimely end, before we were able to summon an infomercial from the dead screen, a shouting guy with a headset hawking some kind of new-and-improved mop. Tub lowered the volume, while I messed with the set to achieve a much blurrier screen.
“Not too much static,” Jack said. “It’s not healthy.”
ARRRGH!!!’s grin slackened as she began to notice the flickering images. Seconds later, five tendrils of drool fell from her jaw. Now that it was within reach, I took hold of the car tire still impaled on her left horn and yanked it off. It went bouncing through the room, scaring away the remaining cats before obliterating a decorative table in the hallway. ARRRGH!!!’s paws relaxed and a chubby tabby bounded from its palm prison.