The Strike Trilogy (9 page)

Aykrada shook her head. “I
asked
you for it. And you know they have been searching for it everywhere, not just here. So never think like that, Orion. Never think like that.”

She turned to the others.

“I’m sorry to say that the only building really left standing is City Hall, and the space there is pretty limited, so I’ve set up a camp for you outside in the garden. I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Orion said, and the others nodded. “You know, Aykrada, once you get this place back up and running again, I think you could run for mayor.”

She smiled. “Thank you, O. You’re as good a friend as ever.” They hugged, and then she walked toward City Hall, which wasn’t far from where they were standing. “Have a good night, everyone. I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast, my treat.”

After watching Aykrada leave, Tobin was surprised to hear laughter behind him. Turning around, he saw Keplar surrounded by a group of children. The dog was showing the kids Scatterbolt, and the robot was putting on a show, juggling and telling jokes. The kids were laughing and clapping, fascinated by the robot.

Orion walked to Tobin and they watched Keplar, Scatterbolt, and the children.

“Once, Tobin,” the old man said, “Gallymoora was the greatest city in all of Capricious, and the generous people here and their water fountain festivals were known all over the world. If you didn’t live here, you wanted to, and if you visited, it was unlikely you’d ever want to go home. Now, all that is obviously gone.”

“How?” Tobin asked. “How did this happen?”

“A question we’ll save for tomorrow. I remember back at the apartment you kept saying you didn’t think any of this was real. Do you remember?”

Tobin nodded.

“Well, it is all very real, Tobin. Just take a look around you.”

The boy looked over the city. He felt sick, and more confused than ever.

Orion noticed the look on the boy’s face.

“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around Tobin’s shoulder. They walked toward City Hall. “It’s been a long day.”

CHAPTER TEN

T
obin was lost, driving in his car, unaware of where he was and not sure how to get home. Slowly moving along the wide, empty road, he finally saw his mother up ahead, walking in the grass.

“Mom!” Tobin called out, pulling over and unrolling his window. “Mom! Where am I? What’s going on?”

But, when Tobin’s mother turned around, her face suddenly changed, and she was a stranger.

Startled, Tobin pulled back onto the road and drove forward. Finally, at the end of a deserted highway, Tobin came upon a bridge. It was thin—so thin it was barely wide enough for him to fit his car over. When he pulled up closer and looked down, he could see that the bridge was supported only by skinny concrete beams, and underneath it, so far away he could barely see it, was the cold, grey sea.

The bridge did not look safe, but Tobin knew it was the only way for him to get home, so he carefully pressed his foot to the gas and began to drive over it. However, he did not drive slowly enough, and halfway across the bridge, he and his car tumbled off the side and plummeted to the dead water below.

Tobin’s eyes flashed open. He remembered where he was—lying in a small tent on the cold ground in the garden outside the Gallymoora City Hall. When he caught his breath, he decided he would rather be awake than asleep, so he wrapped himself in a blanket, opened the door of his tent, and stepped outside.

The boy saw the other three tents in the garden, and the crackling fire resting in the middle of them. Keplar was sitting by the fire, resting on a tree stump and poking the burning wood with a stick. As Tobin sat down on the other side of the fire, he watched the flames and the smoke rising up.

“Nightmare?” the dog asked.

“Yeah,” Tobin replied. “You heard?”

“Yeah. It’s all right.”

A silence.

“You miss your home?” Keplar asked. “Your family?”

Tobin nodded. “Very much. It’s just my mom and me, really, and my friends and stuff.” Tobin thought it over. “Before I got here, I was pretty much a huge jerk to my mom, so who knows where she thinks I went. Then there’s my friend Jennifer. She gets nervous about everything, so she’s probably even more worried than my mom.”

“Is that your girlfriend?” Keplar asked.

“No. Just a friend.”

Keplar chuckled. “Sure.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

The dog grinned. “Nothing.”

Another silence. Keplar added some wood to the fire. They listened to it crackle.

“What has Orion told you so far about all this, anyway?” Keplar asked.

“Nothing, really. Scatterbolt just told me a whole bunch of stuff about these three superheroes, the Guardians. But I still don’t know why I’m here.”

“I’m sure you can probably guess.”

“I have an idea, but I hope I’m wrong.”

“You probably aren’t.”

Tobin watched the fire. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Why are you out here so late?” he asked the dog.

“I don’t really sleep. Not too much, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“Why, though? Everyone has to sleep. How can you not—”

“I just don’t,” Keplar repeated, making it clear this was as far as the conversation would go.

Tobin took the hint. He and Keplar sat in silence.

But then there was a dull boom, off in the distance. Tobin looked toward the dark city. Another boom, louder this time.

“You hear that?” Keplar asked.

“Yeah.” Tobin watched the quiet buildings. “What is it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Reaching to the ground, Keplar picked up the large, grenade launcher-like gun lying next to him. This was the same gun he had used to take down the blood bird earlier, and Tobin had heard him refer to it as a “plasma cannon.” As the dog listened to the night, he moved his hand toward the trigger.

Within seconds, the boom sounded again, and this time it was followed by a soft buzzing. It grew louder. Closer. It sounded like bugs. Coming closer. Soon the buzzing was so loud that the ground shook. So loud that it hurt Tobin’s ears.

Keplar readied his gun.

“Krandor,” he swore. “I know what this is—Tobin, get out of here, now, before they—”

KA-BOOM!
An explosion rocked Gallymoora, knocking Tobin and Keplar to the ground! The buzzing filled the air now, like a piercing, shrill machine, and Tobin had to cover his ears when he stood. Wincing in pain, he looked toward the city, and gasped.

Hundreds of giant wasps flew into the city from the surrounding forest. They were three feet tall, wore armor-like clothing, and had horrible, ugly faces, with bulbous eyes and mouths that were filled with gnashing teeth. They were also holding spears and firebombs and flamethrowers, and as they swooped through the city in a massive horde, they were using these weapons to rain chaos down upon it.

Tobin watched as explosions erupted throughout the city, and fires rose up in terrible, scalding bursts. As their houses burned, the people of Gallymoora ran out of them, trying to take cover. But there was no place to hide. The wasps were everywhere.

Tobin spun to his left, looking for help, but instead saw Keplar run into the center of the city. As the dog growled in anger, he was using the green explosive projectiles from his plasma cannon to blast as many of the wasps out of the air as he could, but the swarm was only growing by the second, reinforced with more troops from the forest. The dog was alone in a sea of bugs.

Tobin dropped to the ground, wrapping his arms around his head and making his body as small as possible. Hearing a
WHOOSH!
to his right, he turned and saw Orion—the old man was riding on a metallic, flying surfboard, and as he zoomed on the board toward Keplar, he was firing his bow and arrow. As the red-tipped weapons pierced the bugs, the wasps exploded into bursts of yellow-and-black goo.
POP! POP! POP!

“Tobin!” the old man yelled. “Get out of here, now! Get somewhere safe!”

The boy was lying on the ground. “Where the hell do you want me to go?!”

“Scatterbolt, take him to City Hall!”

Orion hopped off the flying surfboard, and it hovered over to Tobin. When it reached him, the metal on the board’s front suddenly morphed into Scatterbolt’s face.

“I think it’s best we get out of here, Tobin,” the robot said.

Agreeing completely, Tobin hopped onto Scatterbolt’s back and they zoomed off toward City Hall.

When they arrived on the roof of City Hall, Tobin looked back to the battle. Bursts of fire were erupting throughout the city, and from this distance, the wasps looked like big, black clouds, swooping down and creating destruction whenever they neared the streets. Keplar and Orion were a blue and red dot, almost lost among the blackness.

Hearing a noise behind him, Tobin realized they were not alone on the roof; Aykrada and her family were there: her husband, son, and daughter. The son was a small blonde boy—no more than six years old—and he was crying and holding onto the waist of his sister, who was around twenty. She was doing her best to comfort the boy, but she was so frightened herself, wincing every time an explosion erupted.

“I have to go,” Tobin heard Aykrada say. He turned and saw her standing with her husband; he was a big, burly man, dressed in his bathrobe.

“No,” her husband said. “There’s too many of them, Aykrada—they’re destroying the city!”

“I know. That’s why I have to go.”

Her husband swallowed a lump in his throat and pulled her close. “Be careful.”

“I will. You stay here with them, no matter what.”

Tobin watched as Aykrada stepped to the edge of the roof. Shockingly, her entire body suddenly turned to tan-colored stone, from the tips of her toes all the way to the top of her head. She was now so heavy that when she leapt off of the roof, her stone feet created two giant holes in the ground, and a tremor shook City Hall. Stomping through the city, she ran toward Keplar and Orion.

“What are those things?” Tobin asked, watching the battle.

“They are called the Hoplites,” Scatterbolt said. “They were sent here by a person who doesn’t like us very much.”

A burst of fire erupted, louder than the others and closer to City Hall. Aykrada’s son buried his face against his sister, who was now crying herself. Their father walked to them and led them away from the edge of the roof.

Tobin watched the city. He grew angry.

“We should be down there,” he said. “We should be helping.”

“I know,” Scatterbolt replied. “I wish we could be, too, Tobin, but we can’t. We’re not strong enough.”

“We can still help.”

Tobin scanned the area, darting his eyes around the rooftop; against a far wall, he spotted a mop, sitting in a bucket. Running to it, he removed the mop head from the handle and plopped it back into the water. Now he only had a wooden stick.

He brought the stick to Aykrada’s son. “Hey, little dude,” he said, crouching down. “What’s your name?”

The boy turned to him, shy and nervous. “Leroy.”

“Hey, Leroy, I’m Tobin. I’m gonna go help your mom, okay? But let me ask you something: do you know anything about superheroes?”

Leroy let go of his sister, intrigued. “Yeah…”

“Oh, cool. Do you know anything about the ones who were called the Guardians?”

Leroy squinted. “Yeah, I learned all about them in my history class. Everybody knows about them.”

“All right, good. What about the one who’s called Strike? He used a weapon like this, right?”

Leroy looked at the mop handle with some disappointment. “Yeah. Except a lot more awesome.”

Tobin laughed. “Okay, thanks, Leroy.” He walked back to Scatterbolt. “Okay. I’m gonna go down there and help them. I’m probably gonna die in the process, but I’m not just gonna sit here and watch while everybody else gets killed. So…do you wanna come with me?”

Scatterbolt grumbled, sighing deeply. “I’m not gonna be able to talk you out of this, am I?”

“Nope,” Tobin said. “I figure just being here means that I’ve gone completely insane, so why not do something completely insane to go along with it?”

Reluctantly, the robot transformed into the hover board and floated over to Tobin. “You’re gonna be a bad influence on me, aren’t you?” he asked, as they flew toward the city.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
n the middle of Gallymoora, Orion, Keplar, and Aykrada were doing their best to fight off the invading Hoplites, but they were vastly outnumbered: every time one of the hornets was killed, two more emerged from the forest to take its place. Making matters worse, time was not on their side: Orion was low on arrows, Keplar was down to his last few rounds of ammunition, and Aykrada was exhausted, having not used her stone powers like this in weeks. None of them would admit it, but each of them was wondering the same thing: how much longer could they keep this up?

As if an answer to their question, Scatterbolt zoomed in from City Hall, with Tobin riding on his back. The boy was wielding the mop handle—nervous, but ready for action.

“What are you doing?!” Orion shouted. “Scatterbolt, get him out of here! Now!”

“I know, Orion, I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen to me!”

“He’s right, sir,” Tobin said, stepping onto the ground. “I’m sorry, but I’m staying. I can help.”

“Hey, what the hell, O,” Keplar yelled. “Let the damn kid stay. Let’s see how he likes it tomorrow when he—”

A Hoplite dropped from the sky, landing on Keplar’s back and sinking its teeth into his blue fur. With a grunt, he reached back, threw the bug to the ground, and blasted it into goo.

“Let’s see how he likes it,” the husky finished, “when he’s lying in bed tomorrow with a couple of broken legs and a whole lotta regret.”

Orion glared at Tobin, then turned and fired at a distant Hoplite.

“You stay near me,” the old man said. “You do exactly as I say. Do you understand me?”

Tobin nodded. He watched Aykrada; a Hoplite was charging at her, but she used the bottom of her heavy stone fist to squish it into the ground. Then, reaching up, she grabbed another Hoplite right out of the sky, before flinging it into the far off woods.

Tobin decided he better do something to earn his keep. He looked for an easy target.

He found one: a lone Hoplite, standing away from the battle and using a burning tree branch to set a house on fire. Its back was to Tobin, and it was completely distracted.

Tobin nodded and took a deep breath. Gripping the wooden bo-staff in his hands, he clenched his teeth, yelled in battle, and ran at the Hoplite. When he reached the bug, he raised the weapon up, brought it down, and then smashed it over the bug’s ugly head.

But the Hoplite simply stood up straight. It turned around. It wasn’t even dazed—only annoyed.

Tobin looked at his mop handle, wondering what went wrong.

The Hoplite approached. As it waved the burning tree branch at the boy, he could feel the heat of its fire singing his face. Turning around, he saw that he had no where to go: his back was up against a brick wall. Looking away, he closed his eyes, his body stiffening in anticipation of the fire. “So this is how it ends,” he thought. “Burnt to death by a three-foot-tall—”

But then there was a blast of blue light and a snap of electricity.

Tobin opened his eyes. The Hoplite was now gone, and in its place there was a large puddle of yellow-and-black slime on the ground. Sparks of electricity were zipping through the bubbling slime, crisscrossing it from one end to the other.

Tobin held up his hands. They were now faintly glowing blue, and hissing and popping with streaks of electricity.

“Huh,” the boy said, waving his hand in the air. He watched as it left a trail of blue light behind it. The light hung in the air before fading away.

Tobin had an idea. He closed his eyes again.

He thought about electricity: a power plant; a warning sign; a broken electric line, snapping and twisting on the ground. An electric plug; a generator; a cord powering a machine. A lightning bolt, scorching down from the sky and—

The blue flash again.

Tobin opened his eyes and looked down in amazement; wild, blue electricity was now coursing over the bo-staff, flowing through it like a river. Like his hands, the weapon was encased in glowing, snapping, blue-and-white energy. He could feel it humming and vibrating in his arms.

Tobin grinned. “This is awesome.”

As Tobin ran back to the battle, Keplar noticed that the boy’s hands and bo-staff were now both glowing bright blue.

“Well, look at that,” the dog said with a grin. “The little boy is all growns up.”

“Not hardly,” Orion replied. He shot three arrows from his bow at once, nailing all three of his Hoplite targets. “Tobin, I told you to stay near me. Do not do anything unless I tell you to. You hear me?”

A Hoplite was swooping toward the group, so Tobin swung his bo-staff upward into the air and sent the bug tumbling to the ground. “Yes, sir,” he said, twirling the bo-staff around his head in a flashy show of victory. “Loud and clear.”

Orion grumbled. “Oh, great. Another cocky one.”

Keplar laughed. “He’s just like me!”

Orion readied another arrow. “Don’t remind me.”

Nearby, two Gallymoora children were running away from a murderous Hoplite. The hideous bug was laughing as it chased them, and it was just about to grab onto one of them with its spindly hands when—

CLANG!
A metal wall sprang up in front of the bug, causing the wasp to smash into it with a
SPLAT
! Hearing the noise, the two children turned around, only to see the bug’s face contorted into the metal. When the wall receded, the Hoplite stood there a moment, dazed, before falling to the ground.

“Have no fear, citizens!” the wall exclaimed. With the sound of a piece of steel being wobbled in the air, the wall quickly morphed into Scatterbolt, who stood in front of the kids with one fist on his hip and one fist in the air. “Scatterbolt is here!”

Realizing his heroic pose wasn’t accomplishing much besides making him look cool, Scatterbolt quickly morphed into an even bigger wall—this one was as wide and as tall as a small truck. The two children ran behind the robot, finally finding a place to hide among the violence.

“Any of you guys happen to have a giant roll of flypaper lying around?” Scatterbolt asked, spraying his BUG-BE-GONE can at the oncoming Hoplites. “No? Okay, just checking.”

Near the Gallymoora city fountains, Tobin, Keplar, Aykrada, and Orion were standing in a circle, finally making some headway against the invading hornets. Running toward one of them, Tobin swung his bo-staff and sent it flying upward, where it crashed into another wasp, causing them both to fall out of the sky.

“Not bad, kid,” Keplar said. “Not bad at all.”

“Thanks,” Tobin replied. He spun his weapon in front of him. “Kinda reminds me of a video game.”

Because he wasn’t paying attention, Tobin didn’t notice the Hoplite approaching him from behind. Luckily, though, Orion was paying attention, and he fired an arrow that whizzed right past Tobin’s ear. The boy spun around, startled, as the bug behind him exploded in a
POP!
of yellow-and-black slime.

“Funny,” the old man said, taking another arrow from his quiver. “I must have missed when this became a time to congratulate each other. Stay alert, both of you. Enough talking.”

“Sorry,” Tobin replied sheepishly.

But, Orion didn’t have to worry about their focus for much longer: soon, Aykrada reared back her stone fist and squished the very last Hoplite. Finally, the four heroes could relax.

“And that,” Keplar said, “is that.” He raised a boot, stomping on a barely-squirming Hoplite, finishing the job. “You know, they’re actually kind of cute. In a hideous sort of way.”

Aykrada reverted her stone body back to flesh and blood. “Well, that was exhausting. I should go back and check on my family—let them know that I’m not, you know, dead.” She ran toward City Hall. “Come and see me when you’re ready—let’s see if we can make a plan to clean up this mess.”

Keplar watched her go, scratching a huge, red welt on his arm. “I hope she has about 500 gallons of anti-itch lotion back there.”

Tobin was leaning on his staff, catching his breath. “Maybe her daughter can help you put it on.”

“Ha! Good call, bro. Actually, now that you say that, I think I’ll head up there right now…”

Tobin laughed and sat down, light-headed but exhilarated. He still couldn’t believe what had just happened—he wasn’t even sure he
knew
what had just happened. Nearby, Orion was listening for something in the air.

“I gotta say,” Keplar said, sitting down in the dirt, “you did pretty good, Tobes. How’d you know how to use your powers like that so fast?”

The boy shook his head. His thoughts felt like they were spinning. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what it is that I just did. Me and Scatterbolt were up at City Hall, so I asked—”

“Quiet!” Orion snapped, spinning toward them. “Enough! Both of you!”

Tobin and Keplar looked at each other.

“Uh, Orion,” Keplar said, “relax, buddy. We won, remember? We made like a giant fly swatter and smashed ‘em all. Bugs: zero, us: one thousand.”

Orion waved his hand, motioning for the dog to stay quiet. Then the old man knelt down, lowering his ear to the ground.

Not far away from them, Scatterbolt was still morphed into the wall, shielding the two Gallymoora children and a few other people.

“Um, Orion?”

“Yes, Scatterbolt.”

“I’m picking up something weird.”

“What is it?”

“It’s…I’m getting life signs from the Hoplites.”

Tobin spun to Keplar, shocked. Orion stood and dusted the dirt from his pants.

“How many?” he asked.

Scatterbolt waited a moment to answer.

“All of them.”

There was a low buzzing…and then every single dead Hoplite suddenly sprang back to life! The hundreds of carcasses, now chattering and growling madly, rose off the ground and up into the air, creating a deafening, hovering swarm above and around the heroes.

“Well,” Keplar said, “this kinda sucks.”

After dashing into his tent, Orion returned to the group carrying his last bag of arrows. Then, as he, Keplar, and Tobin stood in the middle of the city, the Hoplites began to fly together in a donut shape above them, like planets orbiting around a sun. Gradually, as the wasps moved their bodies closer together, the air in the center of the circle disappeared.

Keplar spoke from the corner of his mouth. “Are they doing what I think they’re doing?”

“Yes,” Orion said. “I’m pretty sure they are.”

Tobin watched, confused, as the hundreds of Hoplites lowered themselves and floated in front of him. They were becoming less like a swarm now and more like a giant ball of bugs, crawling all over each other like they were building a nest. When the boy looked closer, he realized he could no longer make out each individual Hoplite—they were now simply one slimy, pulsating, yellow-and-black mass. He felt relieved, because surely this blob couldn’t hurt him, not like the hundreds of swarming Hoplites could. But then he noticed something growing out of the bottom of the blob.

It was a giant pair of legs, which stretched down from the blob and touched onto the dusty ground. Next, two massive arms emerged from the sides of the blob, sliding out with slow, quivering slurps. Finally, at the top of the mass, a head formed: it looked just like a Hoplite head, except it was bigger, slimier, and possessed a mouth whose teeth were made up of the black stingers of the hundreds of smaller Hoplites inside of it.

A thirty-foot-tall monster was now standing on the street, towering over the heroes. As it lowered its head, it stared at Tobin and blinked, before letting out a shrill scream. The boy covered his ears and cried out, feeling the warm garbage breath of the monster blasting over him.

Enraged, Keplar leapt in front of the monster.

“Rarrrgghh!” the dog growled, firing his plasma cannon up at the giant Hoplite in quick succession:
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

The green blasts from Keplar’s gun created a great deal of smoke, and when it cleared, Tobin could see that the Hoplite now had a huge hole through its chest. However, the hole was quickly filled in with the bodies of the smaller Hoplites as they crawled across the giant’s slimy arms.

“Uh-oh,” Keplar said.

Reaching down, the Hoplite swiped at Keplar with its massive claws, sending the dog flying. His body smashed against the pavement, skidded wildly, and ended up lying underneath a building. Before he could regain his bearings, the Hoplite stomped over and toppled the building on top of him, covering him in debris.

Tobin spun to Orion. The old man was firing his bow at the monster, but most of the arrows were zipping right through its body with no effect.

“Tobin!” Orion shouted. “Focus your lightning in your bo-staff and fire it at the monster! Now, before it gets any closer!”

But Tobin was too afraid. After looking up at the monster in shock for a moment, he turned around, sprinted across the city, and hid behind a half-destroyed building.

“Dammit,” Orion whispered. He fired another arrow, then ran to Tobin and hid with him behind the building.

“Tobin,” the old man said, crouching down, his voice labored. “Jump out. Now. Fire your staff. We don’t have any time.”