Ascending the Boneyard (5 page)

I palm the side of my head to knock the thought out of it, to kill the noise. I pop in an earbud, quick scroll through my music files, fire up a little Bunny Puke, and bump up the volume as high as I can stand it.

Halfway down the block, I toss the skateboard onto the ground and hop on. It isn't long before I remember what an incompetent skater I am and what a gigantic dickweed I must look like, thrash-spasming just to stay upright. But I elbow my deflating ego to the side just for the moment because I need to find that bird. Somehow I'm supposed to save it—the message said so.

Not that it matters about my lack of boarding skills since there's no one out here to impress. Not a soul on the streets. No cars, no pedestrians. I might as well be skating down an abandoned highway in the Boneyard.

My heart is moshing against my ribs as I whiffle into the parking lot of Goofy Golf and stumble off the skateboard.

A mind-boggling number of news vans have lined up end-to-end along the frontage to the park. Some of the vans are from Ohio stations, but most of them sport out-of-state call letters painted on the sides, and all of them have satellite erections springing out of some unseen orifice in the vehicles' roofs. The parking lot is littered with talking heads and cameras and microphones, and in the middle of it all, one lone, bright yellow truck that looks suspiciously like Stan's bug-mobile, right down to the oversized cockroach on top. The sight of it trips a hate-wire inside me, but I can't let myself stumble over that—not now.

I hop off Devin's deck, pocket my earbuds and phone, and take a view of my surroundings. I'm grateful to be on solid ground, but I can't deny the severe muscle throb from the shock of physical activity as I make my way unnoticed through the maze of cars and cables and journalists.

I struggle to orient myself in the midst of all the chaos. The spin in my head, the ring in my ears . . . the overwhelming sense of being knocked off-balance. I force myself to focus, to remember that the reporter had been standing down in the go-kart pit. So I need to shake it off, because my first order of business is to find that discarded drink cup with the bird next to it.

If I didn't know this place so well, I'd have to start randomly walking around looking for it. But that won't be necessary. Because just a few feet from the reporter was a skid mark up on the wall at a sharp curve on the track, and the discarded drink cup was on the ground below it. I know that part of the track all too well.

Me and Haze were the ones who made that skid mark.

I spit the thought out onto the sidewalk and look around through the yellow-tinged goggles.

No wonder the streets of Sandusky are empty—the park is mobbed with people. I'm getting a definite preraid Boneyard vibe here.

Unfortunately, with crowds like these, I stand a pretty slim chance that anyone's going to let me down onto the track.

If I'd have thought this through for even one second, I would have realized that I needed a more elaborate plan than stealing my brother's Virgin Mary skateboard and rolling up to an amusement park full of people who aren't going to want me here, then trying to find a skid mark and a cup so I can save a dying little bird on the advice of some mystery texter who may or may not be an UpperWorld operative trying to save me from the infestation of Turk's army that started in my room this morning.

But I didn't think it through for more than one second, so that's all I've got.

For a few seconds I contemplate what Roundhouse would do.

In a moment such as this, when TV's Chuck Norris–inspired Roundhouse finds himself in an impossible situation and has to figure his way out with nothing but brains, brawn, and his own saliva, I have reason to believe that he would create a distraction of some kind. He would do so by pulling a Chinese firecracker out of his ass, or fashioning his own hair into a smoke bomb, and as the crowd swarmed to see if they were under terrorist attack or something, Roundhouse would dash in, do his business, and get out before anyone knew he'd been there.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to fashion a smoke bomb out of my own hair.

I need to come up with a plan B.

I survey the amusement-park grounds, the castle that's the hallmark of the mini-golf course, not to mention the place where Logan Ward claims to have lost his virginity to Sabrina Jones last summer. Past that, there's the serpentine pit of the go-kart track, the bumper-boat pond filled with dead birds and disembodied black feathers floating around in it, plus the inevitability of infectious diseases and the budding stench of death. I'm not exaggerating; just check out the way the entire place is swarming with people in hazmat suits.

Wait a minute. Wait. A. Minute.
That's it.

Plan B involves Caleb Tosh in a hazmat suit.

How legit is
that
?

3.5

So far,
there are no signs of UnderWorld infiltration.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

4

The question is,
what kind of dumb-ass hazmat team leaves the back doors of their van open?

Doesn't matter, because here I stand at the back of the van, and there, just inside the open doors, is a stack of white, disposable Tyvek coveralls. Another quick check reveals a box of disposable face masks just behind the suits. This stroke of luck has me a little freaked out, since I don't have the most stellar reputation for being lucky.

But I'll take it.

I've never moved faster in my life to accomplish any goal than I move now, gearing up in that Tyvek suit. Once I'm dressed, I make my way toward the park, only to realize I have one more little snag: Devin's skateboard. Hazmat dudes generally don't carry their skateboards with them.

I hear a faint
tick-tick-ticking
in my head, like if I don't find that bird and save it fast, this whole level will wipe again and I'll lose everything. I quick stash the deck inside the back of that yellow truck parked nearby, only because it'll be easier to find in the sea of white vans when I'm done here. Besides, I know it's not Stan's truck. Stan's truck didn't have any equipment in the back the last time I saw it.

I fake stride across the entrance to the park, very authoritative and official-like, still mystified that no one so much as does a double take in my direction.

I take that back. A girl in black Chuck Taylors and a
SUPERGIRL
T-shirt leans over the chain-link fence. There's nothing noteworthy about her, except that she's the only one who seems to be tracking my entrance. I hop down the stairs two at a time, head to the go-kart pit, pick up the pace until I'm around the first bend, and only then do I break into a jog-walk toward the discarded cup near the skid mark, which I know is somewhere around the third turn. The ground is littered with festering bird carcasses. It's a grotesque enough sight by itself, but I have to dodge them as I go, like some creepy, morbid version of Frogger.

My hyperventilating breath pools inside the toxic-smelling mask until I start to feel claustrophobic, and the more I focus on the claustrophobia, the more I start to panic, which makes me totally question the whole point of coming here; and just as I'm about to give up, to ditch the hazmat suit and the mask, retrieve the skateboard from where I stashed it in the bug truck, and thrash-spasm my way back home, there it is.

The skid mark.

The cup.

And the bird. Still alive, still trying to flap its little wings against the pavement.

Alive.
But barely.

I squat down, look into its little black BB of an eyeball, hoping it'll offer me some kind of insight of greater meaning. It doesn't. It just stares back, pleading.

I pull the toxic paper mask down over my chin, suck in a couple lungfuls of fresh air over my shoulder, blink tears off the surface of my eyes.
Save it,
the message said.

I'm trying, I swear.

I run my hands over the front of the hazmat suit, find a pocket with a pair of latex gloves tucked inside. I put them on, lean over, pick up the green drink cup, and scoop the bird inside even though it takes me a couple of passes because I can't get my hands to stop shaking like crazy. I'm careful to put the little guy in feet first so it can breathe and not feel claustrophobic, the way I felt a moment ago inside this paper mask.

I hold the cup up to eye level, stare into the bird's unblinking little face, and smile for the first time in weeks.

We did it,
I convey telepathically.
You made it—I saved you. Looks like I'll get to level after all.

I keep looking, though, keep looking as if the bird is going to open its beak and thank me or something. But it doesn't. Within seconds, it stops pulsing its exhausted wings against the insides of the cup, and I hold my breath, waiting for it to restart. But it never does.

It's dead.

The bird is dead.

The go-kart track starts to bend and stretch around me and I'm sure I'm going to black out, only my phone starts buzzing in my back pocket just then. I reach to answer it, but it's buried under a layer of Tyvek so super-constructed that there's no way to rip through it. I have to unzip, reach around, fish it out with one hand while holding a dead, probably disease-infested bird in a used drink cup with the other.

I finally get the phone out.

It's the cockroach. Grotesquely cracked and fragmented in my broken screen.

What the fuck, man?

The cockroach found me.

My arm drops as I spin one way, then the other, looking for signs of an onslaught I know must be coming. But there's nothing. No one. Not even backup to keep
my
sorry ass out of hot water. I'm alone, all alone on the go-kart track at Goofy Golf with a dead bird in one hand and a dead phone in the other.

Helicopter blades pulse through the air somewhere off in the distance, and the mantel clock Stan threw in the back of his truck
tick-tick-tick
s from an unseen place behind me, followed by the synchronized cadence of marching feet, which can mean only one thing.