IF: Boundarylands Read online

  “General Squeak!” the Scab called. His pre-pubescent whine carried over the din of confusion, and many of the soldiers fell silent and attentive. “General Squeak! I got ’em!”

  The five children and the Stranger stood huddled at the bottom of a wide pit dug into the debris. Cole felt a little like a gladiator in an extremely poor man’s Coliseum. Around them stood the scruffy, snarling spectators, tens of thousands of Scab soldiers, each one scruffier and snarlier than the last. They surrounded the travelers like trees in a dark, stunted fairy tale forest.

  “Nice piece,” General Squeak said admiringly, turning the Stranger’s six-shooter over in his hand. The way he handled it, it might as well have been a banana instead of an instrument of death. “It work?”

  “Give it back, and I’ll show you,” the Stranger growled. Squeak gave a signal, and one of the little ruffians stepped forward and cracked the cowboy on the back of the head with a plank of wood. Not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to send him to his knees. His hands were tied behind his back, and with nothing to stop himself, he skidded cheek-first onto the gravely ground.

  “Guess that’s a yes,” the general shrugged. “The Royal’ll want it.” He tossed it to the redhead, who stuffed it into the waist of his pants.

  “Hey! What’re you doing?” Willy demanded, nudging the Stranger with the toe of his shoe. The Scabs hadn’t bothered tying up the children. “Are you a cowboy or not? Get up and mow these bozos down, they’re just kids!”

  A murmur of protest rose among the Scabs. “I’ll show you a kid!” one of the soldiers cried, running forward with a huge branch raised above his head.

  General Squeak stepped out and stopped him with a fist to the chest. “I get first blood,” fussed the leader. “Me. You got that?” The little ruffian nodded sullenly, then slunk back into the crowd. General Squeak turned back to the group of children and flashed them a smirk. “We ain’t kids.”

  They sure looked like kids, Cole thought. They were the right size, and the right proportions, and they had the right kinds of snotty noses and reckless scabs. But there also was something distinctly old about them. Something in their eyes, or maybe in the fleshy areas around their eyes, belied a deep, world-weary fatigue. Their eyes were dim and hooded with dark circles above and below.

  Cole’s father had worn those eyes, just once, and just for a day or two. It was right after Cole’s grandmother had retired from her fight with pancreatic cancer. That was how Donald Slawson had put it: retired from the fight. He had smiled as he said it to Cole, to soften the blow, but it was a weak, watery smile, like the one playing on General Squeak’s lips now.

  The Stranger heaved himself back up to his feet. “What do you want?” he said between gritted teeth. His eyes blazed with fury.

  “Batting practice!” Squeak said pleasantly. He snatched the baseball bat that one of his soldiers was leaning on, and the Scab went tumbling to the ground. Squeak hoisted the bat and gave it a few Babe Ruth swings. “What do you think, cowboy? Whose head’ll fly the farthest?” He stepped up to Emma, who hadn’t made a sound since their capture by the Scab army, but had only stood and trembled, her knees literally knocking together. “This one looks like it’s got some heft to it,” he said. He raised the bat so the thickest part of the barrel rested against Emma’s ear. Tears leaked from the corners of the little girl’s eyes, but still she made no sound. “I bet it carries at least twenty feet. What do you think?”

  The Stranger lunged at the general, but four little soldiers stepped forward with spears leveled at his chest. The tips of the blades pushed in on the Stranger’s vest. “Touch one hair, and I swear to the gods I’ll tear your spine from your back,” the cowboy snarled.

  The general smirked. “Dramatic. Biff, put him in his place.” The Scab named Biff stepped forward from the crowd. He was a small, blond thing, with a black leather jacket, ripped-up jeans, and a red bandana wrapped around his head. He hefted a crowbar in his hands and took a mighty swing at the cowboy. The Stranger leapt back, narrowly avoiding the iron, but he jumped back into a solid line of Scabs who shoved him forward. He skidded in the loose trash, and Biff swung the crowbar again, connecting with the cowboy’s hip bone with a sickening thud. The Stranger moaned as he buckled onto one knee.

  “You know what’s funny?” General Squeak asked. He was speaking directly to Emma now, but it was obvious enough he wanted all of them to hear. Emma shook her head slowly. “I don’t even like baseball.” He shoved the end of the bat into Emma’s stomach. She moaned as she doubled over and fell to the ground. “Guess I’m just a natural!” Squeak laughed.

  “Hey!” A sudden fever seized Cole, and he lunged forward, his fingernails stretched out like a cat’s. But although Squeak was only the size of a child, he was the size of a much older child—13 or 14 at least—and he danced easily away from Cole’s attack. “Oh-ho-ho! A little firecracker!” Squeak stuck out his foot, and Cole tripped over it and went sprawling into a loose pile of trash, sending banana peels and empty tin cans flying.

  “Leave them alone!” the cowboy barked. He leapt back to his feet and shoved his way toward the general, but the Scabs with the spears jabbed their weapons at his chest. Three of the metal points dug through the Stranger’s vest, puncturing his skin and drawing blood. He hardly seemed to notice.

  General Squeak threw the cowboy a sniveling smirk and stepped forward so he was almost an arm’s length away. “Mind your manners, IF.” He pronounced the word as if it tasted disgusting as it tumbled out of his mouth. His eyes flashed dangerously. “Your kind isn’t welcome here. And you ain’t gonna be the hero this time.” He nodded over the cowboy’s shoulder.

  The Stranger turned, a bit too late; the heavy wooden plank caught him on the side of the face, breaking in half with a loud crack that Cole couldn’t be sure came from the board and not the cowboy’s jaw. The Stranger spun on his toes like a cartoon fighter who’d just taken a knockout punch. Then he collapsed onto the ground, his head twitching gently against the trash.

  General Squeak turned back to the children, tossed the bat to a nearby comrade, and clasped his hands behind his back. Biff lifted Cole roughly from the trash pile and threw him back into line with the other kids. Squeak paced back and forth before them like a disappointed father. “What’re you little rats doing here?” he asked.

  The children looked from one to the other, none of them particularly wanting to speak up…none, that was, except for Willy. “We’re going to see the king,” he said. “When he hears about this, holy cow, you goons are dead!”

  “The king?” General Squeak laughed, wheeling on the boy and sticking his nose into Willy’s face. “The Royal don’t wanna see you. He don’t want you to make it to the Pinch. Why ya think he sent us?”

  “The Royal sent you?” Cole blurted, surprised.

  “That’s right, Susie Q. He don’t want you at the Pinch, he don’t want you in this junkyard, he don’t want you in the Boundarylands. You and your kind ain’t welcome here.”

  “Your grammar is exceedingly poor,” Etherie observed.

  Cole winced.

  Squeak turned on her, his face boiling over to a deep red. “Grammar?” he snarled, grabbing her by the shoulders. “I don’t give a rip about grammar!”

  He pushed her back, but Etherie stepped fluidly and managed to keep her balance. In fact, she seemed rather nonplussed by the whole ordeal. Squeak noticed this and seemed ready to try to get a different reaction with his fist, when suddenly Emma wailed, “I wanna go home!” She pulled out a handful of her comfort éclairs and stuffed two of them into her mouth at the same time.

  The redheaded Scab stepped forward and snatched the half-full bag of pastries out of Emma’s hands. “Check it out, boss!” he said, swinging the bag over Emma’s head. “Hostess!”

  “They’re homemade special!” Emma replied.

  “Divvy ’em up for the colonels,
” the general commanded, ignoring the girl. “Save the biggest one for me.”

  “Yes, sir!” The redhead scampered off into the crowd.

  Emma burst into tears. “I wanna go home,” she whimpered.

  General Squeak snorted. “Home. I got news for you, Pudgy Patty: you ain’t never going home again.” The general turned and beckoned one of his nearby lieutenants. “Gopher! Come here.”

  A brown-haired Scab with his hair formed into huge, wet spikes ran forward. The dog chain around his neck matched the one around his waist, and his black leather jacket was studded with metal points. “What do you need, boss?” he asked. His lips smacked on a huge wad of bubble gum that shot globs of pink spittle from his mouth when he talked. “You want me to beat ’em to a pulp?” He smacked his left fist into his right palm to demonstrate his pulping skills.

  “Not yet,” the general sneered. “First things first. Get their lunch money.”

  “Lunch money? We don’t have lunch money, you twerp!” Willy cried, spinning around like a tornado with his hands stretched out wide.

  That was a bald-faced lie. Willy did have lunch money; his mother had given him a five-dollar bill before sending him off to school, reminding him that it was to be used only for lunch. But Willy was determined to spend it on Spark-Sugar Chews and Green Slime Bubble Gum when he got back to the real world, and there was no way he was forking it over to these bullies.

  “Grab him,” Squeak snarled. Two of the Scabs darted forward, but Willy’s spinning palms held them at bay, at least for a few seconds. They stood at the limits of the whirling dervish’s reach, bouncing on their knees and timing their approach like two kids about to jump into a Double Dutch. When they’d caught the rhythm, they waited for another quarter turn, then they both dove at his knees, knocking him over and pinning him down. “Hold him upside-down,” Squeak instructed gleefully. “Shake it out of him!”

  They started to do just that when Etherie spoke up from the end of the line. “Might I intrude?” she asked lightly.

  The air filled with the collective thop of thousands of jaws falling open in surprise. Etherie merely stood, lost in her own peaceful world, as Squeak considered her through harshly squinted eyes. Slowly, his hard stare softened into something closer to indulgence. “Sure,” he smirked. “Intrude away.”

  Etherie nodded pleasantly and drew her hands together before her chest. The two Scabs who had recently been engaged in the retrieval of Willy’s milk money withdrew clumsily, shooting each other questioning glances. Etherie glowed at the Scab general and said, “Before we result to violence, I suggest that you take one deep breath, a breath that fully and truly expands your lungs, to clear the anger from your heart.”

  General Squeak smiled. “Is that right?” he said, kneading his knuckles. He flashed a cruel smile that he liked to reserve for special occasions. “Is that right?” he said again, louder, so his soldiers could hear. “A deep breath!”

  Etherie either didn’t pick up on the danger lurking behind his smile, or else she was indifferent to it. She simply nodded and replied, “Yes.”

  General Squeak rubbed his gloved hands together. A deep breath. That was a new one. “A great idea!” he called out loudly. “A deep breath! Come on, gang. Let’s all take a deep breath.” A general buzz of confusion rose from the Scabs, but Squeak shook his head and grinned his sharp-toothed, indulgent grin. “Don’t worry. She’s going to show us how it’s done.”

  Etherie stepped her feet in line with each other and stood tall and straight. She pressed her palms together and closed her eyes, ignoring the cacophony of snickers from the dangerous throng around her. She drew in a long breath through her nose, held it in her swelled lungs for one second, then expelled it slowly through her mouth with a slow, steady ffffssssshhhhhhhoo.

  General Squeak was fit to burst. The girl’s serenity made the beating she was about to get so much more delicious. He motioned for the Scabs to follow his lead, and, like Etherie, he stood up straight and tall. The army mirrored him with a dreadful scraping of sneakers on trash as loud as a thunder roll. Squeak smiled his ghastly smile as he clasped his hands together at his chest, then took a long, slow, deep breath.

  It was that very moment that he realized the junkyard air was poisoned.

  It must have been. There was no other explanation. A gas leak, or toxins dumped in the landfill, something. The air had to be poisoned, because as he drew in that breath, the largest breath he’d ever taken, General Squeak’s head began to spin. It lolled to the side, like it had just been inflated with helium and was ready to bob right off his shoulders and float up into the graying sky. He opened his eyes, and the trash around him swirled. He had to take a staggering step to keep his balance. He snorted the air out through his nose like a confused bull…and he wasn’t the only one. The Scab legions around him looked as if they might topple over like toy soldiers. A few of the Scabs actually did fall, stumbling and rolling down the hills of trash, colliding with the soldiers in front of them at the knees and taking them down like dominoes.

  General Squeak’s head cleared, and the world snapped back into stillness. What was that? he thought, bewildered. It was…it was…

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” Etherie beamed.

  And that’s exactly what it was.

  “More,” he commanded. He held out his hands, palms up, and flexed his fingers back at his chest in quick little bursts. “More. Give me more.”

  “Let’s try Bhastrika pranayama,” Etherie said, clearly delighted to have a captive and willing audience. “Hold your hands like this,” she instructed, holding her arms down straight so her hands fell comfortably at her waist. She touched her thumbs to her forefingers and let the remaining fingers hang loosely curled. Squeak positioned his arms likewise, as did the soldiers who were close enough to hear the instruction.

  Cole and the rest of the children looked on in absolute bewilderment, transfixed by Etherie’s total control over their captors and would-be assailants.

  “Now. Empty your mind of the day’s troubles. Focus on a higher state of unity and purpose. I want you to take ten quick breaths, through the nostrils, like this.” She pulled in air through her nose, held it for less than a second, and expelled it again, then immediately repeated this exercise, again, and again, demonstrating the quickness of the breath. “Okay?”

  General Squeak nodded enthusiastically. “Okay.”

  Etherie smiled. “And…begin.”

  The sound was truly incredible. Every Scab in sight, the thousands of soldiers crammed onto the hills of trash, and even many of those beyond the hills, began sucking in breath through their noses and pushing it back out in quick, uniform measure. Etherie watched them with serene pleasure, clasping her hands behind her back, a thin, young Socrates beaming over her students’ efforts. “Five more like this, then a deeeeeeep inhale. Let your breath travel through your nostrils, into your lungs, through your entire body, down your arms, down your legs, let it tingle your extremities and bring life-force oxygen to every single fiber of your physical being. Nine, aaaaand ten. Deeeeeeeep breath!” She breathed deeply to illustrate the yogic breath for them, but there was no need. The entire Scab army was caught in the gentle gossamer web of repetition and structure, and the soldiers filled their lungs of their own accords. “Hold that breath in your physical body,” Etherie said, “hold…hold…now bring your chin back to center, like this,” she said, demonstrating, “and slowly release your breath through your mouth.” The great ffffwwwwooooooooffff that arose from the Scabs was as strong as a fire hose. Etherie nodded sagely, pleased. “Your energy is revitalized. Your body heated, your mind cleared, your lethargy dissipated.” Etherie eyed the Scabs shrewdly. “Shall we do another breath exercise?” she asked. “And then perhaps a chest-opener? Is your inner being prepared for the next step?”

  “Yes!” General Squeak answered quickly.

  She walked them th
rough lion’s breath next, and then camel pose. Squeak’s spine took control during this advanced movement and held him rigidly in place; otherwise, he might have melted right into the wrappers beneath his legs and spilled across the feet of his captives. His head spun, the lights behind his eyes bursting with easy, magnificent colors, his entire body tingling with the magic of oxygen and endorphins and movement and exercise. As he twisted back over his ankles, and as he felt the satisfying burn in his thighs, his memories escaped to the front of his mind—completely unbidden, though not entirely unwelcome. He remembered his earliest friends, the Scabs who had risen with him through the ranks, fighting side-by-side in dust-ups and schoolyard skirmishes. One by one, they’d all fallen, all except for Squeak. He remembered his first crush, a tough little tomboy named Daun who’d socked him in the jaw on their first meeting and who had stolen his heart from that very moment. He recalled his parents, and while he couldn’t actually remember them, he saw visions of the dark shadows of the face of his mother as she turned and left him on the orphanage doorstep.

  And he remembered his first victim: a small boy, a boy whose real-world self was probably Squeak’s own creator…a boy with large, dark eyes and properly combed hair. The boy had wandered into the playhouse ruled by then-PFC Squeak’s division, and Squeak had had the honor and privilege of pounding him to a pulp, having first removed the boy’s shoes, then emptying his pockets, and finally pulling his shirt up over his head. Squeak had taken delight in the sport until the frightened boy had cried out, sobbing, for his mother. With his arms waving frantically through his pulled-up shirt and his voice muffled by the thick red cotton, he had seemed so pitiful.

  All these things and more floated to the surface of General Squeak’s memory, all these things that had been long forgotten...they bubbled up without warning, all at once, and he felt an unfamiliar heat rise in his throat. Tears stung at his eyes, hot and salty, but oddly welcome, even though he’d never cried in his life. It was something in the pose, in the breath, that ripped his heart apart and forced the fire of anguish into his throat. And he didn’t care. His shoulders shook above his ankles; tears dribbled down his cheeks, and the warm ball in his throat escaped in a heaving, shuddering sob.