He grinned.
Wally felt like a sack of broken bones rattling around inside an iron whiffle ball. Except whiffle balls didn’t have as many holes as he did.
The Radical had hurt him bad. His ribs were broken. Maybe even shattered. If he weren’t a joker, they’d be sticking through his side right now. As it was, he could feel bone scraping on iron every time he moved, like fingernails on a blackboard. The pain spiked with every breath. It took everything he had not to pass out.
He tried to stand, to push himself to his feet. But a rivet on the inside of his shoulder caught something squishy, like a tendon or a flap of muscle. It pinched a nerve, chewed it, mangled it. White-hot pain surged up his neck and into his brain. Wally staggered, but he grabbed hold of a branch of the tree that had exploded through the Red House, and made himself keep going.
He had to get to Jerusha. She could still get out of this. They’d find a way to cure her. He’d failed to save Lucien, but he sure as heck would save Jerusha. Nothing mattered but that. The Radical fella had turned into a giant monster. Bubbles was fighting him, but that did not matter now. There was no more he could do to help. All that mattered was Jerusha.
A bullet pierced a weak spot behind his shoulder. It ripped through the meaty part of his bicep, but ricocheted back inside when it hit solid iron on the way out. It sliced through something else on the rebound. His arm went numb. It didn’t move right anymore.
Wally came around the corner just in time to see a boy emerge from the wreckage of the house, toward Jerusha.
“Jerusha! Look out!”
She didn’t hear him. She was watching the boy. It was too dark and chaotic to see what he lobbed at her.
But not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the fear flash across Jerusha’s face.
Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the explosion.
Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the concussion fling Jerusha backward. Not so dark that he couldn’t see her land, crumpled, like a rag doll.
Not so dark that he couldn’t see the seeds pouring out of her pouch… the blood pouring out of her belly, black as ink. Then lightning flashed from the talons of the giant monster, and turned it red for an instant. So much red.
He staggered to her. “Jerusha!”
She called his name. “Wally. I’m sorry.”
And then he was kneeling over her, cradling her, stroking her hair, calling to her again and again. “Please don’t go,” he cried. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”
But she was gone.
The boy who’d killed her watched it all with a cold smile. His eyes were just as dark, just as soulless, as Ghost’s had been that first night she appeared to Wally.
Wally stood. “You killed my girlfriend.”
Something inside him screamed in rage, called for justice, demanded revenge. One punch is all it would take.
But something else inside him spoke with Jerusha’s voice, the voice of reason. He’s just a little boy.
If Ghost could be fixed, so could he.
Whatever the boy saw in Wally’s eyes, he turned and ran deeper into the ruined mansion. Wally caught him in a few strides. He pushed the boy down, pinned him face-first to a shattered tile floor with one foot on his back. Wally looped the rebar around the kid’s wrists and ankles.
It was difficult because he couldn’t use one arm. But when he finished, the boy who’d killed Jerusha was stuck hog-tied in an iron lariat.
Wally collapsed.
Ellen lay on the ground, staring up at the night sky as if in surprise. Her skin all down the right side was black where it wasn’t bloody. The fedora-Nick-lay five or six feet away, the last low flames smoldering in the ruined felt.
“Are you okay?” Bugsy said, but he knew that she wasn’t. That she wasn’t going to be. “Medic!” he shouted. He was standing naked in the middle of a battlefield. The roaring detonations of Monster and Bubbles drowned his voice, but he kept shouting.
Lilith appeared at his side. “Get down, you idiot,” she hissed, but Bugsy ignored her.
“She needs help,” Bugsy said. “She’s hurt!”
Lilith bent down and looked at Cameo’s ruined body with a passionless eye, and then shook her head.
“You can get her to a hospital,” Bugsy said. “Something.”
“I have an idea,” she said, and a moment later was gone.
“Bugsy,” Ellen gasped. Her voice was thick.
“I’m here,” he said, taking her hand.
“It hurts,” she said.
All around, people screamed and died. But the only thing Wally heard was Jerusha’s final words. I’m sorry. They echoed through his head, over and over again.
He’d failed Jerusha. He’d failed Lucien. He’d failed Simoon and Hardhat and King Cobalt. He’d let down everybody who had ever cared about him. Good old Rustbelt.
Wally rolled onto his side, on the arm that didn’t make him pass out. He teetered to one knee. A charred body- Cameo? -lay sprawled on the earth, curled in on itself, barely moving. Bugsy cradled her, crying. His tears glistened with flashes of lightning and the light of explosions as Bubbles battled the gigantic thing that Tom Weathers had become.
Lilith-Noel-surveyed the carnage with a strange expression on her face. From across the smoking battlefield, she looked Wally in the eye. Then a flash of lightning made her silver eyes blaze bright, and she was gone. Bugsy saw her vanish, too. He swore. Michelle was the only person still fighting, and she was losing.
Wally steeled himself against the pain. He gritted his teeth, but a moan still escaped his lips when he pushed himself upright. If killing Wally could occupy the monster for even a few seconds, maybe it would help Michelle, or give Bugsy time to get some help for Cameo.
I’m sorry, Ghost. Guess I failed you, too.
Chernabog, Michelle thought as she flew through the air. That’s what he looks like. That damn big demon from Fantasia. And I look like one of those dancing hippos. Only filthier and less graceful.
She smashed into a small grove of trees, flattening them as she landed. The monster had grown tired of lighting her up with bolts of electricity and starlight. Now it was tossing her around like a rag doll.
Michelle groaned as she got up. She was terribly heavy now, despite bubbling at him as fast as she could. As she moved toward the monster again, her feet sank into the ground. The monster roared at her. Its massive erection waggled.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “A huge, tumescent penis? That is one ginormous cliche, dude.” While she was talking, she formed bubbles in her palm: tiny, almost invisible, but extremely dense bubbles. Then she streamed them at the monster.
When they struck, it howled in pain and rage. Its hideous purple-black skin peeled back, exposing pulpy red muscle and bone, but the damage didn’t seem to slow it down at all. It dashed toward her again, trailing blood. Where the blood fell on the ground, the grass hissed and burned.
Michelle tried to run away, but the monster’s stride was too long. It grabbed her as if she weighed no more than a sparrow and hurled her at one of the smaller buildings. She went through the concrete walls as if they were paper. Her body blobbed out again. Dust, mortar, and cement block bits and pieces covered her as she rolled to a stop.
Michelle saw that Rusty and Fire Boy were no longer on the steps. As she glanced around, she saw Cameo, Bugsy, and Lilith. They were huddled together. At least Lilith could teleport them out if things got too bad.
As she pushed herself up, she glanced over her shoulder. The monster was bearing down on her again. She bubbled and blasted holes in its knees. That only pissed it off more. It grabbed her, hoisted her thirty feet into the air, and swung her around and around its head.
Then it released her.
Michelle saw the Red House coming at her at breakneck speed. It was burning now. When she landed, she would be buried in fire and brick. How the hell were the others going to fight against that thing while she bubbled her way out? And she was afraid again.