The Scavengers (11 page)

“Memory space?”

“We all grew up in a certain time and place. And for most of us, as we get older our memories of that time get sweeter. Especially if everything else in our world has changed in ways that make it hard to keep up, or remember how things once were. So some people like to surround themselves with objects that remind them of those times. That’s what I call a memory space. It’s not so much a
place
as a
feeling
.

“I know it’s hard to believe, when you look around at this world and what people
really
need,” says Mad Mike, “but you can make a living scavenging memories.”

“Well, if I ever have a memory space, about the only thing in there will be a knuckleheaded brother and a stick for digging in the dirt,” I said.

Outside I hear an explosion of flapping and squawking.

“And a rooster,” I say. “A
stuffed
rooster.”

Outside, Toad has the
Scary Pruner
turned and pointed back up Main Street. Monocle is panting happily. Hatchet is on his perch clucking grumpily and looking dangerous. Toby is sitting silently at the rear. The only sign that he’s been wrassling Hatchet is that his ears are a little redder than usual. I wish I had seen that.

Two hours have passed since we arrived in town. We need to get going. It would be nice to eat lunch at the diner, but the longer we stay the more active the GreyDevils will be, so we’ve each taken a sandwich to go. I climb up beside Toad and as easily as if he were ordering those sandwiches, he says, “Okay, boys, here we go,” and Frank and Spank lean toward home.

The GreyDevils start trailing us pretty much as soon as we leave town.

19

THEY ARE GHOSTLY AT FIRST. JUST HINTS OF SOUND AND FLITS OF
movement. A shadow on a tree trunk. A twig snap. A shift in the tall grass. The sun is still high, but suddenly the countryside
feels
darker. I grip my ToothClub tightly, and check the strap on my helmet. My eyes dart left and right, trying to spot something—anything. Then a GreyDevil steps into the open. It is draped in rags. Its face is sooty and smudged. It shuffles toward the wagon, staring hungrily at our cargo. “Back off, you tatterdemalion mummy-breathed flat-footer!” yells Toad. The GreyDevil stops, its yellow eyes staring as we pass. Its grubby face is cut with tear streaks and snot streaks. I guess I’d have a snotty nose too if I was breathing the smoke from all the things they burn on those bonfires.

Another GreyDevil approaches from an angle, and sidles up near Frank and Spank. Hatchet fluffs his neck feathers and cackles like he’s trying to hack up a fish bone. Wrapping the reins around the buckboard rail, Toad reaches for his bullwhip. I hear the
splap!
of leather on skin, and the GreyDevil yelps and grabs one arm. A trickle of sickly dark blood seeps from between its grubby fingers.

Frank and Spank just keep moving along, and another GreyDevil approaches from my side of the road. I pull out my SpitStick and hit it right between the eyeballs with a pepper-pea. It grabs its face and drops to the dust, moaning and rolling into the ditch.

“Well played!” hollers Toad.

“That’ll run the ol’ eyeliner,” I say. I’ve seen makeup ads in Toad’s old magazines, and some of those women look a lot like GreyDevils. Yet another GreyDevil puts a hand out toward Frank’s flank. Once again Toad flicks his whip and—
pop!
—the Devil yanks back his hand and stands there sucking on the sore spot.

It’s fun to talk tough about Toad pinging GreyDevils with his bullwhip, or about toasting their butts with rock salt, but this is not just an armchair adventure story. I would like to do nothing but sip tea and read poetry with Ma, but sometimes you have to dig in the dirt to survive. Sometimes you have to go out into danger in order to survive. And sometimes you have to strike out in order to protect yourself, and your things, and the people you love. Right now the
Scary Pruner
isn’t just filled with things we
want
, it’s filled with stuff we
need
. And if the GreyDevils take our stuff, it’s not like the old days when you could just get more stuff. So we can’t politely ask the GreyDevils to leave us alone.

For two or three miles the pepper-peas and whipcracks do the job. The GreyDevils come in close, more for a look than an attack, and only one or two at a time. Toby pops one on the forehead with the end of his fight-stick just as easy as if he were shooting snooker and that GreyDevil’s head was a cue ball. The Devil drops to the ditch, and Toby hasn’t even shifted in his seat.

It’s even kinda fun for a while, like shooting silly targets at a carnival. But GreyDevils are beginning to line the roadside ahead, and when I look back, I can see a growing cluster of them gathering behind us. Just like stray dogs, GreyDevils can be troublesome on their own but are most dangerous when they start running in packs. Although GreyDevils aren’t really healthy enough to run.
Shuffling
in packs, I guess. And they’re not so bright, what with their brains all cheese-holed by chemical smoke and PartsWash, but they’re hungry and they’re desperate, and they know travelers are easy pickings. Especially if the travelers are in an overloaded wagon pulled by
dos oxii
.

Mainly we just want to keep them at bay as long as possible. We learned a long time ago that it’s a long haul home, and you don’t go straight for the Whomper-Zooka. We carry plenty of extra saltpowder packs but the supply isn’t endless, and you don’t want to use up your precious reserves on the early stragglers. The Whomper-Zooka is built for a crowd. So we stick to smaller weapons as long as we can. Some days we can get all the way back home without blasting anyone.

Today doesn’t look like one of those days. Like bees in a swarm, the GreyDevils aren’t capable of planning an attack, but once they get worked up and swirling in the same direction they become a terrifying force. And now they’re starting to do just that. The sound of their feet never stops. It’s like a thousand snake bellies slithering over dirt. I can hear their rattling coughs, and even the sound of their breathing is creepy, like someone blowing bubbles in warm cheese. They wear anything they have found—rugs with armholes, T-shirts advertising soda pop or music festivals, strips of old curtains and carpet they’ve ripped from abandoned homes. Some are wearing rough sandals made from discarded tires, although they’ve been known to tear those off and pitch them into the fire. During snow snaps they bundle up in furs and scavenged insulation, decrepit tarps—whatever they can find.

They are sickly and undernourished, and their sore-infested skin looks like a cranberry biscuit rolled in coal dust. You can’t tell if they are male or female. You can smell the stench of them and their crusty, weepy wounds.

And now they’re moaning. A sad, long, mournful sound like someone trying to howl with a hand clapped over their mouth. Once the moaning starts, you know trouble is not far to come. Now all the GreyDevils within earshot know there is treasure on the road.

Toad takes his helmet from its hook and puts it on his head.

“Snooky holer-tables!” he says.

And then he flips his visor down.

20

ONE OF THE GREYDEVILS STUMBLES IN AND REACHES OVER THE
side of the buckboard. With all my strength, I bring my ToothClub down and the GreyDevil stumbles backward into the weeds, clutching one arm to its chest. Then a hand grabs me by the ankle, tugging at my boot. I whirl and face another GreyDevil, so close I can see its runny eyes and feel its humid breath, sour as pickled earthworms. I swing my ToothClub again. It connects with a solid
thunk
, and the fingers gripping my ankle release. I know what would have happened to me if the Devil had dragged me down, and I don’t feel bad for a second. Don’t have
time
to feel bad.

And then, in a single eerie moment, all the howling and moaning blends into a single sound, and the mob stops swirling and comes at us in a single dirty wave. If we were in one of Toad’s cowboy books, this would be the part where Toad snaps the reins and hollers “
Heeyah!
” and the horses bolt, sending our stagecoach careening wildly out of danger. Unfortunately, Frank and Spank have only one gear, and it is low. You can “
Heeyah!
” all you want, but two miles an hour is still two miles an hour. Instead, Toad puts his helmet on, drops the visor, and hollers, “Scale the raven cradle!” Even in this dangerous moment, I grin behind my mask as I climb into the crow’s nest. The idea that Toad can still play word games even while crunching GreyDevils makes me think he’s nuts
and
the coolest guy ever.

With all the GreyDevils closing in, it seems like a good time to try out the flingshot. It’s already loaded, so I spin the bike pedals as fast as I can. After about ten spins the trapdoor flies open and a shower of rocks flies out in all directions. Several GreyDevils fall back, holding their heads and moaning. But I also hear a loud “
SQUAAAACKK!
” and look over my shoulder to see Hatchet flapping angrily at the end of his dog leash, a stray rock having knocked him off his perch.

Oopsie
, I think, smiling to myself.

I attempt to reload the flingshot and immediately run into trouble. First of all, I have to lift the bucket of rocks over my head. That’s tough enough to do, let alone while standing in a crow’s nest that’s rocking side to side with every bump in the road. Then as I’m pouring them into the drum, we hit an extra-big bump and one of the rocks falls out of the bucket and bounces off my helmet.

I spin the pedals and send another load of rocks flying through the air. When I bend down to lift the third bucket, I get hit in the back with a rock, and then another. And then I realize: the GreyDevils are picking up the rocks and throwing them right back at us.

“Might notta thought the flingshot thing all the way through!” I holler to Toad, as another rock bounces off my stovepipe armor. Now in addition to rocks, they’re throwing branches and heavy chunks of wood, and whatever other flingable things they can lay their clammy hands on.

The GreyDevils are really closing in now, but Toad hasn’t called for the Whomper-Zooka yet, so I wait until several GreyDevils are trying to reach over the sides, then pull a handle attached to a cable. The side-whackers fly outward, and a group of four GreyDevils flops over backward. I crank the reset winch as fast as I can and trigger them again, and another cluster of GreyDevils goes down.

All around below me, I see chaos and swirling dust. Hatchet is cackle-clucking and flapping his barbed wings. Monocle is yipping and nipping, his tail spinning in a waggy blur. I can hear the
thwack!
and
smack!
of Toad snapping his whip and Toby cracking craniums with his fight-stick. But it’s funny, even with all this happening, it seems quiet here on the wagon. It’s like the eye of a hurricane. Frank and Spank with their ears flattened back but still plodding along. We’re just working. Doing what we do. It’s like we have a list of chores, and one of the things on that list is “
whack GreyDevils
.” And nobody is whacking more GreyDevils than Toby: on his feet now, standing wide-legged, his fight-stick whirling so fast it is invisible, but all around him GreyDevils falling away or grabbing their bloody, crushed noses, or tipping over backward knocked out cold, and all the while Toby’s expression as still and solemn as if he is studying his reflection in a fish pool.

We’re not keeping up though. The commotion has attracted even more Devils. When I look out around me from the crow’s nest it seems we are at the center of a writhing pile of two-legged maggots.

And then I hear the command I’ve been waiting for.

“Ford Falcon!” hollers Toad. “Whomp at will!”

21

HEARING TOAD CALL ME FORD FALCON MAKES ME FEEL TEN FEET
tall, that’s for sure. But if I stand around with a swollen head, I’ll end up with a swollen head.

I pull the Whomper-Zooka from its hook, drop a saltpowder packet down the barrel, and tamp in a wad of paper. Then I click it into the swivel straps, grab the two wooden handles, swing it around to point at the thickest clot of GreyDevils, and yank the striker string.

For a split second, nothing happens. Then I hear a faint sizzle, and . . .
WHOMP
!

The stovepipe belches rock salt and a wad of flame the size of a pig, followed by a gigantic burp of black smoke. The smoke rolls out over the GreyDevils, and from within the cloud I hear ragged moans as the stinging salt goes to work. The smoke drifts clear and I can see GreyDevils all over the ground, flipping and flopping like their skin is on fire.

There is no time to enjoy the view. I drop in another bag of saltpowder, rewrap the striker string, swivel the Whomper-Zooka to the other side of the wagon, and touch it off again.

WHOMP!

More yowling and howling, and more fish-flopping GreyDevils.

At the rear of the wagon Toby’s fight-stick is a blur. A GreyDevil heaves a stone his way and while it is still in midair, Toby shifts both hands to the far end of the stick and bats the rock right back into the chest of the GreyDevil, knocking it flat. Keeping his hands in the same position, he bats another GreyDevil smack on the butt, knocking it face-first into the dirt. Toby is amazing to watch, and I pay the price for goggling at him when a big chunk of tree root comes end over end through the air and slams into my helmet, ringing it like a bell. I go cross-eyed and wind up knocked half over the railing. I am angry with myself for getting distracted.
Maggie!
I think.
Pay attention! You need Ford Falcon focus!

Toby’s rapidly becoming outnumbered back there. He needs some Whomper-Zooka assistance. “Clearing the rear!” I holler. “In three . . . two . . .”

We’ve practiced this move over and over. When I holler “One!” Toby flops flat and I let fly with another blast right through where he was standing a second ago. Another ragged moan goes up, and for a moment a gap opens in the slobbery ranks, but then the GreyDevils close in again.