Billy: Messenger of Powers (28 page)

“Stuff that doesn’t work!” roared Tempus.

“Just give it a second,” said Vester. Sure enough, as soon as he said that, a shimmering circle of flame about seven feet in diameter sprouted into life at the same spot the marble had disappeared. Vester looked triumphantly at Tempus. “See?” he said.

“Next time we use a professionally made key,” said Tempus. He stepped toward the fire-ringed Transport door. Then he paused. “Where are we going?”

Billy had wanted to know the same thing, but had been too worried about everything going on around them to ask.

“Someplace safe,” said Vester. That reassured Billy. Then Vester added, “I hope.” That did
not
reassure Billy.

But then a new round of screaming and thuds started filtering into the Recovery Room. A zombie peered in through the ruined door, and spotted them. It immediately started moving forward, its huge eyes leering evilly at them.

“Last one in’s a rotten egg!” shouted Tempus. He ran through the fire door and disappeared with a flash of color only slightly more vivid than his Hawaiian shirt and pink shorts.

“Go!” shouted Vester, shoving Billy at the door and then jumping simultaneously through as well, still holding Fulgora tightly to him. Billy held his breath, and jumped.

The first thing he was aware of upon landing wherever it was he had landed was that it was somewhere very, very hot. As usual when Transporting, Billy had been blinded by the light that always accompanied the move, so he had his eyes scrunched tightly shut. The wave of heat that hit him felt like he was inside an oven, about to be broiled at around six hundred degrees.

Then Billy opened his eyes, and realized that he had no such luck: he wasn’t in an oven. He looked around, proud of himself for not screaming inadvertently at what he saw. But no matter how much he craned his neck to the left or right, there was no denying where he now found himself.

He was standing on a rocky ledge.

And the ledge was on the inside wall of an active volcano.

As it had done the last time he left Powers Island, Billy’s “Billy—unDetermined” badge disappeared with a puff of smoke and a sizzle of flame. But Billy hardly noticed the noise, since it was drowned out by the far greater sound of the volcano. Everything seemed to be crackling with heat, and far below the narrow ledge on which they stood, magma bubbled and burbled like thick red soup in a huge deadly bowl.

“Why is it always a volcano or a blizzard? Just once I’d like to be transported into a room made completely of pillows, or maybe a planet whose only inhabitants are giant ice cream sundaes with sprinkles,” Tempus was saying to no one in particular, even as Billy and Vester were just stepping through the doorway. Billy looked behind him and saw that the fire ring through which they had stepped was shrinking, now only half the size it had been when they stepped through.

And suddenly, he also saw a hand, mottled green and gray, that gripped the side of the fire. There was a sizzling sound as flesh burned, but the hand just clung all the tighter, physically pulling the ring of fire wider, wider.

Wide enough to let the zombie that had seen them in the Recovery Room at Powers Stadium step through. As soon as it was through, the fiery doorway disappeared behind it with a snap. Billy, Vester, Tempus, and the unconscious Fulgora were now trapped on the ledge with the creature.

Tempus yelled incoherently. He then followed that up with “Zombie!” As though anyone on the ledge needed that pointed out to them.

The creature looked around with its two huge eyes, a bit disoriented. Then it zeroed in on Billy and started toward him. As before, it moved purposefully, though Billy did notice that it had a tendency to stumble occasionally, as though not fully in control of its own muscles.

Billy backpedaled frantically, looking for some avenue of escape. But he was already backed up to the edge of the ledge. Below him, the lava burbled hungrily. Billy didn’t know what would be worse, falling into lava or being touched by a zombie, but he hated the fact that he had to think about such things. He longed suddenly for the days when his worst fears involved being whether he would be put in a locker or have a spit wad blown at him through a straw.

The zombie was close now. Tempus and Vester were screaming at one another to do something.

“Make fire!” shouted Tempus.

“My hands are full!” responded Vester. “Make wind!”

“If I blow the zombie away, I might blow Billy right off the edge!” Tempus screamed back.

The zombie was within feet of Billy now, still lurching forward. It reached out a disgusting finger. Billy saw that the creature’s nails were discolored and rotting, as were the monster’s teeth, which Billy saw far too clearly as it grinned an evilly triumphant grin.

The finger was inches away. This was it. Billy closed his eyes and did his best to prepare for whatever was about to happen. He thought of Blythe, and for once the thought did nothing to make him feel better. He was about to die in a volcano, touched by a zombie. Things couldn’t get much worse.

Then there was a shuffling, slithering noise to Billy’s right. He mentally yelled at himself for thinking that things couldn’t get much worse. That was just asking for it.

And sure enough, things were, in fact, looking even worse now. Because there was something hideous growing out of the bare rock right next to Billy. It was awful enough that even the zombie paused, looking at the fearful monstrosity that swelled to huge proportions beside Billy in a matter of seconds.

Billy couldn’t really tell what it was, but it reminded him more than anything of a Venus flytrap. Only this one was about twenty feet tall, and its green-toothed mouth was six feet or more across. The plant hissed, and its mouth swiveled blindly toward Billy.

Sure, thought Billy. It wasn’t enough that I was going to either be boiled in lava or knocked out by a zombie. Now I also get to choose Door Number Three: a painful death by plant-eating!

The zombie was still smiling widely, its eyes dead and black, its dark, rotting tongue licking its lips in anticipation of coming mayhem.

The smile disappeared less than a second later. In fact, the entire
zombie
disappeared. Because the giant flytrap suddenly snapped forward, not toward Billy, but toward the zombie. The zombie had a single instant in which it screamed, a thin high-pitched wheeze of a scream that came from deep within its rotten lungs. Then the scream cut off as the flytrap snapped shut around it.

The flytrap straightened up to its full height, the mouth at the apex, and chomped once. Billy had never been very fond of people who chewed with their mouths open. But he determined at that moment that he would rather sit in a room with a thousand open-mouthed food chewers than listen to the sound of a giant Venus flytrap chomping on a zombie ever again.

The flytrap chomped once more, then something strange happened. The plant heaved and bucked, and its entire body shivered. The plant’s body turned gray, as though it had aged a thousand years in one instant. It withered and wilted. And as it did, Billy saw why. The zombie’s fingers curled around the edges of the flytrap’s mouth, forcing the plant open. Apparently the zombie’s touch worked on plants as well as people, and the Venus flytrap was now as immobile—and perhaps dead—as had been those in Powers Stadium who were unfortunate enough to be touched by one of the zombies.

The zombie in the flytrap’s mouth had been partially crushed, but didn’t appear to mind. It glared down at Billy, looking angrier now than it had before, as the flytrap’s mouth slowly lowered toward Billy.

Billy reacted instinctively, not really meaning to do what he did. But suddenly he found himself at the base of the flytrap, his arms around the plant’s vine-like trunk, pushing as hard as he could. The zombie, seeing what Billy was trying to do, screamed its horrid scream again. It pushed even harder against the mouth of the flytrap, trying to force it open far enough that the zombie would be able to jump out.

It almost made it. But the second before the creature could get itself untangled from the immobilized plant’s toothy grip, Billy heard a wonderful sound: the sound of tearing roots.

The flytrap lurched slowly to one side. Billy redoubled his efforts, pushing even harder. All the time spent trying to get out of lockers had thankfully built up his pushing muscles, so with a last ugly ripping, the flytrap slowly toppled over the side of the ledge, the zombie still in the huge plant’s mouth.

Together the two monsters plummeted downward, and at last fell into the lava below. They disappeared with a hiss and a gout of flame. Billy breathed a sign of relief. Then he turned to look at Vester and Tempus, who were looking at him with a mixture of shock and relief.

“Well,” Tempus finally managed, “
that
was a stroke of luck.”

That comment, delivered in Tempus’s typically scatter-brained tone, made Billy want to laugh. But before he could, the edge of the ledge that he was standing on suddenly started to crumble below his feet, no doubt weakened by the roots of the Venus flytrap, and still further weakened by the action of the plant and the zombie being ripped out of it by Billy’s desperate pushing.

Billy wheeled his arms around in huge circles, his feet suddenly standing on ground that had the consistency of a waterfall. He scrabbled to stay on top of the ledge, but then the entire section he stood on fell away, dragging Billy down with it. Billy screamed, but there was nothing he could do. He was falling, falling, falling. Doomed to be burned alive in the lava.

Then, suddenly, Billy felt something grab his feet. In the next instant he found himself strangely indignant, his fear suddenly elbowed aside by anger. What? he thought. It’s not enough for me to get almost crushed, zombie-touched, plant-eaten, zombie-touched again, then fall into lava? Something
else
has to happen, too?

He looked down at his feet, then, and saw something thick and green winding serpent-like around them. That was what he was feeling. But before he had a chance to figure out what the green stuff was, his downward fall was jerked to a stop. Billy felt his feet slam out from under him, and felt the green stuff tighten around them. He screamed as he resumed falling again, then screamed even harder when he bounced upward, feet first, then bounced back down, then back up, like he was being suspended over the lava pit on a rubber band or a bungee cord.

So now, on top of almost dying at least twenty different ways in the last minute or so, Billy was also in danger of losing what little he had in his stomach.

Slowly, however, the bouncing came to a halt. Billy was now hanging head-down, his feet held tightly by the thick green substance that had wrapped itself around them. He looked down (or, rather, he looked toward his feet, which was, in fact, up) and saw that the stuff around his feet was some kind of huge, elastic vine that went up to the side of the ledge.

Billy felt a jerk, and the vine started to pull itself—and Billy—upward. It reeled itself into the face of the volcano ledge like a fishing line. Finally, Billy felt his feet grabbed by a pair of strong hands. He was pulled up over the side of the ledge, and saw Tempus smiling at him as the old man hauled Billy to safety.

“Like I said,” said Tempus with a wink and a smile. “
That
was lucky.”

“Lucky nothing,” said another voice. “That was extremely difficult.”

Billy looked toward the sound of the voice, and smiled. “Ivy!” he shouted happily.

Sure enough, it was the Green Power, the chubby young/old woman who had been there at his Gleaning! She smiled wearily back at him, her hand clutching tightly to one end of a vine that looked an awful lot like the one that had just saved Billy from being fricasseed. The vine pulled up and wrapped itself around her, joining with the rest of the foliage that cloaked her.

“Where did you come from?” asked Billy.

“I showed up at the same time you guys did,” said Ivy. “No one noticed me, though. Not surprising, what with the zombie appearing.”

She weaved suddenly, as though about to topple over. Tempus moved quickly, the old man putting a steadying arm around her waist and helping her to the ground.

“Thanks,” said Ivy gratefully. “The zombie’s effect on my plant, and then my plant’s death in the lava….” Her voice trailed off, showing clearly how exhausted and weak the Green Power was.

“Thanks,” said Billy. “Thank you so much. I would have… well…you know.”

Ivy smiled, still exhausted, but obviously trying not to let it show. The spells she had cast to save Billy’s life must have taken nearly everything out of her.

“How did you know to come here?” asked Tempus.

“Vester showed me this place years ago,” she said. “He told me to come here if there was ever.…”

“A war,” said Vester, completing her thought. Billy looked over at the fireman. Billy’s friend was finally stooping to put the still-unconscious Fulgora down. Vester glanced at Ivy as he did so. “Still think I was being silly?”

“War?” asked Tempus. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Vester. “That little explosion in the stadium was a signal. All the Darksiders on Powers Island disappeared at that instant, so that they could launch an attack on the Dawnwalkers.” His voice was bitter, the loss of Vester’s father years before clearly coming to the surface again. The fireman looked at Tempus. “I scoped out this hiding place years ago, just in case I needed it.” He grimaced. “I hate being right sometimes.”