The Smiley-Face Witches

  ***

  The jailbreak caught Acolytes and G-Men alike off guard, but only for a moment.

  Drew waited to see if anybody followed before sprinting across 3rd Street as the light turned green.

  The oncoming taxi screeched to a stop inches before bouncing him across the busy street. Drew rolled over the cab’s hood like a seventy’s TV detective, slipping into the alley before the hirsute cabbie got out swearing at him.

  The G-Man entered the alley a few seconds later, pinballing off the graffiti-covered brick wall before knocking over a cluster of garbage cans on his way out to 4th Street.

  Drew waited until he was sure he was gone before climbing down the rickety fire escape hanging above the dumpster.

  He took out his phone and tapped out a text. “Meet me at the Windmill. Don’t tell nobody else.”

  He turned to leave but another figure appeared at the far end of the alley. At first he thought the G-Man tricked him by pretending to leave, but he didn’t remember any of them wearing blue berets.

  Drew turned the other direction but a black SUV pulled in to block the alley’s 3rd Street entrance. The door opened and a big man dressed in black wearing the same kind of beret stepped out.

  “Runyon…”

  The Colonel’s jagged features eroded into something like a smile. “You remembered. I’m flattered.”

  They’d only met once, but the image of the mustachioed captain dangling by his ankles from the roller coaster remained vivid even after so many years.

  Drew tried picturing himself squeezing past Runyon but decided the alley was too narrow. “What’s up, homey?”

  Runyon sighed nonchalantly. “Oh, you know, the usual.”

  “Guess you made it outta that trap the Cryptos set for ya on the island.”

  “Guess I did,” Runyon said, “though no thanks to you.”

  “You know how it is,” Drew said, “Sometimes ya gotta make tough choices.”

  Runyon agreed. “Sure kid, I understand. No hard feelings.”

  Drew didn’t think Runyon tracked him down to catch up on old times, so he waited for him to reveal his true motive.

  “So where ya headed?” Runyon asked.

  “I was just on my way back from school.”

  Runyon gestured toward the idling SUV. “Wanna ride?”

  “Ain’t ya at least gonna offer me a lollipop or something to come with ya?”

  “You got it all wrong, kid,” he said, “I just wanna talk to ya.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then I’d say I can’t take no for an answer.”

  Drew threw his hands up and bounced on the balls of his feet, feinting and jabbing in preparation.

  “I like your moxie kid, but you’re fighting out of your weight class.”

  “You ain’t that big,” Drew said.

  Runyon opened his coat flap to reveal the gun beneath. “Neither is a bullet. But you know what it can do, right?”

  “You ain’t gonna shoot,” Drew said. “Too many witnesses running around.”

  Runyon tapped his watch. “Won’t have to.”

  Drew’s legs grew heavy and his arms dropped to his sides. “What’s happening?”

  He swung at Runyon but missed, his aim skewed by the sudden onset of double-vision.

  “Take it easy,” Runyon said, and kept talking, but his words stretched and distorted until they lost all meaning.

  Drew’s horizon contracted, shrinking to the size of a dot before fading to black.

  Runyon waited until he collapsed and dialed a number on his cell. “Yeah… got him…”

  ***

  Newton waited beneath the underpass until dark to make his move. Seeing bulldozers and dump-trucks parked among the miniature golf course’s fairy-tale castles and storybook cottages meant they were ramping up construction, and each time he was there might be for the very last time.

  He avoided the floodlights, climbing the security fence like a cat—before getting stuck on the top.

  “Another few seconds and somebody woulda had to open a can of tuna,” he muttered, but made it down on his own. He crawled past the decapitated gnomes guarding the ninth hole and made it to the Windmill the hardhats used as a tool shed.

  Clementine cracked the door open before he could knock. “What took ya so long?”

  Newton didn’t expect to see her there, but she was stuck in the same groove as he was—as they all were. The Windmill they’d spent so much time at before, remained their sanctuary, especially when there was trouble.

  “Had to make sure no one was following, so I ran all over the place,” Newton lisped.

  “Did ya Zagzig?” Spider asked.

  Newton answered with a self-assured nod of his head. “Yeah.”

  “Zagzig?” Clementine said, “Don’t ya mean zigzag?”

  “I mean zagzig,” Newton said.

  Clementine knew she’d regret it, but asked anyway. “What’s zagzig?”

  “The best way to get away from someone chasing ya,” Spider said.

  Newton stepped past the lumber stacked against the walls. “Zagzig assumes a right–handed universe…”

  Clementine sighed. “Right handed universe?”

  “Yeah, because most of the population is right-handed, it’s easier to make a right turn into traffic,” Newton said.

  She didn’t get it. “So?”

  “When you ain’t sure which way to go, most people go right,” Newton said. “So when somebody’s chasing after ya and ya gotta go either right or left, ya turn left.”

  “That makes no sense,” Clementine said.

  “The right turns add up over time, eventually throwing the cops off your trail,” Newton said.

  “What if you’re in England?”

  Now it was his turn to be confused.

  “What if you’re in England?” Clementine repeated. “They drive on the opposite side of…”

  “They’re on the metric system,” Newton said, “which means…”

  “Did ya go home and change coats?” Spider asked.

  Newton cocked his head. “Zagzig means that you do the opposite of…”

  “Then where’s the blood?” Grady asked. “Dude, you was closest to the G-Man when that chick capped ‘im. Why ain’t ya covered in blood?”

  “What’s the green stuff on your sleeves?” Spider asked.

  “Don’t know,” Newton said, “musta rubbed up against some wet paint or...wait…where’s Drew?

  “Ain’t here,” Spider said.

  “That’s weird,” Newton said, “he sent me a text telling me to…”

  “He hit us all up,” Clementine said, “asked us to meet him here.”

  “Maybe he’s still on the run,” Newton said.

  “Dude, but running from who?” Grady asked.

  Seeing the G-Men after so many years was unexpected, but not inexplicable. Seeing the Acolytes after watching the YouTube clips left them suspicious. The coincidence was too coincidental.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Something musta happened to bring all that heat down on us,” Spider said.

  “They knew we’d be at the bus stop,” Clementine said.

  “If they know where we go to school, they can figure out where we live,” Spider said.

  Newton’s phone buzzed and he answered. He turned his back for some privacy, keeping his voice to a whisper.

  “Drew?” Spider said.

  Newton hung up. “His mom.”

  Clementine folded her arms against her chest expectantly. “And?”

  “She’s looking for him, too.”

  “He ain’t there…he ain’t here…where is he?” Clementine asked.

  The floorboards behind her creaked and they fell silent. They stood transfixed, waiting for them to creak again…and then they did.

  “W-w-who goes there?” Newton stammered.

  Seeing the wizened ghost stunned them, leaving them fumbling for words adequate to express their confusion.
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  “How long ya been back there?” Clementine asked.

  The old woman unstrapped her trapper hat, letting long strands of coarse gray hair escape from beneath. “To tell ya the truth, I been here for a few weeks now.”

  “How do you say surprise in Portuguese?” Grady mumbled.

  “Surpresa,” Spider said.

  She crept out a little further, unbuttoning a man’s coat one size too big for her. Her thin lips parted to show crooked teeth worn by the years, her weary gray eyes coming to life before them. “My stars, I hardly recognized ya. Y’all have grown so much, and I shrink a bit more each year.”

  The awkward reunion unleashed all kinds of emotions they’d put away along with her memory. It’d been four years since they’d last seen Lazy-Eye Susan, and they had four years worth of questions Clementine condensed into a single cogent, query; “What happened?”

  Susan pulled her baggy pants up and cleared her throat. “Everything kinda went to hell after Jamphibian broke loose.”

  Jamphibian. The stunted creature they’d brought into the world was doomed from birth. Frankensteined from their DNA and birthed by Enzyme Seven, he was their primal Adam, disowned and disinherited after his rampage through an unsuspecting city.

  “Did the cops get ya?” Newton asked. “Did they arrest ya?”

  “It’s a long story,” Susan said.

  Her stories always were, but Clementine, like the rest of them, wanted to hear it. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Alright,” Susan said, “This story starts ‘cross the pond, in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains…”

  ***

  The snow started the night before, carpeting the forested valley by dawn. But the shifting weather made no difference to the assembled platoon standing naked in the Romanian monastery’s courtyard.

  Jamphibian-12 was the same as Jamphibian-13, who was the same as…Each towering mass of inverted muscle and exposed bone identical to the one before, after, or next to it, and none of them worth a damn Doctor Camaro decided.

  “Maybe we can use you as kamikazes,” he panted. He’d broken a sweat despite his heavy parka. But he was a scientist not a soldier and unaccustomed to the physical demands the platoon’s training placed on him.

  “Company, march!” he shouted.

  His platoon didn’t answer. The backpacks strapped to their hulking torsos fed them current modulated at the appropriate frequency. The juice kept them alive, though they could hardly be called living. The cloning process amplified errors in the original Enzyme Seven-enhanced DNA. Bandages staved off infection but tumors started growing as soon as they left their incubation pods, spreading with such tenacity that they were now more cancer than creature.

  Camaro stopped to wipe the condensation from his glasses. Like the Clones, his face was too big for his head, his features curving to fit his skull like some kind of bearded goldfish.

  The drill resumed. “Company, march!”

  Movement in the corner of his eye raised his hopes for an instant, but Jamphibian-13 stopped just as suddenly as he’d started.

  Camaro marched through the ranks until he stood toe to toe with the class valedictorian.

  He pressed in on the Clone’s chin. The lower jaw extended well past his heavy skull, exposing the teeth within. Each tooth corresponded to a letter or number, thirty-six in all. The bionic keyboard allowed them to send and receive messages in the field, theoretically.

  Runyon entered another command and closed the keyboard the same way he’d opened it.

  “Hey Tubby…”

  Against his better judgment, he craned his neck up at the tower and his audience of one.

  “Maybe ya start with the basics,” Lazy-Eye Susan giggled. “Try throwing a stick and see if they go fetch!”

  ***

  She caught her reflection in the cell’s mirror, one of the few concessions they’d allowed her beside the surplus army cot and cracked chamber pot. She pulled her parchment skin back around the edges until it was taught.

  “Ya lost weight,” Susan muttered. “Confinement seems to agree with ya.”

  The deadbolt slid back and the heavy oak door swung open. Doctor Camaro stepped into the cell, bumping his head on the door way casing like he did every time he came to visit.

  Susan muffled her laughter, knowing the pudgy Doctor’s temper. He’d hit her after her first escape attempt, but she’d hit him back—hard enough to blacken his eye. Since then, they shackled her whenever they moved her. But she didn’t mind the shackles as much as the prison scrubs they made her wear. She never cared for that particular shade of blue.

  She followed him out of her cell and into the narrow stone corridor.

  Camaro climbed the winding steps to the next level before pausing to catch his breath. He unzipped his parka, letting his belly hang over his belt.

  “Ya put on weight since ya got here,” Susan said, “a nice layer of blubber to keep yourself warm during the long Romanian winters?”

  “Shut-up,” he said. He shifted his bag from his right hand to his left, and punched in his code. The gothic chapel’s double-doors whooshed open to welcome them.

  “After you,” he said, and followed Susan into the laboratory.

  Most of the incubation pods were empty, but not all of the Clones made it through the process. Those that didn’t remained suspended in the deep blue embryonic fluid that sustained them during their gestation.

  “Poor things,” she muttered, “trapped ‘twixt being born and being unborn.”

  Gulliver Grimsby wasn’t as lucky, though just as trapped. Her ritual bound his wandering soul to one of the same clumsy meat-suits, assuming they hadn’t already cut him up like a tenth grade biology class frog.

  Camaro opened the safe and grabbed one of the stainless-steel cylinders from inside. He paused to watch the liquid flow back and forth through the glass window cut into the container.

  “What’s that stuff’s street value?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Must be a real seller’s market out there for something like Enzyme Seven,” she said. “A smart fella could make himself a whole lotta...”

  “A smart fella is already well compensated.”

  “I’m sure ya made out alright for yourself,” she said. “Still, can’t be easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Playin’ second fiddle to your boss,” she said.

  “It’s cooler in the shadows than it is in the spotlight.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “I mean, lotsa partnerships go on for years without any kinda friction, both partners getting their fair share of credit. Robin and Batman, Watson and Holmes, Garfunkel and Simon…”

  “Come on,” he said, and dragged her out of the chapel.

  ***

  He stood by the idling Audi wrapped in the field jacket he favored for winter days, a sentimental reminder of his time in the Navy. Steam rose from his gleaming bullet-head, but Dick Frost was numb to the cold, and most everything else.

  He checked his watch, again. “Already behind schedule.”

  His deep baritone conjured her forth, and she appeared in the monastery’s vaulted doorway, clutching the infant to her chest.

  He turned to face her, his long shadow, lengthened further by the setting sun’s acute angle. “You’re late, Mrs. Frost.”

  She’d gone by Croy for so long that she still wasn’t used to answering to her new name, but she did love the sound of it. “I was ready, Richard. I just like making you wait.”

  She tiptoed across the courtyard’s frosted cobblestones like a ballerina, turning her ankle halfway across.

  He reached out to grab her, catching her in his arms before she fell.

  “I wouldn’t have to wear heels if you weren’t so damn tall,” she complained, but feeling safe in his arms was what she liked best about him.

  He fell to one knee and helped her slip back into her shoe. “Stop complaining, Cinderella.”

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nbsp; “Here,” she said, and handed him the baby.

  Watching him squirm while playing daddy was adorable, at first. It’d been a difficult pregnancy but the worst was behind them. She waited for him to grow into his new role, but the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months. She waited still.

  She buttoned her fur and went over the checklist one more time, knowing if she forgot something she wouldn’t have a chance to come back for it. “Think I got everything.”

  He handed the baby back to her. “You changed your hair.”

  She ran her fingers through her streaky blonde highlights. “Nothing gets past you. I changed it last week.”

  He opened the car door, letting out a rush of warm air. “There’s been a change of plans.”

  Her soft brown eyes hardened. “What do ya mean? We’re still flying out tonight, aren’t we?”

  “We are…”

  “Thank goodness,” she said. “I don’t think I can take another day in this god-forsaken place.” The idea of living in the gothic ruins had a romantic allure at first, like the trashy romance novels she’d read during her pregnancy. But drafty halls and erratic plumbing rubbed the idyllic patina away to reveal the harsh reality beneath.

  She buckled the child into the safety seat and slid into the backseat next to her.

  Frost shut the door behind them. “I’m gonna ride ahead.”

  Her eyes shifted from the black ’68 Eldorado back to him. Reading him was impossible, his emotions masked by unchanging black doll’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  But she knew better than that. “You never did say why we’re leaving.”

  “A moving target’s harder to hit,” he said. He tapped the driver’s window and watched the Audi pull out of the courtyard on to the icy mountain road. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Just a minute,” Doctor Camaro said. He stepped out of the doorway, dragging his prisoner out with him.

  “The travel guide said this was a four-star dungeon,” Lazy-Eye Susan complained, “I’d give it two stars tops.”

  Frost smiled. “Homesick?”

  “Just a touch,” she said.

  “You could be back in your gingerbread house tonight,” Frost said.

  “Don’t know if’n I got enough travel miles saved up on my broomstick to swing it,” she said.

  His jaw clenched. “I wonder if you’re more trouble than your worth.”

  “I am.”

  “I can put you back in your cell but you’re just gonna break out again,” he said.

  She gave him an exaggerated wink. “Got more tricks than that up my sleeve.”