Alexander's Army

  There were tables outside the bookshop and the comic store, both bowed with the weight of the boxes they supported and the rutted slope of the cobble surface. I hovered by the books for a moment or two, but they were mostly wrinkled paperbacks and old car manuals, nothing a kid my age would like. As I moved sideways to flick through the first stack of comics, I saw the Amazing Crow Girl cover displayed in the window, just as Klimt had described it. There were overlapping posters of many of the regular comic book heroes, but clear space had been given to the Crow Girl drawing. Taped across one corner was a strip of paper saying LAST FEW DAYS. I was wondering what “last few days” could mean when a face ballooned in the window. I jumped back as a jam jar thudded against the other side of the glass, trapping a moth inside it. Behind the jar appeared a geeky face. The guy it belonged to spotted me and waved. Seconds later, he was in the street.

  “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He smiled apologetically and held up the jar. “Moth patrol. Place seems full of them lately.” He took a postcard off the end of the jar and set the moth free. “Name’s AJ. What’s yours?”

  “M-Michael,” I said, unsure if I should have used my real name or not. I flashed a glance at him as he looked along the street. He was wearing red chinos and a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt. Lank hair, uncombed, slightly spotty skin. Aged around twenty-five, I guessed. He was tall and lean, the same body shape as the man in the rain, but in no way menacing. The scariest thing about him was his yellow bow tie, flopping halfheartedly at his neck. On his feet were a pair of creased old sneakers, their laces undone.

  He looked my way, turning a wad of gum on his tongue. “You like comics, right?”

  I nodded weakly.

  “Neat. Come on in. Take a look around. We got all the comics you want in here.”

  And he scratched his head and dipped back inside, leaving the shop door open for me.

  It was a place of bare floorboards and flaking paint, about the size of a large bedroom. Some natural light was limping through a window near the sales counter, but most of the interior was lit by a single unshaded bulb hanging from a charred and dirty cord. Nearly every flat space, including the ceiling, was claimed by a poster of a comic book character. Spider-Man, firing webs from his palm. Thor, crushing a mountain with his hammer. On the wall behind the counter was a life-size cutout of a being called Galactus, plated in armor, with shining neon eyes. I could see now why people were so into this. Crossing AJ’s threshold was like stepping out of Doctor Who’s TARDIS into any number of foreign worlds.

  The comics themselves were stacked in wooden boxes around three sides of the room. Most of them appeared to be secondhand. Some were bagged in plastic and had stickers on them saying COLLECTIBLE; they were more expensive than the others. Despite the dingy atmosphere, the colors were amazing. It looked as if a stained-glass window had shattered and rearranged its fragments in the muscular guises of masked superheroes and villainous automatons. All a bit overwhelming at first. But that, I guessed, was part of the appeal.

  “Who’s your favorite?” AJ was beside me suddenly, nodding at the comic I’d lifted from a box. The Fantastic Four — about to save the world from the threat of Doctor Doom.

  “I …”

  “You okay, feller? You seem a little jumpy.”

  “I …”

  “Wait. I get it. Kid like you should be in school, right?”

  I nodded, making myself look guilty. It wasn’t hard, and it helped to hide my real anxiety. Mulrooney was right. There was something weird about this place. I’d been here less than a minute and already I was having what Mom would call a feral experience. Wild animals can always sense danger, she would say. I was alone in the store with AJ, but I was sure I could feel another presence, behind the posters, watching me.

  “No worries,” AJ rattled on. “Me and the moths, we ain’t gonna tell. And these guys here, they don’t say much.”

  He gestured at a bunch of action figures on a shelf above the boxes, characters from movies like X-Men and Star Wars along with some ax-wielding warrior women and a couple of snarling dragons. The dragons made me think of Dad. If he were here now, he’d breeze through this assignment. He’d be chatting normally but looking for flecks in AJ’s eyes. The eyes, I told myself. Read the eyes.

  “So, the Four.” AJ was drifting back toward the counter, his laces trailing across the floor. He scratched his head again, mussing up his hair. Another moth fluttered toward the light. I couldn’t tell if it had come from the hair or not.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Torch, maybe?” Fortunately, I knew the characters. Ryan was a fan of comic books and was often droning on about stuff he’d swapped or comics he’d read. He liked the Fantastic Four. Lauren Shenton had once told him he was uglier than the hulk-like monster the Thing. To her bewilderment, Ryan had been quite flattered.

  “Good choice,” said AJ. He raised a finger. “But not as good as the man himself, Mister REED RICHARDS!” He lifted his chest and shoulders, trying to stretch like Mister Fantastic.

  “To stretch like him would be neat,” I agreed.

  He put a hand to his mouth and pulled a line of gum. “Sure would.” He reeled the gum in with a smack of his lips. “Those guys, though, had their day, don’t ya think?” He picked up a paper clip, flexing the loops like a magician caressing a pack of cards. I noticed more clips on the countertop. Every one was bent out of shape. He said, “I like to see new characters coming through, don’t you?”

  I dropped the Fantastic Four into their box. “Like … Crow Girl?” I said. I turned and looked for his eyes, but the light was too bad for me to see any flecks.

  He tapped the paper clip on the counter. “You picked up a copy, right?”

  Drat. I’d forgotten to look on the table outside. “Um —”

  “Aw, man. Are we out of those again?” He marched to the door and almost jumped into the street. He came back a moment later, waving the comic. He pressed it against my chest. “Last one.”

  “Thanks.” I gulped and flipped it open. It was just like the copy Klimt had given me. A great cover drawing, blank inside.

  “You like the artwork, yeah?”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. But … why is there no story?”

  Now, for the first time, his mood began to change. He stared through me briefly, his eyes as creepy as a ventriloquist’s dummy. The few flecks I could see were scarily still. He picked at one end of the paper clip. I thought I heard a creak from the room above and looked up to see the light cord swinging. “W-who’s up there?”

  “Hey, you’re hurt,” he said.

  “Sorry?” I threw him a puzzled look.

  He ran a finger down the side of his neck. Oh, heck, the wound. He must have seen the bandage when I put my head back. “Oh, that was just my sister. We were fighting.”

  He smiled and rolled his gum. Now I didn’t need to see flecks in his eyes; I could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe me. Upstairs, I heard a sudden tuk! tuk! as if someone had stood to attention.

  AJ made a gesture with his hand. Turn the comic over.

  On the back was a competition form that hadn’t been on the copy Klimt had shown me. “You have to tell the story,” said AJ. “You draw it in the book. Best script wins. You do draw, right? Yeah, course you do. Every kid who comes in here draws.”

  Not me. Josie was the artist in our family. I shook my head. “I can, a bit, but I’m not very good. I like reading. I … think I’d better go now.” I edged toward the door. Those noises upstairs were seriously weird, but somehow the quiet was even worse.

  “Sci-fi?” he prompted before I could turn.

  “Yeah,” I said tamely.

  “Bradbury? Asimov?”

  “Um. They’re okay.”

  He pointed the paper clip at me. “You write, don’t you?”

  I didn’t want to be kept here. I didn’t want to talk. But somehow I couldn’t stop myself from nodding. Stories, I was good at. Mr. Hambleton, my English teach
er, was always encouraging me to write more down.

  “Neat,” said AJ. “We can work with that.”

  “We?”

  He pitched his gum around in his mouth, bending the paper clip to ninety degrees. I thought I heard laughter in the room above. That really freaked me out. “There’s someone up there,” I said.

  He dropped his lip and popped a bubble of gum. “Oh, that’s just … Alexander — listening to the radio, maybe.”

  And right on cue, I heard the faint crackle of a radio broadcast. But why now? Why not all the time I’d been in the store? “Alexander?”

  His keen eyes narrowed a fraction, as if he half expected me to recognize the name. “Me and him, we … run this joint. Alexander did the Crow Girl artwork. The competition, all his idea. I guess you’d say he’s the smart one of the unit. He likes to call himself the Bof —” He paused and chewed some gum. “The brains. He calls himself the brains.”

  Alexander. I raised my eyes to the ceiling. The Green Lantern peered back. He had a hand outstretched as if to warn me, Don’t go here, Michael. Run while you can. But I needed to know about the soldier drawing — and the connection to Freya. “How did he think her up? The Crow Girl?”

  AJ smiled and clicked his tongue. “Oh, Alexander, he’s … totally switched on. Freaks me out with the stuff he draws, the things he … senses. You really want to see his inspiration for Crow Girl?”

  I nodded.

  “Cool. Go up and ask.” He nodded toward a dimly lit stairway, almost hidden in the corner shadows. “He’d be very interested to meet you, Michael.”

  Another moth zigzagged between us. AJ’s eyes followed it briefly. The ceiling creaked. The light cord swung. I realized my breathing had jumped up a notch. My mind went back to what Klimt had said. Don’t engage the man in the rain. It had to be him. Up the stairs. Alexander. The man who moved pencils with the power of his mind. AJ had stopped himself saying the word boffin, and boffins wore lab coats, didn’t they?

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to enter the competition.”

  “No?” He worked the paper clip harder. “Great prize, man. Your own e-comic, produced in-house. Think about it. You can join the ranks.” He made a sweeping gesture at the boxes, and as he moved his hand, the door banged shut.

  I jumped like a bean in a frying pan, instinctively backing away from the sound but moving a step or two closer to the counter.

  AJ said, “Darn that wind. Really gotta buy a stop for that door. Hey, almost forgot to show you. You get one of these as well — if you win.”

  From under the counter he brought out a faceless wooden doll. We had two just like it in the art department at school. Models. Their limbs were jointed so that artists could put them into different poses and practice drawing body shapes. But all I could think of when I saw the doll was that faceless head in a soldier’s helmet.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I whispered, stumbling away. I was scared now. Really scared.

  “Go?” he said quietly, moving the doll’s joints. “Hear that, Tommy? Michael wants to go.”

  He sat the doll on the front of the counter, dangling its skinny legs over the edge. I thought I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Tiny footsteps. Lots of them.

  “Let’s talk some more about Crow Girl,” said AJ.

  “No,” I said. He was staring again, but differently now, almost with the neon eyes of Galactus, as if some entity were looking right through him.

  “We’re not done,” he said darkly.

  But we were.

  Before I could reach the door, someone had opened it from the outside. A man. A big man. A man I knew.

  “Michael?” he boomed. “Michael Malone? My-y-y god, I thought it was you.”

  Mr. Dartmoor. Our PE teacher. Never in my life did I think I would be grateful to be busted by a teacher, out of school.

  “S-sir,” I stammered.

  “Party’s over,” he said immediately to AJ. “This boy’s playing hooky.” He took hold of my collar and yanked me past him. “Out.”

  I didn’t look at AJ or “Tommy” again. But as Mr. Dartmoor turned to leave, I heard a chinking sound and looked down to see paper clips scattered across the floor.

  “What the devil?” Mr. Dartmoor exclaimed. “Out!” he said again, thumping my shoulders. I stumbled into the street, but not before I’d seen what he had seen. A large moth, wings stretched, on the frame of the door.

  Pinned to it by a twisted paper clip.

  “Let me put it this way,” Mr. Dartmoor was saying as he marched me back through the center of the mall, “whatever punishment the principal chooses to inflict will be nothing compared to what I’m going to levy. If I’m not mistaken, you should have been in gym right now. And it’s in gym I will see you — at lunchtime tomorrow.”

  Oh, joy. Pleased as I was to be clear of the comic store, the grim reality of being rescued by a teacher was beginning to sink in. I could take whatever pain Mr. Dartmoor planned to “levy,” but it would be nothing compared to Mom’s hurt. For the second time in just a few weeks, I was sure to be suspended for playing truant. And there was nothing UNICORNE could do about it, short of Mulrooney shooting Mr. Dartmoor, putting him into the trunk of his car, and leaving him buried in Poolhaven Woods.

  But as usual, I’d underestimated them. We were twenty yards from the parking lot when a young woman with a clipboard swept in front of us, halting Mr. Dartmoor mid-stride. She had long brunette hair and enormous glasses, and a faintly familiar European accent.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said breezily. “Could you spare a few moments to answer some questions?”

  “No,” said Mr. Dartmoor firmly.

  He tried to push on. The woman wasn’t deterred. “Just a few moments … Dominic,” she purred.

  That stopped him dead. “Dom —? How did you know my name?”

  Precisely what I was wondering.

  Then she took off her glasses and it all made sense.

  “Ms. Perdot?” he gasped.

  It was the name Chantelle had used when she’d substituted for a week for my French teacher at school. She smiled and said, “Look into my eyes and listen carefully, Dominic. I need to know if you have spoken to any children from school this morning.”

  “What? Well, clearly I have! I found this pathetic specimen” (he meant me, of course) “malingering in … in …”

  But by then, she had him. One look from her mesmerizing eyes and he was already forgetting who I was.

  He even pointed at me, saying, “This boy … here. Mal … Mal …”

  She moved his hand gently back to his side. “That is correct. You were at the MALL. On some sort of business. At the MALL. Why were you here, Dominic?”

  “Been to the d-dentist,” he muttered.

  “Dentist. Parfaitement. You had a dental appointment. That is all you can think about, is it not? Your … teeth. And you did not see anyone from school, of course, because you would not expect any pupils to be here. You have not seen any stray boys, have you, Dominic?”

  “Stray …? I …? N-no,” he said. He touched his front teeth. By now his “pupils” were like spinning golf balls.

  “Bon,” said Chantelle. “Merci, monsieur. That will be all.” She smiled and ticked a box on her clipboard.

  A hand rested lightly on my shoulder. “Walk on quietly. Don’t look around.” Agent Mulrooney. He guided me out of the mall, back to the safety of his waiting car.

  He took me straight to the UNICORNE facility, into what looked like an operations room. It had an oval conference table at its center and computer stations at every seat. The unicorn symbol was engraved into the backs of all the chairs. There were no panels hiding fluid tanks here, but the wall farthest from the door was filled by a giant holographic screen. Klimt was standing in front of it, bringing images to the foreground or sliding them away simply by moving his hands through the air. I was impressed. I knew most technology could be wirelessly connected, but this was something else.

&nbs
p; Mulrooney heard me whistle and said, “It’s what we call an interactive matrix. It’s constantly updated with a mix of news feeds and Internet links. Keeps us — well, him — in touch with the weird and the wonderful.”

  “Come here,” Klimt said without looking around.

  “He means you.” Mulrooney pushed me toward him.

  I walked to the end of the room, dazzled by the information flashing through Klimt and the rate he seemed to be processing it. The images were coming so fast that I couldn’t make any sense of them. Watching a movie with an android must be seconds of fun; it would be over before the first mouthful of popcorn.

  He pulled an image to the front and froze it. A blurry picture of a man in a dimly lit alleyway, surrounded by crows. Klimt flicked a finger, and the image ran into a shaky video. The man threw back the lid on a Dumpster and climbed inside to escape the crows, who were flying at him from all sides. One of them got trapped inside the Dumpster with him. For a few horrible moments, there was banging and shouting and the Dumpster rocked from side to side while the crows outside it cawed in triumph or hammered their beaks on the lid. Klimt stopped the clip there.

  “Is that real?” I gasped.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Lately, we have received several reports of scenes like this, in and around Holton, involving crows and other dark birds.”

  “Lately? You mean … since I changed things?” What was it the Bulldog had said? You’ve stirred up the pond. The silt of the universe is rising to the surface. Killer crows everywhere. What had I done?

  Klimt moved his hand, and the holograms disappeared. “Perhaps you appreciate now the importance of controlling your reality shifts?”

  “Can we stop it? Can we change it back?”

  “Theoretically, yes. But for now, your friend in the comic store is a much greater priority. Sit.”

  I slid into a chair two away from Mulrooney. Chantelle came in, taking the chair opposite mine. She had lost her wig and swapped her disguise for straight blue jeans and a red striped top. She looked beautiful and French and cool. She glanced at me and away again, quickly. Prickly, perhaps, because I still had her scarf. I really wanted to like Chantelle. She’d been kind to me after my last mission. But she was the reason Freya was here and why my shoulder still ached from yesterday. Pretty she might be, but harsh, too.