Everwild (Skinjacker #2)

If anyone had been watching they would have thought the shuttle was lifting off. Flame and smoke blasted from the ground beneath the great spacecraft, expanding as the explosions multiplied and merged into a single massive blast.

Nick was blown off his feet, and sent soaring through the air. Shrapnel tore through him--jagged, burning pieces of metal that left huge Swiss-cheese holes all over his body-- and still the explosions grew louder behind him.

He landed, embedding in the living world so deep that he almost went under. With little more than his head aboveground, it took all his will to push himself out of the earth. Had he been in any deeper, it would have been hopeless, and all his thrashing about would have done nothing but take him farther down. But bit by bit he hauled his shrapnel-blasted body upward. Perhaps the holes helped. Perhaps they made him lighter.

The explosions had stopped by the time he pulled himself out of the ground, and he looked at his own damage. As always the wounds were painless, but that didn't mean the sensation was pleasant. He watched as the wounds healed themselves closed. Even though they were gone, they left a haunting memory of their presence, like the lingering feeling of nightmares.

Nick turned back to the spacecraft to see what was left of it--and of Johnnie-O. To his surprise, the shuttle, the fuel tank, and boosters were all still there suspended in midair, completely undamaged. Perhaps the ship had been designed to withstand such explosions or perhaps its memory was too proud and permanent to ever be troubled by an attempt to take it down, whether intentional or accidental. Of course the same could not be said for the Ripper's rickety scaffold. It was completely gone, which was no surprise. Nick suspected the thing would have fallen if someone had blown on it too hard.

Up in the now-empty cargo hold, Johnnie-O still clung to the inside of the hold, the structure of the shuttle having shielded him from the worst of the blast. Unable to hold on anymore, he slipped and fell, yelling all the way down. He hit the lip of the cargo hold, and bounced off it, tumbling down the tail and careening off the shuttle engines, until landing face-first on the all-too-solid deadspot tarmac, a hundred and fifty feet below the spaceship.

"Johnnie!" yelled Nick, racing to him.

Johnnie-O sat up, dazed. "Am I blown up?"

"No," said Nick, "you're okay."

He looked no worse off than the shuttle itself, except for one thing--the cigarette that had perpetually hung from his lip since the moment he died was now gone--the only part of him incinerated by the explosion. Nick helped him to his feet and decided it was best not to point that out; best to let him discover it for himself once he was in a state of mind to notice.

Then from behind them came a wail of absolute and utter despair.

"My collection!" screamed the Ripper. "Look whatcha done to my collection!"

Nick looked around him; twisted gun barrels and unrecognizable pieces of tortured metal littered the deadspot-- and beyond the deadspot even more destroyed weaponry was sinking into the ground of the living world.

"Look whatcha done! Look whatcha done! It's all gone!"

Nick had no sympathy, and stormed up to him. "What kind of idiot keeps a collection of live ammunition and armed bombs?"

"I ain't no idjit," screamed the Ripper. "You're the idjit! I got nuthin' now, thanks to you!"

And that's when Nick realized something.

In truth he had realized it before, only it hadn't fully registered. It was there in the Ripper's eyes, in the shape of the face, and in the lilt of the voice. Nick reached for the Ripper's Confederate cap, trying to pull it off, but of course it didn't come. Just like Nick's own tie, it was a permanent part of the Ripper.

"Get yer hands off!" Zach the Ripper said, slapping Nick's hand away.

But Nick knew this was no "Zach" at all.

"You're a girl!"

The Ripper's eyes narrowed, boldly staring right at him. "You got a problem with that?"

Chapter 7 A Fistful of Forever

It was not uncommon once war was declared between the North and South for boys to lie about their age so they could serve. Nor was it uncommon for battle-ambitious girls to cut their hair and lie about their gender. Few got away with it, though.

Fourteen year-old Zinnia Kitner was one of those few.

Named after her mother's favorite flower, she had always hated her name--hated the fact that so many Southern girls of their day were named for such passive things as flowers: Violet. Rose. Magnolia. She shortened it to Zin, and allowed only her father to call her Zinnia.

She was not a girl of privilege--no Southern belle. She knew little of fancy things and delicate education. In fact, she had no schooling, and hated the prissy girls of the South's high society. She had no love of slavery, either, but she did love her father and brothers who all hated the North.

Then the South seceded from the Union, and war was declared. With her mother long dead, she knew she would be the only Kitner left at home; a Confederate War orphan left in the care of weepy neighbor women who wrung their hands raw in vain attempts to worry their men home.

Zinnia would have none of that. So she cut her hair, and practiced jutting her jaw and shifting her stance so she would look more like her brothers and less like herself. She became Zachariah Kitner. Then, through a combination of the exhaustion and nearsightedness of her recruitment and training officers, she somehow passed for male.

Little did she know she would be stuck passing for a boy for a very, very long time.

She was killed in her first battle, as so many inexperienced soldiers were. A single cannon blast. It was mercifully quick and painless. Zin's trip down the tunnel into the light should have been quick and simple; however, halfway there, she was struck by the sudden realization that her father and brothers would have no idea what had happened to her. There are few things that can cause a person to resist the gravity of the light. Thinking about one's self can't do it, because self-centered thoughts are weak when compared to the call of eternity. Thinking of others, however, can be a very powerful thing indeed, and can give a strong-willed person the strength to resist just about anything.

Zin knew what the light was. She knew she had died, and knew there was nothing she could do about that. Going straight into that light would be the easiest thing to do. But she couldn't stop thinking about her family, tormented by her mysterious absence.

And so she stopped falling forward, and found herself lingering at the threshold between the here and hereafter. Then she did something of such incredible audacity, the very universe was both insulted and impressed at the same time. Zinnia Kitner reached into the light, grabbed the tiniest bit of it in her fist, and pulled her hand back again, taking a fraction of the light with her. Then she turned and ran from the light, thus entering Everlost.

What she didn't know was that taking a bit of eternity in her hand would give her a very special power.

Like most Afterlights, the details of her life on earth became hazy, but she did remember the war. For more than a hundred and fifty years she served her part. Collecting weapons gave her a sense of purpose--and woe be to any Afterlight who tried to tell her the war was over--for then what purpose would her existence serve? In spite of her uniform, she never forgot that she was a girl, for she never had a desire to be a boy, only to be treated as one. She still cursed the fact that the hat would not come off and that her hair would not grow--and she hated that they called her "Zach the Ripper." Like the uniform, however, it served a purpose for her, so she lived with it.

That is, until the day the Chocolate Ogre came and stripped everything away.

Zinnia fell to her knees in mourning. There was nothing left, nothing at all. All those years of collecting, and now what was there for her? Kudzu nuzzled up to her, trying to comfort her, but she would not be comforted.

"You've ruined everything... ." She would have reached into the fudge-faced kid right then, and ripped him good, if she thought she'd get anything more than chocolate.

Nick chose to keep his distance. He knew any chance for an easy alliance with the Ripper was gone ... but that didn't mean there couldn't be a reluctant alliance, if he played this right. "Come on," he said to Johnnie-O, loudly enough for the Ripper to hear. "We came here for nothing. She couldn't be any use in the war."

"That's right," snapped the Ripper. "Get lost!"

Nick turned to go then did a little mental countdown. One ... two ... three ...

"What war?" asked the Ripper.

Nick grinned--it was like waiting for thunder after lightning. He turned back to her and looked her over, shaking his head. "Not the one you're fighting."

The Ripper looked away, her face betraying an odd mixture of shame and fury. There was a definite sense of craziness in her, but perhaps that could be dealt with. Perhaps it could be refined and directed.

Johnnie-O pulled Nick aside, and spoke to him quietly. "I got this really bad feeling about her," Johnnie-O whispered.

"That's just because she ripped you."

"What if she does it again?"

"I'll make sure she won't."

All the while, Zin kept watching them, trying to hear what they were whispering about.

Nick went back over to her. "After careful consideration," Nick said, "we've decided you're army material."

She looked at Nick warily. "What's my rank?"

"Private first class, in charge of tactical field operations." Nick had made it up on the spot, of course, but it sounded sufficiently impressive to make her consider it.

"Do I get to rip weapons?"

"You'll rip what your superior officers tell you to rip, or you can go back up in that spaceship and launch yourself into orbit for all I care."

The Ripper scowled at him, but her scowl faded. She turned and looked up at the shuttle. "I tried that once, but it didn't work," she said. "I think they launch it from somewhere else. Someplace that ain't in Everlost yet."

She considered the massive ship for a moment more, then turned back to Nick. "So do I gots to call you 'sir'?"

"Yes," Nick said, figuring it might help keep her in line. "As I am your general, you will address me as sir. This is Mr. Johnnie-O. He's a sir too."

"I'm Zinnia," said the Ripper, "but people call me Zin."

Johnnie-O folded his arms. "I won't shake her hand."

Zin curled her lip in disgust. "I wouldn't shake your hand anyway. Your hands are ugly."

In response Johnnie-O made two even uglier fists.

Nick got between them before it could escalate. "Your first order is to rip something for us."

"She already did rip something," said Johnnie-O. Disgusted, he put his hand to his head, maybe to make sure that his brain was still there.

"I mean something from the living world," Nick said.

Zin chuckled. "I thought you'd ask me to do sumpin' hard."

She looked around, then saw a tattered tissue tumbling in the living-world wind. Casually she reached out with her right hand. With a faint shimmering of light, her hand poked a hole into the living world, she grabbed the tissue in midair, and pulled it back through the hole into Everlost. The portal into the living world closed almost instantly. "Whoa," said Johnnie-O. "Abra-freaking-cadabra!"