Rhonaya stood in the rear, looking out, holding a radar gun.
We crossed the raging river that was threatening to overtake the bridge. Branches and small logs were entangled around the pilings like beaver dams. Driving around the battle outside the bakery, Rhonaya popped Baldy’s spider-head bubble with her radar gun. Emboldened, the resistance fighters pressed the attack and knocked him to the ground.
The gates at the monastery were open and unguarded. As we barreled down the driveway, one of the singers turned on the PA and adjusted its knobs until the screeching feedback stopped.
We found the mummers and Zaditorians fighting in a field around back. An entire wall of the monastery had been blown off, black smoke billowing from the wreckage, exposed wiring and insulation hanging from the interior walls and floors. Green, purple, yellow bubbles expanded and popped, expanded and popped as the Zaditorians released horrors from the other stomachs—fanged tentacles, flat, spiked tails, grotesque flaps of skin that twisted and folded and whipped around—onto the mummers, who fought back with rakes and shovels and rocks. Hundreds of mummers against a dozen Zaditorians, and the Zaditorians were winning. Fallen mummers littered the battlefield, and six more were added to their lot just as we pulled up.
Rhonaya jumped down from the back of the truck and started popping bubbles with the radar gun while the singers sang “Mr. Sandman” into their mics. Their harmonies blasted through the speakers, and the Zaditorians stumbled, fell, and flickered, then became transparent. And the physical attacks from the mummers passed right through them.
Zelda bounded over to me, fur plastered to her sides with rainwater. Follow me! I ran into the melee, among the confused and frustrated mummers who couldn’t land a blow to the enemies standing right in front of them, enemies presumably waiting for the singing to stop.
There, Zelda said, nodding her head at a woman swinging a knife through one of the transparent Zaditorians. The woman yelled and swung and swung, apparently unable to accept that her opponent, in its current state, could not be hurt. The woman was approaching middle age, and she wore an apron and a hairnet. Zelda had warned me Em would be wearing these things. They had become something like security blankets for her, ties to the mummer host who had comforted her when she was afraid and confused and alone, a host that still comforted her now. I felt uneasy that Em had formed such a bond with a mummer, a creature that as far as I could tell was parasitic at best. But at least she was alive.
“Em!” I yelled over the sounds of rain and battle.
Her head jolted up, and she turned to me, her face simultaneously hopeful and on the verge of tears. I pushed mummers aside to get to her, and we hugged. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Where were you?” she said, breaking my heart.
“I came as soon as I could. I’m so sorry.”
She breathed out and rested her weight on me, as if she’d fallen asleep watching TV with me. But she was so much heavier now as a woman, and I had to brace myself not to fall.
“Is Mom dead?” she said.
Just to hear the question hurt, brought back pain. “I hope not,” I said, telling myself that I wasn’t lying, that anything was possible now. “We have to go.”
She stood back from me. “I’m not leaving without them.”
“Who? These mummers?” I said with disgust.
“They’re my friends.” She looked hurt. “They helped me. I’m a mummer now.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m not leaving without them. Suzanne has been good to me. You should talk to her.”
“Who’s Suzanne?”
“The lunch lady.”
I shivered at the thought of my niece sharing her mind with a grown woman, a stranger I knew nothing about. “We can’t stay here.”
“I’m not leaving without them.” Her face was not hers, but it wore her expressions. She gave me her stern, determined look, the one she gave when she was pointing out some adult hypocrisy, some fundamental unfairness like bedtime. “There are school buses. We have the keys.” She pointed to the ghostly Zaditorian she’d been trying to kill. It stared at us without expression. “Now that these things aren’t stopping us we can use them.”
“Then let’s do that. But we have to hurry.”
She smiled, then put some bass in her voice and shouted over my shoulder. “Let’s move out.” She walked back toward the monastery, motioning for others to follow, and they did, hundreds of mummers following my niece. They gathered their wounded as they came. We marched between buildings to the front drive, where four yellow school buses were parked, and the mummers filed in.
Hugo drove the army transport truck alongside as I stood by Em/Suzanne, who was watching over the retreat like a sergeant, helping and spouting orders when needed.
“What in the seven stomachs is this?” Hugo shouted from the driver’s seat.
“We’re gonna have a convoy,” I said.
He frowned and looked away, his head shaking with frustration as if he had palsy. I couldn’t blame him. I felt much the same way. But if this was what it took to get my strong-willed niece to come, then this was what it took.
I found Bruce and Pam in one of the lines and stopped them. They seemed happy to see me, like we were old friends. When I told them not to try any metaphors on me, they looked hurt and promised to do no such thing. They claimed they were only trying to save me per Naomi’s instructions, but now that we were all doomed there was no need for that anymore. They just wanted to get back to Naomi, the love of their lives, before
