Trollhunters (23 page)

The
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý
were a race of trolls so nefarious that even their name was an assault, hard
enough to write and impossible to say, an umpteen-letter monstrosity that would tie the most eloquent of troll scholars in such knots of quivering failure that they were slain before the first
clash of battle had sounded. But the trait of which I’d been most warned during that night’s journey through floorboards and sewers and bridges was their sense of smell, unparalleled in
the history of the world. One sniff and they’d forever imprint your scent signature upon their temporal lobes. That was why
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý
, more than any other troll, needed to be completely eradicated in battle. If a single specimen
escaped, it would share your odor with others back at its hive, and your home would be overrun in hours.

Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý
were attracted to areas of spoil, and that night we were meeting them upon the soon-to-be
battlefield of Keavy’s Junk Emporium. It wasn’t just physical decay that attracted
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý.
They
sought out homeless shanties, orphanages, mental hospitals, old folks’ homes, hospice care facilities, anywhere they could snuggle within the invigorating chill of discarded dreams.

Keavy’s was a double whammy: not only was it the most sprawling concentration of decomposition in all of San Bernardino, it also bordered Sunny Smiles for Friends, a budget retirement home
of infamous reputation. Ambulances made trips to Sunny Smiles multiple times per night, and it was widely believed to be a front for meth sales.
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý
operated by infecting weak or elderly lungs with airborne poisons and couldn’t be allowed to
squat in any one location for long, lest everyone there become polluted.

Blinky completed these warnings as we made our way up the side of a dirt hill at the edge of the junkyard. It was after midnight, and the two of us lagged behind Jack and ARRRGH!!!. Tub was not
with us. I had not heard from him since that morning, and as the day dwindled I had resisted calling or texting. He had no business with us. I felt terrible thinking it, but it was bad enough that
I was being bullied into attendance.

Blinky and I joined Jack and ARRRGH!!! at the crest of the hill. Before us spread a labyrinth. Compacted vehicles, everything from motorcycles to trailer homes, made up the walls of the
treacherous maze, while brambles of metal wire blocked easy exits.

“Behold,” Blinky said, unspooling a tentacle over the vista. “The
Ğräçæĵ
…the
Ğräçæĵøĭv
…” He emitted a locust-flutter sound of irritation. If anyone was going to pronounce the unpronounceable, certainly it would
be the self-proclaimed greatest living troll historian! But that achievement would have to wait for another day. The tentacle snapped with frustration.

“Behold the rust trolls,” he mumbled.

Other trolls, I’d gathered, had tried to rob power from the
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý
, pinning them with this simpler
moniker. Right away I saw why it was fitting. They were the color of dried blood, equal parts orange, brown, and red. Each one was scaled with plates the exact shape and weight of rust flakes. Most
chilling of all, the rust trolls were as flat as hammered tin, and they slithered across dilapidated car parts, barely distinguishable from corroded chrome detailing.

Jack sharpened Doctor X against a twist of metal lying in the grass. It was a nervous habit.

“All right. Rust trolls. Seven of them. Hard to kill. Hard as hell.” Through the boom box speaker, his voice was emotionless. “Ever killed a tick? Same thing here. It’s
either fire or a sharp point. We’re not going to set this joint on fire so sharp points it is. Jim, your sword. ARRRGH!!!, your claws. Blinky, you’ve got plenty of arms and
there’s plenty of scrap here, so find something pointy and get to it. We gotta pin these suckers to the ground till they stop twitching.”

“How long do they twitch?” I whispered.

“Anywhere between ten seconds and forty-five minutes. Depends on age.”

ARRRGH!!! was crouched over us to provide cover, and I found her gazing at me with what looked like affection. From deep in her throat came a low purr that somehow communicated that she would
look after me. She bowed her head until the boulder embedded in her skull was within touching distance. I ran my fingertips across it for luck just as troll children had been doing for half a
decade.

One of her orange eyes closed in a playful wink. I had no idea what to make of it until her mouth split open to reveal a hundred jagged teeth and she let loose with the kind of earsplitting roar
that had me imagining nearby rats and raccoons falling dead from fright. Even Jack covered his ears and pressed his face in the dirt. I saw seven glints of light as the rust trolls perked up their
rawboned heads.

With one incredible lunge, ARRRGH!!! leapt thirty feet through the air, and upon thunderous landing she stabbed a thick yellow claw through one of the
Ğräçæĵøĭvőd’ñůý
. Jack swung his face toward me, his dirty-blond hair flopping across eyes alight with excitement. He
pushed himself to standing position and raised both swords over his head.

“Trollhunters!”
he bellowed.
“Attack!”

I was the kid who hung back when they picked sides in gym, the kid who hid behind his book while Pinkton searched for new blackboard victims. But at that moment I detected the rust trolls’
poison. It was redolent with the rotten-fruit smell of a hospital that stored its dying people in rooms like separate stomachs; it smelled of the underarm sweat of bedraggled middle schoolers on
the run from bullies; it carried the sharp stink of the pissed beds of children waking up in their latest foster homes. I coughed out these toxins before I heard the battle cry rumbling up my
throat. There was evil in the world and I needed—I
wanted
—to stop it.

It was a battle both brutal and inspiring. Chaos was the rust trolls’ chief defense. Just as we entered their acrid yellow mist, one tried to sever our feet by coiling itself into a sharp
snare. Another writhed like a crackling live wire too dangerous to approach. Still others slingshotted themselves from car antennae. All the while they produced an asthmatic laughter that smelled
of tar. But Jack proved himself with the tireless, inventive lancing of hearts and softies, while Blinky fended off several at once with shanks of scrap metal and ARRRGH!!! tore apart vehicles as
if they were but
papier-mâché
nuisances.

Three hours later, the junkyard was a slapdash cemetery. Various serrated objects pinned rust trolls to the dirt as they sniggered their way through their drawn-out deaths. Only two remained.
One was eight feet tall and so lean it disappeared when viewed from the side. Its cackle scratched at your brain like nails, and I’d seen ARRRGH!!! slap her ears to drive away encroaching
madness. Jack and Blinky came to her aid, cornering the troll against the pulverized hull of a tow truck.

The other rust troll yet to be speared was the same rogue I’d been working on all night. There was nothing notable about the beady-eyed creature aside from a cross-shaped scar on its flat
chin. It had drawn blood from me a dozen times, snapping its body like a whip, but for every hit I took I gave back two more, remembering my lessons: rabbit, bull, python. At last my opponent could
take no more. With a sputter of laughter, it dove beneath a hill of tires.

Rust trolls, I’d discovered, left an oily black trail in their wake, and I followed it through the center of a tractor tire and over a pile of motorcycle wheels until I was deep inside the
mountain of rubber. I spotted my foe pressed against an impermeable stack of tires, spit dripping down its cross-scarred chin. In the distance, I heard Jack’s victorious cry—his battle
was nearly won. I surged forward on my knees and brought up Cat #6, the perfect weapon for close quarters.

A quake knocked me off balance. I would’ve discounted it as a passing semitrailer if not for the reaction of the rust troll. Its gasping laughter heightened into a strangulated mewl, and
its twiggy arms flapped in a state of blind ecstasy. Oil coated every one of its scales, and in seconds the troll was gleaming with black liquid.

The rumble grew stronger. The tires stacked around me began to jar apart. A section of the rubber cave collapsed. I put my chest to the ground and covered my head with both arms just in
time—a tire landed on my back, knocking the wind out of me. While I heaved for oxygen, an orchestra of groaning metal struck up from the junkyard. Glass shattered, steel whined, and heavy
objects avalanched from the car-part foothills. My rust troll gibbered with delight because he knew what we’d hear next.

Gunmar the Black’s scream shot from a thousand different metal mouths at once. It howled through exhaust pipes, blasted from defunct car radios, gurgled through battery acid, and blared
between truck antennae like the prongs of the devil’s tuning fork. The entire junkyard was being played like a pipe organ.

Scrambling on my elbows, I shouldered aside each tire that battered me. I made it out into the open and flopped onto my back, only to see two tons of mangled vehicle parts sliding at me like
snow from a roof. I shrieked and ran into a world that was raining scrap, burying all of us. Engine hoses slapped my cheeks; windshield wipers stabbed my ribs; edges of license plates sawed at me
like teeth; and headlight lamps dropped and fractured, each of them glaring like an Eye of Malevolence.

The Hungry One’s echo gave way to the sound of him chewing on his tongue, each moist squish piped up from the underworld, softer and softer, until there was silence and the dissipation of
dust. What was revealed was a prison of tangled metal. Jack fought for the necessary leverage to cut himself free. Blinky’s eyes bobbed above the surface of the rubble like eight periscopes.
Trapped beneath several entire vehicles, ARRRGH!!! frothed with frustration, which at least told me that she was fine.

Rust trolls had none of these problems. Their slim forms easily snaked through the entanglements, and the two that had not yet died were on the move. I tried to make myself invisible, but the
one with the cross-shaped scar sniffed me out, asphyxiating itself with hoarse laughter. A long vertical slit opened along its stringy torso, revealing teeth that circulated like a rusty chainsaw.
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the first bite.

The jabber of a police siren interrupted my death. My eyes opened and I saw the slithering shadows of the fleeing rust trolls. Beyond the hill of dirt we had crossed earlier, I could make out
the lazy oscillation of cop lights. A door slammed and I heard a familiar stutter.

“This is the p-p-p-p-p-police! Please disperse!”

Perhaps San Bernardino’s top cop had been staking out the meth hub of Sunny Smiles when he’d heard the avalanche. After all, Sergeant Ben Gulager knew better than anyone the
after-hours teen parties held at the junkyard. He looked pretty dang heroic atop that hill of dirt, his gun pointed at the ground in the standard double-hand grip, his mustache in full bloom, his
cap covering the worst of his lopsided hairpiece. Even from a distance I could see the junkyard lights gleaming off the scar tissue at his temple.

His eyebrows knotted when he saw the fallen debris.

“K-k-kids? Hello? Everybody o-kuh-kuh-kuh-kay?”

I wanted to cry out but the flash of Jack’s goggles beneath the ruin warned me to keep quiet. I grimaced beneath the weight of the trash and wondered how long I could hold out.

Gulager began moving down the side of the hill, sweeping the wreckage in search of trapped teenagers. He did not notice the rust trolls slithering away through the weeds a few feet to his
right.

“Make a n-n-n-noise if you can hear me! Bang on something!” He pressed the radio button at his shoulder. “B-b-base, this is three hundred. I’m ten ninety-seven at
K-K-K-Keavy’s Junk Emporium on Grimes. I’ve got a code three st-st-st-structure collapse here, possible eleven forty-sevens. Request eleven eighty-nine and eleven forty-one as soon as
p-p-p-p-p-p-p—”

The word went forever unfinished. His thumb slipped off the radio button, leaving the pygmy voice on the other end to repeat its follow-up questions. With a clatter like the biggest pieces of
silverware in history sliding from the biggest plate, ARRRGH!!! rose from the rubble. Engine blocks, transmission systems, windshields, even entire vehicles tumbled off her back and shoulders.
Slowly she rose to a full standing position and shook her head as if to clear it. A tire had been speared by one of her horns and held tight.

Emotion drained from Gulager’s face and his jaw dropped. The gun, forgotten, hung at his side as he took in the full height of the monster with an expression of naked fear. But then his
chin locked into the defiant position to which San Bernardino had become accustomed. His eyes narrowed and his hands curled around the gun. It flew upward, pointed in the neighborhood of the
softies.

ARRRGH!!! crumpled a motor scooter in her fist and exhaled threateningly. In the foul-smelling gust, Gulager’s cap sailed away and his hairpiece spun around so that the back was in the
front, covering his eyes. He used a free hand to whip the thing into the weeds and looked even more heroic: bristled hair disrupted by a nasty scar, face folded into a resolute frown, gun barely
shaking at all.

“Now,” Jack hissed. “Follow me.”

From beneath the tangle I saw him crawl on his stomach toward one of the still-standing hills of junk. I disengaged from the scrap and followed, wincing at the razor edges that drew long
scratches across my skin. Blinky had already made it to the safety of the hill and was beckoning with a dozen appendages. My sinuous path took me right beside ARRRGH!!!, who remained locked in a
standoff with Sergeant Gulager.

I reached the safety of the junk heap and collapsed against a knot of tentacles.

“You’re bad luck,” Jack said. “You know that?”

“Fault lies elsewhere,” Blinky soothed. “The boy acquitted himself quite well.”

“No gallbladders? Again? We’re losing this war and it’s barely begun.”