Trollhunters (24 page)

“Let’s go back to the cave,” I panted. “We can come up with a better plan.”

“The cave? Those were
rust trolls
. The cave belongs to them. They’re following our scent there right now, and believe me, they’ll bring friends. We wouldn’t last
five minutes if we went back.” Jack’s shoulders sunk in defeat. “We have no home.”

“Volumes twenty-three and twenty-four of my dissertation were left on the credenza!” Blinky gasped. “Those vulgar blackguards shall tear my heartrending prose to confetti just
to watch it fall. True, true, it should not take me more than eight or nine years to rewrite. Nevertheless I feel a loss—my calligraphy today is not what it once was.”

“The weapons,” Jack groaned. “So many weapons, all gone. And we’re supposed to stop the Machine? Oh, this is bad.”

From several blocks away came the blare of police sirens. Jack crawled to the edge of the junk heap and snapped his fingers at ARRRGH!!!. The tacks on his gloves made loud clicks.

ARRRGH!!! snorted her understanding and ballooned her chest. By now I knew enough to cover my ears. The roar detonated like a bomb. Dozens of windshields shattered at once, and I didn’t
have to look to know that Gulager had dropped to protect his body. The trollhunters made a run for it down a dark aisle. Somewhere up ahead was a bridge—there was always a bridge—but
for once that was not part of the plan.

Jack grabbed me by the front of the shirt. My medallion tightened around my neck.

He searched the sky for signs of dawn.

“Shelter,” he growled. “It won’t be night for long.”

Tub didn’t look happy to see me. He glowered from his bedroom window.

“Unacceptable, Jim. It’s four. In the
morning
.”

“Back door,” I whispered. “Now.”

He was even unhappier to find me in his backyard alongside two trolls throwing anxious glances at the sky while Jack struck a menacing pose next to the decrepit swing set. Tub leaned against the
doorframe and exhaled morning breath, scratching at his bed-head bouffant.

“You kids have fun tonight?”

“It’s going to be light soon,” I said. “They’ll turn to stone.”

“See, that sounds like something worth seeing.”

Jack shifted just enough so that his scabbards clattered intimidatingly.

“No jokes,” I said. “There’s no time. I need you to…” There was no other way except to just say it. “I need you to take ARRRGH!!!.”

Tub laughed once.

“The gigantic ape-monster? In Grandma’s house? You need to have your head X-rayed, kid.”

“You can hide her from Grandma way easier than I can from Dad. Just help me out here. I’m taking the others. I’m doing my part.”

“It’s
all
your part, Jim. You’re the big-deal trollhunter, remember? I’m just some kid who, I don’t know, is pretty good at video games, I guess? Why would
a big, famous hunter like you want the help of an amateur like me? Thanks, anyway, but I think I’ll pass.”

“Then don’t do it for me! Do it for her. It’s not her fault she’s stuck out here. But if we don’t get her inside in two or three stones—a half-hour, I
mean—she’s going to die. You want to live with that? You want to come out here in the morning and see the pile of rocks?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Call me whatever you want. Just take her in.”

ARRRGH!!! tilted her head.

“Boy human. Have peanut butter. For eating?”

Tub’s lips closed around his thick braces as he deliberated.

“I’m going to go ahead and assume she said something about my great prowess as a warrior. In that case, fine. For her, I’ll do it. Just get her inside before the neighbors wake
up.”

Getting through the door was the easy part. ARRRGH!!! popped her arms out of place and didn’t restore herself to full girth until we were inside the house. There was an optimistic moment
during which we thought this was going to go well. It didn’t last. ARRRGH!!! began reaching for every knickknack in the living room with a delighted look on her face. An entire shelf of
ceramic children plummeted to the floor. Tub started mumbling about glue, where was the glue?! A row of delicate wicker decorations was the next casualty, ripped to shreds by a single curious claw.
Tub’s focus switched to the vacuum cleaner—somebody get the vacuum cleaner! When ARRRGH!!! started munching on a vase of plastic flowers, I gave her a push toward Tub’s bedroom.
She got the message, but on her way punctured a vinyl sofa cover with a toenail.

I pointed at a spot on Tub’s carpet for ARRRGH!!! to sit.

She did so with a smile and set about tasting everything within reach.

“Game controllers!” Tub cried. “Not food! Bad troll! Bad troll! Wait, wait, no, don’t—don’t eat—those were my favorite shoes! You can’t—no,
I need—oh, man, you gotta be kidding me! You know how much that hard drive cost?”

Tub bolted from the room without explanation. In the meantime I did my best to wrench Tub’s possessions from ARRRGH!!!’s paws before they were popped between her grinding teeth.
Blinky was no help; he was enraptured by a shelf of sci-fi DVDs and enthusing about the historic importance of this library of human/alien contact. Jack, meanwhile, had yet to move from the front
door. He regarded the homey family room as if it were a jungle concealing its predators.

Random objects began sailing through the open window. It was Tub, hurling junk he’d collected from his neighbors’ backyards: a bundle of chicken wire, a couple of jolly lawn gnomes,
three upended flower pots, an entire bush ripped out by the roots and dripping dirt. Then he crawled over the sill and I pulled him in.

“Stuff for her to chew on,” he grunted. “This is worse than having a cat—”

He froze. I did, too.

A feline screeched.

We caught only a glimpse of calico tail before it vanished down ARRRGH!!!’s throat. Tub pressed the back of his hand against his forehead like a Victorian damsel.

“Cat #20! Jim! That was Cat #20! Sweet lord, Jim, she’s eating Grandma’s cats!”

ARRRGH!!! licked her lips and plucked up another cat as if it were a peanut.

“Cat #36! No! Not Cat #36!”

A short-lived yowl later, Cat #36 was history. Tub clutched his skull in despair. For reasons we couldn’t understand, the cats were drawn to the snack-happy troll and kept winding about
her legs, stroking their whiskers against her stiff black fur.

“Cat #23! Shoo! Shoo! Cat #40, for the love of all that’s holy! Run!” Tub grabbed my arm. “This isn’t going to work! They only respond to their real
names!”

“Then use their real names!”

“You know I lost the list!”

“Find it!”

“It’s in here somewhere—oh, no! Please, anyone but Cat #39, that’s Grandma’s—”

ARRRGH!!!’s long tongue smacked at the furry remnants of Cat #39.

Tub dug his fingers into his scalp.

“Why do the stupid cats keep coming into this den of death?!”

Jack leaned into the room. His barbed gloves carved four scrapes through the paint by Tub’s light switch. He nodded at Tub’s TV set.

“Turn it on.”

Tub and I fell over each other in a race for the remote. A minute of fumbling commenced, during which at least one more cat met its untimely end, before we were able to summon an infomercial
from the dead screen, a shouting guy with a headset hawking some kind of new-and-improved mop. Tub lowered the volume, while I messed with the set to achieve a much blurrier screen.

“Not too much static,” Jack said. “It’s not healthy.”

ARRRGH!!!’s grin slackened as she began to notice the flickering images. Seconds later, five tendrils of drool fell from her jaw. Now that it was within reach, I took hold of the car tire
still impaled on her left horn and yanked it off. It went bouncing through the room, scaring away the remaining cats before obliterating a decorative table in the hallway. ARRRGH!!!’s paws
relaxed and a chubby tabby bounded from its palm prison.

Tub dropped his body onto the edge of his bed. He prodded with a toe at the chicken wire and lawn gnomes. Bits of cat fur hung in the air. His lips moved silently as he calculated the deaths. It
added up to one big problem with Grandma; he’d have to come up with a hell of an excuse, and I didn’t have time to help.

“Sorry, Tub,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Just get out, Mr. Trollhunter.” He sunk his face into his hands. “Grandma wakes up early on Mondays.”

Jack stood at the far edge of the living room, staring through his goggles at the altar above our electric fireplace. He panned slowly across his own school photos, examined
his milk carton portrait, and lingered over a shot of him and his brother with their arms wrapped around each other in a sandbox. I watched from the dark hallway outside my room, afraid to
interrupt.

Blinky sidled up alongside me, the heat of his slime warming my cold skin. Together he and I had cleared out my closet so that he would be able to crouch within it during the day, covered with a
sheet from the linen closet. He was concerned about the imminent dawn, yet took a moment to speak of Jack.

“Tact, courtesy, patience,” Blinky said softly. “These qualities are as foreign to your uncle now as were our troll ways during his first season underground. Even the scantest
of aboveground scents, like those of blossoming flowers or baking bread, odors which I understand are comforts to your kind, reduce poor Jack to trembling. Why do you think he wears his mask, even
here?”

“He could come back,” I said. “We could adopt him or something.”

“Would you adopt a wild animal and expect anything else than to be bit? Jack has become a creature of rock, mud, cave, and sewage, far more at home within our glorious squalor than in your
rudely lit land of sharp corners and stultifying sterility. You have read the human fable of Never Never Land? So is the troll world to Jack. The accomplishments so treasured by humans are rituals
of which Jack shall never partake. There will be no school graduations. There will be no first kiss. There will be no driving a car. There will be no family. Being denied this has created within
Jack a great rage; that is no secret to anyone who has seen the business end of his blade. However, it is a
useful
rage. He would not be the warrior he is without it. He knows this and has
accepted it. A tragedy, to be sure, but a necessary one.”

Blinky left my side to tuck himself within the safe confines of the closet.

In my bedroom I kicked off my shoes and ripped my arms from my hoodie. I felt something in the pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper. It was the flyer of the missing little girl with
purple glasses. I looked at it for a while, thinking of the changelings, the rust trolls, and all the other beasts amassing for invasion.

I returned to the living room. Sunlight was beginning to leak through the cracks of the fortress, making it obvious that Jack was no longer there. I felt a flash of concern before noticing
Dad’s bedroom door was ajar. Then I felt even greater concern, hurried over, and inserted my head.

Jack was standing over the bed, looking down in a posture of heartbroken wonderment at the wrinkled old man, once upon a time a little boy called “Jimbo.” He reached out with a
tentative hand to stroke his brother’s face, but stopped when he remembered that his fingers were covered with sharp tacks. Jack’s goggles fogged over.

Dad’s body made a somnambulant jerk. Something quivered in his throat.

Jack had no problem grabbing
me
with those sharp gloves.

“The schmoof,” he said. “You won’t want to see this part.”

Together we stood in the living room watching a peach glow paint the walls and ceilings. It was Monday morning. That meant work for Dad, school for me. School—how could I face those bland
hallways and ignorant faces knowing what I knew now? It seemed a century ago when Tub and I had been trash-compacted in lockers, fallen from gymnasium ropes, and rolled around in a parking lot to
evade the bouncing ball of Steve Jorgensen-Warner.

“There’s an attic,” I said. “Dad hardly ever uses it. You could hide there.”

“No.”

“Or maybe the garage? We’d just have to cover you up with—”

Dad yawned from his room.

Jack looked at Dad’s door with more fear than he showed when facing a troll battalion.