Chapter 22

chapter twenty-two June erupts. "WHADDYA MEAN WE CAN'T USE IT?? We're not gonna blow you up. We didn't know you were here!" Quint nods. "Our intel said this place was empty of non-bad guys." Dirk looks toward the Goon Platoon. "You can just come with us when we leave. I bet you're good in a fight, on account of all that... uh..." Dirk pauses, eyeing their many bizarre appendages and attachments. "All your stuff." "We cannot come with you," the beetle-lady says. I get the sense she's the leader of this weird trio. "We must remain here." I glance down at Rover, tempted to whisper something in his ear like, "Hey, buddy, your new friends are kinda jerks." But I resist. "Hold up," Dirk says, and I hear him drop his voice a notch deeper, getting gravelly. "Let's try and keep this sociable. Like friends. And friends got names." With a few head nods, Dirk introduces us. Nothing fancy, no rad backstories, just the facts. Then he stares at the Goon Platoon, waiting.

Rover looks up at the beetle-lady, happily panting. She finally says, "The sounds of our native tongue will fry your insides twice over. For simplicity, you may call us... peaches. Um, Dave, man, the name's Karen and her Johnson, but my friends call me Ka and her Johnson. So what do we call you? Not CannonHead Johnson Before we can ask why they'd need to remain here, and—more importantly—why we can't use the

Fortress Breaker, a stomach-churning YOWL rings out. "ALARM!" Peaches barks. In a flash, the Goon Platoon goes into lockdown mode. Cannonhead gets behind us, shoving us along. Ahead of us, a door spirals open with a schlurp. We hurry into a huge, weird, wet cavern as the door revolves, sealing us in. Peaches scrapes a long claw-finger over a fleshy nodule on the side of what now appears to be an other-dimensional freight elevator. We begin to move down the shaft, and I hold on a little tighter to Rover. Suddenly, the lift stops, and the darkness is cut by a sliver of red light as the wall opens up behind us, revealing something I did not expect to see... "Is that..." June starts, then pauses, like she's not sure she can believe what she's seeing. "A fast-food joint from the monster realm?" And that's not even the weirdest part. There are monsters. Creatures. Critters. Everywhere. I recognize a few from Quint's bestiary, back in the day. But this room is like a monster menagerie...

"What is all this?" Quint asks. "The Grub Bonanza," Cannonhead Johnson says. "Best honkin' food in any dimension. Decent milk shakes, too." "Think he meant these creatures," Dirk says. "Survivors," Peaches says. "Like us." "It's the cutest thing I've ever seen," June says. Then Rover looks up at June with big, wide eyes. "Except you, cutie pants, duh," she quickly adds. It appears we're safe, for the moment. So I drop to one knee and give Rover another big hug. "I missed you, buddy," I say. "I missed you more than I knew I could miss anything."

I never had much to begin with. But then I moved to Wakefield and met Quint, and finally I understood what it meant to have a best friend. Then, after the world ended, I found Rover. And that was the start of this weird family of ours. My chest hitches. I run an arm across my eyes, and the sleeve comes away wet. "What happened after you and Skaelka got separated?" I finally manage to ask. Rover stiffens, at attention, then lets out a string of barks in quick succession. It's a very Lassie moment., What's that boy after skulker got carried away. You followed her. The guards came back and they got you

and carried you here. And he met these guys. "OK..." I say. "Think I got most of that. And you've been here ever since?" Rover woofs. "Hey, buddy," Dirk says, as Drooler waddles toward Rover. "Somebody wants to say hello." Rover licks Drooler toe to head, flipping the little guy up into the air. When Drooler lands, he meeps and licks Rover back. June kneels down. "Hey, Rover," she says quietly. "Have you seen a young Winged Wretch around with —with no wings?"