Chapter 17

chapter seventeen We race for the crossing. I'm relieved to be leaving the gorblins behind—but know it's just a matter of time before Wracksaw and the enforcers close in, now that Flustrod has alerted everyone to our location. I expect the crossing to be a bridge or walkway. Instead, it's a series of rocks, floating high above an antigravity river below. Seabiscuit navigates it with ease, bouncing and hopping forward. Through the window I spot Stargrove keeping pace. She still looks like a terrifying monster who could finish us all off with a flick of just one of her arms. But I'm not scared of her anymore. Especially not now, as she gleefully pinwheels over the rocks.

"So, are you gonna tell us the big dead star thing is our friend now?" Globlet asks, glancing suspiciously out the window at Stargrove. "'Cause we have a saying in my dimension: one is the loneliest number, two's company, three's more company, four is good for splitting pizza, and five is a bad idea all around, especially when the fifth is personally responsible for dozens of cage-match deaths." I've finally calmed down enough to process and explain what's going on. "What just happened..." I begin. "It was different than any other time I've controlled a zombie. With Alfred and the rest of my Zombie Squad, I just flick the

Slicer while shouting out a command, like, 'Bring me nachos.' And they follow that command—which is why you so rarely see me without nachos. And when Blargus was gonna smash me... I controlled Alfred with only the Cosmic Hand, no Slicer. But I've never known what any of them were thinking." "Right," Quint says, leaning forward, tapping his fingers with extreme interest. "Continue..." "But with Stargrove..." I start, explaining how I saw what Stargrove was thinking—the mind-doodles, a visible array of choices and options, allowing us to communicate. Not just me giving orders—but both of us, back and forth. "Friend, that is extraordinary!" Quint exclaims. "You used a pictorial language to communicate with a monster zombie... and CONVINCED IT to help you in a fight that should have left you flattened!" I nod, again thinking back to my final moments with Ghazt. The final few molecules of Ghazt's power were delivered into the Cosmic Hand. I saw it change, I freaked, and Ghazt simply said, "Now you are the general, Jack." I didn't know what he meant then. But I think now I do. To lead an army, you need to be able to

communicate with its solders. And that power of communication seems to be what Ghazt put into the Cosmic Hand. "If I can read the zombies' mind-doodles, and they can understand mine," I say, a smile growing on my face, "that could be how I lead the army." "Are you settled on calling them 'mind-doodles'?" Globlet asks. "'Cause I have notes." Ignoring Globlet, Quint says, "If you can actually do that..." He doesn't need to finish his sentence. We both know it could turn the tide in the coming battle for the future of our dimension. "I won't know for sure until I've got a lot of zombies to try with," I caution. "Maybe it just works with Stargrove because we have, like, a special psychic connection." Just a couple of mine. Dude holes, eh?

"Hang on to your biscuits!" Globlet shouts, as Seabiscuit bounds off the last floating rock, flips in the strange gravity, and finally lands on the far side of the crossing. What lies before us now is a very wide, very exposed road. "Are there any other routes to the Hidden City?" I ask. "It's too easy for Wracksaw and the enforcers to find us on these main roads. Thanks to those gorblins, the whole dimension knows where to look for us." "Ah, so you want options? Well, you're in luck! We have options! Two!" Globlet says, pointing to a sign ahead. THE FUN AND EASY ROUTE INCLUDES FREE CAR WASH. THE HIGHWAY OF HAZARDS. TAKE A RIDE AND SEE DOUBLE DANGEROUS DETOURS. RADIOACTIVE ROADBLOCKS, COUNTLESS BOOBY TRAPS. PERIL APLENTY. DEFINITELY QUICKSAND

"Peril aplenty." It sounds like a decent theme for a birthday party... and a terrible theme for the final stretch to the Hidden City. But if it keeps us off Wracksaw's radar, I'll take it... Turns out, it's way more than just peril. The route is both impossible and impassible. Or, it would be, if we didn't have Stargrove. Now that we're trading mind-doodles, she's Swiss Army knife– level helpful.