D. MacHale - The Never War

That’s where I am. First Earth. Veelox was a misdirection. Spader and I flumed to Veelox, but found the action wasn’t there. It was here on First Earth. Where is First Earth? The better question is, whenis First Earth? I’m in New York City and it’s 1937. March of 1937 to be exact. To bereallyexact, it’s March 11 of 1937. I’m writing this on my birthday. Here’s a weird thought: If I’m in 1937 and it’s my birthday, did I still turn fifteen? Kind of freaky, no? I’ll begin this new journal by telling you I stumbled into the most bizarro, confusing, dangerous situation yet. But then again, haven’t I said that before? Let me give you a little taste of what happened in only the first few minutes since I got here… Spader and I were nearly killed. Three times. We were also robbed and witnessed a gruesome murder. Happy birthday to me! The way things are going, I know what I want for my fifteenth birthday…the chance to have a sixteenth. When Spader and I flumed in from Veelox, I had no idea of what “First Earth” meant. Since I’m from Second Earth, I could only guess that First Earth was sometime in the Earth’s past. But how far past? For all I knew we were fluming back to a time when quigs were dinosaurs and we’d be on the run from hungry, yellow-eyed raptors.

I was totally relieved to find that when we landed at the gate, it was the exact same rocky room that I had been through many times before. Yes, we had arrived at the gate ofthe subway tunnel in the Bronx, New York. Phew. At least there were no T-rexes or Neanderthals waiting for us. That was the good news.

Bad news was that we weren’t alone. As soon as the flume dropped us off, I saw two guys standing there, facing us. They wore old-fashioned gray suits, like Clark Kent wears in the oldSupermanshow on TV Land. Actually, a better analogy is that these guys were dressed like thebad guysfrom that old show, because that’s what they were. Bad guys. Verybad guys. They wore wide-brimmed hats that were pulled down low and had white handkerchiefs aroundtheir noses and mouths like banditos. There’s only one word to describe these dudes.

Gangsters.

Their eyes looked wide and scared. No big surprise. They had just seen Spader and me drop out of nowhere in an explosion of light and music. They seemed totally stunned, which was good because there was one other detail I haven’t mentioned…

They were both holding machine guns that were aimed at the flume-and at us.

“Down!” I yelled at Spader.

The two of us jumped to opposite sides of the flume just as the gangsters started shooting. I crouched in a ball, totally unprotected as the deadly clatter from their rapid-fire guns echoed off the rocky walls. I thought for sure I’d get hit, but after a few seconds the shooting stopped, and I was still intact. I was afraid to move and even more afraid to look over and see if Spader was okay. The sharp explosions fell off to a distant echo that bounced around the cavelike room. My ears were ringing and the chemical smell of gunpowder burned my nose. I figured this was what it must be like to be in a war.

“Get up!” one of the gangsters ordered. “Hands in the air!”

I cautiously looked over to Spader and saw that he was okay. We stood slowly and raised our hands. The gangsters held their guns on us. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t like we had weapons of our own. The second gangster kept glancing nervously between the two of us. He looked almost as scared as we were. Almost.

“Th-They from Mars?” he asked his buddy nervously.

Under less terrifying circumstances, I would have laughed. It must have looked like we had just landed from outer space. Not only did we flash in through a storm of light, we were still dressed in our bright blue swimskins from Cloral. For a second I thought about pulling a huge bluff and chanting: “Drop your weapons or we will vaporize you with our mind-heat,” or something equally sci-fi, but I didn’t get the chance.

“Don’t matter,” barked the other gangster. He was definitely the one in charge, but I could tell from his voice that he was a little shaky too.

“We done our job,” he added.

“S-So what about th-them?” the nervous gangster asked.

The guy in charge looked us over. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. He didn’t exactly seem like a rocket scientist, so they must have been very small wheels. I wondered if they hurt when they turned.

“You!” the guy barked at me. “Gimme that ring!”

I couldn’t believe it. He wanted my Traveler ring! This was serious. You guys know how badly I need that ring. It shows me where the flumes are, and it’s the only way I can get my journals to you. Without this ring, I’m lost.

“It’s not worth anything,” I said in a feeble attempt to talk him out of it.

“Don’t matter,” the gangster snapped back at me. “All I want is proof to show you two are real.”

“Then take us with you, mates!” said Spader, trying to be friendly. “We’re all the proof you need, in the flesh!”

“Those ain’t my orders,” he snarled.

“Really? Whatareyour orders?” I asked.

“Just hand over the ring,” the boss commanded. He raised his machine gun to prove he meant business. What could I do? I took off my ring and tossed it to him. He caught it and jammed it into his pocket.

“Let’s step outside, nice and easy,” the guy said.

This was good. It meant they weren’t going to gun us down right that moment. Maybe there was a way out of this after all. The nervous gangster threw the wooden door open, then both stepped aside and motioned with their weapons for us to go through. I looked at Spader. Spader shrugged. We had to play along. With our hands up, we both stepped out of the gate and into the dark subway tunnel.

Everything was familiar, so I made a sharp right, knowing it was the way to the abandoned subway station.

But the gangster had other things in mind. “No, you don’t,” he ordered. “Keep walking.”

We had to walk straight ahead, away from the door. Three steps later we stepped over the rail of the subway track. This was beginning to look bad again.

“Stop! Turn around.”

Oh yeah, this was bad. We were both now standing on the train tracks. ”You move, you die,” said the first gangster.

Yeah, right. We move, we die. If a train comes along, wedon’tmove, we die. Not a lot of wiggle room here.

“Where are we, Pendragon?” whispered Spader.

His answer came in the form of a far off whistle. We both looked to our right and saw the headlight of a subway train rounding the bend, headed our way, on our track.

“What is that thing?” asked Spader nervously. Being from a territory that was covered entirely with water, he had never seen anything like a train before.

“That,” I said, trying not to let my voice show the fear that was tearing at my gut, “is a pretty big tum-tigger.”

“Hobey,” said Spader in awe. “We just got here and we’ve already lost.”

We had been on First Earth for all of two minutes, and we were staring death right in the eye.

Welcome home, Bobby Pendragon.

That’s a taste of how our adventure on First Earth began. I don’t want to get too far ahead because there was a whole lot that happened between the time I finished my last journal, and when we landed here. But I wanted to explain to you how I lost my ring. This is serious because as I write this journal to you, Mark and Courtney, I’m not really sure if you’re ever going to read it. If I don’t get that ring back, I’ll never be able to send this to you. The only thing I can do is keep writing, hang on to the journals, and hope that I get the ring back soon.

Now, let me rewind to where I finished my last journal and get you guys back up to speed.