Neal Shusterman - Everwild

"It would be untrue to say Everlost is entirely free from illness and disease. Our flesh is gone, but in our beings, seeds of our own doom remain. That which was small will grow. That which was once insignificant can devour us. There are cancers beyond those of our mortal bodies. I consider them punishments for unwholesome deeds and wrongful thinking. The Chocolate Ogre serves as a perfect example, for whose thinking can be more wrong than his, and whose affliction could be more unpleasant?"

A large vapor of Afterlights gathered to watch the festivities in the old train yards of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was the most exciting thing to happen here in recent memory. It began with the arrival of the Chocolate Ogre, and rumor was that he was going to perform some sort of magic trick.

A team of ten Afterlights, supervised by the Ogre himself, took a rope, and tied it around the waist of a kid in a Confederate Army uniform.

It was, of course, Zinnia.

"Let's not make this a show," Nick told her. "Let's just get this done."

"S'already a show," Zin pointed out, "best milk it for all it's worth."

Zin concentrated and thrust her ripping-hand out of Everlost, and into the living world just as easily as if she were shoving her hand into water. "Ooh" and "ahh" went the crowd. Then, through the tiny portal into the living world, Zin grabbed the rusted coupling of a living-world train car, springing it closed on her forearm, like a bear trap. They had chosen an Amtrak passenger car-an older one, because it was the only uncoupled passenger car they could find.

Once she was sure her arm was firmly snagged in the coupler, she turned to her team. "All right, y'all know the drill. One, two, three, pull!"

The other ten Afterlights behind her began to pull on the rope which was still tied around her waist. Nick watched, but couldn't participate, because these days everything he touched became too slippery to hold on to.

The team of ten strained as they pulled on Zin with all their strength, and with her arm still firmly caught in the coupler, her body lifted off the ground. A living body might have been torn in half by such a thing, but not an Afterlight. Instead, Zin withstood the force, and the solitary train car began to move. Getting it moving was the hard part. Once it was moving, the small hole in space which at first had been just large enough for Zin's hand, now stretched like elastic, until the entire passenger car was moving through the portal, out of the living world, and into Everlost.

The crowd could not contain their excitement as they watched the blurry, faded train car resolve bit by bit into sharp focus, and fill with the bright hues of chrome, rust, and colorful graffiti.

Once the train car was through, the portal collapsed, sealing closed with a pop. The team of haulers dropped their rope, and scattered as the car rolled off onto a side track that no longer existed, rolling toward the last car of the Everlost train.

"Tha's right," complained Zin, as the Amtrak car continued to roll. "Just leave me stuck here to get smashed in the coupler again!" Nick grinned, and yelled, "That's half the fun, Zin!" Still, he went to free her.

He couldn't move as quickly as he used to-chocolate dripping onto his feet had made them heavy-but fortunately the train wasn't rolling all that fast. He caught up with the rolling car, jumped on the coupler, and used his chocolate-covered left hand to grease the coupler. Zin wriggled her arm free just in time, and they both hopped off just as the Amtrak car hit, and coupled with the last car of the Everlost train, sending a shudder through every coupling down to the engine. The newborn passenger car was now a part of their train, and in the engine, Charlie tooted the whistle to mark their success. The crowd of gawking Afterlights cheered.

"How does it feel to be everyone's hero?" Nick asked Zin.

"I still miss my rocket ship, sir." But Nick could tell she was enjoying the adoration far more than the isolation she had lived in for so many years.

Their train, which had started with just three cars, now had nine-each added by Zin one at a time over the past few weeks. This did not go unnoticed in the living world- although Nick found out quite by accident.

Johnnie-O, who was attempting to teach Zin how to read, made Zin rip various newspapers and magazines from the living world. Johnnie-O, who was now in perpetual nicotine withdrawal, was the world's most impatient teacher, and Zin was the world's most ungrateful student. Every day they would verbally abuse each other for an hour, not much of anything would be learned, and yet the next day, both of them would come back for more. One day Johnnie-O came to Nick with a copy of The World Weekly Herald- a tabloid with questionable news. "I think you'd better read this," Johnnie-O told him. On page two, a headline read SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD SUES PARALLEL UNIVERSE. The article spoke of train cars gone missing from Southern train yards with no explanation- and a promise by one railroad line to take matters into its own hands… but since the headline right next to it read A LIEN BABY DEVOURS AREA 51, Nick really wasn't concerned. Besides, the living world had bigger things to worry about than missing train cars, anyway. And so did Everlost.

Nick had not heard news of Mary Hightower for quite a while, and he couldn't help but worry what kind of mischief she was up to. If Mary had her way, all the world's Afterlights would be trapped in her smothering embrace, and no doubt she was still working toward that end. She had to be stopped at all costs, and Nick had a plan to do it.

That plan depended on Zinnia.

It had been more than a month since wrangling her in at Cape Canaveral.

"I gots no use for you!" she had told Nick and Johnnie-O that first day, as they made their way back through the Florida forests to the train. "But now that ya blowed up my artillery, I gots no use for myself, neither."

Charlie had been waiting with the train, and was more than happy to stay in the conductor's booth rather than have any dealings whatsoever with an ecto-ripper. Johnnie-O, on the other hand, would keep taunting her, until she would rip out some random part of his anatomy, threatening to feed it to Kudzu, and he'd have to chase her to get it back. Johnnie-O did this so often, Nick was convinced that he actually liked it.

Their first challenge was Atlanta-and Nick knew if he failed there, there'd be little hope after that.

When they rolled back into the Atlanta Underground many weeks ago, the crowd of Afterlights that had been so threatening the first time still came out with their bats and their bricks, but this time it was just for show. They were more curious than anything. Word had gotten around that the Chocolate Ogre was looking for Zach the Ripper, which meant he probably wouldn't be coming back. The fact that he had actually returned elevated him to Monster Supreme in their eyes. Everybody wanted to know what he had found in the Florida Everwilds.

Nick had not planned to reveal Zin right away. He knew the Atlanta Afterlights needed to be prepared. But Zin-to whom common sense was a limp afterthought- made herself known even before the train rolled to a stop. She took one look at the Atlanta kids, then poked her head out of a window, and shouted at them, "If you throw them bricks at me, I swear I'll rip out parts a' ya y'didn't even know ya had! See if I don't!" And then to prove it, she reached over to Johnnie-O and ripped his memory of a spleen, holding it out the window.

"Don't you drop that, ya stupid inbred freak!" yelled Johnnie-O.

Since Johnnie-O had no idea what a spleen looked like, his memory of it more closely resembled a Polish sausage than anything else. Even so, it inspired terror in the crowd. They all dropped their weapons, scattering in abject fear, and yelling, "It's Zach the Ripper! It's Zach the Ripper!"