Johnny Apocalypse and the Fight for a New World Read online

  Reginald led them across the room. Misterwizard and the others followed as best as they could, but the darkness made it hard to avoid the couches and tables.

  “Reginald, do you have no illumination in this facility?”

  Reginald stopped and turned. “Mercy me! I’m so used to walking around in the dark to conserve energy I totally forgot you might need some!” He laughed crazily again, totally back to his cheerful demeanor.

  “Let me fix that.” Reginald walked to a switch on the wall and turned a small round dial. Slowly, lights hidden on the top corners of the walls came on, and they could see the room. It was very large, with wood paneled walls, three sets of couches, a dining room table and chairs by one wall and a small kitchen at the far end of the room.

  “MIsterwizard!” Carny yelled. “He’s coming!”

  “Please, Reginald, some speed would be appreciated!”

  “Yes, yes!” Reginald ran to a glass door at the far end of the room. Beyond it they could see a hallway lined with glass doors on either side.

  “This is the way. I know where to go!” Reginald yanked the door open and ran down the hall, Misterwizard and Carny right behind him with the others following.

  As they passed each door, Reginald opened each one and explained its purpose. “Game room. Pool and sauna. Auxiliary kitchen. Bathroom, what you’d call the Necessary Room, heh, heh. And here is what we’re looking for, the Dispensary.”

  Reginald led them through the door into another hallway. The walls were white with glass doors on either side leading to exam rooms and operating rooms. The hallway extended back a long way, showing twenty or thirty rooms on either side.

  “Follow me, and I’ll take you to where you can put the expectant mother. By the way, who will be her attending physician?” Reginald cackled some more.

  “That will be me,” Misterwizard said with a smile. “I’m the Midwife for our Tribe, at the present.”

  Reginald looked at him and chuckled. “Well, you’ll find all the things you need to deliver ten babies here, but let’s hope there are no complications. We have no one to perform a C-section or give anesthesia if it’s needed. Though we have all the medical supplies you could ever need.”

  Reginald led MisterWizard, Foodcourt and Carny to what looked like a delivery room. Misterwizard and Foodcourt helped ease Carny onto the delivery table, where she laid back with a sigh of relief.

  “How are you feeling, dear?” Misterwizard asked, his brow furrowed with concern.

  “Okay, I guess. Miracle has stopped pushing for a moment. You don’t think there is anything wrong, do you?”

  Misterwizard patted her on the arm. “No, everything is fine. Miracle will come when he’s good and ready, and not a moment sooner.”

  Carny smiled and put her head down. Foodcourt found a blanket to keep her warm and began wiping her wet forehead with a cloth.

  Reginald watched the proceedings with a grin. “Who’d ever a’ thought, another baby would be born in this place, after all that’s happened. It just goes to show, Life goes on!” He laughed heartily and Misterwizard couldn’t help but join in. Even Foodcourt smiled.

  “She seems stable for a moment,” Misterwizard said. “So please, Reginald, will you help us with our other patient, one in much more urgent need of assistance?”

  “Follow me!” Reginald led them to another room with a leather bed in it. Bathandbodyworks, set Deb down on the bed and smoothed back her hair.

  “By gum, you’ll find what you want here I wager, for whatever ails you! All kept in refrigerated cabinets, though I daresay the expiration dates on some of them might have passed.”

  Misterwizard watched as Reginald searched through cabinets, pulling out medicine bottles, looking at their labels and throwing them back. “Anti-, anti-, anti-, anti-biotics!” Reginald pulled out a plastic bottle and held it up triumphantly. “Give her a couple of these, and she’ll be right as rain before you know it!”

  Misterwizard took them gratefully, as Thegap and Bathandbodyworks looked on anxiously. “We cannot adequately express our gratitude, dear Reginald. Do you have any water that she could take these with?”

  “Of course. Water, we have in abundance. I can only drink so much by myself, and I must admit, water is not my favorite beverage, if you know what I mean. Ha, ha, ha! I’ll be back presently.” Reginald hurried out of the room. Misterwizard looked through the cabinets to see what other medicines he could find.

  His head in the cabinet, he spoke in a muffled voice. “This is wonderful. He has a treasure trove here, everything from medicine to relieve back-ache to pills for acne!” Misterwizard had to laugh at his own joke, for it completely escaped Thegap and Bathandbodyworks. They weren’t really listening anyway for they were too busy looking anxiously at Deb and waiting for Reginald to return with the water.

  Presently he returned, carrying a white plastic cup filled with water. But in his hand, he held a gun, pointed at his visitors. He wore a grim, angry frown and his lower lip quivered. Thegap swallowed with fright and looked at Misterwizard, who didn’t see Reginald enter for his head was still deep in the cabinet.

  “MIsterwizard.” Thegap said in a high-pitched voice.

  “Be with you momentarily, my good man,” MIsterwizard said as the sound of bottles being picked up and shaken came from inside the cabinet. “I’m looking to see if he has something for an old man’s arthritis.”

  “Misterwizard, now!” Thegap said in a squeak.

  Misterwizard’s head finally popped out of the cabinet. He wore a look of curious concern at Thegap’s tone as he looked at him. Then he saw Reginald, and his frown deepened.

  Reginald looked at him and scowled darkly, pointing the gun at Misterwizard’s heart. “Misterwizard, have I prematurely put my trust in you? I considered you friends. Are you instead interlopers here to usurp my authority and perform acts of piracy?”

  Misterwizard walked forward to stand in front of Reginald. “Whatever do you mean, Reginald?” MIsterwizard’s eyebrows shot up in confusion.

  “I made a simple request that the rest of your entourage wait upstairs until I had time to assure myself of your true intentions. And yet, on the security cameras I see the dark figure of a young lady approaching. I this the beginning of a coup de’ tat?”

  Reginald took a step forward, the gun leveled at MIsterwizard’s heart. Bathandbodyorks put her hand to her mouth in fright. Thegap placed himself between Reginald and Deb. “I was truly fond of you, Adam. It has been so long since I’ve had an intelligent personality to converse with, since the others are still angry with me. In fact, since we seemed so alike, I began to think of you as my own personal Doppelganger, a kindred spirit of sorts with whom I could share the mysteries of the universe. And yet, now it appears that you are a false friend and I will have the unpleasant task of shooting you.”

  Misterwizard raised his hands in supplication. “Reginald, please believe me, we spoke truthfully and with complete candor. I did instruct the Tribe. If someone approaches, I can only suspect that a calamity or great proportions forces them to disobey my instructions and seek me out.”

  Reginald’s hand shook, and he lowered the gun slightly. Then he smiled his old crazy smile again. “You talk just like me.” He laughed, and Misterwizard and the others smiled, feeling less threatened.

  “I hope you are sincere. I may look like a crotchety old man, and I admit that I might appear to suffer from a slight case of psychosis. All right, a big case. I’m crazy!” Reginald cackled darkly. “But I have enough of my faculties left to pull this trigger long before you or your fellow conspirators can stay my hand, be assured of that.”

  “Please, Reginald, give us a chance to prove our fidelity. You say it is a lone figure. I promise you, we will not move from this spot. My only movement will be back and forth from here to Carny’s room to check on her. We will not attempt to escape. All I ask is that you give the person approaching a chance to identify themselves before you shoot them. I give you my word
that if it’s someone from my Tribe, they mean you no harm.”

  Reginald lowered the gun but narrowed his eyes, trying to look tough and frightening, but his old age, long gray hair and spindly body didn’t help make him convincing. “Very well, you, and you alone, my traverse from this room to the other. If any of move in the direction of the Ready Room, I will shoot you all before you take two steps! I have six bullets and there’s only, well, seven of you, but two are sick so they don’t count!”

  Reginald backed to the door and opened it. “I will greet this party crasher and discover her true intentions. If she is the vanguard of a larger invasion force, she will rue the day she tangled with the son of the son of the President! I am perfectly capable of defending my position. In fact, I have enough firepower to fight off the whole Polish army!” Reginald cackled again, his face lit up with laughter, and Misterwizard smiled and chuckled too. “My grandfather was not a well-liked man, for very good reason, since he started the whole shooting match. He expected an invading force to come and try to give him recompense, and so he filled this place with weaponry. We survived a nuclear war, we can survive anything!”

  With these words, Reginald walked out. Misterwizard, Thegap and Bathandbodyworks waited nervously, wondering what was going to happen.

  Ripper and the Gangers hid behind the broken stick building and crept up to where they could see the crowd of Wildies congregated on the grassy Mall. Ripper looked at the dirty, broken down shacks and studied the crowd of Wildies. Facegash moved up silently to stand next to him. “Look at all of them, Ripper. How we gonna take ‘em all?”

  Ripper smiled coldly. “They’re all sheep. They won’t be any trouble. All we have to do is find their Leader Nordstrom. We kidnap him and torture him a little and he’ll do whatever we say. Then we’ll be in charge. We’ll have all these stupid, worthless Wildies serving us. Then we’ll have even more people to help us take care of Johnny and his Tribe for good.”

  Facegash looked across the Mall to the other side at the Capitol. His eyes opened wide in excitement. He looked at Ripper and pointed at the Capitol. “Look, Ripper! That must be their king! And looks who’s with him! Johnny and Starbucks!”

  “And not only that, look, there’s that worm-beastie Leader Nordstrom!” Lady Stabs said from where she stood a few feet away.

  Ripper scowled, disappointed that it seemed like they’d arrived too late.

  As the Gangers watched, Lord Algon, Leader Nordstrom, Johnny and Starbucks all walked out of the old Capitol. They strode across the grassy Mall, heading somewhere with the crowd of Wildies following, yelling and jabbering. “Johnny and the Tribe are already making an alliance with him!” Facegash said.

  “I don’t know,” said Lady Stabs “Look, Johnny and Starbucks’ hands are tied. And so are Leader Nordstrom’s.”

  “Yeah!” Facegash said, smiling. “What do you think, Ripper?”

  “That might not mean anything,” Ripper said, scowling. “Knowing Johnny, he’ll still find a way to make a pact with the guy. We gotta move fast. We got to create a distraction and grab the Wildies’ king. Then we’ll make him change his mind. He’ll decide to align with us or lose some fingers or maybe some teeth.”

  Facegash laughed. “So, what’s your plan?”

  Ripper held up one of the sticks with the string. “We still have some of old Misterwizard’s toys we found. It’s about to get a lot more fun around here.”

  Ripper, Facegash and the rest of the Gangers laughed with evil glee.

  Super hurried down the dark passageway. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. She slowed to a walk and put her hands in front of her, feeling her way. The darkness was so thick it felt like a heavy blanket on top of her, smothering her. The air was stale and unmoving, and she grew scared.

  “MIsterwizard!” Super yelled. The sound of her voice seemed to die two feet in front of her. It was stuffy and hot. Sweat formed all over her body and on her face. She crept along, dread filling her, no matter how much she tried to ignore it. Her heart beat fast. What if she turned the wrong way and took the wrong passage? She might wander for hours, maybe days, and be trapped, and no one would ever find her. She tried to put the thought out of her head, but it came back again and again like an annoying itch. Finally, she set her jaw in stubborn determination. She was risking a lot, maybe her life, but it didn’t matter. She determined to keep going until she found Misterwizard, no matter what it took.

  A cold breeze chilled her face, and the utter darkness made her feel woozy.

  “Misterwizard!” She whispered loudly. “Misterwizard! Where are you?”

  Suddenly a dark, sinister voice sounded from somewhere in the dark. “Who are you, to darken my halls? And what has it gots in its pocketsess?”

  Super couldn’t help but squeak in fear. She stopped and pulled her arms to her chest. She peered around in the dark but couldn’t tell where the voice came from. She turned one way, then the other, expecting to be jumped on at any minute.

  “I’m Super,” Super squeaked. “I’m looking for Misterwizard. Have you seen him?”

  “Super, you say? Super-duper, or Super-size? Supercilious, or Superficial? Or are you just Superior? Is that your real name, or are you just being superlative? Come, come; tell me the truth!”

  “My real name is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Even with her fear, Super couldn’t help but smile with pride as she said her name. “It’s a special name, the only one like it in the whole world. Misterwizard gave it to me.”

  Reginald burst into cackling laughter, so much that he sat down on the ground. Super tiptoed forward and found him sitting in the corner, out of breath with tears in his eyes. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. My, my, that’s a kicker! I haven’t heard that word since I was a little boy! Your Misterwizard is a hoot!”

  Super smiled, losing her fear as she squinted to see the strange old man sitting on the floor. “Do you know where he is? I have to find him right away! Some people are trying to break in! They have Johnny and Starbucks! The Tribe is in danger!”

  Her words snapped Reginald out of his fit of laughter. “Misterwizard said it was something like that. Jingo, I’m glad he was telling the truth! Come, come, I’ll take you to him! No time to waste!”

  Reginald pulled a torch from under his clothes and lit it. The sudden light hurt Super’s eyes and she covered them with her hand. Reginald grabbed her other hand and started running. Super had no choice but to run along with him.

  “We’re off to see Misterwizard!” Reginald howled with laughter.Once again down the long passageway Reginald ran, this time with Super in tow and trying to keep up.

  Johnny, Starbucks and Leader Nordstrom, hands tied, followed behind Lord Algon’s entourage towards the Museum. Lord Algon sat on a portable throne carried on the shoulders of four of his guards. The Wildies followed, hooting, hollering and pointing at the prisoners and having a great time, for nothing like this had ever happened in the city before. But Johnny knew that for him and Starbucks, things were very dangerous. He knew Lord Algon and the Wildies headed for Misterwizard and the Tribe, for he’d listened when the old man told Lord Algon all about the buses he found. Johnny just hoped that Super would reach Misterwizard and the Tribe and warn them about the huge mob heading their way before it arrived, or the Tribe would be totally unprepared.

  Johnny turned to Starbucks. In a voice that only Starbucks could hear, he said, “Leader Nordstrom is going to do whatever he need to in order to save his own life, even if it means betraying the Tribe. We have to prove to Lord Algon what a rat Leader Nordstrom is.”

  Starbucks nodded. “If Leader Nordstrom convinces Lord Algon that he is still the leader of the Tribe, things could go really bad for Misterwizard.”

  “Whatever happens, we have to be ready to protect the Tribe,” Johnny said. “Even if-“

  “I know,” Starbucks said, not letting Johnny finish. “Even if we die, I want to see Leader Nordstrom gets what he deserves.” Johnny nodd
ed in agreement. Then they both stopped talking and watched the road ahead.

  Soon they reached the Museum and Johnny saw the buses. As soon as they saw them, the Wildies shouted with excitement, ran to the buses and climbed inside. As Lord Algon, Johnny and the rest grew closer, Johnny could see the Wildies throwing things out the windows of the buses where other Wildies quickly grabbed them and fought over them.

  “Avast, we have reached the port where ye Tribe be moored,” Lord Algon said from his throne in the air. “Won’t be long now ‘fore we discover who be tellin’ the truth, and who be joining Davy Jones in his locker.”

  Starbucks whispered to Johnny. “I sure wish he’d stop with that weird talking jazz. It’s really beginning to give me a headache.” Starbucks grinned, and Johnny grinned back at him.

  “Get ready. We’re going to have to act soon.”

  Chapter 3

  Ripper and the Gangers watched the procession wind its way behind the buildings on the side of the Mall until they reached the Museum of American History. Then they crept up to where they could see the back of the Museum and the buses.

  “Look, Ripper!” Facegash yelled. “The buses! They found the Tribe!”

  “Then it’s time to act!” Ripper pulled out his knife and the dynamite he’d stashed. All the Gangers pulled out their guns and knives too. “It looks like they’re busy looting the buses. We need to get to ‘em before they get inside. When I say go, we go. It’s time to start this party!”

  Lord Algon lifted a hand, and his guards set him on the ground. He stood up and watched the Wildies rush to the door of the Museum. Johnny worked feverishly on the ropes tying his hands. Starbucks noticed, and started to do the same thing.

  “This is it, Johnny,” Starbucks whispered. “We’re going to have to fight for the Tribe!”

  “Hurry and get your ropes off, Starbucks. We have to find a way to slow them down!”