Everwild

Clearly the Ripper had never thought of this.

"You have till the count of three." Nick reached for the pin, ready to pull it. "One ... two ..." "Fine!" The Ripper went over to Joh

The Ripper then scrambled over the vertically mounted chairs and reached up toward the spacecraft's control panel--then hit a button.

A hatch popped open like a trapdoor right beneath poor Joh

"Was that really necessary?" shouted Nick.

"You're next!" threatened the Ripper.

Nick was angry enough to pull the pin on the grenade and blow them both to smithereens, but he fought the urge, found a foothold, and climbed toward the Ripper.

"We're just here to talk! Why can't you calm down long enough to listen!"

"I warned you!" said the Ripper, and he reached in through Nick's chest, gripped his grubby hands around Nick's memory of a heart, and tugged.

To the amazement of them both, the Ripper did not get Nick's heart at all. Instead his hand came out covered in chocolate.

It surprised Nick as much as the Ripper, but he tried not to show it.

The Ripper stared at his hand, then at Nick, and for the first time the cranky Confederate Afterlight was truly frightened. "What ... are you ... ?"

And although Nick never, ever used the words himself, seeing the Ripper's cocoa-coated hand brought home a growing reality he could no longer deny.

"I am the Chocolate Ogre," Nick said. "And you've made me very ... VERY ... MAD!"

The look of terror on the Ripper's face was the most satisfying thing Nick had seen for a very long time. The Ripper's eyes were locked by Nick's angry gaze, and all the fight drained out of him. There was something about the Ripper's eyes--something about his face that wasn't quite right. Nick wasn't sure what it was, so he filed it away in his mind.

"What are you going to do to me?" the Ripper asked.

"Nothing. If you let my friend go."

Despite his fear of the Chocolate Ogre, the Ripper hesitated ... but he did quickly glance to a particular green button on the console--a button covered by a clear plastic flap to prevent it from being pressed accidentally.

This, Nick knew, was a "tell." The Ripper's eyes had just given away exactly which button to push that would free Joh

"No! Don't!"

Nick savored the look of terrified helplessness on the Ripper's face for a moment. Then he pressed the green button.

Upon taking up residence in the shuttle many years ago, the Afterlight known as Zach the Ripper had gotten rid of the craft's original payload--a bunch of satellites and experiments that weren't doing anyone in Everlost any good. Besides, the massive cargo hold was the perfect place for the Ripper to store Everlost's finest weapon collection.

The Ripper had weapons and artillery of all kinds. Having developed an intimate knowledge of every military base within a hundred miles, the Ripper knew exactly where to find the best arms, and was highly skilled at ripping items--even heavy, awkward ones--from the living world, and into Everlost.

Living-world news reports regularly told of weapons disappearing. "Military mismanagement," the reports would say, because the rational world demanded rational explanations. The one time an unlucky marine dared to tell the truth of what he saw (a hand that reached in through a hole in space, waved to him, then disappeared with an AK-47 rifle), nobody believed it. The man was sent for psychological evaluation, and then promptly discharged from military service.

The Ripper did not know or care about such consequences. All that mattered was the collection, which filled two thirds of the cargo hold ... until the day Nick opened the cargo hold doors.

To Joh

In the flight deck, Nick had, for one crazy instant, thought the cargo door motor was the boosters igniting, and that by hitting the button, he had just blasted them all off into orbit.

"Now you done it!" said the Ripper, hitting the button again and again, but the opening sequence couldn't stop once it started. "Those doors'll swing open wide--and it's all your stupid fault!" He peeked down into the hold, groaning, then ran for the entry hatch. Nick followed. They scurried down the unwieldy scaffold as the craft's huge cargo doors slowly, slowly opened. Once they reached the bottom, and Nick had a view of the cargo hold, he could see that it held a tottering haystack in shades of khaki and gunmetal gray. Gun muzzles and rifle butts stuck out every which way, but far worse than those were the rounded tips and tail fins randomly poking out of the weapon pile.

"Are those ... bombs?"

"Mortar shells, surface-to-air missiles, smart bombs," the Ripper said, with a hint of pride. "You know--the good stuff."

The pile shifted as the doors continued to swing open. Several rifles fell out and toppled to the earth hundreds of feet below. Kudzu jumped out of the way, barking madly. And on top of the pile of weapons sat Joh

"Don't move!" screamed Nick.

"Kudzu!" screamed the Ripper. "C'mere, boy!" The dog came ru

"It's okay," Joh

But he didn't have the view Nick did. Nick could see the shifting of gun muzzles and rifle butts. Everything was starting to slide.

Then Nick thought of something.

"Your coin!" Nick shouted.

Joh

"Take your coin!" Nick said. "Hurry!"

"I don't got it! I put it back in the bucket."

"What? Why did you do that?"

"For safekeeping!"

Meanwhile the Ripper was in a panic as he struggled to free Kudzu. Nick went up to him, and the Ripper looked at Nick wild-eyed. "You stay away from my dog!"

Nick ignored him, knelt down, and quickly unhooked the chain from the dog's collar. "Now run!" ordered Nick.

The Ripper didn't need a second invitation. He took off sprinting, putting distance between himself and the tottering stockpile of artillery, with Kudzu at his heels. "Just jump!" Nick called up to Joh