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.

Johnnie-O should have had it in his back pocket. So it would be there when he finally felt the urge to move on. Right now would be a good moment to feel that urge— because just as Nick told the Ripper, Everlost physics was not an exact science, and not even Mary had written about what happens to an Afterlight that gets blown up.

“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 Johnnie-O, but instead of jumping Johnnie-O leaped from the stockpile to the wall of the cargo hold, and found a metal ridge to cling to—but the force of his jump set the mound of guns and explosives toppling. It all began a long cascade, out of the shuttle, to the ground below.

Now Nick was the one in danger, and he ran for cover— afraid to dive into the underbrush of the living world, for fear that diving would take him into the ground, where he’d begin the long, slow sink to the center of the earth. And so he ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

He was barely twenty yards away when the first bomb hit the ground.

One of the basic natural laws that one learns early in Everlost is that things that cross over always do what they were meant to do. Boats float, airships fly, and appliances run even if they’re not plugged in. Unfortunately the same thing goes for bombs. They explode—especially bombs that were ecto-ripped, and had no good reason to be in Everlost in the first place.

If anyone had been watching they would have thought the shuttle was lifting off. Flame and smoke blasted from the ground beneath the great spacecraft, expanding as the explosions multiplied and merged into a single massive blast.

Nick was blown off his feet, and sent soaring through the air. Shrapnel tore through him—jagged, burning pieces of metal that left huge Swiss-cheese holes all over his body— and still the explosions grew louder behind him.