I was the kid who hung back when they picked sides in gym, the kid who hid behind his book while Pinkton searched for new blackboard victims. But at that moment I detected the rust trolls’ poison. It was redolent with the rotten-fruit smell of a hospital that stored its dying people in rooms like separate stomachs; it smelled of the underarm sweat of bedraggled middle schoolers on the run from bullies; it carried the sharp stink of the pissed beds of children waking up in their latest foster homes. I coughed out these toxins before I heard the battle cry rumbling up my throat. There was evil in the world and I needed—I wanted—to stop it.

It was a battle both brutal and inspiring. Chaos was the rust trolls’ chief defense. Just as we entered their acrid yellow mist, one tried to sever our feet by coiling itself into a sharp snare. Another writhed like a crackling live wire too dangerous to approach. Still others slingshotted themselves from car antennae. All the while they produced an asthmatic laughter that smelled of tar. But Jack proved himself with the tireless, inventive lancing of hearts and softies, while Blinky fended off several at once with shanks of scrap metal and ARRRGH!!! tore apart vehicles as if they were but papier-mâché nuisances.

Three hours later, the junkyard was a slapdash cemetery. Various serrated objects pinned rust trolls to the dirt as they sniggered their way through their drawn-out deaths. Only two remained. One was eight feet tall and so lean it disappeared when viewed from the side. Its cackle scratched at your brain like nails, and I’d seen ARRRGH!!! slap her ears to drive away encroaching madness. Jack and Blinky came to her aid, cornering the troll against the pulverized hull of a tow truck.

The other rust troll yet to be speared was the same rogue I’d been working on all night. There was nothing notable about the beady-eyed creature aside from a cross-shaped scar on its flat chin. It had drawn blood from me a dozen times, snapping its body like a whip, but for every hit I took I gave back two more, remembering my lessons: rabbit, bull, python. At last my opponent could take no more. With a sputter of laughter, it dove beneath a hill of tires.

Rust trolls, I’d discovered, left an oily black trail in their wake, and I followed it through the center of a tractor tire and over a pile of motorcycle wheels until I was deep inside the mountain of rubber. I spotted my foe pressed against an impermeable stack of tires, spit dripping down its cross-scarred chin. In the distance, I heard Jack’s victorious cry—his battle was nearly won. I surged forward on my knees and brought up Cat #6, the perfect weapon for close quarters.