Also by Kevin John Scott
Frederik Sandwich and the Earthquake that Couldn’t Possibly Be
Thank you for downloading this Sourcebooks eBook!
You are just one click away from…
• Being the first to hear about author happenings
• VIP deals and steals
• Exclusive giveaways
• Free bonus content
• Early access to interactive activities
• Sneak peeks at our newest titles
Happy reading!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2019 by Kevin John Scott
Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks
Cover illustration © Gilbert Ford
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Young Readers, an imprint of Sourcebooks Kids
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebookskids.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Frederik Sandwich and the Earthquake That Couldn’t Possibly Be
Back Cover
For Milo, Jessie, Niamh, and Erin.
May you light up the world like fireworks!
Prologue
Two Short Weeks Before Her Ladyship the Mayor’s International Midsummer Festival
On Frederik’s Hill by King Frederik’s Park in an orderly office high in Municipal Hall, there stood a woman: A serious woman who people took seriously. A woman of position, a woman of influence. A woman in a very bad mood.
“What the flipping festering devil,” she demanded, “is this?”
She flung the morning newspaper across her desk. Her desk was enormous. Enormous and orderly. The paper slid all the way across and fell off the other side onto her enormous, orderly floor.
Two tall detectives in identical, dark suits stared down at it. One of them cleared his throat a bit, but neither dared say a word.
Her Ladyship the Mayor of Frederik’s Hill turned to her window in a fury. Her window was broad and high and spotlessly clean. Frederik’s Square lay below her, a fountain at its heart. The finest stores and delicatessens lined Frederik’s Avenue. Factory chimneys and the massive cylindrical vats of the brewery stood proud on her skyline. All of Her Ladyship’s sources of revenue, taxes, and tariffs stretched before her. Frederik’s Hill was an economic marvel, respected near and far. Thanks to her. It had taken years. Decades, in fact. Patience and grit. A ruthless attention to detail. And no one—no one—was going to get in her way. Not now, when she was so tantalizingly close to her long-awaited payoff.
One of the detectives retrieved the paper. “‘Children Flee from Zombies,’” he read.
She placed her fingertips on the enormous, orderly desk. “Zombies!” she shouted.
“I didn’t know we had any,” the detective said.
“We don’t!”
“No. Right. Of course. But it’s on the front page, Your Ladyship.”
“I am well aware which page it’s on,” she barked. “If I say there are no zombies, there are no zombies. I want to know who allowed this to be printed.”
The detectives shuffled their feet and inspected their toes.
“Thomas is the editor, ma’am, as you know. Thomas Dahl Dalby. But he’s loyal. Totally trustworthy. If Thomas says there are zombies, there must be something behind it. I wonder where he got the story from?”
Her Ladyship scowled and snarled. “From a fantasist. A saboteur. I want the presses stopped. I want the internet erased. Is that clear? I want all references to zombies rooted out and removed!”
“Like before, ma’am? With the earthquake?”
“Yes, exactly like that. This is catastrophic.”
Her Ladyship caught herself grinding her teeth again. Her dentist had told her not to. But despite her position and all her staff, it seemed she still had to take care of everything herself.
Two months had passed since an accidental “earthquake” almost derailed her glide toward international fame. Every day since, she had fought to restore the right impression. Impressions were everything. She’d appeared on TV, online, and on the radio, radiating calm. She had spoken at meetings and malls, paving the way for her Midsummer Festival, creating a buzz. Souvenir programs were in the stores. Little, decorative flags fluttered above the streets. All mention, all notion, of anything untoward had been thoroughly buried. Her mishap with the fountains, her humiliation in front of the zoological society—silenced. Until this!
She drummed her fingers on the polished desktop.
“That moronic elephant keeper,” she growled. “He was mumbling about zombies. Remember? During that nightmarish meeting at the zoo.”
“We don’t talk about that, Your Ladyship.”
“I know we don’t! But now we do. Is that clear?”
“Erm, right. Yes. No.”
“Did it leak?”
“No, Your Ladyship. No, no. Not a peep.”
“Are you sure?” Far too many respectable voters had witnessed her embarrassment—nasty kids confronting her, an elephant peeing all over her shoes and her spotless public image.
“Absolutely. Definitely. We spoke to everybody who was there, face-to-face, one-on-one, eye-to-eye. Told them exactly what would happen if they talked. We put a lid on the whole thing. Sealed it up, ma’am. Sank it like an elephant in a lake.”
She glared at the detective. Mortensen. Or was it Martensen? It didn’t matter. “You got to everyone who was there? Without exception? What about that Hotdog hoodlum?”
“We caught up with him next day, Your Ladyship,” the other detective said. “He parks his cart by the ice rink. He wasn’t hard to find.”
Her Ladyship stiffened. “He parks a hot dog cart by the ice rink? At the entrance to the Garden Park? The main entrance?”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
“That’s entirely wrong!” Heat was rushing to her face now. Her jaw ached from the grinding. “My festival guests are going to use that entrance. The ambassadors, the foreign VIPs, the queen! I will not have a filthy peddler waving hot dogs at the queen!”
“Of course. We’ll deal with that.”
“Do it now!”
“We’ll close him down, ma’am. Revoke his license. He’ll never sell a sausage in a public place again. We should have thought of that before.”
“You should have thought of that before!”
“We should have.”
“You should have!”
She snatched the paper from the detective’s hand and stared at the headline again.
“Zombies!” she yelled. “Again! And children!” And a thought struck her. A horrible thought. “There were children at the zoo. The ones who appeared from nowhere. The tall one and the short one. What about them? What happened to them?”
“Ah,” said Martensen—or was it Mortensen? “Never actually identified, Your Ladyship. Actually. Tricky, that one, actually. Erm. Not seen since, you see. Long gone. Over the hills and far away. But they won’t be back. They weren’t even local. You could tell just by looking at them.”
Her Ladyship glared at each detective in turn. “Then how did this zombie hysteria get out? Tell me that!”
“We’ll find out, Your Ladyship. We’ll track it to the source and deal with it.”
“Thoroughly, this time.”
“Understood.”
“Ruthlessly!”
“Got it.”
“You are authorized to use whatever means are necessary. Whatever means.”
The detectives nodded, exchanged a glance, and were reluctant to meet her eye.
“Is there a problem?” she demanded. “Are you too squeamish for this? Mortensen? Martensen?”
“No problem, Your Ladyship. No problem at all.”
“Then get on with it.”
She turned her back on them, dismissing them with a wave of her hand. She watched from her window as buses and bicycles puttered by, far below, on her busy, prosperous streets. The morning haze was burning away. Flags curled in the cool summer breeze. Beyond the buildings, the long, green sweep of the Garden Park stretched all the way up to the castle on the hill.
Two more weeks.
Just two more weeks of preparations, planning, and publicity. Two short weeks until her International Midsummer Festival—the fireworks, the VIPs, fine local cuisine. No fountains, to her great frustration. She’d been forced to abandon that plan. But Her Majesty the Queen would be there, and the eyes of the world would fall upon Frederik’s Hill—and on Her Ladyship, at last.
“Zombies,” she muttered in cold fury. “Zombies!”
Nothing would get in her way. Nothing and no one.
Chapter 1
Reckless Miss Adventure
“Muffin!”
Again?
“Yoo-hoo, muffin, dear!”
Seriously? It wasn’t that Frederik Sandwich disliked Pernille’s company. Wasn’t that at all. But there was such a surprising amount of her company to cope with. He was heading home now. He’d said goodbye. He was hurrying down the pedestrian walkway from Frederik’s Shopping Mall toward Frederik’s Hospital. It wasn’t the quickest route home, but it was out of sight of Municipal Hall. These days, they steered clear of Municipal Hall. Anyone might be watching from those windows.
“Let’s climb the new observation tower,” called Pernille.
“It’s three hundred years old. It isn’t new.”
“But it’s newly opened to the public.”
“No. I need to go and do something.”
“What thing?”
“Anything. A thing. Some things. Does it matter what things?”
“Everything you do matters to me, muffin. I’ve got your back. I am the marvelous Miss Adventure, and you are my sidekick. You may be a mini-sized, funny-talking misfit, but you are the Toto to my Dorothy, the sandwich to my soup.”
“Good grief.”
“Go on. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
The tower was dead ahead, a stout cylinder of brickwork, ancient lettering on its face. Narrow, arched windows were sparsely spaced around its sides. The mayor had opened it one week ago—part of her campaign to impress the world. A prelude to her International Midsummer Festival on Frederik’s Hill.
“No. We can’t,” he said. “It’s too risky.”
The mayor was as popular as ever, the earthquake all but forgotten. Hardly anyone understood how dangerous she was. She might have cameras up in that tower. Listening devices. Spies and informers.
“But it’s so deliciously tempting,” Pernille said. “Think of the views from up there, above the rooftops, looking out across the Garden Park.”
And she was right. They’d be able to see the city beyond with all its spires and domes. Maybe catch a glimpse of the suspension bridge in the far distance stretching over the sea to another country.
“Just a peek, muffin. You know you want to.”
“No. We can’t. And my name is not ‘muffin’. How many times have I told you?”
“But I like muffins. Much more than sandwiches. And I like you too. Ergo, de facto. Sorry, but there it is.”
He hurried on, head down, hoping she would give up. He was done for today. Enough of her endless chatter. Apartment blocks rose six floors ahead of him. Early summer sunlight bounced off their windows. Raucous children ran around with ice creams. Bicycles whizzed by, freewheeling riders laughing out loud. Frederik kept walking. Didn’t look back. Refused to.
Where was she now?
He wouldn’t look. It would only encourage her. Was she behind him? She was bound to be. Right on his heels.
Bother it. Why wouldn’t she give him a break?
He wheeled around. “Stop it!” he said. To no one at all. Just a wide-open space of concrete and lawn, children and cyclists, a tower. Where was she? What was she doing? Where had she gone?
Oh. There. Way over there.
A willowy figure, impossibly tall, her hair as white as winter snow and her skin a deep brown. You couldn’t miss her, even from here.
She was ignoring him, hands behind her back, staring up from the base of the tower to the very top.
She made her way to the public entrance, rummaging in the folds of that baggy thing she was wearing. For what? Coins? She never carried them. She wouldn’t get in. They wouldn’t let her. Not without paying. It wasn’t allowed. Not even Pernille could spirit herself through a turnstile in daylight with all these people about.
He watched her dip her head and talk to the hazy face behind the glass of the ticket booth. Nodding, laughing, throwing her arms around happily. Dazzling them. She was dazzling them. Whoever was behind that glass was getting dazzled. He’d fallen for it himself a hundred times, and he still didn’t know how. He resisted every time, but to no avail.
And then she was through, beyond the gate, waving goodbye to her brand new friend and disappearing into the base of the tower.
Frederik groaned out loud, put a hand to his head, and screwed his eyes shut. Anyone might be up there. People they needed to stay away from. Why was she always so reckless? They weren’t safe yet. She knew that.
Just two months earlier, they had greatly disrupted a prominent public event. You never ever did that on Frederik’s Hill. Ever. They had gone to the zoo with good intentions: to save the life of the mayor. But the mayor was not the role model everyone imagined. She had caused and then ruthlessly covered up an earthquake, and only Frederik and Pernille knew the truth. The mayor’s detectives had almost caught them that night. An elephant had intervened, and a secret, underground train had swept them to safety. But were they out of the woods? No.
> They’d lain low ever since. For more than two months. Kept a low profile, stayed out of sight—and getting Pernille to stay out of sight was about as easy as hiding a lighthouse in a busy public street, a deception worthy of the mayor herself. The girl was like a beacon. You could see her from one hundred yards and hear her from three hundred—whether you wanted to or not. For Frederik, it was easy to pass unnoticed. He was short for his age and wholly unremarkable to look at. But Pernille Yasemin Jensen was as un-unremarkable as it got. She absolutely shouldn’t go up that tower!
The top of it opened out to a viewing platform. People up there, of course. It was quite the attraction, especially on a sunny Saturday afternoon. He couldn’t see her. Not yet. No mess of white hair among the others looking down at him.
Hold on.
Why were those others looking down at him?
The sun was bright, and he had to squint to figure out who it was.
Oh no!
And Pernille heading up there on her own!
He shielded the sun with the flat of a hand. Was he right? Yes. Erica Engel, hateful. Frederik Dahl Dalby, worse. And Calamity Claus, calamitous.
And when Pernille reached the top of that tower, it would be more than calamity. It would be bad words and bitter battle and all in public. Not low profile at all!
So now he was jogging. Not going home. Not getting the downtime he had hoped for. That wasn’t happening. Instead, he was running over the lawn to the base of the tower and thrusting some money at the face behind the glass. How much? That much? To climb a tower? Were they serious?
Into the cool of a gray-walled passage. A tiled floor spiraling upward. Splashes of light from the narrow windows as he puffed uphill. Glimpses through glass of the mall in the distance. Trees. The back of the library. The upper windows of apartment blocks. The orange slope of the roofs. Chimneys. Sky.
“Wait for me,” he muttered. “Pernille, wait for me.”
He was out of breath. His face was hot. His footsteps slapped on the tiles. A door to the open air. He stumbled outside. He stopped, panting, no idea which way he was pointing.
“Flipper-rack.” Erica Engel, his nastiest of neighbors, emerged from the blaze of sunlight, sneering. “You’re here too? They are letting their standards slip.”
Frederik Sandwich and the Mayor Who Lost Her Marbles Page 1
