Gorilla Tactics

by Sheila Grau

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Grau, Sheila.

  Gorilla tactics / by Sheila Grau; illustrated by Joe Sutphin.

  pages cm.—(Dr. Critchlore’s School for Minions; book 2)

  Summary: Cursed to die on his sixteenth birthday, Runt Higgins must find answers at the Great Library, as Dr. Critchlore takes desperate measures to save his monster boarding school from being sold.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-1371-2 (hardback)—eISBN 978-1-61312-893-0 (e-book)

  [1. Monsters—Fiction. 2. Blessing and cursing—Fiction. 3. Boarding schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Sutphin, Joe, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.1.G73Go 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015027699

  Text copyright © 2016 Sheila Grau

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 Joe Sutphin

  Book design by Jessie Gang and Julia Marvel

  Published in 2016 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

  115 West 18th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.abramsbooks.com

  FOR MY PARENTS, JOAN AND BOB JACK

  CONTENTS

  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

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  There can be no dominion without a minion.

  —DR. CRITCHLORE, SPEAKING AT THE EVIL OVERLORDS OF TOMORROW CONFERENCE

  Terror arrived that afternoon dressed as a Girl Explorer pulling a wagon filled with cookie boxes. I watched her stride up the long, cypress tree–lined drive as if it were a suburban road and not the grounds of a highly secured minion school. Well, it was supposed to be highly secured. We’d just suffered multiple acts of sabotage and hadn’t completely recovered.

  She wore a beret over her pigtails, and her vest was covered with colorful badges. When the sunlight snuck through the trees to spotlight her face, I could see the freckles on her nose.

  “I hope she has Monster Clump Sugar Bombs,” my friend Frankie said. He stood next to me with his creator, Dr. Frankenhammer, and Dr. Frankenhammer’s new dragon. They’d been about to take off on a father-son dragon ride, now that Dr. Critchlore’s post-assembly reception was winding down.

  “That issss no Girl Explorer,” Dr. Frankenhammer said, and the look on his face made my heart rate jump to “it’s time to flee” speed. Dr. Frankenhammer, with his sunken dark eyes and his wild white hair, was probably the scariest teacher in the school. If a little Girl Explorer made him nervous, that meant something was very wrong.

  “How do you know?” I asked. What had his highly trained scientific eye noticed?

  “Nobody that young could have earned so many badgesss. I was sssixteen before I earned my Excellence in Explosivesss badge.”

  “You were a Girl Explorer?”

  He didn’t answer. He stroked his dragon, who had started fidgeting and seemed anxious to get away from the little girl. Frankie reached for his neck and started twisting one of the bolts there, his nervous habit.

  As the girl approached, I noticed that the shadow she cast wasn’t right. It looked like the shadow of a wolf or some other beast. The cypress trees, normally filled with chirping birds, became eerily quiet as she walked past. I reached for my medallion, resting on the outside of my shirt.

  As soon as I touched my necklace, her appearance changed dramatically. The pigtails morphed into horns that curved down around her face. Gray fur covered her body, and her bottom jaw stretched forward, revealing a row of sharp teeth. Claws as big as a velociraptor’s scraped the ground at the end of unnaturally long arms. Her hind legs were huge, like a kangaroo’s.

  “She’s a beast,” I gasped. “And those aren’t cookies.” Her wagon was filled with a squirming mass of worms, each the size of a swimming-pool noodle. “They’re . . . they’re . . . they’re spewing!” They coughed up little blobs of phlegm that landed on the ground and smoked.

  Dr. Frankenhammer reached into his lab coat and pulled out a pair of glasses with blue lenses. “Those wormsss are the Minion Saboteurs I sent to the Pravusss Academy last week,” he said. “Someone hasss put a glamour on them. But how can you see through it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just happened.”

  “Dr. Pravus is playing gamesss,” Dr. Frankenhammer said. “Returning my failed Minion Saboteurs with one of the Girl Explorers he used to embarrass usss.”

  “Pravus,” I said. Of course this monster was one of Dr. Pravus’s minions. He and Miss Merrybench had been behind all the catastrophes that had plagued our school recently. Dr. Frankenhammer had sent the Minion Saboteurs as revenge, but apparently they’d been found out.

  “Frankie, I need the MonsssterTrapper,” Dr. Frankenhammer said. “Then go alert Dr. Critchlore.” Frankie sped off in a blur, ten times faster than a normal human. Dr. Frankenhammer squeezed his dragon’s flank, and a ball of fire shot straight at the Girl Explorer. I winced, expecting her to be severely singed, but she opened her mouth and swallowed the fireball.

  “Interesssting,” Dr. Frankenhammer said. “Higginssss, get everyone to safety.”

  I would have obeyed immediately, but the monster lunged forward like a missile. I let go of my medallion, and the beast immediately looked like a little girl again. I froze; it was just so bizarre watching a little girl bound forward with leaps that spanned ten meters. Before I could move, she had me pinned to the ground.

  Dr. Frankenhammer’s dragon took to the sky, nearly ripping off his master’s arm in the process. The good doctor looked down at me and then slowly backed away.

  I couldn’t move. The girl leaned over me, her face inches from my own. Her girl face. I closed my eyes, waiting for the worst while trying not to imagine it. But trying not to imagine the worst just made me imagine it. She was going to eat my face.

  “Hey, look! Higgins has a girlfriend.” Rufus Spaniel’s voice drifted over fro
m the grassy area where everybody was enjoying an outdoor buffet after the assembly. Rufus was the alpha werewolf of my grade, and when he talked, people listened. Or, more accurately, when he taunted, people laughed. The laughter didn’t bother me; I was relieved that they’d noticed me.

  I could barely breathe. This tiny girl was as heavy as a full-grown troll. Where had Dr. Frankenhammer gone? He was supposed to help me. Wasn’t that a Girl Explorer motto? “Never leave a girl behind”?

  “C’mon, Higgs,” a raspy voice said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a pack of imps coming closer, Spanky in front. “Throw her off, ya scrawny wimp.”

  “Can’t. She’s too strong.”

  “She’s a child!” Rufus said. “Hey, everybody! Look at Higgins, pinned by a little girl.”

  Judging by the laughter that filled the air, everyone was watching me now. The girl didn’t care. A line of saliva leaked from her mouth and burned my cheek. I twisted my head from side to side, trying to fling it off.

  “Help me!” I screamed.

  More laughter.

  But then the laughter turned to gasps. I opened my eyes and saw the monster, not the girl. She squinted and turned her head to the side, as if someone was shining a bright light in her face. A safe distance behind me, Dr. Frankenhammer held something that looked like a flashlight behind his blue glasses. The beast growled, and I heard the rumble of footsteps as my classmates deserted me.

  The monster moved off me and roared at my fleeing classmates, keeping a hand (paw?) on my chest. I tried to push the arm off, but it was like trying to move a tree trunk.

  A high-pitched scream tore through the air, much higher than the monster’s roar. It was the kind made by girls, or my friend Darthin. A blur of movement swooshed toward my attacker.

  Syke!

  I’d never seen her look so determined. She crashed into the monster like it was the finals of tackle three-ball and the beast was about to score. But Syke’s most powerful tackle didn’t budge my attacker. She bounced off the monster, looking dazed.

  Claws ripped through my shirt, catching on my medallion. The monster’s hand looked so powerful, and those claws could shred my chest with nothing more than a twitch.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  She looked down at me, then back at the wall of my minion friends, now watching from the castle steps. She did a double take back to me, staring at my chest. Her mouth approached my head. I closed my eyes, my heart pounding with panic. She sniffed my hair.

  In a flash, she released me.

  “You are fameely,” she said, her deep voice sounding throaty and hoarse. “Forgeeve me.”

  I sat up, shaking my head. Did she just call me family?

  Not everything is as it seems. Like candy-shaped soap. There’s a rude surprise.

  —DR. FRANKENHAMMER, EXPLAINING GLAMOURS

  What . . . who . . . what are you?” I asked the monster, now bowing before me. “Why did you call me family?”

  “Waiting for you, young one, to free us from Pravus,” she said.

  “Me? Why?”

  “We are Ohtee,” she said. “We were stolen from fameely. Only fameely can free us from Pravus. We want to go home to the broken place.”

  “You think I’m Ohtee?” I said. “Where is the broken place? What’s Ohtee?”

  She roared at my classmates, who had stepped closer.

  “You’re not going to hurt anybody, are you?” I asked.

  “No. Orders are to return worms, deleever message to Critchlore. I’m to say, ‘Ha ha ha ha ha, you lose.’ Make sure it is at least five has. Then orders say to leave. But you are from the fameely. I take orders from you now.”

  Huh? I was about to ask another question when a steel trap snapped shut around her. Dr. Frankenhammer walked toward me holding a Dr. Critchlore’s MonsterTrapper™, which had been invented by Dr. Frankenhammer. It was an ingenious device, a bazooka that shot a net of material as strong as steel, but flexible. Once the monster was trapped in the net, the thick steel “strings” expanded until they touched one another, resulting in an inescapable bag.

  “Can she breathe?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” Dr. Frankenhammer said. The bag jumped around. “We have to dispose of the beast.”

  “What? No!”

  “Higginssss, that thing is responsible for the bad press this sssschool has gotten. Remember that embarrassssing video?”

  Of course I did. “Epic Minion Fail” showed a troop of Girl Explorers chasing last year’s graduates off a cliff. Zombie brains! It made sense now. They might have looked like little girls, but they were really these hideous monsters.

  And then I remembered that Miss Merrybench had said that Pravus called the girls land piranhas, and that they could strip an animal to its bones in seconds. I had thought she was crazy (she was), but maybe she knew something.

  “She called me family,” I said.

  “Don’t be ridiculousss.” Dr. Frankenhammer waved a hand, and four security guards came running. “Dispose of the—”

  “Wait! It’s true,” Syke said. She brushed herself off and stood up next to me. “The monster bowed down to him and called him family.”

  I looked at her and felt the surprise I should have felt when she’d thrown herself at the monster. Tree nymphs aren’t known for their fighting ability, but then Syke was only half tree nymph. I think her other half was Holy Terror from the Skies.

  She held a Wind and Fire Wheel, which is a metal ring rimmed with seven curving blades. It looked like a flat silver sun.

  Dr. Frankenhammer shook his head, then held out his hand for Syke’s weapon, which she wasn’t allowed to have because she was Dr. Critchlore’s ward, not a minion-in-training. She handed it over with a shrug.

  “Take the beast to my lab,” he said to the security team. “Keep three guards posted.”

  The security guards lifted the steel sack, which wasn’t moving anymore. I really hoped that thing was okay.

  “You two return to the reception,” Dr. Frankenhammer said. “Or you can help me round up my wormsss.”

  We chose the reception. Shocking, I know.

  But the party had died down to a handful of ogre-men around a plate of maggoty cheese dip (ogres like it maggoty). That was fine with me because I wasn’t in a party mood. I needed to figure out how I could talk to that monster again.

  I knew I should thank Syke for trying to save me, but I was still mad at her and didn’t want her to think this fixed everything. She was going back into the Runt Higgins Shun Box. I stopped at the grassy ledge next to the castle wall and sat down, turning my back to her. I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote on the bottom.

  “What’s that?” Syke asked, nudging my back. I felt her chin on my shoulder as she peeked over. “A to-do list?”

  I turned farther away. She was right; it was a to-do list. My foster mother, Cook, told me that if I wrote things down, it would help keep me focused.

  “I have one too,” Syke said to my cold shoulder. “It only has one thing on it, though. ‘Get Runt to forgive me for not telling him he’s not a werewolf.’ ”

  Well, that’s not going to happen.

  “Actually, there’s another thing on it. ‘Tell Runt I’d never do anything to hurt him, and I’m going to spend every free moment helping him find his family, whether he talks to me again or not.’ ”

  She hopped off the ledge, leaving.

  “Wait,” I said.

  I know, I know. My Shun Box is useless. It never stays closed.

  Syke turned around, smiling, and pointed to my list. “What’s on yours?”

  “ ‘Number one, find out where I’m from,’ ” I read. “ ‘Number two, find out who cursed me. Number three, ask him-slash-her to remove the curse.’ ”

  When I’d arrived at the school eight years ago, Mistress Moira could tell that I was cursed to die on my sixteenth birthday. I’d only just found this out. It sounds terrifying, but I had Dr. Critchlore’s
staff working to find answers. In other words, the best and the brightest were on the job, so I wasn’t too worried.

  “And now number four,” I said. “ ‘Find out why that monster called me family.’ ”

  I looked down at my medallion, wondering if I’d missed something in the thousands of times I’d examined it. This little metal disk with a wolf’s head in the middle and the funny writing around the edge was the only clue I had to where I came from. What had the beast seen in it? Why could I see through her glamour when I touched it?

  “So weird,” Syke said. “I mean, clearly you’re not related.”

  “But what if we are?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Higgins.” Syke called me an idiot all the time, but I didn’t care, because she was like a sister to me. “Don’t start imagining you’re something you’re not again.”

  I think she regretted saying that the moment the words left her mouth. Yes, I had been an idiot, thinking I was a werewolf. A tremendously huge idiot.

  “I mean . . . ,” she chattered on, but I wasn’t listening. All I could hear was my anger and humiliation boomeranging back at me, just after I’d let it go. Finally, I interrupted her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Syke? You of all people?” We’d grown up at the school together. I knew everything about her: that she hated the dungeon because it smelled of “root rot”; that her favorite color was green—pine-needle green, not moss green; that she had a crush on Frankie; and that she had stolen Professor Portry’s keys so she could sneak into his Battlefield Implements classroom and “borrow” his—er—implements.

  And she knew me better than I knew myself. Obviously, because I had thought I was a werewolf and she had known the truth.

  “Runt,” she said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you the truth. It . . . being a werewolf . . . it was everything to you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Don’t you think it’s worse finding out you’re the laughingstock of the whole school?”

  I stuffed my to-do list in my pocket and walked off, not waiting for an answer.

  If two roads diverge in a wood, one of them is probably a trap.

  —ADVICE FROM DR. CRITCHLORE