by Bret Schulte
“Tasha?” Sam and Zoey asked in unison.
“Hey.” She waved with one hand while brushing the dust off her ninja suit with the other.
“There were three of them,” Zoey pointed out.
“I got the third one outside,” Tasha said matter-of-factly. “We should go get the uniform before someone notices it.”
“Uh, hello. Little problem here,” Lucas said. His hands were stuck to his pants.
Doc Frost chuckled deeply. “That’s Perma-glue. Dries in seconds. Strong as steel.”
“What?” Lucas frantically tried to tug his hands free.
“Don’t worry. I have a solvent back at the house that’ll dissolve it right off. That’s why we could never sell the stuff. No one wants a construction adhesive that can turn to soup if someone spills the wrong chemical on it.”
Chapter 13
Freezerburn
Everyone crammed into Doc Frost’s tiny car. Sam was a bit leery of the whole deal. What kind of nerd visits a teacher at their house?
But on the other hand, everyone whose opinion mattered to her was going with her.
Doc Frost’s house was oddly normal. It was a conventional square two-story house in a quiet, sleepy neighborhood so far away from Miller’s Grove Academy that Sam could almost believe that she was in a normal town somewhere. Then again, a lot of horror movies took place in quiet, normal houses in small towns, so it wasn’t that reassuring.
Doc Frost pulled his car into the garage. It barely fit between the tarp-covered car on one side and the pile of old computers next to the door.
Two walls of the garage were nothing but shelf after shelf of machinery, random loose wires, and tools. There was a dusty plastic Santa with eight reindeer parked in a corner next to two boxes labeled LIGHTS and a dingy old lawn mower with solar panels attached to the handle.
“What’s under the tarp?” Zoey asked.
“My candy apple red ’66 Mustang convertible. My own personal pet project,” Doc Frost said.
“Hello! Still glued here,” Lucas whined from the back seat.
“Right, yes. Let’s go save Lucas’ hands,” Doc Frost said, stepping out of the car. “The kitchen is right inside. You girls help yourselves to the refrigerator.”
As far as Sam could tell, aside from the addition of a microwave, the kitchen hadn’t changed since the 1950s. She could only imagine what the food in that ancient refrigerator was like.
“Okay, the solvent is in the basement. We’re going to take this one step at a time.”
Lucas had to stoop to walk down the stairs with his hands glued to his thighs. Doc Frost went first just in case he fell. “Right foot down. Good. Now the left one.”
As soon as they disappeared down the stairs, Tasha threw open the refrigerator.
“Let’s see what we got here. Orange juice, chocolate milk, half a watermelon, uh, mystery stew-“
“What is with you?” Zoey more shouted than asked.
“I’m hungry. Fighting vampires always makes me hungry. What’s the big deal?” Tasha said as she rummaged through the crisper.
“That. That’s it exactly. Why aren’t you freaked out by the vampires? A normal person would be freaked out by vampires. I’m freaked out by the vampires.”
“I grew up with vampires. Well, fighting vampires, actually. It’s no big deal,” Tasha said peeling the lid off off a yogurt container.
“Anyone know who those girls were?” Sam asked.
“Nope.”
“No.”
They stood there in quiet mourning for the girls they never knew.
Sam knew that it was a big school and that they were seniors and she was a freshman, so it was only natural that they had never crossed paths before, but she couldn’t help feeling terrible that she didn’t know anything about them.
“Are they connected to that Cervantes guy?” Zoey asked breaking the silence.
Tasha thrust the spoon back into her yogurt. “How do you know about Prince Cervantes?”
“Sam.”
Way to rat me out, Zoey, Sam thought loudly.
“Sam, are you going around telling everybody about this?” Tasha asked angrily.
“No. I didn’t tell you, did I? How do you know about him anyway?”
“I told you. I grew up with all of this. The Beaumonts have been monster hunters for generations,” Tasha said matter-of-factly.
“Monsters? Like what?” Zoey asked.
“Oh, you know werewolves, zombies, mummies, wendigoes, yetis, all the things that go bump in the night. But mostly vampires. My parents were friends with Sam’s parents, so they told me to watch out for her.”
“You told me your parents owned a lumberyard,” Sam said. Tasha was the first friend she had made at Miller’s Grove. How much of that was based on a lie?
“They do,” Tasha said, gesturing with her spoon. “It’s a brilliant cover, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
It actually was a brilliant cover for a bunch of vampire hunters. But Sam was still mad.
Zoey clapped her hands in triumph. “That’s why you’re always so tired. You stay up all night hunting vampires. So, are you like Sam’s bodyguard?”
Tasha suddenly found something very interesting in her yogurt.
“Sort of.”
“What?” Sam screamed.
“Yeah,” Tasha said sheepishly. She studied the piece of mystery fruit on her spoon.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t supposed to.”
The muscles in Sam’s arms and legs tightened with anger. She could probably bend steel in her bare hands right now. She almost wished she had a metal bar to practice on. Tasha must have picked up on this, because she took a small step backward and kept a watchful eye on Sam’s hands.
Zoey stood there looking from Sam to Tasha and back to Sam. She could obviously feel the tension in the room. Fortunately, Doc Frost came clomping back up the stairs.
“He’ll be all right. Turns out the solvent is a little stronger than I thought. It’s safe on skin, but it dissolves pants. I’m going to go see if I have anything that might fit him.” Judging by the way he smiled as he left the kitchen Doc Frost found the situation just as funny as Sam would have if she wasn’t so mad.
“Aw, poor Lucas.” Tasha said.
“I know,” Sam said. Lucas was definitely getting the worst of it today.
“Maybe we should get him something to eat too,” Zoey said, opening the refrigerator again.
“I’d like a turkey sandwich if he’s got the stuff.”
Zoey literally jumped and quickly hid behind the refrigerator door. But after the night they had just had, Sam couldn’t blame her.
“Stop sneaking around,” Zoey said between clenched teeth to Lucas’s head, which had appeared at the bottom of the basement door.
“Sorry,” Lucas said. “But you have to come down here.”
“Yeah, not happening, Captain No-Pants,” Tasha said.
“I’m serious,” he said in a very serious tone. “And I still have most of my pants.”
“Maybe Sam should check it out,” Zoey said.
“Yeah, you go check it out,” Tasha agreed.
“Will somebody please come down here?” Lucas asked in a highly agitated voice.
Tasha and Zoey gave Sam encouraging nods.
“Fine,” Sam said. “But this better be worth it.”
“It is,” Lucas said, heading back down the stairs. “Doc Frost has got some seriously freaky stuff down here.”
Sam slowly crept down the stairs. “Freakier than everything else we saw today? I mean, he’s a little weird, but he’s not some spooky mad scientist.”
“Oh yeah?” Lucas asked when she reached the bottom.
The basement was fashioned into some sort of laboratory or workshop right out of an old science fiction movie. There were ray guns and robotic arms on the walls. Vials of colorful liquids bubbled and steamed on metal tables.
There was even a bulky 1950s-style robot in the middle of the room. Sam was suddenly flooded with memories of her grandfather’s house. He always had the coolest, weirdest stuff.
And then she saw Lucas’ pants. She couldn’t hold back the laughter. There were two large holes in the thigh area where his hands had been stuck. She could see his pockets and the skin underneath. He just looked at her sternly until she stopped laughing, which took a monumental effort on her part.
“This is serious. The hoverboard thing is cool, but these things look deadly.” He picked up a gun that definitely gave off a strong ‘death ray’ vibe.
“Be careful, you don’t know what that does,” Sam said.
He pulled the trigger.
A blue beam shot out of the gun and coated the basement ceiling with ice.
“Turn it off,” Sam yelled. Doc Frost was definitely going to realize they were messing around with his gear if everything was covered in ice.
“Freeze ray. Awesome.” He put the ray gun down.
“Stop messing with this stuff,” Sam said.
“Okay, but look at this.”
Lucas waved her over to an old rolltop desk stuck in the corner of the basement next to the washer and dryer. It was covered in old papers. Some of them were so old they had turned yellow and began to curl.
“Check it out,” Lucas said, handing her a sketch.
The drawing was similar to those used by fashion designers. There was a generic male figure in different poses. A really ridiculous yellow and blue skintight costume was drawn on the figure.
The costume had a gun belt.
“Now look at this,” Lucas said in a darker tone.
He handed her a FBI wanted poster of a man who easily could have been a younger Doc Frost in the same yellow and blue outfit as the sketch, except this costume included a mask.
“This can’t be right,” she said.
Lucas snatched the paper back from Sam and read out loud, “Elijah Frost, alias Freezerburn, wanted on charges of bank robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest-”
“Stop.” Sam didn’t want to hear any more.
“We have to get out of here,” Lucas said. “Maybe tell Dean Futuro.”
Sam would have bet a million dollars that Dean Futuro already knew all about Doc Frost’s past.
“Okay, let’s just get back upstairs. Put that back where you found it.”
Lucas set the papers back down on the desk and closed the rolltop. Sam slowly backed away from the desk with her hands at her sides to make sure she didn’t accidentally touch anything. Her back brushed against something hard and cold. She knew instantly that she had backed into the robot.
Now just step away before something bad happens.
“Kill all humans. Kill all humans,” said a mechanical voice behind her ear.
Sam wasn’t the slightest bit surprised.
“Massively uncool,” Lucas said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the robot.
She spun as he pulled her to him. The robot’s head twisted around to look at them with its red glowing eyes.
“Kill all humans.”
“Help!” Sam screamed at the top of her lungs.
The robot reached for them with one of its metal claws.
Lucas threw a pen at it. The pen bounced off harmlessly.
“Good going,” Sam whispered.
Lucas grabbed the closest ray gun off the wall. He aimed at the robot and fired. A puff of green gas wafted out of the gun.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Help!” Sam shouted again.
The robot took a step closer to them. It was a big clunky robot that rattled and whirred as it moved, but Sam figured it was also probably pretty strong.
“Split up,” Lucas suggested. “I’ll go this way, you head for the stairs.”
Lucas ran past the robot just out of reach of its claw.
“Lucas, you’re crazy.”
“Go up the stairs. Get Doc Frost.”
“It’s still watching me.”
Lucas frantically threw random bits of machinery at the robot. Slowly the robot’s head rotated away from Sam and looked at Lucas.
“That’s right, come and get me.”
The robot’s entire body swiveled to face Lucas.
Sam noticed that Lucas had pinned himself into a corner. With the robot’s back turned, she slowly crept up behind it and snatched two guns off the nearby table. She stuffed the smaller one in her pocket. The big one had a crank on one side instead of a trigger. She pumped the crank as fast as she could. Instantly a pair of blades popped out of the end and began spinning like a fan.
Somehow the fan was spinning a thousand times faster than she was cranking. She did her best to aim at the robot, even though she didn’t see how a strong gust of wind was going to stop such a heavy robot, but the force of the wind became too much for her, and she was thrown backward against the wall. She dropped the gun to the floor, where the blades chewed into the concrete for a few seconds before running out of steam.
“Oh, I’ve got a good one,” Lucas yelled.
He was pointing a gun similar to the ice ray at the robot, but this one fired a red beam into the robot’s face, melting it into a big sloppy frown. But the robot didn’t seem to care about its melting face. It kept right on lurching its way toward Lucas.
Sam pulled the other gun out of her pocket. It didn’t look like much. It had a skinny handle and two long thin prongs at the firing end.
Please be a laser or something.
She pulled the trigger.
Instantly her hands went to her ears and the gun fell to the floor, emitting a skull-piercing high-pitched noise that overrode all of her other senses.
When she finally recovered enough to open her eyes, she saw Lucas huddled in the corner with his hands over his ears as well. He had dropped his heat ray, just as she had dropped the gun she was holding. The robot’s steel claws were inches away from his face.
She had killed Lucas!
“Robot stop.”
The robot stopped instantly. Its heavy metal limbs swung lifelessly at its sides.
Doc Frost trotted down the basement stairs, a pair of brown slacks draped over one arm.
“Why didn’t you just push the off button?” he asked as he swept past Sam.
“Now why didn’t we think of that,” Lucas said, standing up.
“It’s a good thing you used the sonic disruptor or I never would have heard what was going on down here. This basement is practically soundproof. Good for working on experiments without arousing the neighbors. Not so good for meddling kids who like to pick fights with robots.” He tossed the pants to Lucas. “Come upstairs, Miss Hathaway. We’ll let the boy change in peace.”
Back upstairs, Tasha and Zoey gave Sam extremely curious looks.
“So, what happened?” Zoey asked before taking a bite of her apple.
“Robot attack.”
“Oh.”
“Not that I don’t enjoy having all of you here eating my food and breaking my equipment, but I sincerely hope we are through with the excitement for today,” Doc Frost said, selecting an apple out of the basket on the counter.
“That depends on you,” Lucas said from the basement door. “Step away from them.”
Everyone in the kitchen was surprised by the forcefulness in his voice.
“Lucas, what-“
But Lucas cut Zoey off. “Step away from them, Freezerburn.”
Doc Frost let out a sad, defeated sigh. “Lucas, listen-“
He stopped in mid sentence. Sam would have, too, if she had been the one staring down the barrel of Lucas’ freeze ray.
Chapter 14
History 101
“Lucas, put down the ray gun,” Tasha urged, stepping between Lucas and Doc Frost.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Tasha,” Lucas said.
“No, you don’t know what you are doing,” Tasha said back ad
amantly.
Sam couldn’t believe this was happening. Being attacked by vampires and robots was one thing, but turning freeze rays on teachers was something else entirely.
Doc Frost stepped out from behind Tasha. He even put his hands up in the air.
“You’ve got me,” he said playfully.
“What is going on?” Zoey asked, wide-eyed.
“Doc Frost is a super-villain,” Lucas said way more seriously than Sam could ever imagine anyone outside of a cartoon saying.
Zoey burst out laughing. “What?”
He pulled the FBI wanted poster out of his pocket with his free hand and unfolded it for everyone to read. “See?”
“That’s insane.”
“No. It’s quite true.” Doc Frost shook his head and smiled with a twinkle in his eye. “I was a super-villain, or at least I thought I was. That was my intention anyway. But I was young and foolish. I even made a costume. Can you believe that?”
He took a bite of his apple and walked into the living room.
“Well, come on. If I’m going to tell you my sad little story, we might as well be comfortable.”
Tasha followed Doc Frost into the living room. She looked back over her shoulder and gave a smile that told the others it was okay.
Zoey and Sam looked at each other and then to Lucas. He had lowered the freeze ray.
Sam decided to trust Tasha. She might have lied about, or technically neglected to reveal, who she really was, but Sam knew deep down that she had done it to protect her. And Sam knew a little about keeping secrets to protect people.
Lucas and Zoey followed her into the living room.
It was clear that Doc Frost lived alone and had very few guests. There was nothing more than a recliner pointed at an old TV set, a sofa used more for storage of half-read books and random papers than for sitting, and a wall-length bookcase haphazardly stuffed with books.
Tasha, Zoey, and Sam cleared off spots to sit on the couch. Doc Frost naturally sat in the recliner, and Lucas leaned against the wall and pouted.
“I was twenty-three years old, working on my post-graduate studies at MIT, and I had made the discovery of a lifetime.” Doc Frost had a faraway look in his eyes. “I had found a way to project an energy beam capable of altering the vibrations of atoms. All temperature, as we understand it, is really the result of vibrating atoms. The faster they vibrate the hotter they are; the slower they vibrate the colder they are. I had invented the first freeze ray, and the first heat ray. I was on top of the world.”
