My Life as Polluted Pond Scum

by Bill Myers

  Doc was right behind me. “Buckle up!” she cried. “Buckle up and put on that hard hat on the floor.”

  I spotted the hat. The back read Ecodyne, Inc.

  It was obviously something from the bad guys’ home office.

  “Why the hard hat?” I shouted.

  “Like I said, it’s been a long time.”

  I slipped on the hat, wondering how a protected head would stop the rest of my body from being folded, stapled, and mutilated in a crash. But I knew better than to ask. Doc was already firing up the giant overhead rotor.

  Things were going to be close. The guys were out of the water and staggering toward us. It was then I noticed the weirdest thing. For some reason, giant strips of their clothing were missing.

  “What’s with their clothes?” I shouted over the whining rotor. “What happened to their clothes?”

  “They got lucky.”

  Obviously this was a new definition of the term lucky. “What do you mean?” I shouted.

  “Iatds’s problem is that he can’t always distinguish between living and nonliving material.”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “Their clothes are not living,” Doc almost laughed. “This time Iatds only went for their clothes, not their bodies. Next time they might not be so lucky.”

  The whine of the rotor had grown to a roar. Any second we’d be airborne. Doc used one hand to buckle herself in while pulling back on the stick between us with the other. “Hang on, here we go.”

  The roar increased. The helicopter started to rise. We were almost out of there. But suddenly we came crashing back to the ground. Doc’s door flew open and Mr. Snavely’s hand appeared. Doc let out a scream as he grabbed her arm. She tried to slam the door on him, but he was holding on too tight.

  She kept pulling on the stick with her right hand while trying to push Mr. Snavely away with her left. I reached over to try and help, but she shouted, “No Wally! The stick. Grab the stick!”

  “What?!”

  “Grab the stick and pull!” she shouted. “Pull us up. Pull us up!”

  I tried grabbing the stick with my right hand and helping her with my left. But it was no good. The engine strained louder under the extra weight as Mr. Snavely hung on like a bulldog. If it weren’t for the Doc’s seat belt, he would have completely pulled her out.

  Suddenly there was noise on my side. I spun around to see Short Suit throwing open my door.

  “Pull!” Doc screamed. “Pull the stick harder!

  Pull it!”

  Short Suit reached for me.

  “Pull it!”

  I pulled on the stick with both hands. The chopper started to rise. Short Suit grabbed my arm but was unable to hang on. As we rose, he slipped away—not, of course, without your standard bad-guy rantings and swearing.

  But not Mr. Snavely. As my side rose, he kept hanging on to Doc, so that the extra weight kept their side down. We were going to tip over; we were going to crash. The rotor was going to smash into the ground sending pieces of it in a zillion directions.

  I started to let go, to reach over and help Doc, but she cried, “Keep pulling! Keep pulling!”

  “We’re going to crash!” I yelled. “He’s pulling us ove—”

  Before I could finish, Doc reached for her seat harness and unsnapped it. With nothing to hold her in, Mr. Snavely’s weight pulled her out of the cockpit, and they both went tumbling to the ground. The weight loss immediately made the helicopter shoot into the air faster than a cork underwater.

  I was airborne. Big time.

  That was the good news. The bad news was I didn’t know beans about flying a helicopter!

  Chapter 9

  A Little Night Swim

  Flying a helicopter is a lot like flying one of those video games . . . except for all the pedals, dials, and millions of instruments you can’t keep track of. Then, of course, there’s the smashing of your body as it gets thrown all around the cockpit because you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.

  And let’s not forget the money. Video arcades give you three crashes for a quarter.

  Helicopters can kill you once for free.

  “Ohhh . . .

  Ahhh . . .

  Eeee . . .

  Owww . . .”

  I was going nowhere fast. Actually, I was going everywhere at the same time. Up, down, sideways. You name it, I was there, with my stomach and the rest of my insides trying to catch up (or throw up). Then, just to break the monotony (life-threatening horror can get so boring sometimes), I suddenly found myself doing some fancy aerobatics.

  Like flying upside down!

  It was about then that I learned something very important about helicopters. . . .

  They don’t fly upside down!

  “AUGHHHHHHHHHHH . . .”

  It’s a strange feeling to look above your head and see the earth racing toward you at a billion miles an hour. It’s even stranger to realize you’re on your way to meet God without getting a chance to change into some decent clothes. Luckily, by the way Knox Lake was rushing at me, I’d at least get the chance to bathe.

  KER-SPLAT!

  RRrrrrrRRrrrrrRRrrrrrRRrrr

  The KER-SPLAT was the helicopter hitting the water. The RRrrrrrRRrrrrrRRRrrrr was the rotor doing a very bad imitation of an eggbeater. But before it could really work the lake into a froth, there was one final sound—

  GLUG-GLUG-GLUG-GLUG . . .

  That’s right, the cockpit was filling up faster than my handkerchief on a bad allergy day. Part of me wanted to be the good captain and go down with my ship, but because I never quite mastered the art of breathing water, I decided to get out of there as fast as I could.

  But I was stuck. Something was holding me down, pressing me into the seat, refusing to let go. And the harder I tried to break away, the stronger its grip grew. The water level rose closer and closer to my head. It was all over.

  But as I sat there, wondering who they were going to get to play my part in Rescue 911, I glanced down and made a startling discovery. It might be easier to get out if I unfastened my seat harness.

  Quicker than you can wonder how anyone with my incredible unintelligence made it as far as the seventh grade (or question the public education system that got me this far), I unsnapped the buckle and kicked my way out of the cockpit.

  That was the good news. But, as always, there was some bad news, too.

  I had crashed into the part of the lake where I’d first seen Mr. Snavely—near the levee with all of the valves on top of the wall. But it wasn’t the valves on top of the wall that worried me. It was the giant drainpipe inside the wall that had my attention—the giant drainpipe that had been opened when Mr. Snavely turned those valves. And that drainpipe was now sucking all the water out of the lake, sending it splashing a hundred feet to the rocks below.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against giant drainpipes sucking water and sending it crashing a hundred feet below. I just wasn’t crazy about being part of that water. That’s right. As only McDoogle luck would have it, I was smack dab in the middle of a rushing current that was heading even smacker dabber for the giant drainpipe.

  I began swimming for all I was worth (which if I didn’t hurry, would soon be less than nothing). First I swam to the left.

  No good.

  Then to the right.

  Ditto in the failure department. The current was just too strong.

  The pipe was less than 100 feet away. Better make that 90, er 80 . . . uh, well you probably get the idea.

  But that was only part of my problem.

  Yes sir, what McDoogle catastrophe would be complete without a few other nightmares thrown in just to liven things up? So there I was, minding my own business, just trying to die like any other abnormal human being, when suddenly, a giant tentacle splashed out of the water beside me.

  I wanted to scream, but it’s hard to scream when you’re too scared to breathe. I stared helplessly at the black slithering thin
g as it continued to splash about, obviously trying to find me. Of course it was my old friend Iatds, the mechanical monster that can’t always tell the difference between a living human being and pollution. Apparently, he’d heard all of my thrashing and splashing and figured it was time to come over and clean up the neighborhood.

  I looked back to check the distance to the pipe. T-minus-40-feet and counting.

  I was all confused. Should I scream my head off because I was about to plummet to my death through an overly thirsty drainpipe or because I was about to be destroyed by some mechanical monster with an eating disorder?

  Decisions, decisions, decisions.

  Then a second tentacle popped up beside me.

  Then a third. Now they were all over the place, flying back and forth like bullwhips gone crazy. The black rubbery arms were barely missing me on each pass.

  But there was one more element to add to the nightmare. I managed to catch a glimpse of flashing police lights barreling down the distant road. Great, I thought. This is just perfect. If I don’t die as Iatds’s late-night snack or by being swept through the pipe, I can always look forward to being arrested for trespassing.

  I wasn’t sure if they could arrest me after I was dead, but I was sure they’d at least tell my folks . . . and I knew that would mean getting grounded for life (although that would only be about another 16.3 seconds).

  Thinking of my folks made me remember Mom’s little sayings. You know, about God causing everything to work together for good and that I should bloom where I am planted. Good ol’ Mom. I didn’t want to disappoint her, but it looked like the only blooming I’d be doing would involve pushing up daisies at the local cemetery.

  I turned toward the pipe. It was seven feet away. Its darkness was already starting to close in around me.

  I threw one last look at Iatds. His entire body had surfaced, complete with that monstrous black head and some glowing little eyes. And of course those grotesque arms that continued to flail and flop in all directions.

  But it didn’t matter. I had entered the pipe.

  Yes sir, it had been close, but the pipe had won. Any second I’d fly out the other end and be smashed to smithereens. It all came to this. My entire life reduced to a giant blob of polluted pond scum sailing out of a pipe and crashing into some very unfriendly (not to mention very unsoft) rocks below.

  And then, just as my self-pity was reaching an all-time high, I felt a rubbery arm slither around my shoulders and tighten its embrace. I wanted to tell him it was too late, he’d lost, and besides I didn’t believe in going steady, particularly with slithering mechanical monsters. But somehow I figured he’d miss the humor.

  Come to think of it, so would I.

  I was deep inside the pipe, racing toward the other end, but the tentacle would not let go. In fact, its grip grew even tighter, and it began fighting against the current, gradually slowing me down. In a matter of seconds, I had stopped altogether. Water and slime splashed all over me, but I was going nowhere. Ol’ Iatds wasn’t letting go.

  Then, he actually started pulling me backward against the current. Talk about strong. The thing was reeling me upstream, out of the pipe, and back into the lake.

  A moment later I saw the sky. Wow, talk about lucky. Things were really looking up. Unfortunately, just a little too “up.”

  Iatds suddenly lifted me out of the water and raised me high into the air. I knew I was heading toward his mouth, that I was about to become his latest munchie, but I no longer cared. Not because I was brave or fearless or anything like that.

  I quit caring because it’s tough to care when you’ve passed out from fear.

  Chapter 10

  Wrapping Up

  I woke up and breathed a sigh of relief. Talk about a nightmare. Can you believe it? I actually dreamed I had crashed into some polluted lake and was being sucked out by a giant drainpipe while being chased by a giant techno-monster. Talk about weird. I tell you, I’ve really got to do something about my imagination.

  At least that’s what I thought until I opened my eyes and saw the polluted lake with a giant techno-monster hovering just offshore.

  Then I realized I better do something about my life.

  “Wally?”

  I turned my head to see Mom and Dad looking down at me. Past them were a handful of police cars and an ambulance.

  “Are you okay, son?” Dad asked.

  “What happened?” I struggled to sit up and saw I was on an ambulance gurney.

  “Lie back down and rest,” Mom said.

  “But you don’t understand,” I croaked. “They’re draining the lake! The bad guys, they talked Mr. Snavely into helping them steal Doc’s invention and Middletown’s drinking water is going to be—”

  “It’s all under control, Wally.” It was Doc’s voice. She came into view, smiling. “When you were climbing into the helicopter and kicking all those switches and everything, you accidentally turned on the radio.”

  “I did?”

  “Middletown Airport heard us, got a fix on us, and contacted the police.”

  “But the water,” I said. “You’ve got to stop the water from contaminating the other reservoir—”

  “That’s all taken care of,” Dad said. “Officials are warning everyone in town not to drink any tap water until they get the system cleaned up.”

  “Which should only take a day or two because Iatds has already removed the worst toxins,” Doc explained. “After that, everything will be fine.”

  I felt myself relaxing a little, although I still had about a zillion questions. “How’d I get out?” I asked.

  “Iatds saved you.”

  “He did?”

  “It was the most amazing thing.” Doc glowed. “He just picked you right out of the water and plopped you down here on the beach safe and sound.”

  “Only because you remained cool and calm and had the courage not to panic,” Dad said.

  I wanted to explain it’s hard to have courage when you’ve fainted, but he looked so pleased I didn’t really want to burst his bubble.

  “And the best thing,” Doc continued, “is that you’ve put Iatds through an incredible test, and he passed with flying colors.”

  “I did?”

  “Absolutely. Not only was he able to distinguish a human being from pollution, but he was actually able to save your life. You’ve proven that he’s ready to go onto the market, that he’s ready to start cleaning up environmental hazards all over the world.”

  “And you’re responsible for all of that,” Dad said proudly.

  I could only blink in amazement.

  Suddenly, we were interrupted by another voice. “You’ll get yours, McDoogle!”

  I sat up on my elbows to see Mr. Snavely and his two buddies being hauled off toward a couple of police cars.

  “You hear me, McDoogle?” he snarled. “You may have foiled our attempts this time, but you haven’t heard the last of—”

  That was as far as he got before one of the officers pushed his head down and helped him into the car.

  “Don’t let him worry you,” Dad grinned. “It’ll be a very long time before he gets out of prison.”

  “But why is he so mad at me?” I asked.

  Doc laughed. “Because you’re the hero. You’re the one who uncovered their plot. You’re the one who saved the city, saved my life, and proved Iatds is ready for the real world. You did it all, Wally.”

  “But . . . But . . .”

  “Just rest, Sweetheart,” Mom said as she eased me back down onto the gurney. “The next few days are going to be pretty busy with the TV crews and press conferences and everything.”

  “Press conferences?”

  “That’s right,” Dad glowed. “Just like the doc said, you’re a hero.”

  “But . . . but all I did was . . . I mean, I just . . .”

  “Bloomed where you were planted?” Mom asked with a twinkle in her eye.

  I looked at her more confused than ever. “Hu
h?”

  “You just did what you could do where God planted you.”

  I continued to stare.

  “Think of it,” she said. “If you had not gotten the job working at the Water Management Facility, none of this would have happened.”

  I closed my eyes trying to understand. She was right. None of this would have happened if I had been calling the shots my way, if things had gone how I wanted them to go. I couldn’t believe it. True, it had gotten pretty dark there for a while, but in spite of that darkness, everything had turned out really, really bright.

  “Okay folks,” a young ambulance attendant said.

  “We need to take Wally here to the ER—the emergency room.”

  “The ER!” I choked. The truth is, going to hospitals makes me even more nervous than bad guys in bad suits or crashing helicopters or pollution-eating monsters.

  “Don’t worry,” the attendant said. “We just need to run a few tests and make sure everything is okay.”

  “Absolutely,” Dad agreed. “He’s had a very traumatic time.”

  I turned to Dad. Was it my imagination or was there actually a catch in his voice? And then, the most amazing thing happened. He suddenly leaned forward, kissed me on the forehead, and said something I’d never heard before. At least not to me.

  “Son,” he tried to swallow back the emotion in his voice, “I’m proud of you. Real proud.”

  I had a lump in my throat the size of a basketball. All of my life Dad had wanted me to be “a real man,” and all of my life I’d disappointed him. But now . . . well, I could only stare in amazement as the attendant unlocked the wheels to my gurney and started rolling me toward the ambulance.

  “Oh, Wally.” Dad hurried to catch up to us and brought ol’ Betsy into view. “We found this at the Water Management Facility. I thought you might need it.”

  He set it beside me on the gurney. I gotta tell you. I thought my heart would nearly burst. Think of it, Dad was actually encouraging me to keep on writing. Would miracles never cease?