Fries Alive

by David Baldacci

  “I thought you said you destroyed their float,” whispered Stewie Spanker to his son.

  “I did, but they must’ve rebuilt it.”

  “We can’t afford to lose the competition to these clowns,” said Stewie. They heard a noise, and Stewie put the cover back down and said, “I’m going to go and get something to make sure we win. If Funkhouser’s around when I get back, you distract him. Got it?”

  “Got it, Dad.” Stewie took off and Adam hid behind another float.

  Meanwhile, Freddy closed the trapdoor and ducked back outside.

  Howie came running up to Freddy. “I heard that Chief Spanker found Adam and his gang stuck to the wall of your barn. And they told him everything they’d seen. But they didn’t have any real proof so he couldn’t make an arrest. And Adam was trespassing on your property. But they’re all here today and they’re going to be watching for anything suspicious.”

  “That’s just great.” Freddy put a hand up to his nose. “What is that smell?”

  He looked over and stiffened. It was Adam. His hair was all slicked back, and his skin was orange. He stunk worse than a room full of poop.

  “So, I see you rebuilt that piece-of-junk float.”

  Freddy and Howie faced off with him. “Not only did we rebuild it,” said Freddy, “but we’re going to win!”

  “Yeah, right! That’ll be the day.”

  Howie held his nose. “Man, you really stink. And you might want to do something about that orange skin. You look like a big, fat carrot.” Howie and Freddy laughed.

  Adam made big fists. “Why you little twerp. Just wait until I find those monsters that attacked us last night. Then we’ll see whose laughing.”

  “Monsters!” laughed Freddy. “Are you nuts?”

  “Adam!”

  They all looked up and saw Chief Spanker come around from the front of the Burger Castle float, where the tractor that was attached to it was located. He wasn’t dressed as a policeman today. He had on his Patty Cakes outfit with a hat shaped like a burger and a cake. He looked like a big pink cow patty. He was carrying a small bottle that he quickly put in his pocket.

  Chief Spanker stared at Freddy and pointed a fat finger at him. “I know something’s going on here, and I’m gonna nail you and that crazy father of yours, Funkhouser.” He turned to his son. “Come on, the parade’s starting soon. We’ll show these flunkies what a real float looks like.”

  “Right, Dad.” Adam looked at Freddy and smiled. “So long, loser.” Adam and his father exchanged a wink.

  An hour later Alfred and Nancy returned, and the start of the parade was at hand. Alfred gave Freddy a walkie-talkie. “You’ll be on the float with your sister, waving to the crowd, but we can still communicate with these.”

  “Right, Dad,” said Freddy. “Where is Nanny Boo-Boo?”

  “She’s on the float already, waiting for the great unveiling.”

  From the large reviewing stand set up on Main Street, Norman Thackery, the honorable chief judge of the Pookesville Court, and a fair and reasonable man – meaning he was no friend of the Spanker clan – announced the commencement of the parade.

  Using a megaphone he said, “All float participants, start your engines.”

  Alfred was at the controls of the Burger Castle float. He called out, “Okay, Freddy, off with the cover.”

  Freddy pulled the cover off the float. And then his jaw dropped. There was his sister against the tallest turret of the castle, dressed in a long-flowing gown and a peaked hat, and she had tied herself with rope to the structure. She looked like a witch about to be burned at the stake.

  “What are you doing, Nanny-Boo-Boo?” he cried out.

  “You thought you were going to stop me from performing by taking out my balcony, didn’t you, you little fiend? Well, I outsmarted the great brain this time.”

  “Get down! You’re going to ruin everything.”

  “To be or not to be, that is the question.”

  “You’re going to be a complete and total freak if you don’t get down right now.”

  “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but little nerds can never hurt me.”

  Freddy stuck out his tongue at his sister and she immediately shot him a raspberry.

  Freddy jumped on the float and they started off.

  Freddy’s walkie-talkie crackled. “Oh boy, look behind us, Freddy,” said his father over the walkie-talkie.

  Freddy’s heart sank. Positioned right behind them was the Patty Cakes float. It was three times the size of any other float and built of new and costly materials. As Freddy had guessed when he’d seen it in the warehouse, it was a complete reproduction of the Patty Cakes Restaurant, complete with the Patty Cakes theme park, roller coaster, Ferris wheel, splash ride, movie theater, video arcade, and much more. All put together now, it was far more impressive than Freddy realized it would be.

  Standing on the float was the entire Spanker clan, including Adam, outfitted in their best clothes, although some of the family wore clothespins over their noses. Freddy could smell Adam from where he was standing. A huge loudspeaker attached to the float shouted out the Patty Cakes ditty: “Patty-cake, patty-cake, Spanker man, follow us, follow us to Spanker Land.”

  “Wow,” said Alfred over the walkie-talkie, “their float’s going to be hard to beat.”

  “That’s because they can afford some big-shot to build it for them,” Freddy shot back.

  “It’s okay, Freddy, I still have a good feeling about today. Okay, here we go! Hold on tight, Nanny Boo-Boo.”

  “It’s Nancy!” she yelled from the top of the turret.

  The parade started off. All the floats in one long line glided down Main Street, passing in front of the reviewing stand where Judge Thackery would pick the winner.

  The Burger Castle started off smoothly, but then the engine started sputtering.

  “Something appears to be wrong,” said Alfred.

  Up on top of the turret, Nancy was really getting into her performance.

  “Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too, at each ear a hearer – that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts,” she said in a deep voice while making many hand gestures.

  One of Adam’s gang called out to her from the crowd. “What are you supposed to be, a gargoyle?”

  Nancy’s face grew red, but she continued, “Happily, he is the second time tome to them, for they say an old man is twice a child.”

  Another gang member yelled, “Hey, maybe if we’re lucky, lightning will strike and shut her up!”

  Nancy took a deep breath and kept going, though her cheeks were very pink now. “I will prophesy he cometh to tell me of the players; mark it.”

  The first gang member hooted, “What is this junk?”

  Nancy finally stopped and screamed, “It’s Hamlet, you little moron.”

  Just then the Burger Castle float took a sudden jolt and died. As Alfred stared in perplexity, bubbles started coming out of the engine.

  The Patty Cakes float passed them on the left. As it went by Adam grinned at Freddy. Adam called out, “Oh, and just so you know, any float that doesn’t pass by the reviewing stand is automatically disqualified.”

  Alfred and Freddy looked at the engine. Alfred snagged one of the floating bubbles and took a sniff. “It seems that someone poured a bottle of shampoo into our gas tank,” he said.

  Freddy looked back at Chief Spanker. That bottle he’d been holding!

  Adam yelled, “So long, loser!”

  “What’s going on, Dad?” asked Nancy.

  “I’m working on it, Nanny Boo-Boo.”

  “For the last time, it’s Nancy! Now where was I? Oh, right. ‘O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!’”

  “Treasure this,” called out one of the Spanker gang as he nailed Nancy with a soggy tomato, right in the nose.

  Freddy watched as his sister was getting bombarded, as his father worked on the sabotaged gas tank, and as the Spanker float
drew ahead of them while the crowd cheered. It would be over for the Burger Castle. They would have to leave Pookesville. The Spankers would win.

  And yet right in the middle of it all something clicked in Freddy’s big brain. The fight was not over yet. He grabbed his father’s walkie-talkie from the tractor cab and raced to the float.

  CHAPTER19

  THE FLOAT THAT REALLY FLOATS

  Freddy opened the trapdoor underneath the Burger Castle float and stuck his head through the opening.

  “Fries, we’ve got a problem,” he said.

  “I know,” said Ziggy; “we’re not moving.”

  “Spanker sabotaged our engine, and unless we do something they’re gonna win the competition,” explained Freddy. He looked at Si and Meese. “Okay, guys, you know how when you hold your breath it turns to helium? Well, we’re gonna use that little talent right now.” Freddy handed a walkie-talkie to Theodore and quickly explained his plan.

  Everyone put their hands together and said, “One Fry for all and all Fries for one, plus Freddy.”

  Freddy came out from under the platform, jumped in the driver’s seat of the tractor, and said, “Uh, Dad, you might want to move back.”

  Alfred looked up from the tractor’s engine, bewildered, “What was that, son?”

  “Hey, get that float out of here!” shouted all the people on the floats lined up behind the Burger Castle.

  “Hit it,” yelled Freddy into his walkie-talkie.

  Inside the Burger Castle float, Si and Meese took twin enormous breaths, filling up their hollow insides. After five seconds the air inside them turned to helium, the same gas used to fill balloons and make them fly. Inch by inch, the Burger Castle float began to rise into the air.

  The crowd along the streets watched, mesmerized, as the float rose above their heads. Nancy, thinking that the crowd was mesmerized by her performance, smiled and said, “Thank you my fans, an encore? Well, if you insist.” After taking ten bows in a row Nancy Funkhouser-still oblivious to the floating float-started reciting favorite movie lines. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” she said. “Play it again, Sam.” She winked and exclaimed, “Rosebud!” She spread her arms to the sky. “Oh, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  But when she finally looked down and saw how far up she was, she started screaming.

  Alfred wiped his hands on a rag, adjusted his glasses, and smiled.

  “Go, Freddy,” yelled Howie from the crowd. He was so enthralled by what he was seeing, he actually stopped nibbling on a cheese cube.

  Freddy steered the float to the left and then to the right. “Okay, Wally,” he said into his walkie-talkie, “full speed ahead.”

  Wally put his mouth against a back window in the float and blew out an enormous breath. The float shot forward. Pilot Freddy Funkhouser knew exactly what his target was, and it was dead ahead.

  “Okay,” said Freddy into his walkie-talkie, “Let out half of your air.”

  Si and Meese instantly did so, and the float went into a nosedive.

  Nancy, hanging on to the turret for dear life, screamed, “What is going on, Dad?” She managed to turn around and saw Freddy at the controls.

  “Freddy Funkhouser, you put this float back on the ground this instant.”

  “That’s where I’m going, Nanny Boo-Boo.”

  “Oh, all right, then. AAAGGGHHH!!!”

  Wally had let out an enormous burp and the air force had knocked the Burger Castle sideways and then nearly upside down.

  “My bad,” Wally admitted sheepishly.

  However, the crowd cheered wildly at this maneuver. Freddy smiled. “Okay, let’s give them a show, guys! Back up!” he barked into his walkie-talkie.

  Si and Meese filled themselves with air again.

  The float soared into a vertical climb as the crowd watched in awed silence, all heads uplifted to the sky. The only sound was the hysterical screams of Nancy Funkhouser. Freddy barked commands to the Fries, and Wally and the other Fries raced around the insides of the Burger Castle float, blowing air out different windows.

  After a series of loop-the-loops, roller coaster plummets, and other stunts that rivaled the best of any barnstorming pilots, Freddy set his sights once more on his original target: the Patty Cakes float.

  “Okay, reduce altitude and full power, guys.”

  Si and Meese let out their breaths as fast as they could and Wally blew as hard as he could out the window.

  The Burger Castle float went into a tight dive, aimed right at the Patty Cakes behemoth. The Spankers saw what was coming, and they all started scrambling off the float. Adam Spanker looked so scared that Freddy actually felt sorry for him.

  Okay, Freddy thought, if I bust up the Spanker float, I’m as bad as Adam is. He barked into his walkie-talkie, “Hard to port and then come in for a landing.”

  Right at the very last instant, the float went into a sharp turn and buzzed right by the Patty Cakes float. The Burger Castle float made a perfect landing directly in front of the reviewing stand to the cheers of the crowd.

  Stewie Spanker was so angry by this that he kicked the machine that was blasting the Patty Cake ditty and knocked it over. It kept playing, in a long moan that sounded like, “Poopy kook, poopy kook, spank me, man,” before dying out completely.

  Freddy climbed out of the cockpit and waved to the cheering crowd. Judge Thackery beamed down at him from the reviewing stand. “I think we have our winner,” he said.

  Alfred Funkhouser came running up while Nancy untied herself and climbed down from the turret, boiling mad.

  “Freddy, I’m going to kill you,” she shouted.

  Freddy said, “But Nanny Boo-Boo, we won, we won!”

  “What!”

  “WE DID! WE DID!” shouted her father as he picked up Nancy and swung her around before setting her back down.

  Nancy turned and saw the crowd cheering her and her family, and she immediately started smiling and waving. “Thank you, my loving fans,” she murmured. “Another encore? Well, if you insist.”

  The Funkhousers were up on the reviewing stand and about to accept the award from Judge Thackery when the Spankers stormed up.

  “This is outrageous,” sputtered Chief Spanker. “Floats can’t fly. They obviously broke the rules. You have to disqualify them.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, you sabotaged our float by putting shampoo in our gas tank,” Freddy shot back.

  Chief Spanker tried to look innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Adam, do you know what he’s talking about?”

  “No, father, sir,” answered Adam politely.

  “There,” roared Chief Spanker. “It’s this juvenile delinquent’s word against ours, Thackery. So you have to believe us.”

  The Judge was thinking about this when Freddy spotted in the crowd the big-shot designer from New York he’d seen at the warehouse.

  “Hey, that was a great float that you built for the Spankers,” said Freddy so loudly that Judge Thackery could hear.

  “Thank you very much,” said the man. “They paid me a lot of money to do it.”

  Judge Thackery looked at Chief Spanker. “Is that true?” he asked.

  The Chief began to sweat. “Well, um, he, uh, I, uh…”

  The judge said, “The rules specifically state that each float must be entirely designed and built by the people entering it. No paid outside help is allowed.” He turned to the crowd. “The Spanker float is disqualified and I hereby declare the Burger Castle float the winner.”

  A mighty cheer went up through the crowd.

  Judge Thackery looked at Alfred Funkhouser. “Alfred, I know you’re a very brilliant scientist, but how in the world did you get that float to fly?”

  Alfred looked at his son. “I’m not the only scientist in our family, Judge. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was a simple matter of physics – right, Freddy?”

  Freddy beamed.

  But as Freddy and his family accepted the first-place trophy, A
dam Spanker was already plotting something to turn defeat into victory.

  CHAPTER20

  THE BURGER CASTLE’S A HIT

  Freddy flew the Burger Castle float over to the real Burger Castle as fast as he could, while his father and sister followed in their car. Freddy had a lot to do before anyone got there. As he looked down from the air he saw hundreds of people streaming toward the Burger Castle for lunch.

  When his father and sister pulled up in their car, Freddy had already gotten the Fries in the back entrance and led them to a room with clothes lockers. He opened the locker doors and pulled the costumes out.

  “Good thing these costumes are made of rubber, so they’ll stretch. But I have to make a quick modification on Si and Meese’s. I brought some stuff to do that.”

  Five minutes later Freddy was finished. “Okay, you know what to do. Meet me at the front entrance in five minutes.”

  Freddy hurried off to find his dad and sister.

  Alfred had his tomato costume on and was warming up the ovens and getting the fat-free fry machines popping. Nancy went flouncing by in her ketchup costume.

  “Dad,” she said, “how can we possibly serve hundreds of people for lunch?”

  “We’ll manage somehow,” said her father.

  “Uh, Dad,” said Freddy. “I found some people to take the Guacamole Brothers’ place.”

  “What! Who?”

  “Some friends of mine.”

  His sister said, “I didn’t think you had any, except for that cheese cube nerd, Howie Kapowie.”

  “Where are they?” asked Alfred.

  “Here we are,” boomed out a voice.

  They looked over and saw the five – six if you counted heads – bodies coming toward them.

  “They’re dressed as fries,” said Nancy.

  “That’s right. They’re wearing the Guacamole Brothers’ costumes,” explained Freddy. “Well, with a few modifications.”

  The Fries stopped in front of them. They each were dressed as regular-looking French fries with zippers down the back. Wally was squeezed so tightly into his that it looked like it might burst open any second.