by Matt Solomon
A massive pile of construction dirt up ahead slanted back toward the road like a huge ramp, practically inviting him to jump the river. He’d try it in a video game, but in real life, there was no way. Especially not on a bike.
Then his rear tire shuddered as Fitz nudged it with his front wheel. Charlie tried to counter steer, but his front wheel jerked sideways, and he went over the handlebars, landing hard on the dirt pile. Fitz skidded to a stop. Charlie scrambled to his feet and dashed up the hill, hoping to escape down the back side. Fitz followed him up the pile, wiggling the fingers of both hands in anticipation of a good beatdown. Charlie reached the top, looked over the edge, and gasped. It was about twenty feet straight down to the jagged rocks on the downriver side of the dam.
He was trapped.
Fitz reached Charlie and grabbed the back of his neck with a strong, hot hand. He grinned. “What are you, scared?”
Charlie’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Fitz was right. Charlie was scared to death.
Fitz tightened his grip and pulled back his other fist. Charlie closed his eyes, but the punch never came as a stern voice burst from below. “Powder, go say ‘No!’”
The big German shepherd dashed up the incline, wild barks ringing over the sound of the water. Fitz let go of Charlie and stumbled down the hill, trying to dodge Powder. But the snarling dog drove Fitz back toward her master—Hank, the old man from the warehouse! He hobbled to the base of the hill.
Charlie couldn’t believe his good luck, although the old man didn’t look happy to see either one of them. He sized up Fitz. “Looks like I got here just in time. What’s your name?”
Fitz was frozen by a growling Powder. “Jamie Fitzgibbons,” he groused.
“Fitzgibbons, huh? Sean Fitzgibbons your dad?”
Fitz’s face fell, answering Hank’s question.
The old man chewed the inside of his cheek. Then he turned to Charlie, who feared being recognized from the warehouse, even though he knew it was impossible. “And who are you?”
“Charlie Lawson.”
“And who’s your dad?”
“Gone.”
Hank’s face softened, and he slapped his thigh twice. Powder returned to his side. “Well, I don’t care what you two were fighting about. It’s done now. You get me, Fitzgibbons?”
“He laughed at me!” said the defiant teen. “No one laughs at me and gets away with it.”
“People who worry about being laughed at,” said Hank, “often find themselves in laughable situations.”
Fitz’s eyes burned, and he clenched and unclenched his fists.
“Get out of here,” Hank said, “unless you want me to call out to Accelerton and talk to your old man.”
Fitz kept an eye on Powder and retrieved his bike. He yanked it off the ground with one hand. Charlie relaxed as his tormentor took off for the other side of town.
“You all right?” Hank asked.
Charlie nodded.
“The last thing I need is kids hanging around and getting hurt. This dam isn’t safe. Get on home.”
Charlie didn’t need to be told twice. He hopped on his bike and rode away as fast as he could. He worked his way through town, beating for the warehouse, and finally flew into the alley. Then his heart and bike skidded to a stop.
The window he’d used to get in earlier was boarded up tight.
8
Dr. Fitzgibbons was manipulating a digital simulation of a giant DNA strand when his phone chirped. He’d been expecting the call and transferred it to the lab’s largest monitor.
With a flicker, the thin, serious face of Gretchen Gourmand appeared. Her close-cropped hair accentuated the sharp angles of her cheekbones, pinched in an expression that suggested she’d tasted sour milk.
“Good afternoon, doctor,” she said in that affected accent Fitzgibbons could never quite place—European, Scandinavian perhaps, though he’d heard from another high-ranking Accelerton executive that she was from Denver.
“You remember Mr. Barton, Gretchen?” said Fitzgibbons, motioning for his colleague to enter the camera’s view. Barton, always more comfortable with centrifuges than with executives, slicked back his hair with a sweaty palm and smiled weakly at the screen.
Gourmand ignored him. “I need a status report, gentlemen. I haven’t heard anything since you began this current phase in Richland Center.”
“My apologies,” said Dr. Fitzgibbons. “We’ve found something promising.”
“A giant?”
“Not exactly. It’s a piece of giant thumbnail,” said Barton. “We’re still analyzing but it looks like—”
“Sean?” Gourmand interrupted, her voice sharp with skepticism.
Fitzgibbons took a moment to choose his words. “As I said, we’ve found something, and early analysis indicates the presence of DNA.”
“Have the allelic variants been identified? Can you confirm that this is giant DNA?”
“Not conclusively,” Fitzgibbons admitted. “At least, not quite yet.”
“What about the giant? You have verifiable proof it was there?”
“It was hiding in a silo. I’ve tasked more satellites to comb the surrounding countryside,” returned Barton. “If it’s still in the area, we’ll find it.”
“I’m tired of hearing about ‘ifs,’” said Gourmand, seizing on the uncertainty. “I need results. You’ve delivered for me in the past, Sean—that’s why I was willing to pursue this outrageous idea. But there’s too much cost here and, so far, no benefit. It’s not like I haven’t been supportive. I’ve approved huge expenditures to retrofit labs, task satellites, and I’ve even authorized you to employ the Stick. Mercenaries aren’t cheap, as you know.”
“We agreed the Stick was a necessity,” argued Fitzgibbons. “When the time comes to bring down a giant, he’s our man. And who better to go to the military with product? They all know him. There’s plenty of benefit for your cost.”
Gourmand sniffed.
“Forget the military,” said Barton. “You know the consumer side of GGH alone will be worth billions. Want to be seven feet tall? No problem. Want to be seven foot three? Sorry, that’s next generation. We’re going to roll out products for decades!”
“There’s nothing to roll out,” she said. “That’s the point.”
“You know the process doesn’t move that fast,” Fitzgibbons said. “But we’re on the verge of something that will make our previous military work look like whey powder at the nutrition store. The Stick’s abilities are merely amplified. GGH will transform.”
Gourmand sighed. “I’ve heard all the upsides before. I need definitive progress that will yield products, not fairy tales. Soon.” She disappeared from the screen.
“Arbitrary deadlines,” Barton muttered, adding several expletives about how it was science that bought Gourmand’s expensive suit. He stomped back to his workstation and pounded away on his keyboard.
The intercom buzzed. “Dr. Fitzgibbons? Jamie is here.”
Fitzgibbons had nearly forgotten. As punishment for that morning’s fight, Jamie was “volunteering” with some odd jobs at the lab, including an evening stint at the Accelerton fair booth. The scientist hurried to the lobby to find his son shadow-boxing his own furious reflection in the receptionist’s plate-glass window. His gray Hornets Football T-shirt was wet with sweat around his neck. JoAnne, the anxious receptionist, flinched every time he took an angry swing, punctuating each punch with a powerful grunt.
“Hmph, huh, hmph, yeah!”
“Knock it off, Jamie.” Fitzgibbons sighed as his son threw a haymaker uppercut at no one.
“I’m not hitting anybody!”
“You’re scaring JoAnne,” Fitzgibbons said.
“He’s fine, he’s fine!” JoAnne insisted with a nervous laugh. She pulled a white Accelerton windbreaker from under her desk. “Jamie! I got you this for the fair tonight.”
Jamie held the jacket at arm’s length as if it was pink.
“Jamie?”
prodded Fitzgibbons.
“Thanks,” Jamie grumbled. “It’s really cool.”
Fitzgibbons reached into his wallet and withdrew a ten-dollar bill. “I’m not a complete tyrant. Play a few of those strongman games and win something.”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Right, Dad. Refuse to lose. Got it.”
“I love the fair!” JoAnne confided to Fitzgibbons as she slipped on a matching windbreaker. “It’s my favorite time of year!”
“JoAnne is your boss tonight, you understand?” said Fitzgibbons. “You do what she says.”
“Sure,” Jamie returned in a monotone.
“Then I’ll see you back here in the morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
“Are you kidding?”
“If you wanted to sleep in this weekend, you shouldn’t have acted like an idiot.”
With a grunt, Jamie headed out with JoAnne to the parking lot. Fitzgibbons felt one headache begin to subside, at least for a few hours.
“Dr. Fitzgibbons?”
The scientist turned to find Ravi Pradeep, a young agricultural researcher, waving a manila folder.
“Got your soil sample analysis,” Pradeep said. “Really weird stuff. Full of fecal matter, which your nose already told you. There’s a high concentration of water and a lot of indigestible fiber, oats specifically. But the water content isn’t consistent with animal waste. It’s way too high. My guess is someone is dumping illegal sewage—and a lot of it. We should report this.”
“Hold off on that,” said Fitzgibbons as Pradeep handed over the report and returned to his lab. The findings confirmed Fitzgibbons’s theory: Someone had been dumping waste by the silo. But was it giant waste?
He checked his watch. It looked to be a long night, and Barton worked better when he was fed. Fitzgibbons sent his partner a text asking what he wanted for takeout, and headed for the parking lot.
A ten-minute ride through town later, his silver BMW pulled into O’Finley’s Pub and Grill on Highway 14. Fitzgibbons parked on the far side of the lot to avoid getting the door of his luxury car dinged by one of the trucks up front. He made his way toward the entrance and the smell of fryer grease. Then he heard a familiar growl. There was Powder in a silver pickup, trying to work her angry snout through a partially opened window in the cab.
Fitzgibbons ignored her snarls and walked into O’Finley’s, where he was greeted by lime-green walls and sideways glances from regulars sitting at a horseshoe-shaped orange bar. The beer signs were the only thing Irish about the place.
Brandi, a young woman with Chinese symbols on both biceps, greeted him from behind the bar. “What can I getcha?”
“Picking up an order for Fitzgibbons.”
“Sure thing, hon. It’ll just be five minutes, okay?”
One of the regulars, Gruber, stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into a Cherry Master gambling machine. He wiped his cheek on the shoulder of his fluorescent T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. “Hey, Hank, know my idea of a balanced diet?” he asked.
Hank Pulvermacher didn’t even look away from the evening news on one of the bar’s TVs. “A burger in each hand.”
Gruber cackled. He made eye contact with Fitzgibbons and cocked his head over at Hank. “That guy knows the dang punch line to every joke ever made! Go on, try him!”
Fitzgibbons raised an amused eyebrow and acknowledged Hank.
The old man lifted his bottle in return. “I’ve been getting acquainted with the whole Fitzgibbons family this week.”
“How do you mean?”
“Powder and I met your boy this afternoon. He got into it with one of the local kids. Had to break it up—your boy outweighed the little guy by a good thirty pounds, and I was afraid he was going to end up in the hospital.”
Fitzgibbons rubbed his forehead. “Thanks for breaking it up, Hank. I think Jamie’s having some trouble adjusting to his new school. New town. You know how it is.”
Hank nodded and sipped his beer.
“Can he stop by to see you? Apologize?”
“Not necessary.”
“His mother and I are trying to make him take responsibility for this kind of behavior. If you just let me know where he could…”
“Hank’s right over there by the old warehouse,” Gruber called over the ding ding dings of the Cherry Master. “Just down the block. You can’t miss it.”
Hank shifted on his bar stool and shot Gruber a look.
Fitzgibbons remembered passing by the strange old place, empty and huge. “The Frank Lloyd Wright building?”
“That’s the one,” Brandi said, returning from the kitchen with a large brown bag, already stained with grease from Barton’s double order of onion rings. “Here you go!”
Fitzgibbons threw some bills on the bar. “Well, thanks again for stepping in, Hank.”
The old man tipped his glass. The scientist grabbed his bag of food and headed back outside as Gruber resumed his punch-line quiz: “Here’s one for you, Hank! What’s brown and sticky?”
“A stick.”
Fitzgibbons smiled at the irony of the punch line as he walked out the door. Powder barked at him again as he passed by Hank’s truck. He ignored her once more, focusing on the dozen fifty-pound bags of feed in the truck bed. The labels read Oats.
Oats, just what Pradeep discovered in the soil sample.
Fitzgibbons glanced around the lot to see if anyone was watching him. Then he slid his car keys from his pocket and poked a small hole in one of the feed bags. Powder barked, but trapped in the truck cab, the furious dog was powerless to stop him.
“That’s a good girl,” said Fitzgibbons. “Bark your heart out.”
He sped back through town and stopped in front of the warehouse. The abandoned building, at least forty feet tall, jumped out at him like never before. He pulled out his phone and activated the WiVi application. But the device couldn’t produce a single view of what might be concealed inside: The concrete was too thick for the signal to penetrate. Even so, Fitzgibbons concluded that the AD German Warehouse would be a pretty good place to hide a giant—right in plain sight.
And Hank Pulvermacher lived nearby. Hank Pulvermacher, who happened to work at the quarry next to the silo where they’d found the piece of thumbnail. Hank Pulvermacher, who was carrying around a truck full of feed that might just be identical to what was found in the fecal-tainted soil samples.
Fitzgibbons tried the front door, then the one in the alley. The windows were sealed as well. Naturally, the place was locked up tight, but they could watch it better than a hawk. Fitzgibbons punched a name on his phone.
“Barton? I’m on my way back. Listen, I want you to retask a satellite to 300 Church Street. Yes, that’s in town. I don’t care what it costs. I want to see who comes and goes from here twenty-four seven.”
9
Hoping to find a tool to help him break into the warehouse, Charlie lifted the door to Mrs. Lundstrom’s garage. Tim may have had a box of crap, but she had a whole garageful. It looked like she’d collected every magazine since 1984. There were boxes on top of boxes, some labeled, some not. Two riding lawn mowers dripped oil in the corner, and neither had tires. The garage’s crown jewel? A creepy male mannequin wearing nothing but sunglasses.
Frustrated, he raised the walkie to his lips. “Dude, I can’t see a toolbox in here, much less a crowbar. I have no idea how to get that board off the window.”
“Sucks.”
“Sure does, dude. Let me…”
“Hey, C-B, what up?”
Charlie didn’t even have to turn his head: The unmistakable voice belonged to his mom’s boyfriend, DJ Donovan, leaning out the window of his pride and joy, a jet-black Hummer H2. He could afford it—the man was heir to Donovan Dairies, the largest independent cheese manufacturer in the entire state. He was vice president of Logistics, which involved massive trucks, heavy-duty suspensions, and “the fine art of efficiently moving things around.” Everyone in town could see DJ liked Charlie’s mom, really liked her. Char
lie wasn’t sure how much his mom liked DJ. It was okay by Charlie, who thought the guy was just too much. He also had a habit of showing up at just the wrong time.
DJ parked the Hummer and jumped out, wearing his “Hey, big guy” grin and the autographed NASCAR jacket he won in some charity auction. “Who you talkin’ to on the old squawk box?”
“Dude, I gotta run. Talk to you later,” said Charlie into the walkie.
“Later,” the giant’s voice screeched through the speaker.
Charlie snapped off the walkie and shut the garage door.
“Boy, have I got a surprise for you, C-monster.”
“Really,” Charlie said, sidestepping DJ and making for the apartment staircase.
“Aw, man, it’s the best. Unbelievable, really. But I can’t tell you until tomorrow!”
“No problem,” sighed Charlie.
“So don’t even ask tonight when we’re at the fair,” DJ said, practically begging Charlie to continue the discussion as he followed the boy up the stairs. When he wouldn’t take the bait, DJ changed the subject. “I’m sure excited to meet your brother!”
Charlie grimaced as he pushed his way into the apartment. Even if he could figure out a way into the warehouse, he’d have to burn up most of the night at the fair, just to see dopey Tim. He headed for his room, DJ on his tail. Charlie took one look at the boxes of clothes still on his floor and grimaced again.
DJ looked behind him to make sure the coast was clear. “Looks like you could use a break from unpacking boxes. What do you say—a Total Turbo race before your mom gets home?”
It beat unpacking boxes. Besides, Charlie wanted to try the heel-toe maneuver that Adele had shown him. “Sure, okay.” DJ wasn’t bad at Turbo, not for a grown-up anyway, so it would be good practice. The man plopped on the bed and grabbed a controller while Charlie powered up and chose a track with plenty of winding road. How hard could the maneuver be?
Plenty, as it turned out. The first time he tried it, his foot slipped off the brake. His Lamborghini came out of the turn and crashed into a mountain, allowing DJ’s Corvette Stingray to take a huge lead.
