by Matt Solomon
Wertzie had doubled back in one of the carnival’s SUVs and skidded to a stop on the other side of the highway. He dashed across the four lanes. “What happened?” he asked. “Are Charlie and the giant all right?”
“They’re gone,” Tim said.
“What? How can they be gone?”
“That dude must have seen the trailer was empty, and that’s why he broke off. We got to find Charlie!”
Tiger worked her sore jaw. “At least the gold’s still there.”
Tim wheeled to her. “Thanks for your concern!”
“You know I’m worried about your brother. I’m worried about the giant, too. But let’s not kid ourselves—we’re all doing this for the money.”
“Some of us more than others, apparently.”
“No one is getting any gold,” Wertzie reminded them, “if we don’t deliver the giant. It’s not one or the other.”
“That psycho knew the giant was with us. I don’t know where Bruce and Charlie are, but that guy’s not going to stop until he finds them.”
“So we’ll find them first,” said Wertzie.
“Charlie’s my brother,” said Tim. “I’ll find him.”
29
The lack of streetlights along this particular dark stretch of Interstate 74 made it pretty much impossible for passing cars to get a good look at Bruce. When Stan the Statue Man’s trailer of massive fiberglass mascots had pulled out of Peoria Plaza Tire, Charlie and Bruce had snuck out of the Creep Castle and stowed away, with the giant taking Vanna Whitewall’s vacated spot.
Tiger’s argument with the mechanics had turned out to be great luck—in Wertzie’s rush to break up the scuffle, he’d left his map with Charlie. And using it, he made a plan: Piggyback on Stan the Statue Man’s trailer to Grady’s Family Fun Park in Bloomington, find the train with Hank’s double-decker car, and ride the sucker to Grand Isle. He didn’t expect the giant smugglers to check the Creep Castle until breakfast. By the time Tim and the rest of them put two and two together, Charlie and Bruce would be well on their way to Louisiana with no one to stop them. Maybe the smugglers would be worried, but it served Tim right for trying to send Charlie home. After all they’d been through, he wasn’t about to ditch Bruce just because Tim said so.
Charlie was impressed with the way Bruce stayed stone-still, posing with his hand up like some kind of goofy, waving statue. The boy hid in the crook of the gigantic rabbit’s arm, straddling a rusted beam that ran the length of the rumbling trailer. In the spaces between the truck bed’s slats, he could see the pitch-black asphalt rushing beneath them, and it freaked him out more than a little. Stan the Statue Man was visible through a small, rectangular window in the back of the semi’s cab, but he hadn’t looked back once. Charlie wasn’t too worried—it wasn’t like truck drivers used a rearview mirror anyway. As long as he and Bruce didn’t screw around too much, they were as good as out of sight.
“Hey,” Charlie yelled over the roar of the truck barreling down the highway, “how you doing?”
“Good.” Bruce grinned and opened his mouth as wide as it would go to catch the wind in his cheeks. He probably swallowed a mouthful of bugs, which Charlie thought was pretty gross. The faster the trailer went, the more the giant seemed to like it, and if he shared any of Charlie’s fear that one funky bounce could turn them into roadkill, he wasn’t showing it.
A white minivan pulled up alongside the trailer. Charlie ducked as far as he could into the rabbit’s armpit to avoid being seen. Inside the van, a little kid in a car seat, maybe four or five years old, pressed his face up against the window. His eyes went wide at the sight of the humongous creatures, and he gave a cheerful wave.
Bruce winked and stuck out his tongue.
The kid went nuts, pointing at the giant and slapping the window. The father at the wheel of the minivan heaved his shoulders in a sigh and threw a granola bar into the backseat, never taking his eyes off the road. The kid shoved the snack into his mouth but kept slapping the window, trying to get another reaction from the funny statue on the big truck. His face fell as the van pulled ahead and away from the semi.
“That kid’s going to have crazy dreams tonight,” Charlie shouted.
“Crazy,” Bruce agreed. He grimaced and shifted his weight, and the trailer let out a low groan.
Charlie froze. “Don’t move!” He watched the window at the back of the semi, and sure enough, Stan the Statue Man’s grizzled face was checking the passenger-side mirror to see what was causing his trailer to complain.
“Keep low,” the boy shouted to Bruce. Stan the Statue Man wasn’t visible in the side mirror, and that meant he couldn’t see them. Still, Charlie held his breath, half expecting the whole rig to come screeching to a halt.
Instead the driver shifted gears and steered toward an exit ramp. Charlie exhaled—there would be no roadside inspection. But Stan the Statue Man would soon be at his destination and they would have to find a way to get off the trailer without being seen. The giant’s ninja skills would be put to the test once more.
The trailer worked its way through sleepy neighborhoods before hitting a stretch of industrial road. Finally, it turned past a sign that read GRADY’S FAMILY FUN PARK—END OF THE SEASON BLOWOUT in vibrant blues and reds. Little kids straddled pint-size railroad cars that chugged around the exterior of the park, a miniature locomotive puffing indigo smoke into the night.
“Fun,” Bruce said.
Stan the Statue Man worked the truck around the edges of the crowded parking lot, looking for a sane place to unload the outsize rabbit. The aroma of freshly baked pizza hung in the autumn night air, and Bruce’s nostrils started to twitch.
“Hungry!”
“You just ate like a hundred burgers,” Charlie complained, though by now he knew giant teenagers ate a ton, literally. “You can eat later. We’ve got bigger problems.”
Problems like lots of people, all possible eyewitnesses to the giant hiding on the mascot trailer. Lucky for Charlie and Bruce, most of them were near a temporary stage at the front of the park, where a man in an old-fashioned straw hat shouted into a microphone, “And the best way to thank you for our biggest season ever is with the biggest pizza in Illinois!” The man pointed to a massive makeshift pizza oven to his left, where a crew of chefs worked a ten-foot pie into position. The crowd erupted in cheers.
“Don’t even think about it,” warned Charlie.
The giant grinned and licked his lips.
The truck continued past all the cars, past the shadowy miniature golf course and deserted bounce house, and groaned to a stop at the end of the lot where the pavement turned to dirt. One by one, lights were turning off throughout the park, leaving the bumper boats and batting cages shuttered until next year. The mini train chugged to a stop, despite the kids’ disappointed groans. “You guys really expect me to deliver this thing in the dark?” shouted Stan the Statue Man out the driver’s-side window to no one in particular.
The lights had been turned off for a reason. Something was about to go down. “Everybody, get ready,” barked the man in the straw hat.
Stan the Statue Man jumped out of the rig and slammed the driver’s-side door. “A little help!” he shouted. When everyone ignored him, he kicked at the dirt and turned for the trailer, heading right for the bow-tied rabbit where Charlie was hiding.
The boy slipped down from the rabbit’s armpit, sliding as quietly as he could behind an enormous ceramic fish, its cartoony lips pursed as if it was blowing bubbles. “Stay still,” he whispered to Bruce. The giant didn’t respond, frozen in place.
Stan the Statue Man shuffled down the opposite side of the trailer, muttering to himself the whole way. He was lost in his own frustration as he undid one of the straps that secured the huge Grady’s rabbit, paying no attention to the flesh-and-blood behemoth that lay motionless on the other side.
Charlie bit his lip. Once the man moved the rabbit, there was no way he wouldn’t see Bruce. They had to think of something—fast.
“Thanks for a great season, Central Illinois!” boomed the voice over the loudspeaker. The last floodlights in the park went black. “See you next year!”
A huge burst of fireworks detonated over the park with a bright scarlet flash and thundering boom. Stan the Statue Man craned his neck to the sky, watching the lights create a colorful weeping willow that melted into the night.
Charlie felt Bruce’s enormous hand close around him. Then the two of them slid to the ground on the side of the trailer away from where Stan the Statue Man stood. Bruce watched the fireworks’ light fade, and just before the next one exploded into the darkness, he leaped onto the mini golf course, landing near the Statue of Liberty hole. Bruce stashed Charlie on the ground behind Lady Liberty’s skirt.
“Are you nuts?” whispered Charlie as the sky exploded green and blue. “Somebody will see us now for sure!”
Stan the Statue Man came around the trailer and stopped, perplexed. He squinted at Bruce on the golf course, lit only by the muted colors in the sky.
Bruce stood perfectly still, posing like a fierce caveman right above the waterfall on the seventeenth hole.
“Those sons of guns have been buying their giant figures someplace else,” muttered Stan as more fireworks boomed overhead. “Pretty lifelike though, I got to say.” He gave up on unloading the rabbit for the time being and made off in the direction of the largest pizza in Illinois.
Charlie peeked around the statue. “Dude.”
Bruce lowered his fist for a bump. For someone without a lot of real-world experience, Charlie thought, the big guy was pretty quick on his feet. But there was no time for celebrating this small triumph.
They were going to be in real trouble if they missed the train. Charlie wished his phone hadn’t been crushed at the drive-in. If they got stuck out in the middle of nowhere, he had no way to contact the giant smugglers or anyone else to bail them out. Charlie pulled Wertzie’s map from his back pocket, then surveyed the line of dark trees that ringed the amusement park. According to the smugglers’ map, they needed to go west of the amusement park to catch the train. But Charlie had no sense of which way was which. Neither his surroundings nor the map offered potential landmarks to help point the way.
“Bruce?” Charlie looked up from the map and the giant was gone. “Quit screwing around, man! We’ve got a train to catch! Like now!”
The giant’s head poked around from behind a fiberglass giraffe that towered over the twelfth hole. “T-t-train?”
It was another word that the giant didn’t understand. “Train,” repeated Charlie. He pointed out the miniature version over in the kiddie area of the park they’d seen coming in. “Like that but bigger. The trees are the problem. They totally block the view. And the train could be coming from any direction.”
The giant stared at the trees, then took a look around the darkened park. He closed his eyes in thought, then opened them. “Got it.”
“Got what?”
Bruce once again picked up Charlie in his right fist. He crouched low as another set of fireworks boomed overhead. Then in the brief moment when things went dark, he sprinted out of the miniature golf course and leaped atop the deserted bounce house. The inflated structure sagged, then threw them high in the air.
Charlie had the presence of mind to get a good look at the Bloomington skyline even though he’d just been jerked into the night sky. The city, way bigger than Richland Center, blinked its downtown lights just past the trees. No train in that direction.
“Turn another way,” Charlie urged as they fell. Bruce torqued his body as he landed on the inflatable house. When they returned into the air, they faced ninety degrees to the right. In the distance, Charlie glimpsed the remote lights of the train as it made its way around the perimeter of the town.
“There! You see it?”
“Yep!”
Bruce and the boy landed once again on the bounce house, this time puncturing the structure with a rowdy pop that coincided perfectly with a booming explosion in the night sky. The two tumbled into the grass.
“Think we can make it?”
Bruce grabbed Charlie and tore off into the darkness. Staying hidden took a backseat to catching up with the train. Charlie held his arms in front of his face as Bruce ran straight through the line of trees, noisily busting off branches and sending fall leaves swirling in a million directions. They tore through an apartment complex parking lot in a blur, then along a lonely road in the direction of the rail cars.
A whistle blew up ahead, long and low. Charlie and Bruce saw the train chugging under an overpass. They were going to miss the ride for sure. “Come on, Bruce! It’s getting away!”
Bruce responded by kicking it into a new gear, sprinting down a grassy slope toward the train like a rocket. They reached the tracks, but the train had put some distance between them. Charlie identified the final car in the line, its tall profile perfectly fitting Wertzie’s description of Hank’s double-decker, the Express. “We can still make it!” he shouted.
Bruce sprinted along a path parallel to the tracks. The train had slowed as it passed through town, but it was picking up steam now. Bruce took big gulps of air, and Charlie felt the giant’s palm get sweaty as he galloped after the final car. They closed the distance, and Charlie tried to figure out how they would get inside. If Hank had transported other giants in the past, there must be an entrance big enough for Bruce. How could he open it?
Bruce jumped onto the back of the Express, straddling the double-decker car like the kids he’d seen riding the miniature train. “Wooooohooooooo!”
“No, not like this, we’re supposed to ride inside,” yelled Charlie from the giant’s fist. The boy surveyed the roof of the double-decker and spotted a release lever at its far end. “Let me down and I’ll see if I can get us in.”
Moving down the top of a rumbling train was tricky. The car shook so hard that Charlie could barely keep his balance. He got down on his hands and knees and worked his way to the latch, and with some effort, he pulled it up.
With a hydraulic hiss, the door on the back of the double-decker swung down like a pickup truck tailgate. The hatch door was now parallel to the tracks, creating a platform that Bruce could easily step down on to enter the car. He reached up and grabbed Charlie, bringing him inside. Then Charlie found a button on an interior control that raised the door back into its closed position, just as the train whistle gave off another long blast.
Charlie looked around the car, modestly furnished with plenty of room for a giant. “We did it!”
Bruce flopped onto his back and caught his breath. “Fun,” he agreed. He reached inside his tunic and from somewhere pulled out a massive piece of pizza that he’d stolen from Grady’s. He shoved the entire greasy thing into his mouth.
“You’re disgusting,” laughed Charlie.
30
The sound of rain slapping against metal nudged Charlie awake. He looked up. Silver clouds streaked past high windows twenty feet above him. It took a few seconds to shake the cobwebs free and remember just where he was—in Hank’s train car, the Express, rumbling south toward Louisiana. Once he and Bruce had gotten safely inside, the rush of their mad dash to board the train had given way to exhaustion. Charlie had been knocked unconscious back in Richland Center, but that wasn’t the same as sleeping. Both of them had been up so long they pretty much collapsed and passed out.
Even though Charlie’s head still ached, he realized that right about now he should have been racing to beat the first bell at school. Instead, here he was, long gone from boring Richland Center and riding in a tricked-out train car with the best dude ever (who just happened to be a giant).
He looked over at the big guy taking up nearly the whole length of the car, snoring like crazy despite the hard wooden floor. Giants were used to sleeping on the ground, Charlie guessed.
He rolled off the fold-down cot he’d slept on and quietly refastened it to the wall. The interior of the car was nice enough, though nobo
dy would call it elegant. The walls were paneled with dark cherrywood, and a lower bank of tinted windows were protected by thick red drapes that kept out the sun and prying eyes. The car had two doors—the fold-down hatch in the back that they’d used to get in and a regular-size entryway at the front of the car.
Furnishings were sparse. A lone leather chair and empty coffee table stood across from a wall adorned with framed pictures. Charlie tiptoed around the sleeping giant and took in the shots: a forest of incredibly tall trees blanketed in snow; a dented coffeepot atop a campfire; several shots of Powder running through the wintry wild. The display was a reminder that had there been a different turn of events, it would have been Hank riding in the car. Charlie turned away.
Positioned near a far window, several potted plants rested atop a large box with a slatted wood-panel surface. Next to the box, Charlie opened the door on a small enclosure to find a tiny bathroom. Perfect—he was worried that he’d have to leave the car to find a place to relieve himself.
“Me too.”
Charlie wheeled around. The ceiling was just high enough for Bruce, and there he stood. Of course he hadn’t made a sound. “You got to go?”
“Yep.”
“Number one or number two?”
Bruce held up three fingers.
“There is no number three, man.”
Bruce crossed one leg in front of the other, a distressed look on his face. He was serious about having to go. “Bad.”
Charlie looked around—there wasn’t a giant enclosure for … wait. He looked more closely at the box. The slats on the surface were spaced close together, but Charlie could see through them—the boards concealed a monstrous toilet! “Looks like Hank thought of everything,” he said, holding up a “just a second” finger. He began pulling the potted plants from the giant toilet lid, looking for a place to put them so Bruce could flip up the top.
