Crisis Zero

by Chris Rylander

  I got right up next to the large door on a giant machine that was basically an oversized shovel. I walked around to get a better look inside the pit. And that’s when I saw the large plastic bin attached to the other side of the machine. It was a translucent plastic container that looked to have several rolled-up blueprints inside it.

  The container wasn’t locked and the lid snapped off easily. I reached inside to pull out a tube when the huge digging machine suddenly sprang to life. The diesel engine roared and gurgled a few feet from my face and I tripped over a loose chunk of cement behind me.

  Then, I was falling.

  I tumbled backward into the pit, grabbing at the sides, trying to catch myself. The cold and numb hands inside my mittens couldn’t really get ahold of anything and I slid all the way to the bottom of the pit. My flailing had slowed me enough to keep from shattering any bones in the fall, but that didn’t matter since I quickly discovered that my snow boot had gotten wedged in between two frozen pipes in the dug-up ground below me.

  The pipes squeezed my ankle as I attempted to pull free. Then I heard the hiss of hydraulics. The huge shovel started descending right toward me. And I knew that any machine that could tear a hole in this frozen ground would have no problem crushing me like an overripe grape, splattering my insides all over the bottom of the pit like spilled juice.

  The shovel moved slowly but steadily. Ten feet away.

  Then eight.

  Then four.

  I yanked at my foot with both hands to no avail.

  This was it. There was no escape. My mission and life were about to come to a crushing defeat.

  Pun intended.

  CHAPTER 26

  CAN HUMAN TEETH CHEW THROUGH HUMAN BONES?

  UNLESS I COULD SOMEHOW CHEW THROUGH MY ANKLE IN THE next twenty-five seconds, I was going to die. Once again, the image of my hot insides splattering all over the frozen pit, steaming like stir-fry in the cold air, flashed into my mind.

  It would not be a pretty way to go.

  It certainly wasn’t the hero’s death that all secret agents probably hoped for if they were going to die in the line of duty. I had survived two assaults on the hideouts of dangerous criminals, only to die at the hands of a stupid power shovel. I thought again about the possibility of cutting off my own leg somehow, even as the giant metal scoop descended to just a few feet away. It was so large up close that it blocked everything else from my view, enveloping me in darkness.

  But the grisly thought of chopping off my own foot brought with it the easy solution to my problem. A solution so blatantly obvious that I was ashamed it had taken me this long to figure it out. I could have freed myself long before it had come to thoughts of popping like a grape and self-amputation.

  I ripped off my mittens with my teeth, exposing my fingers to the harsh air. They dried up and turned pink within a fraction of a second, losing most of whatever feeling the mittens had been preserving. But the adrenaline kept them from shriveling up into useless, shivering fists.

  Untying my boot with nearly frozen, clunky fingers that I couldn’t feel was not as easy as it might sound. But the direness of my situation helped, as I ripped at the laces. The lowering metal scoop was so oppressively close to me now that I’d have slammed my head against it were I to sit up straight.

  Finally, I loosened the laces just enough to allow me to tear my foot free from the boot. The force of finally breaking away slammed my shoulder into the hard metal of the scoop. I winced but knew there was no time to waste. I spun onto my belly and scrambled up the side of the pit just as the scoop finished lowering and smashed into the ground and pipes where I’d been stuck just a second before.

  I sat there and took as many deep breaths as I could manage, the icy air stinging my lungs like poison. Then I shifted my gaze up toward the cabin of the giant machine. It was empty. Whoever had powered up and lowered the scoop was gone.

  The hydraulics groaned as they continued to press the scoop into the cold ground. I stood up, my exposed foot already turning into a block of clunky, frozen flesh. After retrieving my mittens, I clambered up to the side of the pit and tried to climb out. There was nothing to grab on to. My painfully cold foot was not helping.

  There was a real risk that I could freeze to death inside this pit if I couldn’t get myself out. In this kind of weather, a person could get frostbite in a matter of minutes. I wish I was kidding or exaggerating. Do you now understand the insanity of choosing to live in North Dakota?

  I assessed my situation, looking all around the pit for any kind of handhold or ladder or anything I could use to climb out. And once again the solution was so obvious that I had missed it by overthinking the problem.

  The giant scoop.

  I ran over and climbed up onto the hydraulic arm. It vibrated with energy, since no one had shut it off. Once at the top, I dropped to the ground carefully. My foot was now all the way past pain and just felt completely numb. Instead, the pain was working its way up my leg and into my very core. I climbed into the cockpit and turned the key in the ignition.

  Then I hopped down and ran toward the school’s front door, desperately hoping that I could catch a teacher arriving for work who would let me inside early before I lost my foot to frostbite.

  Although, come to think of it, having a robotic foot like Mr. Blue might be kind of cool. He certainly hadn’t seemed that bummed about it. I used this thought mostly as a distraction as I hobbled across the sidewalk.

  Just as I rounded the corner, I spotted someone entering the building.

  “Wait!” I yelled out.

  The figure stopped and looked my way. They waited as I hobbled up.

  “Carson?” the figure said in a familiar voice.

  “Oh, shoot,” I said, recognizing it even though I couldn’t see her face under the bundle of scarves that covered it. “Uh, I mean, hi, Ms. Pullman.”

  CHAPTER 27

  LOANER SOCKS

  “WHAT WERE YOU DOING OUTSIDE WITH ONLY ONE BOOT?” Ms. Pullman asked as she herded me inside the school. “Are you having problems at home, Carson?”

  She unfurled the layers of scarves around her face and there was a look of genuine concern on her face. She really seemed worried about me.

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” I said, still limping despite being inside the relatively warm school. “It was just a minor bike mishap.”

  Ms. Pullman gave me the squinty eye. You know, the eye of disbelief. Every kid who had ever told a lie to a teacher or parent had probably seen it before. She had a good one. It cut my lie to pieces like a samurai.

  “Must have been some mishap,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, not really knowing what else to say.

  “Why are you at school this early?” she asked. “You know students aren’t allowed inside for another twenty minutes. It’s dangerous, Carson, to be outside for that long on a day like today.”

  “My alarm clock must be broken?” I said, disappointed at my own effort.

  “Okay,” she said, likely pretty cold and tired herself by that time. “Let’s just get you to the nurse’s office.”

  Ms. Pullman walked me there. The school nurse, Mr. Looper, still had his coat on when we arrived.

  “An injury already?” he said, taking it off and hanging it up in a small closet. “I knew the kids wouldn’t fare well in the weather today.”

  “Carson, you better hope I don’t find out that you were up to no good,” Ms. Pullman said from the doorway. “I don’t think we’d recover from another breach of trust.”

  Then she left without waiting for an answer. Not that I had one for her anyway.

  “Wow, sounds like you might be in trouble,” Mr. Looper said.

  I shrugged. “I just lost my boot.”

  “Let’s have a look,” he said, and patted the padded table. I hopped up and took a seat, extending my foot up toward him. “Oh no, that’s going to have to come off,” he said, frowning.

  “What?” I gasped. Was it real
ly that bad? How was that possible? I’d only been outside without a boot for like five minutes. Ten maximum. Could my foot really have frozen that badly that quickly?

  “The sock, I mean,” Mr. Looper said. “That sock needs to come off.”

  He carefully peeled off my crunchy, icy sock as I sighed in relief. My bare foot was red and pink and turning white in places as it adjusted to the heat. Some feeling was starting to return to it, which meant the pain was as well.

  Mr. Looper grabbed the top of my foot and I winced.

  “Well?” I asked nervously. “Is it frostbitten?”

  “No, no, you’ll be fine,” he said. “You got lucky to catch Ms. Pullman and get inside when you did, though.”

  I breathed out another sigh of relief. The truth was, he didn’t even know how lucky I’d gotten. I’d almost just been squashed like a bug under a huge shovel. I envisioned them carting what was left of me into Mr. Looper’s office inside a few buckets. How would he have handled that?

  The thought forced out a quick laugh that I tried to cover with my hands, but it was too late.

  He gave me a look.

  “Sorry, I just now realized how lucky I really am,” I said.

  “Yeah, whatever you say.” He looked at me as if debating whether or not to refer me to the school psychologist. “Do you have different shoes to wear today?”

  I nodded, patting my backpack where my regular shoes were stashed. Some kids opted to just wear snow boots around all day during the winter. But I was in the camp of bringing different shoes and changing at the start and end of each day. Who wanted to clomp around indoors in those things?

  “Okay, I’ll see if I have a dry, warm pair of loaner socks for you,” he said, turning to root around inside his supply desk.

  I didn’t particularly like the sound of “loaner socks” but had to admit that the thought of something warm and dry on my cold, aching foot sounded better than nothing.

  “Here we go.” He held out a pair of mostly clean-looking black socks.

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching for them.

  “They’re clean,” he assured me.

  I nodded and put them on. Already my foot was feeling better. I put on my sneakers.

  “All right, you’re good to go, Carson,” he said, opening the door for me. “Try to bring those socks back by the end of the week if you can.”

  “Okay, thanks, Mr. Looper,” I said, wrapping my lone boot in a plastic grocery bag and then stowing it inside my backpack.

  I left the nurse’s office and then started toward my locker through the empty hallways. There was still another five minutes before the school doors would technically be open. Which is what made it so weird to see another kid sneaking around a corner in front of me.

  A kid in a black hoodie.

  CHAPTER 28

  A JACK DANIEL’S SHOWER

  THE KID IN THE HOODIE STILL HADN’T SPOTTED ME AS FAR AS I could tell.

  I crouched and waited, allowing some distance to develop between us. He was also down low, moving cautiously forward, cradling something in the front pouch of his sweatshirt. He got to a junction in the hallway ahead and looked around. I quickly ducked into the doorway alcove of a classroom.

  After waiting a few seconds, I tiptoed after him. He wasn’t getting away this time. I was going to find out who he was and what he was up to. Was it Junior? It had to be. The figure was certainly too big to be Ophelia, that was for sure.

  As I followed him through the deserted school hallways, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that he was headed toward Agent Blue’s classroom. Even still, I didn’t give up my position just yet. I didn’t want to jump the gun—I had to catch him in the act, just to be sure.

  He stopped at the closed and locked door to Agent Blue’s classroom. Most of the teachers were probably already at school, but since Agent Blue had a substitute, his classroom was still dark. Substitutes typically didn’t show up any earlier than they needed to.

  I wondered briefly how he planned to break in. But it turned out he didn’t have to break in at all. He pulled a key ring out of his hoodie pocket and inserted a key in the lock. When he slipped inside the classroom, that’s when I made my move. I darted toward the door as it slowly swung closed. I slid feetfirst across the slick, freshly cleaned floor and just was able to jam a foot inside the doorway before it clicked shut.

  I stood up and quickly slipped inside the room myself.

  The figure spun around. It was Junior. He was standing near Agent Blue’s desk, holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. What was he doing? Trying to plant the bottle on Agent Blue and get him fired? With me blocking the doorway, he was now cornered.

  Panic spread across his face.

  “Gotcha,” I said and then immediately felt stupid for not being able to come up with something cooler to say. Maybe something like, “Who’s your daddy now, Junior?” But, no, that sounded even lamer and kind of creepy. Maybe “gotcha” wasn’t so bad after all.

  But it didn’t matter either way. Because it turned out there was a lot more to apprehending someone than merely cornering him in a classroom and saying something stupid.

  Junior reared back and threw the bottle of booze at my head. I dived out of the way as the bottle crashed into the door and smashed to pieces, spraying shards of glass and whiskey everywhere.

  I stood up and recovered, shaking the glass off me, just in time to see Junior charging me, his face contorted into panicked determination. He slammed into me and I went sprawling backward, crashing into the door and then slumping down onto the whiskey- and glass-covered floor.

  Junior pulled open the door as I slid across the floor, still dazed from my head connecting with the hard wood. Then he slipped out into the hallway and was gone, just like that.

  But, like I said before, there was no way I was going to let him get away this time.

  I sprang to my feet, ignoring the cuts on my knees from the shattered bottle and the throbbing knot already developing on the back of my skull and the strong reek of whiskey that followed me. I’d obviously never tasted whiskey before, but if it tasted even ten times better than it smelled, I’d have no idea why anybody would ever want to drink it.

  After collecting my bearings, I burst into the hallway. Several kids nearby stared in shock, not at me but at Junior, who was sprinting down the hall away from where they stood.

  The school doors were open and the building was starting to fill up with students, which made running after Junior something of an obstacle course. I spun and wove my way through the startled crowds, keeping my eye on the streak of black hoodie twenty or thirty feet in front of me. I didn’t have time to stop and try to explain why I smelled like everyone’s favorite drunk uncle.

  Junior fled into the gym.

  I followed.

  We both wove around the orange cones the gym teacher was setting up for first-period basketball drills.

  “Hey,” was all he managed to say as we ran past him.

  Junior was losing ground and he knew it. His pace became more frantic as he headed out the side door and into the empty boys’ locker room. He leaped over a row of benches and darted behind a wall of lockers.

  I followed. Or, I tried to. I tripped over the edge of the bench, slammed into a nearby locker, and dented the door. But I was able to recover quickly and only lost a few steps as I followed him through the side exit and into the backstage area of the school stage, which was at one end of the gym.

  It was almost total darkness since the thick velvet curtain was closed.

  I heard a crash ahead of me as Junior tripped over the set of whatever play was currently in rehearsals. I pulled out my phone and switched on the flashlight.

  Junior was sprawled out, draped across a row of fake bushes. He tried to get up, but flopped onto the floor instead. I dived on top of him, pinning his arms down, using all of my weight. He was pretty lanky and had no chance to throw me off as he struggled wildly.

  “It wasn’t my idea,�
� he finally said, “I swear!”

  “I know, Junior,” I said. “I know. And I’ll let you go. Just tell me where he is and what he’s planning.”

  “Who?” he asked as he finally stopped struggling.

  “Don’t play dumb,” I said. “Mule Medlock.”

  “The milk guy?” he asked, confusion flooding his eyes, erasing the panic.

  Mule Medlock had first come to our town under the guise of the owner of a custom milk bar. It had been pretty popular until it closed down. Of course, I knew the real reason it closed down was because I’d managed to foil his plans and drive him into hiding. But that’s a whole other story.

  “Come on,” I said. “Spill it. Medlock. What’s he planning? And why did he recruit you?”

  “Seriously, Carson,” he said. “I’m just doing this for the money. I got paid fifty bucks to put the booze in Mr. Jensen’s desk. That’s all I know. I just needed the cash.”

  “And what you did to Agent Nine—I mean, the other Mr. Jensen’s music office? What was that all about?”

  “Same thing,” he said, his eyes wide with genuine fear. “I was paid to go in and mess the place up a bit. That’s all.”

  “Who paid you?” I asked.

  “I can’t”—he shook his head—“I can’t tell you.”

  I lifted and then slammed his shoulders onto the stage, putting more pressure on them. I felt bad for a moment as he cried out in pain, but then reminded myself that he was working for a known terrorist.

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  Junior started crying. Tears streamed down his red cheeks as he panted, struggling for breath.

  “Don’t you know?” he said. “You have to know. You of all people . . .”

  I let up on him slightly. I have to know? What did that mean? But Junior took advantage of my momentary lapse in restraint and thrust a knee right into my ribs.