She shuffled through the collection until she found the album she wanted. She put the record on the platter, and for the first time in many years, the scratchy notes drifted through the ether.
Pouring herself another a cup of tea, she sat opposite Jamphibian, wiping away bits of wood and metal fragments that sprayed from his mouth with each enormous bite he took. “My stars, you do have a healthy appetite—though yer table manners could stand some improvement.”
The dull drone of the electric current coursing through his body was the only reply, which was probably for the best. Like she told the kids, “It’s dormant ’til activated, and it’s activated by ’lectricity.” But what she didn’t tell them was that the same electricity could kill Enzyme Seven—modulated at the right frequency. Connected to the car battery by an extension cord, the umbilical was her lifeline, not Jamphibian’s.
She finished her tea and took his giant hand in hers, inviting him to follow. “Let’s just see how much soul ya really have up in ya.”
He followed her lead, and they began to dance.
“My, this does take me back,” she said, “I ’member first time I heard this song…seems like it was only yesterday. ’Member how it was? Just drivin’ ’round in the van and groovin’—’fore things got all messed up and complicated.”
Jamphibian’s tentative steps resonated with a thud that shook the Windmill’s foundation, but he’d get better with practice, she told herself. After all, he was still a baby in many ways, born just a few days ago.
“There’s somethin’ I need yer help with. These last few weeks I been seein’ terrible omens and portents. Somethin’ dreadful is near ’bout to happen, and I don’t think I can stop it. Fact is--I ain’t sure if’n I should even try—might do more harm than good if’n I do.”
Jamphibian’s errant clodhopping caught her foot, and she winced in pain. “My, my—you’re light on your feet. Just wish you was a little lighter on mine,” she said.
She stared into his heavily bandaged face, searching for any sign of awareness “Are ya really in there, Gulliver?”
* * *
“Where the hell am I?” Mr. Birdsong wondered.
The Igloo Ice Cream truck swerved wildly from side to side, almost crashing into a parked car and narrowly missing a telephone pole before he regained control of the wheel.
“Man, I wish I had some aspirin,” he sighed. He checked the rearview mirror, taken aback by the gaunt, unshaven face staring back at him. This was his first day on job, he was already lost, and the xylophone rendition of “Pop Goes the Weasel” that was blaring out of his speakers bored into his brain like a drill bit.
After being fired from the restaurant, he’d scored a gig with the ice-cream company at the last minute, his first real break in weeks. He was determined not to screw it up, but driving an Igloo truck meant meeting a quota, and for that, he needed customers.
“Four in the afternoon. Where are all the kids?” he wondered.
* * *
The Igloo Ice Cream truck rumbled across the overpass, and the Windmill’s tin roof vibrated in sympathy—every timber, every shingle resonating at the same frequency, turning the shack into a giant radio receiver and amplifying “Pop Goes the Weasel” until it drowned out the record playing inside.
Jamphibian writhed in agony, clamping his gigantic paws over the bandaged stumps that functioned as his ears. His reaction to the other songs ranged from lethargy to anger, but this was the worst Lazy-Eye Susan had seen him yet.
She backed away to a safe distance and thought about sending a surge through the umbilical, but decided against it. “That melody sure has put ya in a bad humor. Better crank up the record player to compensate.”
She reached for the volume knob but stumbled instead, yanking the plug out of the outlet and silencing the record. Now, “Pop Goes the Weasel” was all either of them could hear.
“Oh no,” she muttered.
* * *
The Igloo truck crawled along Third Avenue, past boarded-up houses and vacant lots strangled by weeds, heckled by frothing mad pit bulls tied up behind chain-link fences.
“I got a bad feeling about this,” Birdsong muttered, cranking the volume up. “Come on, kids, where you at?”
He came to a stop at the next light and reflexively checked his rearview mirror—then checked again to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. “Who is that?”
Jamphibian first appeared as a blurry dot in the distance, chewing up wide swathes of asphalt with each giant stride, getting closer and closer.
Birdsong started to get nervous. Someone had hijacked another Igloo truck the week before, pounding the driver’s face into hamburger during the stick-up. That very morning, the dispatcher had warned him before going out to be on the lookout for suspicious characters.
“Guess a guy running toward me wrapped in bloody bandages qualifies as suspicious,” he mumbled.
He checked the light, and then checked the mirror again—back and forth—back and forth—waiting for the signal to turn green.
By then Jamphibian was almost on him, stampeding toward the truck and trumpeting like an elephant.
“Forget this!” Birdsong croaked, and hit the gas.
Jamphibian charged toward the truck, obliterating anything in his path—cars crumpled like tin cans, windows shattered with each thundering step.
“Gotta put some distance between me and that guy!” Birdsong yelled. He mashed the pedal and checked the speedometer, but the truck topped out at sixty-one miles per hour.
Birdsong jerked the wheel to the left and then back hard to the right, trying to shake him, but Jamphibian kept coming. He was so close now that Birdsong couldn’t see anything but the hulking brute in the rearview mirror.
“He’s almost on me!” Birdsong shrieked.
The truck spun out and flipped over. Even with his seatbelt buckled up, Birdsong tumbled around the truck cab like a cat stuck in a dryer. His ordeal finally ended when the truck came to a grinding stop halfway across the intersection.
The music wound down and died, leaving the street quiet except for the chorus of car alarms going off up and down the street.
Birdsong hung from his seatbelt parallel to the street, wiping the blood from his forehead. He unbuckled his seatbelt and fell flat against the asphalt.
Crawling out of the wreckage through the shattered windshield, he limped to a safe distance just as the truck burst into flames.
“This is not good,” he muttered.
A second later the truck exploded like it’d been hit by a missile.
“And that’s even worse,” he griped, shielding his eyes from the raging fireball. “Hmm…who knew ice cream was so volatile.”
Jamphibian stood inert amid the smoke and rubble on the opposite side of the street. The maniacal compulsion that had prompted his rampage, now silenced.
Lazy-Eye Susan arrived gasping for air a few seconds later. “What have I done? I done ruined everythin’, daggummit!”
She grabbed Jamphibian by the hand, and they beat it down a back alley.
* * *
Molly Tuggle stepped daintily through the smoldering rubble, like a doe crossing a frozen pond, trying not to scuff her new shoes.
“The ice-cream truck destroyed several million dollars worth of property during the apocalyptic rampage,” she explained to her audience with an earnest frown.
Spotting a grime-caked bystander wandering through the chaos, she gestured toward him with a tilt of her head, and her cameraman followed. The video jumped and skipped a few frames before stabilizing, and she jammed the microphone into the man’s flinty mug.
“It was horrible. Wherever that truck went, death and destruction followed. I thought it was the end of the world. Like in the Bible…one of the four ice-cream trucks of the apocalypse.”
Molly shook her head. “That’s…not…a real thing.”
“Whatever, Sally.”
“Molly,” she corrected him.
<
br /> “Whatever, Molly. But as long as I live, I’ll never be able to get that song out of my head.” He hummed a few bars of “Pop Goes the Weasel” before breaking down into tears and being led away by the stern hand of the Red Cross worker.
Jet engines roaring overhead drowned out Molly’s voice before she could close out the live feed. Distracted, she looked up into the sky, eyes bulging, lips pursed in anger.
“When did Channel Four News get a jetpack?” she shouted.
“You’re still on,” her cameraman whispered.
She regained her composure and resumed her report. “Authorities are on the lookout for the two suspects and warn the public that they are to be considered armed and dangerous.”
CHAPTER 9
The kids watched the breaking news on Newton’s tablet from inside the Windmill. Lazy-Eye Susan’s police composite sketch flashed across the screen first, followed by Jamphibian’s likeness immediately after.
“Now what?” Clementine asked. “They won’t be showin’ up ’round here anytime soon. Bet half the city’s out there lookin’ for ’em!”
“Maybe that’s the way she planned it,” Grady said.
Drew looked at the others, but they didn’t know what Grady was talking about either.
“I looked up Gulliver Grimsby on the Internet,” he explained, handing them a printout.
Drew looked at the page, then back at Grady. It was a screen capture from a newspaper archive dated December 21, 1969.
“Lower down—in the obituaries, under Grimsby,” Grady said.
Drew read the obituary out loud. “Gulliver Grimsby, New Age guru, folk musician, and spiritual leader of the Smiley Face Witches cult, died on Tuesday in Lancaster. He was fifty-four.”
They saw his picture beneath the notice, putting a face to the name for the first time. He wasn’t what Drew expected. He looked older than he was, his long, narrow face framed by white hair zigzagging out of his head like lightning bolts in every direction. But there was something powerful behind the eyes, a quiet magnetism that came across even through the picture.
Drew kept reading. “Grimsby, a biologist by training, became a hippie guru in his later years. His prophetic teachings included the idea of a New Age apocalypse, during which humanity would ascend to another level of consciousness through a process called quantum evolution…”
“Quantum evolution?” Spider repeated. “Where’d I—”
“Frost’s biography page,” Clementine answered. “Sounds like he was tryin’ the same thing Frost is tryin’ now.”
“And remember that story Spider told us in the sewer,” Grady said, handing them another printout. “Even the craziest urban legend starts out being true somewhere.”
Drew skimmed the headline: “Smiley Face Witches Suspected in Disappearances of Local Kids.” The grainy photo beneath the headline looked familiar. She was much younger, like the pictures hanging from her parlor wall, but he was sure it was Lazy-Eye Susan.
“They snatched a buncha kids for the same reason Frost is usin’ kids now,” Grady said, “because Enzyme Seven don’t work on nobody else.”
“But why’d she help us now?” Drew asked.
“She didn’t help us—we helped her,” Grady said. “We gave her our DNA, and she turned it into a big meat suit so she could put Big Daddy Warlock’s soul, spirit, mojo—whatever—inside it.”
The evidence against her seemed damning, but Drew just couldn’t believe she’d betray them. But regardless of what her real motives were, Lazy-Eye Susan was gone, and Jamphibian with her. And their plan to wreck the demonstration on Transylvania Island didn’t make sense anymore. They had the map, but that was about all they had.
“Hey, you guys—come over here,” Newton shouted.
They gathered around the table where he sat flipping through Dr. Camaro’s journal. “Listen to this,” Newton said. “Day One: Base dose of Enzyme Seven introduced. Electrochemical charge to trigger reaction delivered.”
“What’s that mean?” Spider asked.
“They picked who they wanted and gave them a jolt of electricity to start things off,” Newton explained.
“Just like Miss Susan told us,” Drew said, checking to make sure Grady was paying attention.
Newton turned back to the journal. “Day Five: Changes in subject morphology already apparent. Mutations developing at accelerated rate.”
“That means they startin’ to change by the fifth day, right?” Clementine asked.
Newton nodded and skipped ahead a few pages. “Day Seven: Enzyme Seven transition complete. Virus activating dormant DNA sequences according to taxonomy profile.”
“Dude, what does that mean?” Grady asked.
Newton scratched his head. “I think it means that Enzyme Seven is using some part of our DNA that’s already inside us, using it to make the changes.”
“How?” Spider asked.
“Don’t know,” Newton confessed. “But remember what Lazy-Eye Susan told us? About DNA being a recipe? Guess if you know how to mix the ingredients, you can make up any kind of dish you want—make up any kind of thing you want.”
“Keep readin’,” Clementine said.
He turned the page. “Day Eleven: Subjects’ physical attributes enhanced beyond expectations. Average strength increase eight hundred percent. Agility and endurance scores up four hundred percent.”
“They got stronger and faster, but we already knew that,” Grady said.
Newton nodded. “Day Seventeen: Subjects developing unusual tics and tremors. Recommend adding….”
“Wait…go back,” Drew said. “Sounds like they gettin’ sick or somethin’.”
“There’s more about that here,” Newton said. “Day Thirty-Two: Subjects growing listless. Engaging in obsessive-compulsive behavior.”
“Same thing’s been happenin’ to Romeo,” Clementine said. “He’s movin’ back and forth, doin’ the same thing over and over again.”
“Day Forty-Three: Reflexes are down two percent from benchmarks established during testing. Cognitive functioning down three percent from previous benchmark. Further tests suggest degradation in subjects is irreversible,” Newton said, closing the journal. “And that’s where it ends.”
They looked at each other, not sure how to react to what they’d just heard. The journal entries were proof of what was happening, but they didn’t need proof. They’d seen the changes for themselves. Yet, somehow reading the cold, detached text aloud brought the full weight of the situation crashing down onto their shoulders.
“You guys, come over here!” Grady shouted.
They found him hunched over the table with his face pressed against one of the cages.
“What happened to Romeo?” Clementine asked.
* * *
They buried Romeo just outside of the Windmill in a bare patch where wildflowers bloomed every spring. It was a choice plot, bathed by the rising sun every morning and covered in shade by midafternoon.
Spider made a tombstone out of an old DVD and stuck it halfway into the soil. He wrote Romeo’s name across the shiny surface in big, bold letters with a permanent marker.
Newton took Juliet out and put her down next to the grave so she could say good-bye. She sniffed around, her pink nose twitching, but whether she understood what was going on, only she knew.
Clementine said a few words in Romeo’s memory, and they bowed their heads to pay their last respects. Nobody else said anything for a long time, but they all knew what his death meant.
Harley’s time was running out.
* * *
Miss Croy had her coat on and was halfway out of the door when the phone buzzed. She looked at the phone and checked her watch, trying to decide whether to answer it before her conscience kicked in.
“Yeah…Uh-huh. Can’t it wait? I’m running late…I have a date.”
There was a long pause before Principal Hoyt buzzed her back and spoke again. “I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.” <
br />
“For a while I was seeing Abraham Lincoln everywhere, but then the meds kicked in.”
He didn’t laugh at her little joke, and there was another long pause before he spoke again. “Please come to my office.”
* * *
She entered the office with a courtesy knock and found him hunched over his desk. “Miss Croy, do you know anything about this account statement?”
Her face went white upon recognizing the bank logo. She reached for the statement, but Hoyt pulled it back. “Sorry, that was supposed to go to Mr. Frost,” she said.
“There’s a lot of money being moved around,” he said. “I thought that any transfer of funds required my signature.”
“That’s right,” she said. She went around to his side of the desk and pulled up the bank account on his screen. “See, that’s your signature…right—there.”
Hoyt studied the scanned checks for a minute. She was right. It was his signature, but he didn’t remember signing anything.
She logged out of the account. “There’s been a lot of paperwork flying across your desk these last few weeks. Maybe you just forgot.”
“I didn’t forget!” he said, raising his voice before lowering it again. “I mean…I don’t remember forgetting.”
She reached for the statement again, and this time got it, tearing it from his hand. “Principal Hoyt, there’s no use getting agitated over these little things. I’ll take care of them for you.”
She turned to leave, but stopped before she reached the door. “Are sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re shivering.”
“No, it’s just that it’s so cold in here,” he said. “You gotta do something about the thermostat.”
“Yesterday it was too hot. The day before it was too cold. Are you sure you’re OK? I mean, my grandfather was about your age when started to hallucinate and—”
“Just get the thermostat fixed!”
She gave him a moment to calm down before trying again. “Maybe you should see Dr. Camaro…you know, just to talk.”
“Just…tell the janitor to fix it,” he said, lowering his voice.
She gave him a patronizing smile and slung her purse over her shoulder on her way out, closing the door behind her.
* * *
Like every other room in the school’s west wing, Room 113 was locked at all times. A private security team arrived on the day the special studies grant was awarded and replaced the locks with keypads. They’d also installed security cameras the same day at strategic locations throughout the school so nobody could get in or out without logging in or being seen.
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