by Peter Nelson
Chupacabra grabbed and yanked the rope, sending Buck flying.
“You pathetic parasites, you think you can stop me?” The scales on Chupacabra’s Hydro-Hide fluttered, snapping the rope like soggy spaghetti. He glared at Donald, Francine, Sandy, and the others. “You creatures had your chance to join me. But you foolishly refused and chose to stand with humans. Now you shall see what an unfortunate decision that was!”
He took a deep breath, the frozen crystals in his Blizzard-Bristles glistening in anticipation of creating an icy blast.
“Now!” Abbie shouted.
Donald lifted Clarissa and flung the Colossus Crab straight at Chupacabra. Her pincers slashed the thick Blizzard-Bristles, leaving a silly-looking patch beneath his snout. The frozen storm he was about to unleash sputtered out as more of a chilly breeze.
“AAAUUUGGH!” Chupacabra reached out to grab Clarissa just as Sandy leaped toward him, her golden fur radiating brightly. The others looked away or covered their eyes as Chupacabra fell backward, blinded from the glare. He fumbled around for something to fight back with and found a thick tree branch. He gripped it—until it suddenly gripped him back.
“What—what is this?”
Francine’s stick arms twined around Chupacabra’s arm like a Chinese finger trap, gripping him tightly before lifting him into the air. The Bunyip thrashed Chupacabra against the concrete pier until the infuriated cryptid fluttered his Hydro-Hide again, this time shedding a few hundred scales in order to slip his now-naked arms out of the swamp creature’s grip. The scales littered the ground, falling to the pier like sparkling sequins.
Chupacabra stumbled back until he reached the edge of the pier. Realizing where he was, he grinned at the others and let himself fall backward.
“Oh, no!” Abbie and the others ran to the edge, surprised to see Chupacabra floating in midair, and rising. Kriss and Gavin had their claws and talons sunk in Chupacabra’s shoulders, and carried him high over the center of the pier again—then tossed him like a pile of garbage.
Chupacabra hit the concrete hard, then rose unsteadily to his feet.
Lou and Paul leaped into action, pummeling Chupacabra and pinning him to the pier. The other cryptids moved in to help as Chupacabra growled menacingly. He pushed Lou backward with his powerful Soil-Sole, sending the New Jersey Devil and the Dingonek knocking into the other Face Chompers. Abbie dived out of the way, but Chupacabra leaped up again and grabbed her. He tossed her to the ground, then lifted his Soil-Sole over her.
The others froze at the sight of this. Chupacabra grinned. “So this is your new master! You finally wise up and find the strength to leave George Grimsley’s enslavement only to be brainwashed by another human—and a girl at that!”
“You bet she’s a girl, you horrible beast!” Abbie’s mom yelled out.
“And not just any girl,” Abbie’s dad added. “A Grimsley girl!” They dived at Chupacabra, slamming into him and knocking him away from Abbie.
Chupacabra stumbled backward but used his tail to regain his balance. Alistair helped Abbie to her feet while Harvey pulled the Grimsleys back toward the Face Chompers.
Chupacabra spotted Harvey Quisling. “Another traitor!” Chupacabra sneered at the old man standing defiantly among his new comrades. “And how convenient to have you all gathered before me. All but one, that is—your cowardly ex-leader George Grimsley has abandoned you, yet again. Don’t worry: he and I have a deal. I’ll see to him once I retrieve what I came here for. In the meantime, you will all pay for your betrayal. With one stomp of my Soil-Sole, I will turn this entire pier into rubble. Consider this a sneak preview of Operation Pangaea. Pray you die now and be spared what is to come!”
Chupacabra went to raise his mighty Soil-Sole. As he tried, a confused expression spread over his face. He tugged with his rear leg and looked down. His Soil-Sole looked like it was stuck in a big wad of chewing gum—Day-Glo–yellow chewing gum, with multiple eyes staring intently back at him.
“’Fraid I can’t letcha do that to my mates, chief,” Hogie said.
“What is this? Let me go!” Chupacabra twisted his leg and yanked harder. His foot snapped back, sinking deeper into the goo as the Tasmanian Globster oozed tighter around his ankle. He tried to blast Hogie with his Blizzard-Bristle, but just a tiny puff of powder poofed out of his shorn whiskers.
“Nice work, Hogie!” Abbie called.
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t mind a little help!” Hogie cried out.
They ran to Hogie and grabbed hold of his gloppy body as Abbie counted off. “One, two, three—HOIST!”
The entire team—Face Chompers, Mr. and Mrs. Grimsley, Buck Wilde, Harvey Quisling, and Alistair MacAlister—all pulled the Globster as hard as they could, yanking him out from under his captor. Chupacabra hit the concrete with a thud.
“This time, let’s make sure he stays down!” Abbie cried out.
“You heard her, guys!” Clarissa shriek-lisped. “Cryptid-pile on this scurvy dog!” They leaped on top of Chupacabra, pinning him to the pier.
Whoops and hollers from the villagers and news crews filled the air. They were halfway across the chasm on their makeshift bridge cheering the Face Chompers on.
“See that?” Buck said to Abbie. “You can’t put a price tag on this kind of promotion. We got ’em eating out of our hands now.”
34
Jordan clung to Nessie’s neck as she swam in circles at the surface of the debris-filled water. Syd and Wilford held on tight as well, trying their best not to slip off the scaly cryptid as she began to go faster and faster.
“Not a big fan of water in this particular form!” Wilford hollered up to Jordan over the swirling, sloshing current. “I really hope you know what you’re doing!”
“So do I!” Jordan leaned in closer to Nessie. “That’s it, girl! We need a whirlpool all the way to the bottom! You can do it!”
Nessie snorted. The scales of her Hydro-Hide shifted, and she thrust her tail and fins, bearing down on the swirling water.
“Yee-haw!” Syd held tight with one arm as he swung his other in the air. He smacked Nessie on the side. “Giddyup!”
She didn’t like that and bucked, nearly tossing them all into the vortex she was creating. The faster she swam, the deeper it dipped, pulling the wood and debris away from them and gradually creating a swirling wall of water. She surged like a torpedo along the spinning current, spiraling lower and lower, until she reached the bottom of the gulf. “Great work, Nessie!” Jordan yelled when he spotted the exposed rocky bottom of the Chicxulub crater.
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” Syd called out. He leaped off Nessie’s back and tumbled out of the water wall into the center of the whirlpool, landing at the soggy bottom. Jordan leaped off next, and Syd caught him. Finally, Wilford let go of Nessie. They all looked up. The incredible funnel of water was spinning around and above them, all the way back to the surface. It was like standing in the eye of a liquid twister.
“Just don’t stop, whatever you do!” Wilford yelled to Nessie as she zoomed past, swimming just inside the whooshing, spinning current.
“Over here!” Jordan yelled. Wilford and Syd sloshed across the mucky bottom of the gulf to where Jordan was kneeling. Embedded there was the dense, shiny black orb, staring up at them like the pupil of a giant, underground eyeball.
Syd placed his Soil-Sole on the surface of the strange stone and closed his eyes. Jordan had seen his great foot meld with rock and soil before. He was an expert at all things of the soil and earth. “It’s not from around here,” the Sasquatch said. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or felt. And it’s hot.”
“This is the asteroid,” Wilford said. “It has to be.”
“Could there be something alive inside it?” Jordan asked.
Wilford shared a glance with him. “The fourth special cryptid.”
Syd shook his head. “I’m not sensing anything living.” He pointed at the blaststones lodged in the surrounding rocky floor. “But those re
d crystals are shocked quartz, if I’m not mistaken. When this asteroid thingy slammed into this spot, it created such a hot thermo-blast that it altered the geological makeup of the stones around it.” He took his foot off the black asteroid. “Somehow this thing is still burning on the inside.”
“Impossible,” Wilford said, feeling the strange stone. “Nothing can burn for sixty-six million years at the bottom of the sea and stay that hot.”
“Whatever it is, it’s got to come out of there and fast,” Jordan said. “And only you three special cryptids can do it.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get cracking!” Syd raised his Soil-Sole and slammed it down on the strange stone with all his might. The ground shook and rumbled, but the loudest sound came from Syd himself.
“OWWWWWEEEEE!” He grabbed his foot and stumbled backward, almost falling into the wall of rushing water behind him, which would have swept him away if Wilford hadn’t yanked him back toward the center.
The Yeti glared at him. “Do you ever use that bark-brain before you act?”
Syd was in too much pain to respond to the insult. He hopped around on his little foot, holding his large one, whimpering and sobbing. “Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”
Syd’s efforts had put the tiniest hairline crack in the eggsteroid. But the shock waves of the impact crumbled the stone floor where it was lodged. The odd object was now lying in a bed of broken-open rock laden with blaststones. While Syd gently blew on his pinkie toe, Jordan and Wilford went to work digging out the eggsteroid.
“I can’t hold on much longer!” Gavin called out from near the bottom of the cryptid-pile. “I think my wings are beginning to freeze!”
“Just a little longer!” Abbie said. On the broken pier, the crowd of people was trying to make its way over to help them. Abbie wished she knew where her brother was or what he was doing. An anguished cry snapped her attention back.
“I can’t feel my muscles!” Lou said. Through the thicket of wings, claws, legs, tails, and horns, his red arm was turning blue as the eerie white frost steadily spread from beneath them.
Abbie put her ear to a space between Francine and Sandy. She could hear a soft, low exhale: Chupacabra’s breath seeping out of him in a slow hiss. What few Blizzard-Bristles he had left after Clarissa’s trim he was using to his advantage—Abbie could feel the subzero air on her neck and ear.
A low sinister laugh started as a chuckle, then grew louder and stronger. Abbie heard a creaking. The pile trembled, then—CRACK! The ice broke beneath them, sending the cryptids tumbling in different directions. Each of them had broken ice attached to whatever part of the body was closest to Chupacabra’s frozen whiskers. They lay in pain, rubbing their wing, their leg, their tail, their claws, trying to warm them back to life.
Chupacabra stood up and shook the ice and frost off his body. “You Grimsleys are a major thorn in my side,” he said. “Time for you to feel one in yours.” He raised his claw to strike Abbie. THUMP! Something bounced off the back of his head. It was a wooden toy Alebrijes creature. THUMP! A snow globe tagged him in the chest. THUMP! A bottle of orange soda. The crowd had finally crossed the gap and was throwing anything they could get their hands on from the gift and food stands.
BONK! A scuba tank tagged the infuriated cryptid in the head, and Chupacabra reeled backward, stumbling across the pier and against the railing.
“Stop him!” Abbie cried. But she was too late. As Chupacabra fell over the side, she rushed to the rail just in time to see him fall into a strange, watery vortex that dropped straight to the center of the Chicxulub crater. His limp body got caught in the swirling whirlpool wall, and he spun off into the water.
35
Jordan and Wilford dug deeper into the blaststone rubble to extract the eggsteroid. Wilford gently blew through his Blizzard-Bristles, cooling the orb down enough so he and Syd could lift it out of the center of the Chicxulub crater.
Aside from the tiny crack Syd had put in it, the object was perfectly smooth, and roughly the size of a beach ball. Syd knocked on it. “Hello? Anybody home? Helloooo?”
“What now?” Wilford asked Jordan.
“Now you can hand it over to me!” Chupacabra’s voice cut above the roaring sound of the water swirling around them. He hovered high above, near the top of the whirlpool. Using the Hydro-Hide on his tail and lower body, he floated ominously, suspended between the whirlpool’s rushing walls.
“SKRONK!” Nessie’s head popped out of the water. She tried to take a nip at Chupacabra as she sped past.
“Tell that attack-cow to stay clear!” he shouted down. “Remind her that she’s not the only one with Hydro-Hide! One flick of my tail and this water cyclone comes crashing down on the three of you!”
Nessie continued swimming in circles closer to the bottom, keeping the whirlpool from crashing, but staying close to Jordan, Syd, and Wilford.
“It’s okay, Nessie!” Jordan shouted to her as she circled past just inside the spinning funnel. “Keep swimming! We’ll handle this.”
Chupacabra’s cackle echoed over the sound of rushing water that surrounded them. “Thank you for doing all the hard work for me!” he shouted down. “Now if you could kindly toss my package up to me, I’ll leave you in peace.”
“You mean you’ll leave us to rest in peace!” Jordan shouted back. “The minute you get what you want, you’re going to drop a mountain of water on our heads!”
“Georgie boy. You hurt my feelings. I promised you I would kill you as soon as I got the power of the Perfect Storm, and I intend to keep my promise. Besides, drowning is far too gentle a way for my lifelong nemesis to die. Now just give me the orb, and I’ll see to it that you get out of here alive. We go way back, Georgie boy. You can trust me.”
“Why does he keep calling you that?” Syd said quietly.
“He thinks I’m my grandfather,” Jordan muttered. “And I’ve got to keep letting him.”
“Jordan, what do we do?” Wilford asked.
“You heard him,” Jordan said. “He wants the orb. Let’s give it to him. Syd, how’s the ol’ foot?”
“Oh, no,” Wilford said.
“Oh, yeah!” Syd grinned and stepped back, leaving Wilford struggling to hold the orb. “Little to the left, Frosty. And hold her steady. I’d hate to shatter your hand.”
“Enough of this!” Chupacabra hollered over the rushing water. “Give to me what is mine—NOW!”
“I’d like everyone to know that I’m against this plan.” Wilford held the orb out, turned his head, and shut his eyes.
“All right, Syd,” Jordan said. “Let’s give him what he’s asking for!”
Syd swung his great foot, kicking the eggsteroid out of Wilford’s hands. It blasted straight up the water funnel, slamming Chupacabra in the jaw. As the dense orb continued to sail straight up and out the top of the whirlpool, Chupacabra fell—dropping like a stone down the center of the flume.
WHUMP! Chupacabra landed hard in the pile of cleared rocks dug out of the center of the crater. As he lay motionless, the nearby blaststones began to vibrate and glow. One by one, they flew toward him, slamming into his Hydro-Hide, each one burning him as they burrowed deeper into his body.
“SKRONK!” Nessie shot out of the funnel wall. The whirlpool shifted and slowed, no longer churning from the power of the Hydro-Hide but by its own weakening momentum. In a split second, Syd and Wilford were on Nessie’s back.
Syd held out his paw as Nessie prepared to dive back into the water wall. “Quickly, Jordan! Before the whirlpool collapses!”
Jordan took a step to hop aboard Nessie, but glanced back at Chupacabra lying in the center of the crater, covered with stones that were burning him alive.
Jordan ran toward Chupacabra.
“JORDAN!” Wilford’s yell was instantly muffled as Nessie reentered the water, shooting up toward the surface with him and Syd holding on tightly.
As it slowed, the spinning funnel of water towering overhead began closing at the top. Jordan ha
d no time to think. He grabbed Chupacabra, avoiding contact with the smoldering blaststones, and pulled him from the rubble. As the top of the funnel collapsed on itself, its walls cascaded down like a great waterfall. Jordan gripped Chupacabra tightly and took a deep breath, not knowing if it would be his last.
SPLOOOOSH! The force of the gulf as it refilled the vacuum blasted the two of them away from the epicenter, sending them turning and tumbling through the murky water. Jordan kept his breath held, and his grip on the lifeless cryptid in his arms. When the spinning stopped, he didn’t know which way was up. His arms were burning from contact with the blaststones. His lungs were burning, too, screaming for air. A dizziness overcame him, and he shut his eyes.
Something soft and wet suddenly rose from beneath him. Water rushed past his face at an incredible speed. His eyes fluttered open.
Moe was lifting him and Chupacabra toward the surface at an alarming speed.
They burst out of the water and into the air. Jordan took a massive breath as they sailed up and over the railing of the pier. Moe flopped on the pier, tossing Jordan and Chupacabra off her back. Jordan tumbled to a stop and looked around. His friends had been on a similar trip—Nessie was sitting on el Terminal Remota, too, where she’d landed after rescuing Wilford and Syd. The two soggy cryptids came running over, followed by Abbie and the Grimsleys.
“Jordan!” Mrs. Grimsley exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Jordan said. Nearby, lying on the pier, Chupacabra was still unconscious. The blaststones were sizzling against his Hydro-Hide, burrowing their way into his body. “Wilford,” he said, “you’ve got to do something. He’ll die.”
Wilford nodded at Jordan. The Yeti took a deep breath, then blew a pinpoint gust directly into each of the cryptid’s injuries. The lodged blaststones began dimming just like the one in Jordan’s room had.
