by Bill Myers
K-SPLASH!
glug-glug-glug-glug . . .
I would have continued chatting, but it can be hard keeping up a conversation when you’re busy drowning in a city storm drain.
It’s not that I’m a bad swimmer. It’s just that I have this thing about staying on top of water.
I don’t.
I also have this thing about panicking and breathing under water.
I do. A lot.
So there I was swimming like an Olympic gold medal rock, when suddenly I noticed there was something moving in my pocket.
Something alive!
At first I thought it might be a lizard or a fish that had squirmed in. But then I noticed something else—it was growing! Fast! Almost as fast as the interest on Mom’s credit cards.
It burst through my pocket and continued to grow. And then I recognized it. It was a package of chewing gum! The one the blond guy at Destructo Lasers had given me!
And it was still growing!
Now it was the size of a loaf of bread . . . then a breadbox . . . then a bread truck!
As it grew, it began to take shape. It began looking like a lifeboat. In a flash of genius my superior intellect figured out the reason—it was a lifeboat! One of those inflatable kind—complete with inflatable oars, inflatable life vests, and the ever-popular inflatable TV and VCR (obviously for longer cruises).
The boat shot to the surface, and I quickly climbed into it.
That was the good news. But, as you might have guessed, there was some bad news.
The current on the surface was strong in a major white-water-rafting kind of way. In fact, the boat and I were flying through the storm drain faster than Dad drives on vacation when he thinks Mom has fallen asleep beside him.
I knew the time had finally come. It was time for me to suck it in and do what I do best. It was time for me to open my mouth and scream:
“SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!”
But there were no somebodies around—not even Beefy the Biker Boy or my construction buddy. Just me, this weird lifeboat, and the oars. (I would have mentioned the TV and VCR, but I couldn’t find the remote, so what good were they?)
It was about this time that I saw a little speck of daylight ahead. A little speck that was quickly turning into a larger dot, that was quickly turning into an even larger circle. All right! I was coming out of the storm drain!
I grabbed the oars and began rowing, trying to stay in the center of the giant pipe. The light grew bigger and bigger, the opening wider and wider. Finally I shot out of the pipe, into the open air, and—
“Uh-oh.”
I glanced down and saw the Middleton River a mere seventy-five feet below.
Seventy-five FEET!?
I quickly grabbed the oars and began rowing like I’d never rowed before. But oars don’t work that well in midair. So, once again, I began my falling-like-a-rock routine. And, once again, I did what I do best:
“AUGHHHHHhhhh . . .”
We hit the water hard.
KER-SPLASH
In fact, we hit so hard that I bounced out of the boat and was once again airborne—which, of course, meant a repeat in the
“AUGHHHHHhhhh . . .”
department. But a moment later I crashed into the soft, sandy shore.
K-SMOOPH
As I lay there, trying to regain consciousness, I was a little disappointed. I mean, I could have brought a beach towel and some suntan lotion— you know, to try to tone up my tan a little before dying. After all, it’s important to look your best for those morgue photos.
Unfortunately, my little stroll through Weirdville hadn’t exactly come to an end. Not yet.
“Zer hee iz!”
I raised my head from the sand and saw my favorite tall bad guy racing down the riverbank after me. And just behind him was his short buddy, Mr. Sweet Talker himself, yelling, “Stoop or I vill blow you to kingdom cume!”
And behind him?
“Stop, thief, stop!”
It was kinda nice to see the old gang together again. But as much as I wanted to stick around and catch up on old times, there was something inside me that thought living might be a better idea. So I leaped to my feet and quickly
K- Smooph!
fell over a piece of driftwood.
I jumped up and started running again. I noticed a highway following the river so I headed toward it. If I could reach it and flag down a passing car—
“Stoop, lettle boy, vee muust talk to you!”
I was closing in on the road. It was forty feet ahead . . . thirty . . . twenty . . . but my bad boy buddies were closing in faster.
“Stoop or vee vill blow you to kingdom cume!”
And then I saw it . . . coming down the road. An approaching van. I waved my arms wildly and shouted at the top of my lungs. “Help me! You’ve got to help me!”
Now the road was fifteen feet away . . . ten . . . “Stoop, lettle boy, vee muust talk to you!”
I threw a look over my shoulder. Tall Guy was just a few steps behind. “Help me!” I shouted at the van. “Help!”
I reached the road and began running alongside of it. “Help me!”
The van slowed and eased up beside me.
“Help me!”
“Stoop, . . . lettle boy!” Tall Guy was reaching out. He nearly had me.
Suddenly the side door to the van slid open. Inside was a kindly looking man in some sort of paramilitary uniform. “Jump!” he shouted as he motioned with his hands. “Jump, Wally! Jump!”
I wasn’t sure who he was, or how he knew my name, but—
“Stoop, lettle boy!”
I didn’t think now was the time to play twenty questions. I veered toward the van and reached out to the military guy. He reached out to me.
We were just about to grab each other when Tall Guy suddenly felt this urge to leap into the air and grab me around the waist. He got me, and we both fell to the ground.
“OAFF!”
I looked up as the van raced away. “Don’t leave me!” I cried. “Don’t leave!” But the driver didn’t seem to be in a listening mood.
I rolled to my side and broke free of Tall Guy just long enough to get to my feet and take off.
“Stoop or I vill blow you to kingdom cume!”
Ah, yes, I’d almost forgotten. Sweet-talking Short Stuff was still behind me. And by the sound of things, it was his turn to be closing in.
Suddenly, there was a loud squeal. I looked up to see that the van had turned and slammed on its brakes. Now it was parked directly in front of me, less than twenty feet away. The military guy motioned toward me and shouted, “Hurry!”
I hurried.
Behind me, I could hear Tall Guy scrambling back to his feet. “Vee muust talk! Vee muust talk!”
“Hurry, Wally! Hurry!”
I was fifteen feet from the van . . . ten . . .
Short Stuff continued closing in. “Stoop or I vill blow you to kingdom cume!”
And what party would be complete without the Destructo Lasers owner?
“Stop, thief! Stop!”
Yes sir, all of my friends were there. And they were all gaining on me.
I was five feet from the van.
“Jump!” the military guy shouted. “Jump!”
I nodded and with all of my strength leaped toward the van’s open door—just as it peeled out and zoomed away . . . without me!
WHAT?
There I was, sailing through the air toward the . . . well, toward nothing. A moment ago I had been heading toward an open van. Now there was nothing in front of me but thin air—and a wheelchair.
A WHEELCHAIR!!?
That’s right.
For some unexplained reason, somebody had parked an empty wheelchair right behind the van. So, instead of hitting the ground face first, I hit the wheelchair face first. That was the good news. Unfortunately, there were a couple of pieces of bad news:
Bad News #1—That same somebody had not bothered to set the wheelchair’s
brakes.
Bad News #2—The wheelchair was parked at the top of a very steep slope.
Well, it had been parked at the top of a very steep slope. Now it was rolling down that very steep slope with one very reluctant passenger clinging to it and screaming for his life.
“AUGHhhh . . .”
Faster and faster I rolled. There was no way to steer the thing and no way to stop it. But that was the least of my worries because straight ahead I noticed a slightly bigger one.
Directly in front of me a huge building towered at the end of the street. The very street I was currently setting the world’s land speed record on.
“AUGHhhh . . .” x 2
After another prayer (where I promised God not only to empty that garbage but the cat box as well), I braced myself for the worst.
But the worst never happened.
Instead, it was worse than the worst. Just before I hit the building, the front door miraculously slid open and I rolled inside—past the waiting area, past the receptionist’s desk, and directly into a . . . K-POOF! . . . wall.
But this was no ordinary wall. Instead of plaster or wood or some other bone-breaking hardness, it was made of extra-thick foam padding. A padding that caught me like a giant feather bed.
Suddenly everything was silent. No screaming Tall Guy, no screaming Short Stuff—and, most importantly, no screaming Wally.
After a long moment of catching my breath, I finally reached down and rolled the wheelchair and myself out of the wall. For the most part, nothing was too badly broken. For that I was relieved. Until I heard a voice behind me—
“Good evening, Mr. McDoogle.”
I froze. There was something strangely familiar about that voice. Something about the thick English accent that I recognized.
Slowly, I turned to see . . .
It was the blond guy. The man they shot back at Destructo Lasers. The one who had died right in front of my eyes. Only now he was sitting in a fancy chair, behind a desk, wearing a fancy three-piece suit, and, most importantly, there were no longer any fancy bullet holes filling his body.
He smiled. “Nice to see you again, Wallace.”
Chapter 3
Spy Guy
So there I was, staring at a man who was supposed to have stopped breathing in a major kind of way. I opened my mouth and in my coolest, most casual voice said:
“B . . . b . . . bu . . . but . . .”
He smiled again.
I continued displaying my incredible speaking ability: “You’re . . . you’re . . . you’re . . . you’re . . .” “I’m supposed to be dead?” he asked.
I nodded, grateful for the help.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s what they’re supposed to think.”
“They?”
He nodded and reached to a computer keyboard on his desk. He hit a few keys and suddenly
G-zzzzz . . .
a glass wall slid across the doorway I’d entered— just as Tall Guy and his pal, Short Stuff, arrived.
They didn’t look too happy about the situation. In fact, once they arrived, they began banging on the glass and shouting all sorts of “you-can’t-say-that-in-Sunday-school” kinda stuff.
For some reason it didn’t look like they could see us. But we could sure see and hear them. And the more I saw and heard, the more nervous I got.
“Not to worry,” the man behind the desk chuckled. “It’s a steel-reinforced, one-way mirror. They can’t see us, and they can’t break through.”
“But . . . but . . . who are they?” I croaked. “And . . . who are you?”
He rose up from his desk and stuck out his hand. “The name is Blond . . . James Blond. I work for Her Majesty’s Central Security Agency.”
I reached across his desk to shake his hand but accidentally knocked over a family photo instead. No problem . . . except the photo toppled into his pencil holder . . . which knocked into his cup of tea . . . which spilled out across his desk into all sorts of electronic gizmos and doodads.
CRACKLE . . . CRACKLE
SPARK . . . SPARK
SIZZLE . . . SIZZLE
Mr. Blond could only stare in astonishment as the smoke slowly rose from his desk. “Amazing,” he whispered in awe, “simply amazing.”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” I stuttered.
“Nothing to worry about, old chap,” he said as he continued to stare and shake his head. “Our intelligence report said this sort of thing always happens to you, but I had to see it to believe it.”
“Your ‘intelligence report’?” I asked.
“Yes. Ever since our little run-in at Destructo Lasers, we’ve been—”
“Hey, I didn’t do it,” I interrupted. “It wasn’t my fault.”
He looked at me and let out a quiet sigh. “The report said you’d say that as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently, you are the type who doesn’t take responsibility for your actions.”
“I am?”
“If you would have taken responsibility for causing me to fall, if you would have told those gentlemen that it was simply an accident, they may have believed you. But when you denied it, and when they heard us talking, they naturally figured we worked together.”
“You mean,” I tried to swallow back the lump growing in my throat, “they think I’m a secret agent, too?”
“Precisely.”
“Oh boy!”
“And now, in a sense, you are.”
“I am?”
“We suspect there is a leak in our security. It’s imperative that everyone inside the intelligence community including our friends out there”—he motioned toward my buddies who were still banging on the mirror—“it’s imperative that they all think I’m dead.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“They overheard us talking. They know I told you the location of the Giggle Gun.”
“Giggle Gun?” I exclaimed. “There really is such a thing?”
“Oh yes. And it really is in a cave in Africa.” He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “And now I’m afraid you must go to Africa in my place and pretend to search for it.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Central Security Agents never kid. Your father is already en route to join us and—”
“Dad?”
“Correct.”
“My dad’s coming here?”
“Why does that surprise you? The fate of the entire free world depends upon the success of this operation.”
“I know, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, it’s Monday Night Football.”
Mr. Blond blinked.
I tried to smile.
He blinked again. Obviously, he didn’t know how important football was to Dad. He cleared his throat and continued. “You must hurry. You have less than one hour to wash up and prepare for your flight.”
“Flight?”
“As I said, it’s important that you appear to carry on the mission.”
“But . . . but . . . but,” I was starting my motorboat imitation again. “I can’t carry out any mission.”
“Of course you can, Wallace. You’ve already passed our tests.”
“Tests?”
“You expertly rode with our agent on the motorcycle.”
“That was one of your guys?”
“Certainly. And you handled yourself excellently in the storm drain, deployed the lifeboat, navigated the pipe, and landed on the beach, exactly as we had planned.”
“You planned all of that?”
He nodded. “Just as we planned the van, the wheelchair, and your dropping in here for our little visit.”
I couldn’t find my voice. (It’s hard to talk when you’re in major shock.)
“Now, if you’ll head on into the next room over there.”
He hit some more computer keys and the back wall of the room slid open. Amazing. On the other side was a mini-hotel room complete with shower and a fresh change of clothe
s on the bed—clothes exactly like I would wear. But that wasn’t my only surprise. . . . On a little coffee table sat an exact replica of Ol’ Betsy, my laptop computer!
“Wow,” I cried, “you guys thought of everything!”
“That’s why they pay us the big, spy-guy bucks.” I turned to him and scowled. “But I’ve still got one question.”
“Yes.”
“Back at Destructo Lasers . . . I mean, after they were done shooting, you should have had more holes in you than a piece of Swiss cheese.”
He rose to his feet and smiled. “Actually, Wallace, I wasn’t at Destructo Lasers.”
“Of course you were.”
“No, that was just a 3-D holographic image.”
If my jaw had dropped any lower, they’d have had to dig it out of the floor. “You were there,” I said. “I saw you!”
“You only thought you did.”
“But . . . you looked so . . . real!”
“As real as I do now?”
“Absolutely.”
He nodded and reached down to his computer keyboard. “Well, don’t believe everything you see, Wallace.” With that he hit three keys. And suddenly, his image and the keyboard itself began to waver.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Then they started to disappear.
“What are you doing?” I cried. “You can’t go!”
“The limo will be here with your father in exactly fifty-three minutes. Good luck, Agent 001/7th. And remember, the fate of the entire free world lies in your hands.”
“But . . .”
“Good evening.”
“But . . . but . . .”
But there were no more buts. He was gone. Disappeared. Vanished as completely as if he had never been there. And the reason was pretty simple—he never had been.
The clothes were a perfect fit, just like the ones back home. But without all the rips, patches, and bloodstains from past McDoogle mishaps. (These spy guys may be good, but they’re not that good.)
The replica of Ol’ Betsy was practically the same, too. I flipped her on and checked some of my files. Sure enough, they’d even entered my old superhero stories. There were Mutant Man McDoogle, Gnat Man, Hydro Dude, Floss Man, Tidy Guy, Bumble Boy, and more. They were all there, and it was pretty impressive.
I had a half-hour to kill before Dad and the limo showed up. I hoped he would explain more of what was going on. Until then, I did what I always do to unwind—I sat down and started another one of my stories. But I wanted this one to be different. I wanted it to be calm and peaceful—not at all like the crazy dream (or was it a nightmare?) I was currently living.
