The voice in Bolt’s head was gone as quickly as it had arrived. The Stranger knew they were there. Was this a trap? Should they run away and make a better plan?
Or maybe Bolt was imagining things. As long as they were careful and avoided alarms, they’d be fine. Pushing aside his worries, Bolt crawled through the hole.
They tiptoed forward, Bolt trying to scan the yard with his penguin-connected mind. Feel the penguin-verse, he told himself, but that fuzz was still there, obstructing his connection. He felt a vague presence of penguins, but was unsure where they were. It was all so maddening! “Be careful,” Bolt warned as his birthmark tingled. “We’re surrounded, I think. Possibly. Just don’t trigger any alarms. One wrong move and—”
“Look out!” Blackburn pointed to a small wire that ran along the ground. It was nearly buried in the grass and almost impossible to see.
“Strange,” Bolt muttered, reaching out to touch it.
“No, don’t!” urged Annika, but it was too late. Bolt tapped the wire, and it snapped. A siren wailed, spotlights shone from every building, and a speaker shouted, “Intruder! Intruder!”
“Sorry, guys,” said Bolt. “My bad.”
A penguin carrying a massive toothbrush emerged from the side of the building, followed by another penguin, and then another, and another. They were running toward Bolt, Annika, and Blackburn. Bolt stared, frozen in horror.
Even more penguins emerged from the side of the building, all waddling, all growling, and all holding their enormous, deadly-looking toothbrushes.
“Borscht!” shouted Blackburn, reaching for his swordfish. “Well, they won’t get me without a fight.”
“Me neither,” hissed Annika.
“Or we could just run?” Bolt suggested.
“Works for me,” said Blackburn, and they dashed toward the hole that led back under the fence.
8.
Falling for You
More than one hundred penguins chased Bolt, Annika, and Blackburn as they reached the hole under the fence, dove through it, and popped out the other side, one after another.
“They’ll have to go through the hole, too,” said Bolt, hoping that would slow the penguins down.
The penguins ran straight into the fence and knocked it over with a BANG!
“Or they could just do that,” said Blackburn.
Bolt bit his lip and wished his fearful heart weren’t racing faster than his legs.
Bolt and his friends fled down the wide dirt road that ran along the tree line, kicking up snow and dirt. The icy ground made running slippery. Penguins aren’t fast runners, but their webbed feet make up for it with excellent traction. Bolt and Blackburn kept sliding around on the ice. Annika was as steady as ever.
“Bandits are slippery, but we never slip,” she explained as Bolt pinwheeled his arms to keep from flopping onto the ground after an unexpected skid.
Penguins have been known to march fifty miles just to find food, although that’s partly because there are so few high-quality penguin restaurants. But that meant Bolt’s friends would grow tired long before the penguins did. Blackburn was already wheezing.
In between his running and slipping, Bolt tried to spread his thoughts among the chasing penguin guards, to reach inside their minds and talk to them. They were his family, after all. They were each a part of the mighty penguin-verse.
Peace, my brothers and sisters. You don’t want to chase us. Bolt hurled the thoughts at the penguins closest to them. But, like before, his instructions only bounced off, failing to make even a faint impression.
Listen to me! We are family!
The penguins did not listen. Instead, they barked. Bolt understood penguin barks:
“Get them!”
“Stop them!”
“Capture them!”
“Dr. Walzanarz wants the boy! The boy!”
Up ahead, the dirt road forked—one side veering into the forest, the other aiming toward the beach. Blackburn and Annika were ahead of Bolt, and they ran deeper into the forest. “We’ll lose them in here!” Annika shouted.
Bolt hesitated.
Bolt always told himself he wasn’t brave, not like Annika and Blackburn were, and that he would much prefer to hide under beds than fight monsters. But did that make him a coward, or smart? It was generally safer under a bed than anywhere else.
Still, Bolt didn’t need to be brave to do the right thing.Which is why Bolt ran the opposite way. If he took the other path, toward the beach, the penguins would follow him and not his friends. Annika and Blackburn could escape! Or at least he hoped so. Bolt wasn't sure if sacrificing himself to save his friends was terribly brave, or awfully stupid. Maybe it was both.
As Bolt ran, the penguins slowed at the fork. Bolt could hear their barking and their wings flapping. After a few moments of silence, one penguin yapped: “He went over there! Ignore the humans! The doctor wants the boy! The boy!”
“Why did I run this way?” Bolt asked himself, finally deciding that had been far more stupid than brave.
The path had ended, and Bolt ran on the beach now. The sand was filled with dozens of small holes. It’s hard to run fast on sand in general, but the holes littering the landscape made for an even slower slog. Bolt’s feet kept getting stuck in them and making him stumble.
Bolt’s heart continued to race. There were no beds here, or trees, or anywhere to hide out. Just sand, lots and lots of sand. And holes, of course.
Meanwhile, his pursuers were still in the forest. Their pause at the fork had given Bolt a little breathing room, and the trees blocked their view of him for the moment. If only he could run a little faster, maybe . . .
He never got to finish that thought, because he didn’t see the hole in front of him: a larger hole than the others on the beach. He stepped right into it.
And heard a crack.
“Hey! What? Why?” Bolt sputtered a bunch of other one-word exclamations as the sand gave way beneath his feet, revealing a much larger hole, one as large as the hole under the fence they had crawled through earlier. He plunged downward into darkness, sand raining down on him. For a moment, he was worried that the hole went on forever, a bottomless abyss into nothingness. Although, actually, it only went about ten feet before Bolt smashed onto the hard dirt floor below. Clomp! “Ow!”
Dirt floors are not as hard as concrete, but you still don’t want to fall on one. Bolt had the wind knocked out of him, and he curled into a ball, coughing and trying to catch his breath.
His coughing subsided after a few seconds. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t injured. Best yet, he wasn’t captured by penguins.
Bolt looked up. Branches and leaves had been placed over the hole in the sand, and one of the branches had cracked underneath him when he stepped on it. Sand had poured back over the branches after Bolt fell, leaving only a pinprick of light. The place smelled like earth, but also like horse dung and, faintly, like beets. But it was too dark to see much. He could also hear the faint pattering of penguins up above, in the distance. They were running past the hole. Bolt was no longer in danger.
Or at least he thought he was no longer in danger. Because just then a flicker of lights approached—flames from a torch. No, flames from four torches, hurrying down a long, earth-carved tunnel and toward him. The first torch was held by a short, squat woman with wild dark gray hair standing up on its ends. Her head was round with a big upturned pink nose, and she had two big buckteeth. She wore a loose, long black robe, lined with gold trim near the bottom, a hood flopping behind. She squinted her small gray eyes beneath oversized plastic goggles.
Three men, wearing similar goggles and robes, also with poofs of gray hair and round pink noses, ran behind her, buckteeth bared.
Maybe Bolt was safe. Maybe these odd but threatening-looking people were friendly.
“Who are you?” demanded the woman. Her voice
was squeaky but harsh. “And how dare you invade our home!”
Well, they didn’t seem friendly.
One of the men, taller and older than the rest, with deep wrinkles in his long, gaunt face, held a giant pair of scissors. He snipped them back and forth and squawked, “The invader must die.”
Bolt yelped. Nope, they weren’t friendly, not at all. And Bolt was definitely not safe.
9.
One in a Hole
Bolt stared up at the odd, torch-carrying woman and her companions, the lump in his throat growing larger with every snip of the scissors held by the tallest man. The man’s hands were large, incredibly so, and Bolt soon noticed that all of these people had enormous hands, too. They also had extra-large feet; none of them wore shoes. Their fingernails and toenails were long, pointy, and painted bright red. They all hissed at Bolt.
The tall man continued to open and shut his scissors menacingly. Snip. Snip. Snip.
“What are you going to do with those?” gulped Bolt.
“For now, I’ll just open and close them in a threatening manner,” said the man. His voice was incredibly high. It reminded Bolt of someone stepping on a rubber duck.
“Wh-what is this place?” asked Bolt, his voice unsteady as he inched backward. His eyes glanced back and forth between the woman standing closest to him and the man with the scissors. Their dancing torch flames added to the general eeriness.
“We will ask the questions,” squeaked the tall man. “Who are you? Who sent you? What did you have for breakfast last Wednesday?” The woman glared at him. “Sorry, I got carried away with the questions.”
“I’m Bolt. I sent myself. Last Wednesday, I probably ate fish for breakfast.”
“Enough,” said the woman. Her voice was pitched even higher than the man’s. It reminded Bolt of the orphanage where he grew up and where, after meals, the boys had to wash their plates until they were squeaky clean. Squeak, squeak, squeak. “No more questions, Topo,” the woman squealed.
The man, Topo, bowed his head. “Of course, Zemya. I’ll just stand behind you and continue snipping my scissors, if you don’t mind.” Snip, snip, snip. As he stepped back, he glared at Bolt.
Zemya sighed. “Just snip them quietly.”
Snip, snip, snip.
The woman, Zemya, looked down at Bolt. “Why are you here?”
“I came to the island on a ship, and then I was running and I fell into a hole. It was an accident,” Bolt explained, his heart beating faster with every snip of the man’s scissors.
“He lies!” roared Topo, who began snipping with even more ferocity as he glared at Bolt and stomped forward. Bolt’s heart was now beating so fast he feared it might bounce out of his chest. “What is your mission?” the tall man demanded. “What are you hiding? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” The man withered under Zemya’s icy stare. “Sorry. I got carried away with the questions again.” He snarled at Bolt. “I’d snip you into strips and then feed you to the alligators, except we don’t have any alligators.”
“Wait a second,” said Bolt. He had been threatened to be fed to alligators before. “Are you related to anyone who lives in Brugaria?”
“I have an older brother named Günter who lives there.”
Bolt thought back to when he had faced Günter, the leader of the Mystical Brotherhood of Whales. “I've met him. You remind me of him.”
The woman peered down at Bolt. Her eyes glared at him from behind her goggles. Bolt stood perfectly still, waiting for her next move. “My name is Zemya. I am the leader of our group.”
“And what is your group?” Bolt asked.
“As if you don’t know!” roared Topo, jabbing his scissors forward. “Let’s cut him into snowflakes! I’ve cut dozens of trespassers into snowflakes!”
“No, you haven’t, Topo!” yelped Zemya. Her voice was so high that her yelp hurt Bolt’s ears, like nails on a chalkboard. “Forgive Topo,” she said to Bolt. “He tends to exaggerate.”
“I exaggerate more than anyone in the world!” declared Topo. Snip, snip, snip.
“Look, I came here by accident, I swear it,” yelped Bolt. “And I know I fell into your hole, but really, aren’t you just making a mountain out of a molehill?”
Topo roared. “How dare you!” he snarled. “He mocks us!”
“I didn’t mean any offense.” Bolt felt panic stirring inside him, and confusion—what had he said? He took a deep breath; he needed to control his fear. After all, Bolt had been in worse jams than this and escaped them. Well, on second thought, maybe he hadn’t been in worse jams than this, just equally bad jams. In truth, it was hard to rate his jams in any particular order, but being trapped underground with, well, whatever these people were was high on the list. “What did I do?”
Zemya ordered Topo to stop snipping and looked down at Bolt, shaking her head. “Topo has a point, you know.”
“Actually, I have two points,” said Topo, pointing to the ends of his scissors.
Zemya rolled her eyes. “You said you got here on a ship. But if that’s true, how did you get past the rocks and the fog?” She peered down at Bolt and gasped. Then she squatted beside him and sniffed around his head. Her buckteeth chattered together, and she poked him on the neck.
“Ow,” said Bolt.
She peered so closely, Bolt could smell the woman’s robe. It smelled like dirt and worms. She held her torch closer to him and sucked in another breath. Bolt, who was always a little self-conscious about the penguin-shaped birthmark on his neck, instinctually raised his shoulder to hide it.
“He has the mark of the penguin!” she declared. Zemya stepped away from Bolt, wary, but her eyes remained focused on him. “Your white skin. Your long beak-like nose, bushy eyebrows, and your hair, springing up into the shape of horns. You turn into a werepenguin at midnight, don’t you?” She scrunched her mouth together and looked away. She appeared to be deep in thought.
“I mean you no harm,” said Bolt, his forehead sweaty. He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender and peace. “I’m not a spy. I came here to save the world.” Zemya raised an eyebrow. Behind her, the scissor-snipping grew louder. “Honest. We were sneaking into the fortress but set off an alarm and were chased by an army of penguins with toothbrushes.”
“We? But you are alone,” said Zemya.
“My friends are on the island, too. They’ll be looking for me. If they find me, that’ll just mean more people falling into your hole. You don’t want that, right?” Zemya shook her head. Topo’s scissor-snipping slowed. “I just need to sneak into the fortress, steal a tooth, and then travel to the South Pole to stop the evil leader of the werepenguins.” Zemya stared at Bolt blankly. “I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but trust me, I’m on your side.”
“He lies. Can I snip him now?” asked Topo, marching forward. Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip. The man bent down, and Bolt closed his eyes. The scissors were so close Bolt felt the air next to him being cut in half. “I say I snip him, we lure his friends here, and I snip them, too!”
“Stop!” cried out Zemya. “I don’t know if he speaks the truth or not, but it is obvious that he is a were-creature. If we start snipping were-creatures, then we are no better than those who hurt us! No, we must give him the test.” The scissors stopped snipping, and after a couple of seconds Bolt, who still had his eyes closed, opened them. Topo was backing away, scowling.
“You’re giving me a test?” Bolt asked. That didn’t sound so bad. Maybe Bolt would get out of this mess. He hoped it was a true-or-false test. Bolt was never good at essays.
“We will take him to the antechamber while the test is prepared,” said Zemya.
Topo jabbed his scissors in the air. Snip, snip, snip. “Follow us. And don’t try any funny stuff, got it?”
“I’m not funny,” Bolt promised. “I’ve never been
very good at telling jokes.”
One of the other men withdrew a hammer from his own pocket and began to wave it in the air, in unison with Topo’s snipping. “If he tries any funny stuff, I’ve got this!”
“And I’ve got this!” shouted the other man, who then pulled a banana from his pocket. “Sorry,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I was about to have a snack when the intruder fell in.”
Zemya walked down the tunnel in the direction from which she had come, followed by Bolt, and then Topo with his snipping scissors, and the other two, one waving a hammer and the other holding his banana. But there was nothing funny about any of it.
10.
The Underground
Bolt followed Zemya down hand-carved tunnels. The walls were high—even the Omnescian Quad, in his stilts, wouldn’t have needed to slouch. The tunnels twisted and turned and branched out to other tunnels. Bolt grew confused as to where they were. Escape was impossible—Bolt would never be able to find his way out of this maze.
They passed two people whispering in the tunnel. The people were dressed the same as Bolt’s escorts, with black garments and goggles, and shared the same pink noses and abnormally large hands and feet. They ate something small and wiggly.
Worms. They ate live worms.
Bolt’s stomach lurched. Ugh.
But, then again, he ate raw fish, so who was he to judge?
The two worm-eating people moved to the side to let Bolt and his group pass. Bolt slowed, and one of the men behind him shouted, “Keep moving! I have a banana!”
They passed doors, many doors. There was an entire community within these tunnels. They even had electricity, as faint electric lights buzzed from the ceiling, lighting the way, although dimly.
They passed an open room that reminded Bolt of a beauty salon, with barber chairs and sinks and lots of these strange people inside. Some were having their hair cut, while others were getting their nails done.
The Battle of the Werepenguins Page 5
