Zeke Bartholomew

by Jason Pinter

  “This amateur found you out, you, you, bombastic simpleton.”

  “Wow, even your insults are amateur hour. Listen, Zeke, I’m kinda impressed that you stayed alive this long. Doesn’t reflect well on this big lug right here.” Derek shot Ragnarok a disapproving glance. The monster just glowered, as most monsters do.

  “Don’t get a big head, my friend,” Derek continued. “Every dog gets lucky from time to time. Most kids, they’re just as stupid as you. They’ll follow anyone anywhere. They already follow Penny and Jimmy like they’re saviors. Well, all my main man Le Carré is going to do is show the world how right I am.”

  “My army of children will be unstoppable,” Le Carré said. “Millions swarming east and west. A tidal wave of small soldiers.”

  “And you’re going to let this happen,” Sparrow said.

  “Let it happen?” Derek said, laughing, his tie fluttering ever so slightly. “Baby, I’m making it happen.”

  “You’re lucky I don’t kick those sunglasses down your throat.”

  “If you even tried,” Derek said, “I’d kill you so fast I wouldn’t even need to take my suit jacket off.”

  “It’s a cheap jacket anyway,” I said.

  Derek cocked his head. “This suit is worth more than your house.”

  “Too bad the guy wearing it isn’t worth the crud I clean out of the gutters.”

  Derek stepped forward to me. He took his sunglasses off. His eyes were a piercing blue.

  “I have half a mind to kill you right now,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” I replied. “Why wait? What, you’d rather these freak-show dolls or this molten mutant did it? Let them. At least I’ll know it wasn’t at your hands.”

  Derek looked at Le Carré. The mastermind did not move.

  “All you are is an errand boy,” I said. “You delivered a message. How brave.”

  “Shut up,” Derek said.

  “Or what? You’ll go find codes that will make me be quiet. Go ahead, big man, show me what you’ve got.”

  Derek marched over to one of the Jimmy Peppers robots and pulled the laser rifle from its hand.

  I circled slightly to my left.

  Derek walked back and stood directly in front of me. I could tell by the way he held it, he’d never used that type of rifle before.

  The gun currently had one green panel lit. Enough to kill me. But not enough for what I had in mind.

  Le Carré said, “In five minutes they’ll be dead anyway. You can wait, Derek.”

  “Yeah, Derek,” Sparrow chimed in. “You can wait.”

  “I don’t wait for anyone,” he said, thumbing a button on the side of the rifle. A second green light flared up.

  “You’re a patsy,” I said. “A nothing. That rifle isn’t going to do anything more than give me an electric shock. You don’t even know how to work it.”

  “Derek…” Le Carré said, walking toward us.

  “I do too,” he said, and thumbed the rifle button three more times, lighting up all five panels.

  I looked at Sparrow. She gave me a slight nod. We were on the same page. This was it. The moment it all came down to. The fate of the world was in the hands of a kid who had once let a dodgeball bounce off of his head three times before hitting the floor.

  “Then go ahead and shoot, Lance, or are you nothing but an empty suit?”

  At that split second, Sparrow charged up from behind Derek Lance and threw her entire body weight into him, just as he pressed the trigger on the laser rifle.

  A massive red beam exploded out from the barrel, Sparrow’s weight caused the laser to divert from its intended target, instead cleaving a hole right through SirEebro. The metal box erupted into flames, the sides melting down where the laser had perforated it.

  Le Carré let out an anguished howl as steel and sparks rained down around us.

  The blow had knocked the gun from Derek’s hand. I sprinted over, dove, and picked it up. And just as I did, I felt a massive hand close around my neck.

  Ragnarok. And this time he wasn’t going to just hold me tightly.

  I could feel his huge fingers digging into my windpipe. I did the only thing I could. I aimed the rifle up in his direction and pressed the trigger.

  Another pulse emanated from the rifle, and suddenly I was free. I looked at the monster. A faint wisp of smoke was coming from the floor next to him. The blast had cut right through a molten lava tube on Ragnarok’s arm, and he was literally leaking thousand-degree liquid onto the floor. He howled in agony.

  I turned back to the room and yelled to Kyle and Sparrow, “Run!”

  Then I fired one more blast at the Penny and Jimmy army. A dozen robots exploded as the rifle torched them.

  As we ran out of SirEebro’s chamber, I heard Le Carré yell, “Kill them all!”

  We ran through the next room as I fired blasts behind me without looking. There were enough huge explosions and raining debris for me to realize that SirEebro was officially out of commission. Le Carré wouldn’t be able to broadcast the PB&J single to the world. Sparrow and I had just saved millions of lives.

  How we were going to get out without losing our own lives was something I hadn’t quite figured out yet.

  “Go for the elevator!” Sparrow yelled.

  “It’s destroyed!” I answered.

  “We’re not going to use the actual elevator,” she said. I gulped.

  The three of us ran as fast as we could, Kyle ahead of us, his long legs much quicker than ours.

  “There it is!” Sparrow shouted. Less than twenty yards away were the burnt remains of the elevator we’d come down on. Sparrow and Kyle pried the doors open, Sparrow wincing with her injured shoulder.

  Then I felt something plow into me from behind, and I went sprawling. I turned to see Derek Lance. His fist cocked back and then, before I had a chance to move, landed just below my left eye. A burst of pain exploded in my head, and I went tumbling backward.

  My head smacked on something metallic and hard. It was the railing in the reactor room. Had I lost my balance, I would have fallen to my death.

  The lair was falling apart. We had only minutes, if not seconds, before the whole thing collapsed with us inside.

  “I’m going to kill you, amateur hour,” Derek said, his hands closing around my throat. I was getting a little tired of that. I moved my head back, swung it forward, and head-butted Derek Lance right in the cranium. He stumbled back and we both tumbled to the ground.

  Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw something coming. It was Ragnarok. He was leaking molten lava, leaving steaming puddles as he moved. He was weak, the burning life draining out of him. And he was coming right for us.

  Just as the monster was about to crash into both of us and send us all plummeting thousands of feet to our doom, I pulled Derek down to Ragnarok’s knee level. The unbalanced monster tripped over our prone bodies and, unable to stop himself, flipped over the metal railing and crashed into the reactor. Several of the lava tubes crossing his body were cut, and magma spurted everywhere. I felt a drop of it graze my arm, like a hot poker. Then the monster fell noiselessly into the abyss.

  Derek and I stood there for a moment in shock. We looked at the reactor. Lava had begun to eat through the metal, smoke pouring from dozens of tiny holes.

  That was not good.

  I heard footsteps. Many of them. The PB&J army was coming for us.

  I pressed Derek up against the railing, but he wouldn’t budge. And his hands found my throat again.

  “You’ll die now,” he said, teeth gritted into a maniacal snarl.

  “Hey, Lance,” I said, with all the air I could muster. “Nice shades.”

  I drew my hand back, and with all my might I thrust my index finger right through his sunglasses and
into his eye.

  Derek staggered back, holding his face. I could see blood dripping between his fingers.

  I turned and ran. Sparrow was fending off the PB&J army with the rifle, but they were beginning to return fire.

  “Come on!” Kyle yelled.

  We piled into the broken elevator, and one by one clambered on top of it. The three of us stood there, fire snaking out into the elevator shaft. In mere seconds the reactor would overheat and we’d all be dead.

  Sparrow gripped the elevator cable. “Hold on, guys,” she said.

  “Are you crazy?” I said.

  “Only the crazy survive,” she said.

  Kyle and I grabbed the cable and held on for dear life. Sparrow aimed the rifle down at the elevator, at the opposite cable, and pulled the trigger.

  The blast illuminated the elevator shaft in a brilliant red light. The elevator exploded, and the cable across from us snapped in half.

  Then we were zipping through the air, being whisked upward at speeds my dad would never let me drive at in a million years. I could feel my hair and my lips being pulled back. I’m pretty sure I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

  Suddenly a huge fireball erupted directly below us and began chasing us up the elevator shaft. It was gaining on us.

  I looked up. I could see the top of the shaft. We were almost there. But I didn’t know if we could outrun the fireball.

  A hundred yards. Fifty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten.

  The cables hit the roof of the shaft at full speed, rattling our bones with the huge jolt. Kyle and I managed to hold on, but I heard a cry of pain and saw Sparrow’s shoulder give out. She was going to fall directly into the fiery pit. Holding on to the elevator cable with one hand, I caught her good arm with my other.

  Kyle reached down and grabbed it too. We pulled until Sparrow was back with us, then the three of swung onto the ledge where we’d entered the elevator not too long before. We pried our fingers into the small slot between the doors and pulled it open.

  Then we all squeezed through the small opening until we fell into a heap back in the woods outside. We were safe.

  “Keep running!” Sparrow shouted as she jumped up. Soon she was ten yards ahead of us.

  She’d been right so far, so Kyle and I stood up and began to run. And we kept running.

  Then, behind us, the entire woods seemed to explode into a massive fiery ball, right where we’d stood just seconds before.

  We kept running until we got to the strip mall with the coffee shop. The military antenna had melted onto the roof of the shop. The woods were burning. The reactor had exploded. The PB&J army was now destroyed. Le Carré and his plan had been defeated.

  We’d won.

  I rolled over, coughing amid all the smoke and ruin. I saw Kyle lying on the ground a few feet away. I crawled over and shook my friend.

  “Kyle!” I said, slapping him in the face. “Kyle! Speak to me!”

  “Ugh, stop slapping me, you turdburger.”

  He rolled over. Aside from being covered in ash and looking like he’d just slept for a week in a fireplace, he appeared unhurt.

  “Zeke,” he said, “right now I’m just happy to be alive, but at some point real soon you’re going to have to explain to me what the heck just happened.”

  “I will,” I said. “I will.”

  I stood up and looked around, but I couldn’t see her.

  “Sparrow!” I shouted. I ran back and forth, checking under logs and broken branches. “Sparrow! Where are you?”

  I spun around, looking for some sign of her. Anything.

  But Sparrow was gone.

  8:17 p.m.

  Seventeen minutes since we saved the world. I think…

  This is Stefan Holt, reporting live from the scene of the crime. What we have here is an explosion of the highest magnitude, with fire and brimstone raining down all across the horizon. What has happened here we do not know for certain yet. Hey, Dad, can I have a hot chocolate?”

  Okay, so Stefan Holt wasn’t really reporting live from the scene, but his dad was, and the kid kept pretending to report his own fake newscast while peppering his working dad with annoying questions, such as whether they could go across the street and get snacks from the coffee shop sitting atop a molten lava reactor cave.

  I watched Stefan Holt’s dad report the real news. Rumors were they had to break into other breaking news: that the new PB&J single had debuted to critical panning. Kids around the world hated it. The duo had canceled all appearances and concerts for the indefinite future. And according to their publicist, both would be taking a step back from the spotlight, perhaps permanently.

  We got to see some of the publicist’s press conference on a closed-circuit TV in the back of one of the news vans. I recognized the publicist immediately: it was the driver of the sedan that had picked me up outside of Derek Lance’s house. The guy looked absolutely terrified, and as soon as his carefully prepared statement was read, he practically sprinted away from the microphones. I smiled. The bad guys were all gone or going into hiding. Operation Songbird was finished.

  And, hey, if we’d not only put an end to the PB&J army but to their music career too, well, that was just icing on the cake.

  I was sitting on the curb with Kyle, waiting for our parents to come pick us up. We hadn’t said a word since we realized we’d survived the explosion, but there were enough fire trucks, news crews, and onlookers to do all the talking for us.

  It still didn’t seem fully real. That just the other day I watched as vans carrying Derek Lance and his family pulled up to the abandoned home next to ours, and today I’d been fighting Derek in the middle of a cheesy robot pop-star army miles underground. It felt like I’d somehow fallen into a video game and survived the ending but had the bumps and bruises to show for it.

  “What’s gonna happen now?” Kyle asked.

  “I have no idea. Who knows if they’ll even find Le Carré’s cave. They might just chalk it up to some sort of venti coffee meltdown.”

  “Yeah. I figured one of those was bound to happen someday. What happened to the girl?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  Just then we saw a small, furry animal scamper through the woods. It stopped to stare at us, gnashing its teeth once before disappearing into the forest.

  “There goes Higgins,” Kyle said.

  “Guess we’re not the only ones who made it out of there alive,” I replied.

  “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

  I heard tires squeal up to the curb. Two cars stopped, and three people got out of them. Kyle’s mom and dad—who were each well over six feet tall—and my own dad. Kyle’s parents gathered him up into a gigantic, freakishly tall hug. My dad walked over to me. Tears were in his eyes. Something lead fell into my gut. I didn’t wait for him to get to me. I got up, ran over to him, and threw my arms around him.

  “It’s okay, son,” he said. “I’m here, Zeke. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “I know,” I said, drooling tears and snot into his jacket. “Love you, Dad.”

  He took my face in his hands, smiled, and we continued hugging.

  A police officer took statements from Kyle and me as witnesses. We told him we’d just hitchhiked over here, taken a joyride, and happened to see the whole mess go down. The officer gave us his card and told us to call him at the station if we remembered anything else. I told him we would.

  I got into the car with my dad. Kyle and I shared a slight smile before our respective cars drove away.

  Before Dad pulled out onto the highway, we sat there in silence for a while.

  Finally he turned to me and said, “You sure you’re all right, Zeke?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Just looking forward to getting ho
me, getting back to my boring old life.”

  He patted me on the cheek. “We can do that.”

  I didn’t really believe what I’d said. Though I was looking forward to getting home, I knew the adventures with Sparrow had changed me forever. I felt like I was a different Zeke. Same body, new motor.

  When we got home, I passed right out and didn’t wake up until the alarm clock woke me the next morning.

  “Zeke!” my dad shouted. “Time for school!”

  Funny. I had almost forgotten about school after everything that had happened. I dragged myself out of bed. It was only when I stood up that I realized how sore my body was. I guess with all the adrenaline that had been pumping through it the past few days, my body hadn’t had a chance to really process all the abuse I’d put it through. Of course, not having really been very active before this didn’t help. Like taking a rusty bicycle and trying to go from zero to ninety in thirty seconds.

  When the school bus pulled up, I stumble-walked over and made my way up the steps. I found a seat and sighed as I lowered myself into it. A minute later, Kyle ambled on board. He was limping slightly. He made his way to the back and sat down next to me.

  “I feel like I got run over by a truck,” Kyle said.

  “I feel like your truck attacked me when it was done with you.”

  “Your backpack looks light. No gadgets to bring to homeroom today?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’m done with all that. Look where it got me.”

  “Yeah. You owe me a bit of an explanation,” he said with a hint of annoyance.

  “You’ll get it,” I said. “I promise. Now, wake me when we get to school.”

  The day passed faster than I could have imagined. I did my best to pay attention in class, but my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking about what Sparrow and I had done. The lives we’d saved. That despite all the pain I was in now, and how many times I’d almost been killed, something about the adventures felt right. Like maybe there was a reason I was still alive. Maybe Derek Lance was wrong. Maybe this nerdy dog hadn’t just gotten lucky. Maybe I was actually good at this.