by Sechin Tower
As creepy and quiet as the park was, navigating through it wasn’t at all a problem because all the big rides made great landmarks. There was a big Ferris wheel to the north and a curving roller coaster in the south, but the biggest landmark was easily the Doomsday Machine ride. On the wall of a boarded-up hotdog stand I found a poster that showed a group of happily screaming people plunging down the side of it strapped into a little car. As tall as the thing was, you could probably see the curvature of the earth from the top, and the really extreme thing about it was that after you dropped, your seat would still be travelling at terminal velocity when you got to ground level. From the illustrations I could tell that at the very last second before you went splat, the floor would drop out of your way and you would fall past it, into a big shaft that extended way down into the ground, and that’s where you would slow to a stop. After you had been properly traumatized and/or delighted, your chair would take you back up to the observation deck thirty feet above the fairground, where you would exit into a gift shop that probably specialized in Doomsday Machine beer steins and instant photos capturing your face at the precise moment when you thought “oh my God, I’m seriously going to die.”
After looking at that poster, it almost started to sound like fun, but when I put on my goggles and zoomed in for a closer look at the actual ride, I saw that the elevator track of the Doomsday Machine had either been dismantled or hadn’t ever been completed. It looked like there had been an effort to convert the structure into a radio broadcasting tower, because at the very top was a metallic dome lined with golden disks that made the whole thing resemble a pepper shaker.
I may not be so good with people, but I know my electrical equipment and I could tell that was no mere decoration up there. This so-called “Doomsday Machine” was meant to broadcast extremely powerful radio signals of some kind. I was ready to bet that its use as a ride was designed as an afterthought, or maybe even a disguise. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would go to so much trouble to disguise an antenna, or why they would even need it. Out of curiosity, I toggled the controls on my goggles to look for radio transmissions, but the tower was cold. At least, for now.
I slid my goggles back up onto my forehead and used the Doomsday Machine as a landmark to find my way to the center of the park. It didn’t take me long to get there and discover that a wide-open parade ground encircled the extreme ride. Here I found what I was looking for: two dozen motorcycles, all parked haphazardly on the dead grass of a picnic area. It was seven in the morning, so the owners of the bikes were probably sleeping somewhere, but they couldn’t be far.
Creeping through the gum-sticky sidewalks, I made my way into the ranks of black gas tanks and chrome pipes, Rusty close at my heels. This would hurt them: they were a motorcycle gang, so these bikes must be their big thing. As I studied the bikes, however, a growing sense of disappointment crept over me. Every single one of their engines used a carburetor. Even the more recent models had been modified to swap out their fuel injection systems for the older air-flow regulator systems. It made sense that they would make these mods, because if these guys had been robbing banks with EMP-bombs, then their carburetor motors would keep running while newer, more sophisticated vehicles with fuel injectors would stall on the spot. It was the cheapest possible way to harden a civilian vehicle to a massive electromagnetic pulse.
I cursed under my breath. The only electrical systems in these bikes were the headlights and the starter switches. Sure, I could fry every one of them the way I fried the keypad on the door lock outside, but the total damage would amount to thirty or forty bucks per bike. Not exactly what I needed to hit them where it hurt and bring the Professor’s plans crashing down around his ears.
I squatted there and scratched under the strap of my goggles. Their bikes were hardened against Rusty’s EMP transmitter, but maybe there was some other way to hit the Blitzkriegers where it would count. These guys were bank robbers, after all, and they had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe the money was stashed around here somewhere—if I was really lucky, maybe they were even keeping it in large brown bags with dollar symbols on the sides to make it easier to swipe. Judging from the drifts of crumpled beer cans and cigarette butts piled outside the Doomsday Machine, I could tell that it had received a lot of attention from the bikers, so that seemed like a good place to start looking.
The building was a long, squat structure occupying the full area beneath the Doomsday Machine. It had a sign over the door that showed people strapped into the ride’s seats, managing to look like they were screaming their lungs out but still smiling at the same time. Big, plate glass windows ran the full length of each wall of the building, except on the north side, closest to me, where the building shared the back wall of a stage that might have once been used by musicians to entertain guests in the park. It seemed to offer the best cover, so Rusty and I scampered over to the base of the stage. From that spot, I was close enough that I could look through one of the windows.
Even though the sun was just coming up, it was still really dark inside, and the slightly tinted windows didn’t help visibility. I slid my goggles down over my eyes and switched to the lowest setting of light amplification. My breath caught in my throat when I suddenly realized what I was looking at.
Row upon row of sleeping bikers littered the floor inside the building. They were bundled up in sleeping bags, stretched out on cots, or sprawled across inflatable mattresses, their beer cans, ash trays, and potato chip bags piled between them. There would be no gold stars for housekeeping here. It seemed an odd arrangement for a gang that could steal money whenever they wanted it. If I had a share of a few dozen bank-vaults worth of loot, I would go out and buy a house, or at least a nice bed. Yet here they were, all of them snoring away together in one big makeshift dorm. Well, almost all of them.
“Hey, girly, what you doin’ here?” asked a voice behind me.
I gasped and whirled in place to see a bright green shape towering over me. I yanked the goggles off to see a bald guy with a leather jacket and a stained tank-top. He was flexing his fists open and closed, as if he were trying to figure out exactly how big around my throat was.
Another one stepped out from behind the stage to block off my retreat. My stomach churned when I recognized him. It was the same shirtless creeper who had brought me the cell phone on the train.
My mind raced and my heart was pounding, but there was no escape for me. If I tried to run, they could easily grab me before I moved two steps. If I stayed there, they would do the same.
“I recognize this one,” Shirtless said, lifting my chin with his grimy finger. I yanked my head away, but he just laughed.
“This one here is working with the P’fessor,” he said to his buddy. Then he turned to me and rasped “Well, c’mon, then. Let’s get you down there so you can get to work.”
The two of them lead me through the doors and into the biker’s makeshift dorm. I couldn’t tell if I had just stumbled into the perfect disguise or if I was the little fly that had zoomed right past the web and directly into the spider’s fangs.
Chapter 31 ~ Dean
Pushing past Victor, Angela grabbed Dean by the hand and led him next door to the shower room. She backed him up to the wall, and then opened the secret tile and pressed the down button. By the time the doors opened to the underground lab, Dean’s head was spinning.
“This place,” Dean muttered. “It looks like Frankenstein’s lab in here. And over there—is that…?”
Dean pointed to the cage where the chupacabra sat. Its tongue flicked in and out of its mouth as it watched them cautiously.
“Your new pet?” Angela asked admiringly.
“That thing almost killed me,” Dean glared at Victor. “I thought you had dissected it or something. Why are you keeping it down here? Why are you keeping any of this down here?” he waved his hand to indicate the lab all around him.
Dean wasn’t quite sure what went on in that lab, but he knew
it was a big secret to hide from someone who lived upstairs.
“How about we let bygones be bygones?” Angela stepped between the two of them, waving the egg in front of their noses. “As much as I love seeing Vickey get chewed out by the teacher, we have work to do, remember? Now, who can tell me why the Professor would be interested in this egg?”
There was a moment of silence as Dean and Victor shifted mental gears.
“What tests have you run?” Victor asked.
“Everything,” Angela answered with a sigh. “I know it consists mostly of silicon and teslanium, but that’s about all that was interesting. Do you have any ideas? Anything at all?”
The three of them were silent as they stared at the rock in Angela’s hand. Dean rubbed his earlobe, which was his way of stimulating ideas, but nothing came to him. The egg was no piece of art. It had no historical value. It wasn’t made out of gold or diamonds. It seemed like a cruel, meaningless joke that McKenzie had died for such a useless little lump. The only unusual thing about the egg was the faint rainbow sheen that played along its surface. That, and the weird colors it had emitted when he first took it out of the display case.
“It’s probably nothing,” Dean said at last. “Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I could have sworn that it was glowing, just for a minute, back in the museum.”
“When?” Angela narrowed her eyes like a hunter taking aim. “Think carefully. Was there anything that might have triggered it?”
“It happened when I took it out of the case. When you had that thing of yours, your—what did you call it—your harp. Your miniature EMP-generator.”
Angela and Victor exchanged a triumphant look and said, as though with one voice: “electromagnetic field.”
Then it was like someone fired a starting pistol, because the two of them raced off in different directions and started pulling various items from shelves. Victor rummaged through boxes of gears and wires while Angela picked the best pieces and went to work with a soldering gun.
All Dean could do was watch. He knew his way around a toolbox, but right then he felt as useless as roller-skates on an octopus. He looked over at the chupacabra, who was leaning on the bars of his cage, looking back at him with a quizzical expression on its face.
“You and me both, buddy,” Dean said to the creature, still being careful not to get too close.
The chupacabra’s only response was to flick its snake-tongue in his direction.
In about twenty minutes, Victor and Angela had constructed a wand that looked like a silver billiard ball glued to the end of a length of plastic plumbing pipe. A single cord ran out its back to connect to a kettle-bell shaped gizmo in the corner that Dean assumed must be supplying the power.
“My harp emitted an irregular, broad spectrum pulse,” Angela explained to Dean. “It’s good for temporarily scrambling camera circuits, but you can’t run a device off it. Right now, we need to generate sustained electrical induction inside the egg.”
None of this made sense to Dean, but he gathered that, despite its looks, the egg was actually some kind of electronic gizmo, maybe like a cell phone that had lost its power cord. Victor and Angela had just cobbled together a way of charging its batteries without needing that cord. Why anyone would want to make a device that looked like an ugly rock was beyond him, but at least they were about to find out what it was supposed to do.
“I wish Soap were here,” Victor said, readying the wand. “She’s really good with wireless electricity.”
Angela glared at him. “What am I, chopped liver?”
Victor ignored her and gave the dial at the base of the wand a slow twist, hunting for the right frequency. The only thing that happened was that Dean yelped in pain. He scrambled to pull out his new cell phone, which he had needed to purchase on his way back here after Angela’s harp destroyed the last one. And now this one, too, was wrecked.
“You’ve got to be kidding! I just bought this…” Dean’s voice trailed off when he looked up from his overheated phone to see the egg. Victor and Angela also stared, dumbstruck.
Shining above the egg was a slowly rotating ball of light. It looked three dimensional but insubstantial, like a ghost floating right in front of their eyes. Angela flipped off the overhead lights so they could get a better look, and their faces were cast in a blue glow as they studied the display.
Dean had to look at it for a long moment before he realized that the shining ball was actually the image of a planet, seen from the perspective of deep space. As it slowly rotated, he saw that a swirling blue ocean covered almost the entire the surface of the planet, save only a single, gargantuan continent. This landmass included gray mountain ridges, blue rivers, and small brown dots of deserts, but most of it was covered in thick, green jungles that ran from one coast to the other like bright green wall-to-wall carpeting. And there was one unnatural feature in the image: scattered across the continent were glowing red dots. There might have been a hundred of them, twinkling like little red stars.
“Aliens!” Dean said. “I knew it! I should have guessed it was aliens as soon as I saw the lizard-monster over there.”
Choop rose up on his hind feet and flicked his tongue.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Captain Kirk,” Angela placed a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “That’s not an alien planet. It’s Earth. This is our planet, or what it used to be during the Triassic era, 200 million years ago. That big continent is called Pangea, and it’s what things looked like before the tectonic plates broke apart into the continents we know today.”
“Then what are all these little red dots?” Dean leaned in to touch one and was startled when the image changed, the globe disappearing as the perspective zoomed in on the spot he touched. It resolved itself into a bird’s-eye view of what appeared to be a wooden structure in a jungle clearing. Dean pulled his hand back and the image zoomed back out until it was once again a spinning globe.
“What was that?” Dean looked at his finger and then back at the image. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a treasure map from the age of the dinosaurs,” Angela said, reaching out to touch another red pinpoint to zoom in on another location. “And X marks the spot.”
Chapter 32 ~ Soap
The shirtless guy led me past the sleeping bikers. The place smelled like rotten milk, and I had to fight my instinct to hold my nose. One of the lounging men grumbled about it being too early to start the party, but Shirtless just told him to shut up and go back to sleep because “the P’fessor” needed me to do something. A few of them commented on Rusty, but they seemed strangely unsurprised by an eight-legged mechanical scorpion-dog clicking its way across the floor before them. Perhaps after working for the Professor they had just grown accustomed to weird things.
The building at the base of the Doomsday Machine was actually a restaurant, but you wouldn’t know it from the discarded cigarette packs and the sleeping bodies spread all over where the tables must have once been. I didn’t even guess that food might have been served in that area until we stepped through the swinging doors into the kitchen. That room was just as messed up as the rest of the building, with moldering pots and pans piled high in the sink and on the floor. I scrubbed my hands with some hand sanitizer as we walked, but I wished I could have applied some to the inside of my nose because of the smell.
“Through here,” Shirtless said, unlocking a door to a brightly lit room in the back. This area contained only an elevator labeled “Maintenance Access.” In front of the elevator doors sat the largest man I have ever seen in my life. I recognized him from the DMV photos Nikki had helped me access, but no photo could convey the impression of his true size. He looked like a titanic professional wrestler, and his body must have been forty percent fat, forty percent muscle, and forty percent granite. I know that adds up to more than one hundred percent, but it felt appropriate because this guy seemed bigger than mathematically possible. When I looked up at the florescent bulb above his shiny-bald head, I almost expec
ted to see the light curving around him.
The big guy was evidently on guard duty, but it didn’t look like he was putting much effort into it. One of his meaty hands was wrapped around a girly magazine, while his other enveloped a forty ounce bottle of beer. He glanced at me, and then, without standing up, he stretched out his elephantine arm to slap the elevator button with the rolled-up point of his magazine.
“Where’s your lab coat?” he said with a gravelly voice.
“My lab coat?” I was worried that it was a trick question or maybe I needed to answer with a password. “I don’t like lab coats. I prefer to wear black.”
He grunted in approval before returning his attention to his magazine.
To my relief, Shirtless didn’t get onto the elevator, so it was just me and Rusty going down.
“The machine’s on B-2,” he said to me, and I could see his tongue through the hole made by his missing tooth. “The thing’s on B-1 if you want to check that out.”
Even as the door closed, Shirtless was still leering at me, so I hunched over, pulled my hoodie tight around my shoulders, and folded my arms until I was safely sealed away from view.
It would have been nice to hide in that elevator forever, but it simply wasn’t a realistic option. I needed to make a choice and pick one of those floors. I wasn’t sure what he had been talking about when he said “the thing” was on B-1, but I liked the sound of a machine, so I pressed the other button and began a very, very long descent.
When the elevator doors opened up, Rusty and I walked down a short hallway and through a reinforced metal door. The door had a heavy bolt-lock, so I slid it closed once we were in. Somehow I felt a lot better having a barred door between me and the creepers upstairs.
