He thought back to what Farley had said about kids never making it as far as the road, but he was probably just bluffing.
He kept sneaking backward.
Pretty soon, he was through the cafeteria doors. He turned and sprinted for the outside exit.
A tiny bell tinkled.
He was almost to the door when a huge WOOF shattered his eardrums.
A big set of gleaming black eyes and a bigger set of gleaming teeth stood right in his path.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NURSE
The dog’s jaw opened, and out came a tiger-sized growl, along with a Niagara Falls-amount of dog drool. Cody tried to make a dash for it, but the dog sunk its teeth into the hood of Cody’s sweatshirt.
Dr. Farley appeared in the doorway. He dropped a little brass bell back into his pocket. “Ah, Pavlov,” he said, patting the dog on the head. “Good boy.”
Pavlov dragged Cody back into the cafeteria. At the sight of him, several of the boys shook their heads. Too late, better luck next time, their expressions seemed to say. But Dr. Farley’s bloodshot eyes bored holes right through Cody.
“Nurse!” Farley barked.
In moments, a burly woman barged through the swinging door to the cafeteria.
Cody Mack did not like needles.
“Which one tonight, doctor?” she asked. “It’s a shame how many of these boys need sleep serum to help them settle down.”
“Yes. A shame.” Dr. Farley nudged Cody with his shoe. “That one, Nurse Bilgewater. Showing quite unruly tendencies. Prone to escape.”
“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?” the nurse said. “On the other hand, if he were to go outside, who knows . . .”
She looked hopefully at Dr. Farley, but he shook his head firmly. Nurse Bilgewater sighed and turned her attention back to Cody.
Nurse Bilgewater’s double chins burbled. “No?” She elbowed Dr. Farley. “We’ve got a feisty one here, haven’t we, Archibald?”
“Shall I hold him still for you?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I need to teach these little demons respect, right from the get-go. It’s like training alligators. You don’t get a second chance.”
Nurse Bilgewater gripped him tight against her with her enormous arm. She smelled like the inside of Cody’s grandpa’s fishing tackle box—half dead worm, half rotting trout.
Cody felt the eyes of all the disruptive boys at Splurch Academy on him as Nurse Bilgewater brandished her syringe. He pushed and strained against her mighty grip, but she had the strength of a pro wrestler.
Dr. Farley watched with a lazy smile.
Nurse Bilgewater squirted another drip of sleep serum from her needle.
Cody really did not like needles.
This Nurse Stinkwater, or whoever she was, wasn’t going to stick Cody Mack without a fight.
The other kids at Splurch Academy began to cheer.
Cody kept on running, skidding through plates of food.
Dr. Farley swooped in to grab him, but Cody leaped for the dangling chains of a chandelier and swung out of his reach.
For one glorious moment, Cody was free!
Then the chain swung back. Cody headed back toward Dr. Farley, who yanked on the other end of the chain.
Just then, a hole opened in the floor beneath Cody’s feet.
Cody couldn’t help it. He let go of the chains.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DUNGEON
He fell, thumpety-whack, against the sides of a long, steep chute made of rough stone blocks. His clothes snagged, his hair caught, and his skin scraped against the endless slide.
Then he landed on his knees in a pile of something scratchy, damp, and stinky.
The first thing he noticed was pain, everywhere he got jostled.
Then, the dark.
Then, the squeaks.
The kind of squeaks made by things with scratchy claws. And beady eyes.
And big. Sharp. Teeth.
Lots of squeaks.
And wheezing, from the ancient furnace. Booming, from the radiator. Shooshing, through the water pipes. Creaking, from the floors overhead. And groaning, as the tons of stone that made up Splurch Academy pressed down into the ground.
Or was it ghosts?
“Okay,” Cody said slowly to himself. “Let’s just relax. I don’t need to freak out. There’s nothing to freak out about here. I’m cool. It’s just an old basement, probably with a mouse in it somewhere. Who’s afraid of mice? Not me!”
Slowly, Cody’s eyes adjusted to the dark. The pale moon peeped through a small, grimy window, tucked away in a high corner near the ceiling. It gave just enough light for Cody to see that the floor was moving! Swarming past his legs, like a wave of dirty water, was a river of . . .
RATS!
Cody jumped up and clonked his head on some low-hanging pipes. They were slimy, dripping with who-knows-what, probably toxic sewage, but they were better than whiskery rat noses sniffing your ankles. So Cody climbed up on them.
And for a second, he could relax and think. After he finished sneezing all the cobwebs out of his nose.
Cody wasn’t scared of rats, if there was only one of them, and it was living in a tank.
But these rats were different.
Cody’d never been scared of much. What was there to be scared of back at home? The worst teachers and parents could do was yell at you.
But this crazy place! Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys . . . A haunted house nightmare run by lunatic freaks who didn’t care what they did to poor, innocent, disruptive boys, who never did anything worse in their lives than set the elementary school on fire. And those freaks got away with it because there was no one watching, no one willing to stop them!
Well, that was about to change.
They couldn’t send kids to schools swarming with rats, run by living skeletons and devil dogs and huge nurses waving hypodermic needles!
Not if Cody Mack had anything to say about it.
That Archibald Farley was about to meet his match.
He looked toward the light.
He climbed toward the light.
A huge spider—probably a tarantula—crawled across his hands. Rats ran along the pipes like tightrope walkers. Centipedes reared up and waved fifty or sixty legs at him. At one point, he slipped and conked his head on a pipe above, and at another he fell and landed on a pipe below. Ouch.
He was covered in cobwebs by the time he finally reached the light.
Moonlight clouded the warped and stained window. Its sills were made of rotting wood, locked by rusting iron bars. Cody shoved it with the heel of his hand.
It didn’t budge. He wiped at the grimy window with his sleeve to get a better look.
Something was moving out on the grounds. Several somethings.
Was that a dog? Pavlov, maybe, running loose? No. Pavlov was big, but this hound was even bigger.
Cody looked up at the moon, hovering over a bank of clouds. It was the same moon he saw out his bedroom window back home, yet here at Splurch Academy it seemed colder, more menacing. Just then something flew past the moon, blocking its entire shape with its large bat wings. Cody drew back. Something slithered past the window, parting the dark grasses with its long, thick body.
Cody rubbed his eyes.
Farley wasn’t bluffing when he said there were ferocious beasts around here.
Or maybe Cody’s eyes were just playing spooky tricks on him, because it was late and he was tired and hungry and far away from home.
CHAPTER SIX
THE CAFETERIA
“New boy! Wake up!”
Cody flinched. Something was prodding him. In his dream, he was about to eat a stack of pancakes, with melted butter and syrup, bacon, and a bowl of Fruity Tooters.
Breakfast vanished. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll get up!”
“New boy misssssed breakfassst.” Ivanov squinted at Cody. “Missssed morning classes, heh, heh. New boy gonna have detention!”
Ivanov’s one good eye oozed with repulsive gunk.
“Hear noisesssss last night, new boy? Did ssssomething haunt your worrssst nightmareses?”
Cody gulped.
“Come on,” Ivanov harrumphed. “Sstudentsss is eating their lunch.”
Cody followed him through the dungeon. With a bit of morning sunlight leaking through the dirty window, Cody could see enough to notice dozens of strange, shoebox-sized cages stacked along the stone walls. He looked closer. There were rats inside some of them, playing with wheels and bells. Occasionally a piece of food fell down a chute for them. They got all excited whenever it fell. Weird.
Cody climbed the tall, rickety stairs leading out of the dungeon. He blinked in the bright light of day, then followed Ivanov down the halls to the cafeteria. He wondered if he smelled like rat poop after sleeping in the straw with them all night.
“Fifth grade, here,” Ivanov said. He left Cody at a table and shuffled off.
There’s no point getting friendly, Cody thought, because the first chance I get, I’m gone.
Carlos went on. “Now, Sully, he won’t answer a grown-up. Ever. Not if they’re screaming in his ear. Acts deaf. Makes ’em cuckoo. Victor,” Carlos pointed toward the kid playing solitaire. Carlos lowered his voice to a whisper. “Victor’s a bad loser.”
Cody nodded. Good to know.
“How come I was a moron to run away?” Cody asked. “Don’t you ever try to escape?”
“Not since Billy Whistler,” Sully said.
“So you do talk,” Cody said, puzzled. “I thought Carlos said . . .”
“I only don’t talk to grown-ups,” Sully said. He shoved his glasses up his nose. “They’re the enemy. You talk to them, you give them power.”
Wacko, Cody thought. “So what happened to Billy Whistler?”
“Billy Whistler tried to escape one night,” Sully said. “His parents got a letter, and flowers.” He mimicked Farley’s voice. “Such a tragedy, how he drowned in the river, and his remains were never found.”
“What river?” Cody asked.
“Exactly,” Sully said.
“You mean . . . ”
They all nodded.
“But . . . but . . . didn’t the parents call the police—get it investigated or something?”
“Funny thing about the police in this town,” Sully said. “Whatever Farley says, goes. You’d think they were afraid of him.”
“But then,” Cody said, “how come you’re not all scared to death?”
“Just keep your head down, go to class, go to bed at night, and nothing much happens to you,” Carlos said. “Except for Dr. Farley’s behavioral experiments.”
The other boys shuddered like they’d just swallowed bad medicine.
“What about your parents?” Cody asked. “Don’t they flip out when they learn what happens here?”
No one said anything.
“What about parents?” Cody insisted.
“Farley doesn’t let us write to them. It’s a year-round school. No vacations. If parents visit, we sit in Farley’s office, and he supervises,” Carlos said. “‘Family contact disturbs our behavioral progress.’”
“Some parents don’t come at all,” Sully said.
Victor slapped down a solitaire card so hard, it made the other cards jump.
Sully lowered his voice. “Some parents were actually glad to get rid of their disruptive kid.”
Everyone looked away from Victor.
Cody thought of his own parents. They wouldn’t be happy to be rid of him, would they?
Would they?
“LUNCH IS OVER!” a female voice came screeching from the loudspeakers.
“REPORT TO CLASS
IMMEDIATELY!”
Cody fell in beside Carlos. “If it’s really that bad, how can you stand it?”
Carlos put a hand on Cody’s shoulder. “Welcome to Splurch Academy, pal,” he said. “The state makes Farley set everyone free when they turn eighteen. So the name of the game is: Survive.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CLASSROOM
They reached the classroom. Cody’s new teacher snoozed in his chair. A dusty placard on his desk read: MR. FRONK.
Cody slid into a desk behind Carlos. He waited for class to start, but nothing happened. Carlos made a paper airplane, looked around cautiously, then launched it into the air. The paper airplane glided straight for the teacher, landing softly in his combed-over hair. Mr. Fronk didn’t budge.
Ivanov shuffled through the door, muttering. He went behind Mr. Fronk’s chair, bent over, and plugged in an extension cord. The lights flickered. There was a loud buzzing sound, followed by a pop. Mr. Fronk’s eyes flicked open.
Cody sniffed the air. Was that smoke he smelled?
“Ah. Thank you, Ivanov.” The hall monitor, still grumbling, left the room.
Mr. Fronk stood and stretched. Then he noticed Cody.
“New boy.” His voice was deep and rumbly. He slapped his massive hand on Cody’s desk. “What was the title of the last book you read?”
“Revenge of the Soul-Sucking Grease Goblins?”
Mr. Fronk waved that away.
“Frivolous comic trash. What did you read before that?”
“Um . . . Attack of the Soul-Sucking Grease Goblins?”
Mr. Fronk snorted. “Figures. Another ignoramus. Is there never a disruptive boy who appreciates literature?”
Weirdo.
Mr. Fronk slapped Sully’s desk.
Fronk gave up on Sully. He pulled out a polka-dotted handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Your task for the afternoon, new boy, is to copy these sentences a hundred times. When that’s done, you and all the other students will write an essay entitled ‘Why I Love Splurch Academy.’”
“What?”
“You’re joking!”
“You’d have to be dead in your grave to love this place!”
Fronk scowled at the class. “Who said that? Tell me!”
Everyone looked at their desks.
“I love Splurch Academy,” Fronk said. “Are you saying, Mugsy, that I am dead?”
Mugsy turned pale. “Is that a trick question?”
“Get on with your work.” Fronk sat, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
Copying sentences, eh? Cody had done that a million times before. He read the sentences on the board:
Nimble on the dance floor? The guy looked dead.
Inside his desk, Cody found stubby pencils and some paper. He tiptoed to the pencil sharpener on the windowsill.
Cody fed his pencil into the sharpener. Nothing happened.
The blaze in the trash can fizzled out. Cody yanked the pencil sharpener cord out from the wall, then jumped up on the window ledge.
No teacher watching . . . an empty lawn . . . and a straight shot to the highway . . . this was his chance! Did he dare take it?
Was he Cody Mack, or wasn’t he?
“Well, adios, guys.”
“Cody, what are you doing? Get down!” Carlos cried.
Teachers’ voices echoed down the hall. Would the kids tattle?
That was a chance he had to take. Cody climbed out the window, jumped, landed on soft grass, and took off running.
Freedom! Sunshine, blue skies, and the highway. He’d flag a car down and use their phone to call his parents. When they heard what Splurch Academy was really like, they’d beg his forgiveness.
He raced across the grass, wishing he’d worked harder in gym. But he was close!
Uh-oh.
Footsteps. Pounding closer. Panting breaths. Glancing back, Cody saw a man running, his feet tearing up the grass. No!
Inches from freedom, the man tackled him. Cody was buried under a wiry form that smelled like dog and Dr. Pepper.
“Get moving, mutt,” Howell said. “It’s back to the kennels for you.”
Cody shuffled toward the academy. Headmaster Farley stood at the front door.
“Thank you, Mr. Howell, for showing
our newest pupil around the grounds,” Dr. Farley said. “And now, young Cody, you will come with me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HEADMASTER’S OFFICE
Cody followed Dr. Farley down the grimy corridors. Even at a distance, Farley smelled like mothballs.They passed through a door marked OFFICE.
“Miss Threadbare, meet Cody Mack.
Master Mack, please meet my assistant, Miss Threadbare.”
“How do you do?” Miss Threadbare asked. “Your clothing is amiss.”
“A miss what?” Cody asked.
“Amiss,” she screeched. “Wrong.”
Farley disappeared through a door marked HEADMASTER in gold.
“Every day’s a happy day at Splurch Academy, where disruptive deviants reach daily toward their true potential,” Miss Threadbare said. She banged a rubber stamper down on some papers on her desk. “Your paperwork is out of order. Here. Fill these out.”
She handed Cody a stack of forms. He flipped through them. Name, age, date of birth, weight, blah, blah, blah. Wait a second. How rich are your parents? Are they lawyers? What’s your blood type? Huh?
Farley’s voice crackled over the office intercom. “Is he ready, Teresa?”
Miss Threadbare opened the door marked HEADMASTER and shooed Cody through. Cody gulped. He’d been to a lot of principal’s offices in his time, but never one with a coffin-shaped desk.
There was barely any light. Heavy drapes were drawn shut, and only one small lamp shone over the headmaster’s desk, next to an ancient framed photograph of a creepy old woman in a wheelchair.
“Sit down, young Cody,” Farley said.
Cody sat.
“Nice job sitting down. Have a Swedish fish.” Farley made a note on a clipboard. “Missing class . . . running away . . . you ought to have a week’s detention, but as this is your first day, I thought, instead, we’d have a little chat.”
The Rat Brain Fiasco #1 Page 2
