Sven Carter & the Trashmouth Effect

by Rob Vlock

  That probably wouldn’t matter to her. But other than bawling like a baby, it was the only way I could think to get through to her.

  She lowered the gun a little more and nodded. “Why did you do that?”

  I wiped away a gob of snot with the back of my hand. “I couldn’t just sit there and watch him kill you. I told you. I’m not a bad kid.”

  She squatted down next to me, studying my face. “What are you programmed to do?”

  “Programmed? I—I don’t know. Until two minutes ago, I didn’t even know I was a . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  “Come on!” she snarled angrily. “Why are you here? Tell me!”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Don’t give me that!” Alicia roared. “You’re lying! What are you doing here? What do they want you to do?”

  I met her eyes. “Please. I don’t know.”

  She stood up and kicked the grass in frustration. “Don’t you lie to me! Tell me! Tell me about srok rasplaty!”

  The breath caught in my throat. Soak us slappy? That’s what the crows were saying!

  “Wait! Did you just say ‘soak us slappy’?” I asked.

  Alicia sneered at me. “What? No. Don’t be stupid. I said srok rasplaty.”

  “That’s . . . that’s what the crows said,” I gasped.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “What crows?”

  “The ones I saw on the way here this morning. There were a bunch of them. Following me and making these weird noises. They were saying ‘soak’ . . . ‘sroak’ . . . well, whatever you just said. And they kept saying ‘thirteen.’ And then there was this one that . . .”

  I didn’t want to tell her about the one that sang “Happy Birthday” to me. She’d think I was completely loony.

  “There was this one that what?” she asked insistently. “Tell me!”

  “Fine.” I sighed, getting unsteadily to my feet. “You’ll think I’m crazy, though. There was this one that sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. I swear it looked kind of like my pediatrician, Dr. Shallix.”

  “Srok rasplaty,” she muttered. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

  She raised the weapon again. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath, petrified with fear.

  After several seconds, I still wasn’t dead. I opened one eye a sliver.

  The Tick popper shook in Alicia’s hand. Then she abruptly lowered it.

  “God, I suck at this!” she said through clenched teeth. “Ticks killed everyone I cared about. They took everything from me. And now I’m looking one right in the face and I can’t pull the stupid trigger. Great.”

  “Please,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Before yesterday, I’d never even been in a fight. Can’t you just let me go?”

  She shook her head. “You’re too dangerous to have around. I have to deactivate you.”

  “Deactivate me? You mean kill me. It’s killing, you know. I’m a twelve-year-old kid. A kid whose biggest worry up until two days ago was trying to somehow convince the population of Chester A. Arthur Middle School that I’m not the biggest loser in the world!”

  “Stop talking!” Alicia snarled.

  “I don’t know how you think I’m dangerous to anyone,” I continued, words flooding out of me in an uncontrollable torrent. “I’m just a big failure at everything I do! Everyone hates me! My dad thinks I’m a screwup! My mom thinks everything is just great because she’s too oblivious to realize that her son has only had one friend in his whole life! And now you’re here telling me I’m dangerous! The only thing I’m dangerous to is my own social life!”

  “I said, shut up!”

  My voice squelched into silence as I watched Alicia’s finger tighten on the trigger.

  CHAPTER 17.0:

  < value= [We Could Get Suspended for This] >

  A BUMBLEBEE BUZZED BY, AND from the school building I could hear the muted clamor of busy hallways as my classmates continued their ordinary lives.

  The muscles in Alicia’s jaw clenched and unclenched while she decided whether the Tick standing in front of her should live or die.

  Then something white fluttered between us in the brisk morning breeze and came to rest in the grass at our feet. It was a copy of Brandon’s fake picture of me that had probably blown loose from one of the picnic tables outside. He may have been a big, stupid bully, but I had to give Brandon credit for being thorough. Not only had he plastered nearly every locker inside, but he had taped dozens of copies outside as well to make sure I couldn’t escape my humiliation.

  Alicia’s eyes drifted down to the paper, and a hint of vulnerability flickered in her expression.

  Finally, she let out a long sigh and lowered her weapon. She tucked the Tick popper away, and suddenly I could breathe again.

  “What? Why . . . why didn’t you . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words kill me.

  “I know what it’s like to be that kid, Sven. The one everyone hates.” She closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. “Besides, if I want to find out what’s going on here, I might need to keep you in one piece. At least for now.”

  “But wait. It’s not true, right? I’m not really a Tick, am—”

  “Enough questions,” she interrupted. “It’s not safe here. We have to run.”

  I started off toward the cafeteria door, but Alicia put her hand on my shoulder and yanked me around.

  “Not that way. We need to put as much distance as we can between us and the school. It’s the first place they’ll come.” She paused to think for a moment. “Follow me.”

  I ran after her to the teachers’ parking lot. Alicia darted through the first row of cars, trying each door as she passed. When she yanked on the handle of a blue SUV, the door swung open. She climbed inside.

  “What are you doing?” I cried.

  “Getting us out of here,” she answered, ducking under the dashboard.

  Ten seconds later, the engine turned over and the SUV started. How did she know how to hot-wire a car?

  “Get in!” she ordered.

  I hesitated. We couldn’t just steal a car.

  She revved the engine. “Get in the car or you’re going to find yourself under it!”

  I walked around the front of the car—pausing to lick some of the dead bugs off the grille—then climbed into the passenger’s seat.

  I looked out the window and my heart sank. A sign marking the parking spot read:

  RESERVED FOR PRINCIPAL PAPADOPOULOS

  “Alicia, we’re going to get suspended for this!” I complained.

  She slammed the SUV into reverse, backed out of the spot, and shifted into drive.

  “Better than getting dead,” she replied as she stomped on the gas.

  We zoomed out of the parking lot with a screech of tires.

  • • •

  We drove through downtown Schenectady without saying a word. I watched the scenery roll by and wondered how I was going to get out of this mess alive.

  Eventually, Alicia broke the silence. “Those birds. Did they say anything else?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Just ‘thirteen’ and ‘happy birthday’ and ‘srkoak’—”

  “Srok rasplaty.”

  “Right. What does that mean, anyway?”

  A worried look flitted across her face. “It’s Russian. It means ‘day of reckoning.’ ”

  “That doesn’t sound good. So what does it have to do with my birthday?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe srok rasplaty is going to happen on your birthday. When is it?”

  “Two days from now. On Saturday.”

  “Then that’s how long we have.”

  “To do what?” I asked.

  “To find a way to stop the day of reckoning, whatever that is,” was her reply.

  “And . . . what if we can’t?”

  “Just ask your friend, Will, back there,” she said, with an edge I found mor
e than a little threatening.

  “What happened to him? The real Will, I mean. Where is he? Is he . . . is he okay?”

  Alicia toyed with her hair distractedly as she considered this. “I don’t know. But they need the original to make copies. So there’s a decent chance they’re keeping the real Will alive somewhere.”

  “Then we have to find him,” I said.

  She stared at me. “We only have two days to stop srok rasplaty, and you want to take the time to find your little buddy?”

  “Yes,” I stated without hesitation. “He’s my best friend.”

  Alicia shook her head slowly. “You’re completely bezumnyy, you know that?”

  I looked back at her blankly. “I’m . . . bezoom . . . bezz . . . what?”

  She laughed. “You’re crazy, Sven. Completely nuts.”

  I liked hearing her laugh. She might run around fighting cyborgs and hot-wiring cars, but her laugh was gentle and genuine. At the sound of it, the wall that stood between us seemed to crack just a little.

  I couldn’t help noticing how tightly she gripped the steering wheel, though. And that she kept checking the rearview mirror.

  “So, where did you learn to steal cars and fight like that and stuff?” I ventured.

  A shadow flitted across her face. “Where I come from . . . it’s a rough place. We all learn to fight. To fight the Ticks. To fight the government, if we have to. We get combat training in school, starting when we’re six. Instead of gym. As for bypassing a car’s ignition, I learned that in shop class.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “They taught you to steal cars in school?”

  She smiled slyly. “I didn’t say they taught it to me. Let’s just say it was independent study.”

  She steered us expertly toward the industrial part of town. Soon, modest single-family homes gave way to old boarded-up brick factories and warehouses covered in graffiti. Weeds and garbage lined the streets. This wasn’t an area I’d want to wander around at night.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “My place,” she said. “You’ll like it.”

  CHAPTER 18.0:

  < value= [Alicia Has a Better Idea] >

  I DIDN’T LIKE ALICIA’S PLACE. I guess I just had a thing against dark, damp places that smelled like wet dogs. Wet dogs that liked to roll around in really stinky cheese.

  She lived in an old, run-down house set far back from a row of warehouses and industrial buildings. It had no electricity, no water, and only a few pieces of rotting furniture. It did have lots of rats, though. I watched a few of them scurry along the baseboards when Alicia lit some candles.

  The shock of seeing the terrible conditions in which Alicia lived was quickly replaced by pity. And a sense of guilt. I had it so good compared to her. Sure, my house was pretty modest, but compared to this, it was a mansion.

  “Um, this is . . . nice,” I lied, smiling to mask what I really felt.

  “No, it’s not,” she replied. “But it’s out of the way. The nearest neighbor is a quarter of a mile away.”

  Hearing how far we were from other people suddenly made me feel isolated. Vulnerable. Without even realizing I was doing it, I tore a scrap of moldering wallpaper off the wall and stuffed it in my mouth.

  “What are you doing?” Alicia asked slowly.

  I swallowed down the pulpy mess I was chewing on. “What am I doing what?”

  “You just ate my wallpaper!”

  “Oh, did I? Yeah, I do that sometimes.”

  Alicia scratched her head. “You do what, exactly?”

  “Oh, you know,” I mumbled. “Eat stuff that most people don’t think is edible. It’s not, you know, a big deal.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Huh. I guess I always figured Brandon Marks called you Trashmouth because you said a lot of dirty words or something. But this . . . this is much weirder.”

  “Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. I try not to let people know I do it, for obvious reasons,” I said. “I wish it was something I didn’t do, but I can’t help it. I guess it’s just a glitch in my programming or something.”

  “Oh . . . right. A glitch.” Alicia furrowed her brow and scratched her chin thoughtfully. “In your programming.”

  When she finished staring at me like I was a freak, she pried up a loose floorboard and pulled out four small white spheres that looked a lot like golf balls.

  “Really? You hide your golf balls under the floor?” I asked incredulously. “Wow, you must really love golf.”

  “You definitely don’t want to hit these guys with a golf club,” she replied. “They’re HE44A concussion grenades. They’re from home. In case we need a little extra firepower.”

  I took a big step back.

  She gently placed them in a pocket on the side of her backpack and zipped it up. “Relax. As long as they’re disarmed, they’re harmless.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “Let’s say I’ll be responsible for holding on to them, okay?”

  I immediately nodded.

  “So,” I said, taking in our run-down surroundings. “Is your mom home? Won’t she be upset that you’re not in school?”

  She laughed grimly. “Yeah, right. My mom. No, I don’t think she’ll mind.”

  “What?” I asked, taken aback by the tone of her reply.

  “I don’t have a mom, Sven. Or a dad. I live here by myself.”

  “Wait, how can that be? I’ve seen you arrive at school in the morning with your mother.”

  “That’s not my mom,” she answered with a shake of her head.

  “But I’ve heard you say, ‘Bye, Mom,’ to her when she drops you off,” I protested.

  Alicia rubbed the back of her neck and frowned at the floor. “Yeah, well, that’s what I want people to think. But she’s not my mother. Her name is Denise. I met her at the homeless shelter when I first got to town. She kind of took me under her wing. We help each other out. She’s lonely. Doesn’t have any family. So I spend time with her at the shelter. And she, in return, pretends to be my mother.”

  “Why? I don’t get it.”

  “Because,” she explained with a sigh, “what do you think would happen if any of the teachers at school found out I’m living alone here in an abandoned house that’s overrun with rats? Child Protective Services wouldn’t exactly be thrilled about that.”

  “Seriously?” I gasped. “You live here all alone?”

  “Yeah. I’m”—her voice hitched—“I’m all alone.” She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “And you can’t go back home?”

  Her eyes gleamed wetly in the glow of the candlelight. “There’s nothing to go back to. Everyone’s gone. Dead. The Ticks saw to that. Some of the scientists in the Settlement were able to download a few fragments of information from a deactivated Tick before its memory was wiped. They found out the Ticks were planning something called srok rasplaty. And that it was supposed to start in Schenectady. But that was all they got. No details about what srok rasplaty actually was or why Schenectady was so important. Somehow the Ticks must have known we were onto them. They wiped out the whole Settlement. Except me.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “How did you get away?”

  Alicia’s jaw clenched and she turned away. When she finally spoke, she ignored my question. “My mom is—was a linguist. She studied in the US. She loved it here. She’s the one who taught me to speak English like a native. Ever since I can remember, she wanted our family to move here, and she didn’t want me to stand out. She’d make me practice my American accent constantly. But my father . . . he felt like leaving would be betraying the Settlement. So we stayed. And now they’re . . .”

  A shuddering sob shook her frame. I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

  In a heartbeat, she slapped it away.

  “What the heck?” she cried. “You do that again and you’ll lose that hand, Tick!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I stammered. “I just thought you were . . . Never mind. Sorry.”

>   “I wasn’t crying,” she said defiantly, turning to face me with a hard glare. “Anyway, I was on my own, with no home to go back to. So I salvaged what I could from the weapons lab and figured I’d do my best to stop the day of reckoning. Which you and this Shallix guy seem to be right at the center of.”

  She stared at me, her eyes burning with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.

  “Okay,” I said, eager to change the topic. “So I should probably be heading home now.”

  “No,” Alicia snapped. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. Not until we find out what you have to do with srok rasplaty. You’re staying here.”

  A rat scurried over my foot. “No way! I’m not staying here!”

  “Well.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to. I could just deactivate you now.”

  I chewed on my lip. Both options sucked.

  “Fine. I’ll stay. But I have to call my parents,” I insisted. “I have to let them know where I am so they won’t worry.”

  “No way,” Alicia responded immediately. “If anyone, anyone, finds out where you are, we’re putting the whole world at risk.”

  “I can’t just disappear. They’ll freak!”

  “They’re just going to have to deal.”

  “Well,” I snapped, “what do you think will happen if I don’t let them know I’m okay? How long until they call the police? Every cop in New York State is going to be looking for me. How’s that going to help us?”

  She thought about this for a moment. “Okay, you have a point.”

  “So you’ll let me call them?” I asked.

  “Nope. I have a better idea.”

  CHAPTER 19.0:

  < value= [Breaking and Entering (But Mostly Breaking)] >

  “THIS IS NOT A BETTER idea. This is a horrible idea,” I said ten minutes later, as we parked Principal Papadopoulos’s SUV a few doors down from Shallix Pediatrics. “We should be looking for Will.”

  Alicia ignored me.

  “Just because you’re ignoring me doesn’t mean it’s not a bad idea,” I huffed.

  She kept ignoring me until she turned off the ignition. Then she whispered, “It’s a great idea, okay? Just take cover.”