by Rob Vlock
I nodded, even though most of what he said sounded like science fiction.
“Good,” he continued. “You see, I can program your body to sustain itself indefinitely, perpetually repairing itself. Eternal life, yes? Plus, I can make you stronger, taller, better-looking . . . whatever you like. I can make you a perfect specimen of humanity—if you will excuse the contradiction in terms.”
“Sven,” Alicia cried, “you’re not listening to him, are you? People don’t hate you.”
“Well,” Will corrected, “maybe not hate hate, but . . .”
Alicia glared at him. “You’re not helping.”
“But, but, I mean, they’re just jerks,” Will corrected sheepishly. “Anyway, we like you.”
“Come with me, Seven,” Shallix Squirrel squeaked. “You are still valuable to me. Your mission must be completed. I will give you the life you have always wanted, yes?”
“The life I always wanted?” I uttered. “Killing everyone on Earth isn’t the life I always wanted.”
“Please, Seven. Be reasonable.” The words came out of the squirrel’s mouth in a sickly sweet croon. “I would greatly prefer to keep you alive. Come with me. I can assure you it is far preferable to the gruesome death you and your friends will experience if you decline my offer.”
“You’re bluffing,” Alicia snapped. “You won’t kill Sven. He’s your secret weapon. You need him.”
Squirrel Shallix’s fuzzy tail twitched convulsively. “Ah, but it is not a bluff. Seven, please understand, if the humans were to discover your true nature, you would never see the outside of a laboratory again. They would dissect you to learn your secrets. And if they were able to reverse engineer our technology, it could have far-reaching repercussions that would be . . . unthinkable. To stop that from happening, I would do anything. Anything. Even if it meant destroying our ultimate weapon.”
Alicia shifted her weight uncertainly from foot to foot and stared at me like she was sizing up a math problem. An equation that would probably determine my chances of living through the afternoon.
Finally, she spoke. “Sven, don’t listen to him. Don’t do it. Tell me you’re not seriously thinking about going with him.”
I swallowed hard and studied the dirty wood floors. A lot of what Dr. Shallix said hit too close to home. My whole life, I had been teased and bullied and excluded. And it felt awful. I thought about all the times everyone in my class but me got invitations to birthday parties. All the whispers behind my back. The pranks. The insults. The stares.
An image of an eight-year-old me materialized in my mind. Half of Mr. Akita’s third-grade class surrounded me, laughing at me on the playground during recess. Each of them took turns pelting me with a red rubber kickball. The hollow, plastic THUNK of the ball smacking against my body still resonated in my memory.
What hurt worse than the ball, though, were the words they chanted in time with each throw.
Smelly Sven. Stupid Sven.
Mom’s a goat and dad’s a hen.
He looks like poop, he smells like butt.
He’s ugly as a monkey’s nut.
But now, everything was different. Yeah, I might have been the world’s biggest loser, but I was a loser who had the whole planet’s fate in my hands. I wondered what those kids from Mr. Akita’s class would think if they realized how important I was to their very existence. What would Brandon Marks say if he knew? He’d probably think twice before calling me Trashmouth again.
I took another step toward Shallix Squirrel. “It’s an interesting offer. I . . . I just have two questions for you, Dr. Shallix.”
“Sven, no!” Alicia pleaded. “You can’t do it!”
Will walked up to me. “Dude, come on.”
I ignored them and stepped forward until I stood right in front of the furry gray animal that was trying to tempt me with immortality.
“Yes, my boy. Good,” Shallix Squirrel said, rubbing its little hands together. “Now, what do you want to know?”
“First,” I asked, “what exactly will I be doing in the mission you keep talking about? How will I defeat the humans?”
“I am afraid that would spoil the surprise, Seven. But you will know it when it happens, yes? Simply think of it as my thirteenth birthday present to you. It will have to stay under wraps for a little while longer.” He giggled, amused at the thought. “Now what is your second question?”
“I was just wondering,” I asked. “Are you a flying squirrel?”
“What do—”
That was all he had a chance to get out before I swung my foot in a sweeping kick and sent him flying into the air and right through the glass windowpane.
CHAPTER 25.0:
< value= [I Change My Underwear] >
I HEARD A FAINT SQUEAK as the squirrel bounced off a tree a dozen yards away. I guess my dad had it wrong. I should have practiced being a kicker, rather than a quarterback. I felt kind of bad booting a squirrel through a window, though. Even if he did totally deserve it.
“Nice kick.” Will laughed, slapping me on the back.
Alicia was a little less enthusiastic. She just looked at me with her eyebrows all scrunched up.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said dismissively.
I folded my arms over my chest. “You thought I was going to go with him, didn’t you?”
She shrugged.
“I’m going to take a wild stab here, Alicia, but I’m thinking you don’t like me very much, do you?”
“So? I’m not particularly fond of my toaster, either.”
“I’m not a toaster!” I countered, years of teasing forcing my anger to the surface.
She took a menacing step toward me. “You’re a machine! A machine just like the ones that killed my parents! And you expect me to like you? I don’t even know if I can trust you!”
That hurt. “What? You don’t trust me? You really think I’d kill the entire human race?”
“You tell me! It’s what you’ve been programmed for!”
“Look at me!” I yelled. “What do you think I’m going to do, gross people out by eating gross things until they die of grossed-outedness? Or do you think a bunch of nuclear missiles are just going to fly out of my butt?”
“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” she said, suddenly quiet. “Eating gross things might be part of it, for all I know. If we could figure out what you’re programmed to do, then maybe we could find a way to stop it that doesn’t involve deactivating you.”
“I wish you’d just call it what it is,” I fumed. “Killing me!”
“Seems to me Shallix is the one who . . .” She trailed off, suspicion etched on her features.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“How did he find us here?” she asked pointedly. “How did he know where we were?”
“Maybe he’s just really good at hide-and-seek,” Will suggested.
Alicia frowned. “I don’t think so. I think Sven led him to us!”
“No way!” I protested. “Why would I lead him to us? I have more reason than anyone to get away from him!”
“Maybe,” she replied, scratching her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe . . . Hold on a second.”
Alicia starting rummaging through her backpack intently. I hoped she wasn’t looking for one of her grenades. But when she pulled out her hand, she was holding nothing more dangerous than a calculator.
“Hold this,” she said to Will, thrusting the device into his hands.
Before either of us had a chance to ask what the heck she was doing, she used her knife to cut the cord off a broken table lamp. Then she darted out to another room and returned almost immediately with an old cordless phone handset.
I watched her curiously. “What are you—”
“Shut up,” she interrupted. “I need to focus.”
She grabbed the calculator back from Will and tossed it and the other two items onto a rotting side table. Her hands worked furiously, strippin
g the insulation from the cord, unbraiding the copper wire, and winding it around the antenna of the cordless phone.
“There,” she said after finishing doing whatever she was doing.
“What is that?” Will asked, peering at the tangle of wire and electronic devices that Alicia held in her hands.
“Kind of a bug detector,” she answered. “My dad showed me how to make one. Watch. Sven, come here.”
I walked over to her cautiously. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Be quiet,” she ordered.
Alicia pressed talk on the phone handset and began slowly waving it in front of my body.
Static hissed softly from the phone’s earpiece as the contraption made its way over my head, my neck, and my shoulders, and down along my spine.
Suddenly, it emitted a loud squawk.
“What’s that?” I asked nervously, trying to look back over my shoulder at where she was holding the device.
“That’s how he found us. You have some kind of tracker installed. It’s broadcasting a signal. That’s what this detector is picking up.”
“A tracker?” I cried. “Oh, no!”
Her lips compressed into a tight slit. “At least we found it. Which means we have options.”
“What options?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Well, I could remove it.”
“No! No way!” I barked.
“Or we can block its signal,” she continued.
I nodded vigorously. “Definitely option B!”
“Okay.” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few moments later. “Here.”
I caught the roll of aluminum foil she tossed to me. “What? You want me to wear an aluminum foil hat? Seriously?”
“No,” she replied. “Not a hat.”
“Well, then where . . .”
I followed her gaze downward until it rested somewhere between my thighs and my belly button.
• • •
So the thing about wearing a pair of underwear made out of aluminum foil is that it’s uncomfortable. And sweaty. And kind of crinkly in all the wrong places. It was even worse than Dr. Shallix’s suit.
Alicia waved her bug detector over my body. Nothing but static.
“It’s working,” she remarked with a smile.
“It sucks!” I moaned. “Feels like I’m wearing the Tin Man’s diaper.”
“Dude,” Will chuckled. “I don’t think the Tin Man wore a diaper.”
“Whatever! It’s awful!” I caught Alicia stifling a laugh. “You think it’s funny?”
“Because it is,” was her reply.
“You try wearing a pair of underwear made out of metal and see how you like it,” I raged. “It’s not funny, you big—”
“Uh, guys?” Will interrupted. “Did you just hear something?”
CHAPTER 26.0:
< value= [It’s So Funny I Forgot to Laugh] >
WE STOPPED AND LISTENED. AT first, all we heard was nothing. But then a laugh echoed through the empty house. A second one joined in. In a few seconds, a chorus of chortling voices shattered the silence.
“So, um, I take it those are the two things humans are most scared of?” I asked, nervously recalling Dr. Shallix’s earlier threat.
My mind flooded with images of horrible things—laughing tigers, laughing grizzly bears, laughing dudes with machine guns, laughing Bigfoots. (Or was it laughing Bigfeet?)
“Come on, guys! Combat formation!” Alicia barked, sliding her knife out of her backpack.
I looked at her cluelessly. “Um, what exactly does that mean?”
In the meantime, Will balled his huge hands into fists and twisted his body into some kind of martial arts pose. “Like this?”
“You guys are hopeless! Just get in the center of the room with our backs facing each other. That way, nothing can sneak up on us,” Alicia explained. “The first person to see anything, call out.”
We did what she said.
For half a dozen seconds, we stood there listening to the sinister laughter. Then I saw a shadow move. The others did too, because at the same instant, they started yelling, as well.
“Over there!” I called.
“There’s something!” Will shrieked, pointing at the window.
“At the south entrance!” Alicia shouted.
I didn’t know which way was south. But it didn’t really matter, since we were being attacked from every direction.
“I think we’re surrounded!” I cried. I looked around for some way to escape the room, but there was movement at every door and window. We were trapped.
Finally, something came into view.
It was . . .
What the heck was it?
It took a few seconds for me to register what I was seeing. Dr. Shallix had said he was sending the two things humans feared most. What he didn’t mention was that he had combined them into one creature. Something so hideous, it made me want to barf.
What I had seen slither into the room was, from the neck down, a giant snake. At least ten feet long and as thick as my dad’s leg. That was bad enough. But from the neck up, it was even more horrifying.
It studied us for a moment, yellow slit-pupil eyes peering out from beneath a curly rainbow wig. A round red nose and oversize polka-dot bow tie completed the picture.
A CLOWN!
“Join me, my brothersssss,” it hissed.
An instant later, nine more creatures identical to the first, each with thick white makeup and painted-on fake clown tears, wriggled into the room.
Alicia wasted no time. She immediately attacked, slashing and stabbing at anything within reach.
The clown snakes sprang into action as well, lashing out with tails that ended in sharp, jagged spikes—like overgrown bee stingers glistening with venom.
Alicia swung her knife in a big arc and cut off two of the snakes’ tails.
“Losers,” she sneered at them. “What are you going to do now?”
The snakes answered by opening their red-ringed mouths far wider than any human could and angrily flicking out three-foot-long forked tongues.
One of the snakes lunged at me, and its tongue—covered with octopus-like suckers that had pointed spines sticking out of their centers—just barely grazed my cheek. And suddenly, my whole head felt like it was on fire.
“Arrghhh!” I howled, holding my head in both hands.
Alicia called over to me in midstab, “Sven, what’s wrong?”
“The tongues,” I groaned. “Watch the tongues.”
Before I finished speaking, Alicia leapt into motion, spinning and jumping and jabbing with her knife even more frantically.
Within seconds, tongues and tails and clown heads littered the floor.
She stopped, out of breath, and panted, “That wasn’t so bad.”
The clown snakes didn’t seem to like being cut into pieces, though. The various parts on the floor wriggled and slithered, rejoining the bodies they belonged to. In a few seconds, all ten clown snakes looked as good as new. They circled around us.
Suddenly, Will cried out, “Wait! Salt! Salt is deadly to snakes! All we need to do is sprinkle some salt on them! Alicia, where do you keep the salt?”
“Will,” Alicia pointed out, “that’s slugs you’re thinking of. Not snakes.”
Will looked deflated. “Oh. Right.”
Each clown snake raised its tail and aimed it toward us. Ten lethal stingers poised to strike.
We were dead.
Alicia slowly reached around and unzipped the side pocket of her backpack. She slid her hand inside and groped for something.
“No, you don’t,” a clown snake hissed. “Bad girl.”
It uncoiled its body and drove its head right into Alicia. The impact sent her sailing through the air and into the far wall. She slid, unconscious, to the floor.
I looked at Will. His lower lip trembled and all the color drained out of his face.
Alicia moaned faintly
but didn’t move.
They don’t deserve this, I thought through the pain that enveloped my head like a cloud of acid. It’s my fault they’re in this mess. I need to fix it.
“Wait!” I took a step closer to the deadly spikes. A drop of venom beaded at the end of the snake tail nearest me and dripped to the floor. It sizzled on the worn wooden boards. “I’ll . . . I’ll go back to Dr. Shallix. Just let them go.”
“Sven, no!” Will cried.
I turned to him. “I have to do this,” I said.
“Veeery goood,” one of the clown snakes wheezed. “I will take you to our masssster, Dr. Shallixssss. The others will ssssstay here to keep your friendssssss company.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. “But . . . I want to say good-bye to my friends first. Please.”
The clown snakes looked at one another, and then the one that had spoken nodded.
I walked over to where Alicia lay on the floor and grasped her shoulders. Her head sagged to one side as I propped her up against the wall. A tear glistened on her pale cheek.
“Is that you, Mom?” she mumbled, still completely out of it.
I reached into her backpack and fished around until my hand closed on something round. A grenade! I pulled it out and shielded it from the clown snakes’ view. I didn’t want to use it—in a space this small, it would probably blow us all up. But maybe it could buy us some time.
I wheeled on the Ticks and held the grenade up over my head so they could see it. “Okay, back off or I’ll use this!”
A confused look passed from one clown head to another as they eyed me. One of them started laughing. Then another. All ten clown snakes quaked in creepy, high-pitched giggles.
