Kid Normal

by Greg James

  “Oh, don’t start all that again. It’s one thing I haven’t missed in the last thirty-five years,” grumbled Carl. “I know what I’m doing and I know where I’m going. Leave me alone.”

  “All I’m saying is there’s nothing wrong with stopping to ask directions every once in a while,” said Flora.

  “Look. I got lost ONCE, when we were combatting the Mongoose in ’74. And even then, asking for directions was more trouble than it was worth. Remember trying to explain that one away? ‘Oh, sorry, officer, do you know where we can find the Mongoose? Me and my wife, the Blue Phantom, seem to have gotten lost in our FLYING JET CAR!’ Anyway, look, I’m not going to get lost.”

  Carl pointed to a screen in the center of the main panel in front of him.

  “GPS,” he declared proudly. “I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself.” He gave them all a wink.

  “Can we stop to pee, please?” asked Billy.

  “Save the world first. Pee later,” replied Flora. “Page one of the Spy Handbook, if you must know. I remember someone telling me that once. Anyway, do you think it’s time to have a quick run-through of your plan? We’ll be there in a couple of minutes; it says so here on Carl’s newfangled hoojamaflip.”

  “Plan?” said Murph, Hilda, Mary, Billy, and even Nellie.

  “We were kind of hoping you’d be able to help us out with that,” Mary added, embarrassed.

  “Well,” said Flora, “this Nektar sounds like a nasty piece of work. And he’s got some of the most powerful weaponry I’ve ever heard about. But what I think I’d do is—”

  Before she could impart her wisdom, there was a huge BANG and a sudden rushing of wind as the glass beside her shattered. A bullet had pinged across the metal cabin, denting the wall behind them.

  Outside the window was the hovering yellow-and-black shape of one of Nektar’s attack drones.

  Flora didn’t seem unduly worried. “We’ve got company, Carl,” she said calmly.

  “This was always my favorite part,” said Carl with a grin, and he jerked his control wheel sharply to the right. “Hang on!” he shouted as he pulled the Banshee into a sideslip, leaving the drone behind as they dropped toward the thin cloud layer still shimmering below them.

  “Your destination is in three hundred yards,” intoned a lady’s calm voice from the dashboard.

  But up ahead they could make out the shape of a second attack drone hovering just above the cloud cover and moving rapidly toward them. Tiny sparks appeared on each side of it, and with horror Murph realized that it was opening fire. Bullets pinged off the Banshee’s windscreen.

  “I always said you should have made the side windows bulletproof as well,” chided Flora.

  “Now,” said Carl through gritted teeth, pulling back on the controls and sending the vehicle spiraling upward and out of range, “is not the time for feedback. But thank you, dear, it’s been noted. And if we survive this, I’ll certainly look into it.” He pushed on another lever to his right, and the engines increased in pitch. “Let’s see if we can outrun ’em, at least.” The Banshee shot forward.

  “Your destination is in two hundred yards,” the GPS lady informed everyone.

  Hilda had her nose pressed to the window at the back of the cabin. “I can see them. They’re dropping behind,” she shouted excitedly. “I think we’re going to make it.”

  “How many of these big drones were there at The School?” asked Murph.

  “Four,” replied Mary. “We got rid of one at your house, then there are two more back there. That makes three, so . . . oh.”

  “Your destination is in one hundred yards.”

  “Carl, there’s another one!” yelled Murph over the scream of the jets.

  Carl turned his head: “What?”

  “There’s another . . . LOOK OUT!”

  The fourth drone had broken the cloud cover just ahead and was flying straight toward them at full speed.

  Flora turned to Carl, suddenly looking deadly serious. “Get these kids down safely,” she urged him.

  Carl looked back at her. “Don’t worry, I will,” he told her. “Never again, remember?” Flora nodded, and then vanished in a flash.

  Within seconds, the drone was just yards away, aiming its machine guns at them through the broken side window.

  But before it could fire, it suddenly lurched backward, bullets streaming harmlessly over the Banshee’s roof. Murph could just make out a bluish shimmer on its rear end. Flora was straddling the drone’s back.

  An invisible retiree riding a giant robot wasp, Murph thought to himself. That’s not something you see every day.

  The Banshee moved slightly to one side as the Blue Phantom grabbed onto the swinging passenger door, holding the attack drone tightly with its guns pointed upward so it couldn’t fire at them.

  “Carl, bring us down so I can finish this thing off!” they heard her yell over the scream of the engines.

  Carl moved a lever to rotate the jets and bring the Banshee lower, but as they moved, the attack drone was sucked through the intake of the left-hand jet engine. The engine sputtered and sparked, giving out a cloud of smoke and flame. The Banshee veered sickeningly to one side and began to lose altitude. Flora was nowhere to be seen.

  “We’re going down!” shouted Carl unnecessarily. “Get ready to bail! Mary, you got that umbrella? Flora, where are you?” He touched a button in front of him, and with a whine of motors, a hatch behind them began to open.

  Outside they could see nothing but Nellie’s layer of cloud rushing past.

  “We need to shift some weight.” Carl yelled. “Mary, get that umbrella up and get everyone on the ground!”

  “What about you?” screamed Mary as she looked at the umbrella, willing it to be okay again since it was used to see off the first attack drone.

  “We’ll be fine. This is your first time being shot down, am I right?”

  “Um, . . . yes, oddly enough it is,” she replied.

  “Well, this is our hundredth. I told you, we’ll be fine. We’re tough old things. Get yourselves down there and get saving.” Then Murph heard Carl mutter to himself, “One hundred crash landings, eh? Do we get a letter from the queen?”

  Flora’s voice came from the roof: “I imagine we’ll get one from the insurance company.” And Carl smiled with relief that she was alive. But then there was another huge bang as the left-hand engine exploded. Smoke began to fill the cockpit.

  “Jump,” Carl ordered the five Super Zeroes. “Now!”

  The last thing they heard before they leaped into white nothingness, holding Mary’s umbrella handle for dear life, was the GPS saying, “You have reached your destination.”

  A few moments later there was an enormous crash and an explosion from somewhere to the right.

  21

  The Hot Dog Minute

  The Super Zeroes floated gently toward the ground. Below them lay Ribbon Robotics, the tower at its far end casting a long shadow like a threatening, pointing finger.

  The concrete area at the front of the factory was brightly lit by two huge floodlights. Five yellow dots near the entrance gave away the position of Nektar’s new servants standing guard, but there seemed to be few other signs of life. There was no sound and no sign of the Banshee.

  Mary started guiding them straight toward the building, but Murph hissed at her to change direction.

  “No, Mary, that way, that way.” He was pointing across the road from the main gates, where a closed-up food truck was parked. “Behind the food truck.”

  Mary changed course, and the five of them made a soft landing on the road, shielded from any watching eyes in the factory by what they could now see was Large John’s Deluxe Snack Wagon.

  “Not an ideal time to stop for a hot dog, Murph, is it? And besides, they’re closed,” said Mary acidly.

  “I don’t want a hot dog, actually,” Murph retorted, realizing that if there was one thing he really wanted right now, it was, in fact, a hot dog.

/>   “But we can’t just go barreling in there. We wouldn’t stand a chance. We need a minute to work this out, right?”

  The other four nodded. He was right.

  “We could do this on every mission, and call it ‘Murph’s Minute,’” said Hilda, liking the sound of it.

  “Or ‘Hot Dog Minute,’” suggested Billy.

  “‘Murph’s Minute’s better,’” said Mary.

  “Can we focus, please,” pleaded Murph. “Right, let’s see where we’re at. The Banshee has crashed.”

  Nellie let out a frightened sob.

  “But there’s nothing we can do about that now,” said Murph gently. “It’s not ideal that Flora and Carl aren’t here right now, but maybe it’s not only the Blue Phantom who can save us. Maybe we can do this ourselves.” He paused. A brief pang of panic bolted through his belly as the magnitude of the task at hand dawned on him. For a moment even he was unconvinced by the words he was saying. But he pressed on, hoping that if he believed what he was saying, they would too. “We’ve got to try,” he went on, puffing out his chest. “Right—what’s the situation we’re facing?”

  “Evil man-wasp in factory,” said Billy, surprisingly calmly. As he continued, he became less calm. “Um, plus mind-controlled Capability kids. And at least two mind-controlled teachers. And the rest of school is held captive! It’s not looking good.”

  “It’s okay, Billy. Deep breaths,” Murph reassured him. “We can handle this. We just have to keep our heads. And keep them the same size,” he joked, to defuse the tension. It worked. Billy let out a little chuckle as Murph continued. “So, what’s our mission?”

  Hilda piped up, “The wasp man must be stopped before he can take over the entire school and form a full mind-controlled army. We must storm the factory, defeat the hideous genetic hybrid, and save the day.” Somehow she made it all sound quite matter-of-fact, using the same tone of voice she would normally use to say something like, “We must go to the meadow, pick some daisies, and make a delicate daisy chain to weave into my hair, tra la.”

  It was at this point that Murph realized the other four were looking at him expectantly but confidently. As if he was their leader or something. Another little pang of panic lurched in his stomach, but to disguise it he asked a third question.

  “And what do we have on our side?”

  “Flying,” replied Mary, pointing at herself with the umbrella. “Ballooning,” she went on slightly more uncertainly, indicating Billy. “Weather,” she added, waving her other hand in Nellie’s direction. “And, er, horses. Tiny horses,” she concluded. Hilda stuck her thumbs up.

  There was a moment of silence while they contemplated their powers and how they stacked up against heavily armed at tack drones and powerful mind-controlled servants. It’s a good thing no one had told them that the wasp man had stingers on his wrists.

  “Bravery,” said a voice suddenly. Nellie had raised her head and was pointing at Murph. “Doing the right thing. Not giving up. Seeing things other people don’t see. Helping us work together. Staying positive.”

  “And blushing,” added Mary as Murph’s cheeks went full-on traffic-light red.

  Murph wasn’t sure he really had any of those powers. But he had made a decision back at his ruined house; he had decided to mount this rescue mission. And although it had been a long time since Murph Cooper had decided anything, once a choice was made he followed it through to the bitter end. His friends were relying on him.

  “All right,” he told his team, trying to look more confident than he felt, “huddle up. I think I know how we can do this.”

  Behind the food truck, Murph’s Minute—or the Hot Dog Minute, if you prefer—concluded with a plan. “First thing,” began Murph, wondering if rescue planning might turn out to be his Cape after all, “if we’re going to sneak in there without anyone seeing us, we need to get those lights off . . .”

  The reception desk at Ribbon Robotics was run by a woman named Patsy McLean. Nobody was quite sure how long she’d worked there, because nobody dared ask her. In fact, few people dared speak to her at all, because she was so incredibly rude and fierce. She had stiff black hair like a stuffed raven and a mean, pinched face that made her look like the sort of person who might actually grab a passing raven and stuff it—without even asking nicely first.

  Patsy sat in the building’s most comfortable chair, which she had insisted on getting because she falsely claimed to have a bad back. She tapped away at her computer, sending staff members aggressive e-mails about tidying up their coffee cups at the end of the day. And she hated absolutely everybody except her cat, Boris.

  Patsy McLean was unaware that the building had been taken over by a crazed genetic hybrid with an evil plan to take over the country. When a man in a yellow jumpsuit had led a large group of people through her reception area earlier that day, at gunpoint and with the help of three armored drones, she hadn’t asked questions. His security pass was valid, and that was all she cared about.

  A little later on, after all the rest of the staff had been sent home, five children with black-and-yellow eyes had marched back through the reception area and taken up guard positions outside. But Patsy had been busy composing a particularly unkind all-staff e-mail about the state of the bathrooms on the first floor. And besides, she was due to go home soon—she wasn’t too bothered about the human drones unless they left a coffee cup lying around, in which case they were in real trouble.

  Upstairs on the fourth floor, Gary, the work-experience intern, gazed out the boardroom windows overlooking the back of the building. The lights had come on as a layer of unexpected cloud had rolled in across the sky at the end of the day, and dusk had arrived early.

  It’s going to be a lovely sunset, he thought poetically, trying to ignore the fact that the rest of the room was so weird-looking.

  The doors to the boardroom were guarded by several human drones in yellow helmets. Their black-and-yellow eyes gave Gary the creeps. The two remaining attack drones had landed on a table to one side, where they were recharging at a wall socket. And not far away from him, near the main windows looking out over the front of the building, Nektar and Nicholas Knox were talking urgently in low voices.

  Brainwashed servants, thought Gary, small helicopters with flamethrowers, evil wasp guy. Yep—best just to concentrate on the sunset. His best friend from college was doing an internship at a chicken restaurant and was allowed free spicy wings at the end of the day. Gary very much felt that he had drawn the short straw.

  “Spy drones indicate that the vehicle crashed somewhere off to the east,” Knox was saying.

  “Which way is that?” buzzed Nektar petulantly. He hated it when people talked about things happening to the east—or, in fact, any point of the compass—because he could never work out which way they meant. Mentally he spelled out the word N-E-W-S but then realized he didn’t know which way north was, so it was absolutely no help.

  “Over there, sir, just where you can see that large plume of smoke,” said Knox oilily. “I have sent spy drones to establish who the intruders were, but I surmise that word of our attack on The School has been picked up somehow by other people with similar . . . abilities.”

  Nektar nodded intelligently, wondering what “surmise” meant. There was a loud crack of thunder from outside, and a couple of fat raindrops slapped against the windows.

  “I will go and garner drone reports with which to update you,” continued Knox, “but I suggest we prepare the facility for possible infiltration.”

  Just then all the lights fizzed, flickered, and went out, as if they were voice-controlled and the signal to turn off was the word “infiltration.” But that would have been odd. Yellowish emergency lights turned on, mingling with the brownish-orange light from the thundery late afternoon sky outside to give the room an unpleasant glow.

  Nektar looked around in a jittery way, like a panicked wasp in a glass bottle.

  “I’m going to my tower, Knox,” he said nervously. �
�Keep me updated as you annihilate all intruders, won’t you?”

  He pointed to one of the larger and stronger-looking of the human drones waiting for his command: “You, come with me and protect the entrance to my private quarters. And you, bald human drone”—he pointed at the blank-eyed Mr. Flash—“go downstairs and guard the prisoners. You two,” he instructed two other mind-controlled servants—a girl with long, dark hair and her handsome sidekick—“protect the outer doors to my sanctuary. Let no one enter. Kill anyone who tries.” He indicated the large double doors at the back of the boardroom, the ones that led to his tower. “The rest of you, assist Nicholas Knox in defending the building.”

  “What shall I do?” asked Gary in a hesitant squeak.

  Nektar pondered this for a moment. It’s always difficult to know what to do with the intern in this kind of situation.

  “Oh, just . . . just wait by the coffee machine and see if anyone wants one,” Nektar decided. And with that, he swept through the double doors with his personal bodyguard and Mr. Flash and slammed them shut behind him. Cowgirl and the Sheriff took up defensive positions outside, their wasp-colored eyes blank and staring.

  Nicholas Knox sighed. Once again he was left to do the dirty work.

  “Right. Well, all remaining drones, take up positions out there in the hallway. Don’t allow anyone to leave the elevators.”

  The other servants marched woodenly out the door, ignoring Gary’s squeak of “Doesn’t anyone want a coffee, then?”

  Knox followed them but didn’t stop in the wide white area off the hallway where the elevators were. On the opposite wall, almost hidden behind some large potted palms, was a small door to which only he had the key. He walked over and vanished through it, carefully closing and locking it behind him.

  At the end of Murph’s Minute, Mary and Nellie had been the first into action. Holding tightly to Mary’s umbrella, the two of them snuck around to the side of the building, and when they were confident nobody was watching, not even one of the tiny robot wasps they could see zipping around, Mary flew them swiftly up to the roof.