“Not a step closer, Doofus!” the bully shouted, thrusting out his hand like a policeman directing traffic.
Spencer wouldn’t have stopped if Penny hadn’t grabbed his arm. He reeled back, not even aware that the other Rebels had followed him into the hallway. They were all there now, trying to figure out the best way to stop Dez from doing something stupid.
The hallway security light glinted off a tiny glass vial in Dez’s hand. The boy threw the cork to the floor, and a sulphuric odor wafted from the open bottle.
“Take it easy, Dezmond,” Walter said calmly, stepping to the front of the group. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“Back up!” Dez shouted.
“We can work this out,” Walter said. “But you have to set down the potion.”
“No way!” answered Dez. “If I put this down, then you guys win and I’m back to being treated like a nobody!”
“That’s not true,” Walter continued. “You’re an important member of this team.”
“Whatever!” Dez yelled. “You guys didn’t even let me ride in the front of the truck on the way here. I had to sit in a big pile of stupid smelly garbage!”
“I object!” Bernard said. “My garbage is not stupid.”
“But Dez has a point about the smell,” Daisy said.
Bernard shrugged. “So I haven’t dumped it in a while. So maybe a few things are rotting back there. Doesn’t mean the kid has to insult my trash!”
“I’m going to insult everybody’s trash!” Dez yelled, raising his potion like a toast. “And then, when I’m a Sweeper, I’m going to kick some trash!”
“You can’t use the potion, Dez,” Walter cut in. “It won’t work on you.”
“Don’t try to talk me out of this!”
“Think about the rules of Glop,” Walter said. “Only janitorial items can be Glopified.”
“What about the rest of the Sweepers, then?” Dez said. “How come it worked on them?”
“They were janitors,” Walter explained. “They were officially employed to clean, which made them fit the rules.” The warlock shook his bald head. “If you drink that Glop potion, it will kill you, Dez. You’re just an ordinary student.”
“Well, I’m not going to be ordinary anymore,” Dez muttered. “And when I’m a Sweeper, you guys will need my help. I’ll be the most powerful person on your pathetic Rebel team.”
“Actually,” Spencer said, “I’m pretty sure Walter just explained that you’ll be dead.”
Dez sneered. “Well.” He shrugged. “I’ll take my chances.”
Penny sprang forward, but it was too late. The vial of Sweeper potion touched Dez’s lips and he threw back his head, draining the formula in one gulp. The Rebels froze in total shock at what was happening.
Dez stood perfectly still for three whole seconds. Then his body jerked violently. The glass bottle flung from his hand and shattered into tiny fragments on the hard floor. A second spasm seared through his body, throwing him up against the wall. His eyes clamped shut and his face was pinched in pain.
“We’ve got to do something!” Daisy shouted, stepping toward Dez.
But the bully threw out his hand. “Stay back!” His voice caused Spencer to shudder. It was changing, growing suddenly throaty and raw. Then, all at once, Dez’s outstretched hand flexed. His fingertips split and black talons emerged, hooked and wicked looking.
The skin on Dez’s face flushed a bright red. It grew wrinkly and tough, like old leather. His eyes snapped open, and Spencer jumped back. Dez’s gaze looked the same, but there was a pinkish hue to his eyeballs that seemed altogether unnatural.
The bridge of his nose darkened and turned hard, widening across his cheekbones like a broad beak.
Then there was a tearing sound. Spencer couldn’t tell if the rending was cloth or skin, and he grimaced as Dez let out a horrible shriek. Leathery, black wings rose from his shoulders, unfurling wide enough to span the hallway.
Then it was over, and Dez Rylie collapsed on the floor.
Chapter 17
“I look totally awesome!”
It didn’t take long for Dez to revive. When his eerie eyes fluttered open, Spencer was sure he would attack. Instead, Dez rose slowly to his feet, examining his taloned fingers and flexing his huge bat wings.
Then he began to laugh.
“Boo-ya!” he shouted. “I look totally awesome!”
Spencer glanced at Daisy. “That’s not the word I would use,” he muttered.
Earl was holding onto his cowboy hat, as if he feared a gust of wind from Dez’s wings might blow it off. “So that’s a Sweeper?” he drawled.
Dez thrust a hooked finger in Walter’s direction. “Told you so, old man! I knew the potion would work on me!”
Walter was shaking his head, eyes unblinking. “I don’t understand . . . how did you survive?”
“I don’t care how,” Dez said. His transformation seemed to delight him. “I’m amazing! Next time those chumps at New Forest Academy mess with me, they’ll get the hook!” He swiped a sharp finger through the air.
Spencer suddenly had a thought that made everything fall into place. “Weren’t you in detention at the Academy?” he asked Dez.
“Does it matter?” he answered. “Nobody’s putting me in detention now!”
“It matters,” Spencer said. “Wasn’t Garcia making you clean the school at night?”
“Yeah,” Dez said. “I kept trying to get my name off the list, but Garcia wanted to punish me bad.”
“That’s why it worked,” Penny finished Spencer’s train of thought. “The Sweeper potion worked on Dez because, technically, he was a temporary janitor, cleaning New Forest Academy.”
“Shouldn’t we knock him out already?” Daisy asked. “You know, since he’s a bad guy now.”
“I’m not a bad guy,” said Dez. “I’m the same guy I always was.” Then he grinned. “But now I have wings.”
“We need to get him back to normal,” Walter muttered.
“Didn’t you just say that a fatal blow to a Sweeper will knock the Glop out of them?” Bernard said.
Walter nodded. “But it will also leave them blind.”
“Maybe I can de-Glopify him,” Spencer said, holding out his left hand. “With my Auran powers.”
“Nobody’s taking away my better half!” Dez yelled. He flapped his large wings, and his feet lifted from the floor for the first time. “Woo-hoo!” Dez touched the ceiling and coasted back to the floor.
Spencer could see that Walter was caught in a dilemma. The warlock rubbed a hand across his face. “We don’t know what side effects it will have on Dez if you de-Glopify him. He may still go blind from having the Glop withdrawn.”
“I agree that we need to get him back to normal,” Penny said. “But didn’t Agnes say that we’ll need a Sweeper once we get inside that Port-a-Potty?” She pointed at Dez, who was now doing a dance move that looked kind of like the Funky Rubbish. “Let’s use him while we’ve got him,” Penny said. “Turn him back after we steal Belzora.”
Spencer was shaking his head. That was exactly Dez’s plan. He wanted to make himself feel important and indispensable. Giving in to him would just fuel his selfishness.
But Walter nodded in agreement. It was decided.
“I’ll give Agnes a call,” Alan said, pulling a phone from his pocket. “Let’s get those portals open before Mr. Clean gets back to the lab.”
Spencer and Daisy followed the other Rebels back toward the janitorial closet.
“This is going to be bad,” Spencer whispered. “Dez can fly.”
“At least he’s a Rubbish, so his breath doesn’t affect us,” she said.
“I wish it would affect himself,” Spencer said. “He used to be vulnerable to big Rubbishes.”
“I think he’s immune now,” said Daisy. “It’s hard to smell your own breath.”
There was a rush of air overhead, and Dez suddenly landed between them, his big bat wings folding around S
pencer and Daisy like an awkward group hug. “Isn’t this going to be fun?”
Spencer could think of a dozen words to describe what it would be like working with a Sweeper Dez. Fun was not one of them.
Chapter 18
“She’ll never see me coming.”
The squeegee portal opened, and Earl tipped his cowboy hat to the woman standing on the other side.
Agnes Maynard was a rail of a woman. She was dressed in dark clothes with a big ring of keys on her belt. Her gaunt face was creased in ways that made Spencer think she’d spent most of her fifty-some years worrying.
“Come quickly,” she said, gesturing for the group of Rebels to step through the squeegee portal. Penny did so first, scanning the area for any kind of trap or betrayal. When she judged it to be safe, she nodded to the others.
“Best of luck to you,” Earl said.
“We won’t forget your part in this,” Walter said.
Earl winked. “That’s assuming y’all survive!”
Spencer didn’t find the cowboy janitor’s words to be very encouraging. But it was too late to turn back now. He and Daisy stepped up to the doorway, hearing his dad give Earl some last-minute instructions.
“Agnes is going to let her side of the portal close,” Alan said. “But we’ll be taking her squeegee with us into the laboratory. We need you to keep swiping on your side so we can use our squeegee to get back at any moment.”
“How long should I keep her open?” Earl whispered.
Alan shook his head, and Spencer could tell that his dad didn’t like the question either. “The only reason you should close that portal is if it opens to a mess of Sweepers on the other side. Then you shatter the glass and dispose of the squeegee.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” said Earl. He tipped his large cowboy hat one last time; then all the Rebels were through the portal and following Agnes down the darkened hallways of a middle school in Massachusetts.
Dez tried to fly above the group, but he was still clumsy with his newfound wings. He grazed the ceiling and dropped heavily to the floor behind them.
“I can’t wait to get outside and stretch my wings,” he said. “I feel like a bird in a cage.”
“Maybe if we give you a cracker, you’ll stop talking.” Spencer muttered.
Daisy started digging in her pocket. “I think I have a Ritz in here.” Then she shrugged. “Nope. Just crumbs.”
Agnes glanced back at Dez. “Where did you find the Sweeper?” Spencer heard her whisper to his dad.
“You said we’d need one when we enter the Port-a-Potty,” Alan said.
“I didn’t think you’d bring your own,” said Agnes. “How do you know we can trust him?”
Spencer still wasn’t sure they could, but Walter cut in. “Because he wasn’t a Sweeper fifteen minutes ago.”
“It’s a risk,” Agnes said, so matter-of-fact that Spencer couldn’t tell how she felt about it.
A moment later, they were outside, but Dez wasn’t unfurling his leathery wings. Penny had a solid grip on the boy’s shoulder. Spencer was pretty sure his Sweeper strength could lift her off the ground, but Penny’s threat stopped him from trying.
“Take off, and I clip your wings.”
“Whatever.” Dez shrugged away from her grasp. “You guys need me.”
Penny nodded. “We need you,” she said. “We don’t need your wings.”
They moved beyond the school property and followed Agnes down a street lined with massive trees. After a while, the road turned to hard dirt, ribbed with washboards. They stepped out of the trees and back into the moonlight, where Spencer saw the dirt road bend down a slope to the right.
Agnes quickly dropped to her knee on the edge of the road, and the other Rebels followed her example.
At the base of the gentle slope was a construction site. It was large, treeless, and ringed entirely by a chain-link fence. The fence looked ordinary enough and stood no higher than about twelve feet. Floodlights filled the site with harsh, artificial brightness, and Spencer could see warning signs hanging every few feet along the fence.
DANGER
Construction Area—Keep Out
The dirt road ended in a dusty parking area outside the fence, where Spencer noticed only a half dozen cars. He didn’t know why he had expected to see more, since the BEM workers who knew about the lab were likely to be Sweepers or Pluggers. Neither of those groups needed vehicles when they could move with the speed and agility of Toxites.
The only break in the chain-link was an open gate wide enough to admit even the largest Extension Filth. Standing before the gate were two Sweepers. Spencer couldn’t see the details of their faces, but even at this distance he could tell that one was a Filth and the other a Grime.
Beyond the guards, the construction site looked plain. A crane loomed over a stack of large pipes and rusty rebar. There were several perilous-looking dugout holes, with backhoes parked on the piles of excavated dirt and broken chunks of concrete. Splintery wooden pallets were tossed next to a heap of loose bricks.
But at the center of the construction area, clearly visible in the floodlights, stood a single Port-a-Potty.
There was nothing extraordinary about the way it looked. It was a Port-a-Potty, and Spencer had seen plenty of them in his lifetime. The plastic sides were fire-engine red, with a domed top and a small ventilation pipe rising from one corner. Spencer’s instincts had always been to stay away from germ-infested Port-a-Pottys. It seemed strange now to risk his life to get inside one.
“There is something else I should tell you,” Agnes whispered. “It has come to my attention that Mr. Clean has found a way to Glopify the chain-link fence. You won’t be able to climb it.”
“We have brooms,” Penny said. “Why would we climb it when we can just fly over?”
“That’s the problem, you see,” said Agnes. “Imagine a force field lying flat across the top of the fence, covering the entire construction site like a blanket. Anything that touches the force field from above or below will be destroyed.”
“What about the crane?” Alan asked. It was clearly rising high above the twelve-foot fence.
“The crane has been reinforced,” said Agnes. “The force field is sealed around it. The only opening is that gate.”
She took a deep breath through her nose. “This is where I leave you,” Agnes whispered. She handed her Glopified squeegee to Alan, who clipped it into his janitorial belt.
“Sure you don’t want to join us?” Bernard asked. “I bet there’s plenty of room in the john.”
Agnes didn’t even crack a smile. She clasped Walter firmly on the shoulder, gave him a businesslike nod, and retreated into the darkness.
“What now?” Daisy asked. Spencer could tell she was a bit shaken by the fact that Agnes had revealed the dangers of the Glopified fence and then left.
“Looks like those two Sweeper guards have Glopified walkie-talkies,” Penny said. “We’ll need to take them out fast, before they can radio in for help.”
“You guys handle those two,” Dez said, pointing down to the gate. “I’ll take out the third one.”
Spencer looked at him, annoyed by the fact that he wasn’t even crouching down. “Third one?”
“Yeah.” Dez pointed. “There’s a Rubbish Sweeper perched on top of the crane.”
The tip of the crane was high above the construction site and well out of the glow of the floodlights. Spencer squinted, but he couldn’t make out a figure anywhere.
“You’re lying,” Spencer said. “You’re just looking for an excuse to test your wings.”
“I don’t see anything either,” Daisy said.
“Duh,” said Dez. “That’s ’cause I have eagle eyes. I can see pretty good in the dark now. When I turned into a Sweeper, my eyesight got entranced.”
“Enhanced,” Spencer corrected.
“Whatever,” said Dez. “There’s a Sweeper lady up there.” He squinted. “I think she’s got a walkie-talkie too.”
“If Dez’s Rubbish eyes can see her,” Walter said, “then her Rubbish eyes will spot us long before we make it to the fence.”
“Let me take her out!” Dez insisted.
Spencer rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. You’ve been a Sweeper for maybe twenty minutes. She’ll eat you alive.”
“She’ll never see me coming.”
“Dez has a point,” Walter said. Spencer threw his hands up in the air. Why did they continue to side with Dez? He always got them into trouble!
“That crane is too high for even the strongest broom to carry someone up,” Walter continued. “That Rubbish Sweeper probably feels quite secure up there.”
“An aerial attack would give us the benefit of surprise,” Penny said. “But I don’t think Dez should handle this alone.”
“What are you saying?” Dez asked.
“I’m saying that you’re going to fly me up there and drop me right down on top of that Sweeper lady,” answered Penny. “I’ll hit her with the green spray and she won’t remember a thing about it when she wakes up.”
“Why not take her out completely?” Bernard asked.
“Mr. Clean can’t be far behind us,” she said. “If he shows up and all of his guards are blind and de-Glopified, he’ll know we beat him here.”
“Green spray erases only recent memories,” Walter said. “That means you’ll have only a minute or two from the time she spots you. Anything beyond that might not get erased and she’ll wake up with a memory of the fight.”
“I’ll be faster alone,” Dez said.
“Absolutely not,” replied Walter. “You’re flying Penny up there.”
Dez was shaking his head. “No can do. Penny’s too big. I don’t think I can carry her that high.”
“Are you calling me fat?” Penny glared, hands on hips.
“Use a plunger,” said Bernard. “She’ll be weightless.”
Dez shrugged. “I don’t have one.”
“Here,” Daisy said. She unclipped a Glopified toilet plunger and tossed it to him. Dez’s taloned hand closed around the handle, but it slipped through his grasp and landed on the dirt road. He bent over, his awkward hands making several attempts to grasp the wooden handle. At last he got it, but when he turned to face the Rebels, the plunger slipped through his fingers again.
Strike of the Sweepers Page 8
