“Artie, stop clowning around!” Pilot hollered. “What does she want? Ask her what she wants!”
“Sheesh!” Artie rolled his bulgy eyes and shook his head. “Well, for shtarters, I think she wantsh to know who shrunk the pyramidsh!” He waved a scaly limb at the mini-golf display and started snorting again.
“Artie!” the twins yelled in unison.
“I shwear,” Artie huffed, “one shingle creature of the undead shows up and you guysh all of a shudden loosh your shenshesh of humour! I’m the one lookin’ like luggage, here, y’know …” He pointed at his scaly hide. “Well, never mind. You’ll find out shoon enough what that’sh like. She was shupposhed to rule a whole darn kingdom way back when, but I told her Wigginsh ish awful nishe and sho she shaid she’ll shettle for jusht a whole town! Ol’ Zee here is gonna turn all the kidsh in Wigginsh into her own pershonal shcaly army—and you guysh are next! She’sh gonna take over, Armbrushter. And I’m her shecond in command. Neat, huh?”
Pilot turned back to the twins. All three of them sported identical expressions of horror. The Wiggins folk, for the most part, were trusting and mild-mannered. With small town manners and unlocked front doors. They wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of Zahara-Safiya. Most of them couldn’t even tell that they were getting taken to the cleaners by that creepy faker Colonel Dudley. And that was just the adults. The other kids in town? What did they know about fighting off the supernatural forces of toothy doom? Nothing. Cindy Tyson couldn’t even handle the Bottoms boys when they were boys.
Cheryl and Tweed, at least, knew what they were up against. They, at least, were armed with knowledge. But would that, alone, be enough? The girls exchanged a glance and each knew what the other was thinking.
They had W-O-W power. Zahara-Safiya had real power.
They had the gear and the grit. She had minions and magic.
If this was just another one of their ACTION!! games, they would have wrapped her back up in her bandages and sent her packing. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just a game any more. It wasn’t make-believe. The Bottoms boys were depending on them. Artie—clearly—needed their help. Even if he seemed to be somewhat enjoying his role as real-life sidekick to a monster.
“What are we gonna do?” Pilot asked.
Cheryl was still in a bit of denial. “What would we do if this was a movie?”
So was Tweed. “If only we’d seen the last reel of Curse of the Blood Red Sands!”
“No!” Pilot said. He said it as gently as he could, which was still pretty adamant. “Stop. Cher-bear, Tee-weed, this isn’t a movie. We’re not gonna solve this by following a script. There’s nothing in the movies that … in … uh … wait.”
He blinked.
A look of surprise, followed by one of revelation, flooded his face.
The girls waited impatiently for him to continue.
“I … I think I have an idea,” Pilot said, slowly. “It’s crazy … but it just might work.”
“Where’d you get this crazy idea from?” Cheryl asked, suspicious.
“Um.” Pilot might have actually blushed a bit. “A movie …”
“A newfangled movie?” Tweed asked, her voice carefully neutral.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “It’s a new one. But there’s a mummy in it, and—here’s the thing—it’s afraid of cats.”
Cheryl frowned. “Why would a mummy be afraid of cats?”
“Well, according to the hero of the picture,” Pilot explained, “the Egyptians worshipped them. They thought they were guardians of the underworld that kept departed souls from returning to walk the earth. Maybe a close encounter of the feline kind is just what we need to send that mummy spirit packing, back to the Great Mummy Beyond!”
“I don’t know … sounds pretty far-fetched to me …” Cheryl said.
“You mean farther-fetched than flaming bug-bombs and croc-toddlers?”
Cheryl blinked and thought about that for a moment. “Point taken.”
She poked her head up to check on Zahara’s movements and had to duck back down again as another insect sizzled through the air. It landed on the ground right beside her and she scrambled back, stomping on the thing and, in spite of her earlier protests, winding up with bug guts on the sole of her shoe. Flaming, evil bug guts. She stomped again to put out the green flames, grimacing at the smell of burning rubber.
“Wait!” Tweed pointed at the squashed remains. “Pilot might be on to something.”
“Whazzat?” Cheryl asked, skeptical, scraping her sneaker bottom off on the Astroturf.
“Remember how the bugs reacted when Miz Parks’s puddins all started to meow?” Tweed said.
“That’s right! They freaked!” Pilot urged. “Come on, Cheryl … think about it! If we can get Artie to help lure the mummy princess and the Bottoms kids into the barn, we can unleash the feline fury of a whole army of cats on them.”
“The shnookumses?” Cheryl paused, mid shoescrape, glancing back and forth at her companions. “An army?”
“She has minions.” Pilot jerked a thumb in the direction of the Princess. “Why can’t we?” He tapped one foot, waiting anxiously for the twins to see the genius of his plan.
Tweed tilted her head, contemplating what would happen when Pigwidgeon, Kittums Fat Fat, Mr. Sniffers and the rest were turned loose on an unsuspecting mummy princess.
Cheryl frowned, working the logic—the scarab beetles had skedaddled at the first yowl of cat-song. Surely it couldn’t be coincidence, could it? The girls had long spouted on about the wisdom of the pictures. Maybe Pilot could take what he’d learned from his movies and apply it in the very same way.
He pleaded his case: “A movie’s a movie’s a movie,” he said. “Right? It’s worth a try, isn’t it? At least it might distract her long enough for us to get Artie and the boys away from her …”
“What do you think?” Tweed asked Cheryl. “Can we make a break for it?”
“Heck yes, we can!” Cheryl answered, a fierce gleam in her gaze as she unholstered two cans of Silly String from the belt around her waist and slammed the welder’s mask back down over her face.
Tweed settled the 3D glasses down over her eyes.
Pilot nodded and flipped his ball cap the other way around.
“Go! Go! GO!” shouted Cheryl.
Tweed and Pilot burst out from behind their mountain hideout and sprinted for the mini-golf entrance gates, arms and legs pumping for all they were worth. Cheryl lagged, diving and ducking behind the igloo on hole three, just as the first volley of fire-beetles went blazing past, overshooting her in their flight to take down Pilot and Tweed. She let them get out front and then, with a cool head and steady hands, Cheryl stood, aimed with both cans, and let fly with a wide, wildly colourful spray of plastic string that burst into spectacular, flaming gyroscopic patterns of pyrotechnic kablooey in the night sky as the scarabs were hit with the improvised bug-catcher net and exploded on contact.
The second they did, Cheryl took off, sprinting to catch up with Pilot and Tweed.
“Hey, Shrimpcake!” she yelled over her shoulder, goading Artie with the nickname. “You tell your evil mummy princess—she wants to minionize us? She’s gonna have to catch us first!”
And, with that, she poured on a burst of speed, catching up to Tweed and Pilot as they ran through the drive-in’s (annoyingly) empty lot, ducking and dodging the vulture that was dive-bombing them, shrieking and flapping its wings.
“Flyboy!” Cheryl shouted as she ran. “Catch!”
She tossed him a can of string and Pilot snatched it out of the air without breaking stride. Cheryl drew even with him as the vulture readied for another dive, arcing up into the sky and then arrowing sharply downward, hooked beak gaping open and uttering a piercing skreeeee.
“Target that chicken’s six, Flyboy!” Cheryl ordered. “I’ll take tea time! Tweed—order us up some hot wings and spice that sucker up!”
Pilot and Tweed reacted as any well-oiled SWAT team or superhe
ro squadron would. Pilot stuck out a hand, grabbed the nearest drive-in speaker pole, pivoted sharply around it and loosed a stream of string aimed at the vulture’s “six o’clock”—its tail feathers—while Cheryl fired a neon blast at its right wing—the “three o’clock, time for tea” wing. Tweed, right on cue, slapped a Nerf bolt in her crossbow, spun, executed an entirely unintentional (but somehow still totally wicked-cool) shoulder roll, came up onto her knees and fired.
Cheryl suppressed a surge of stunt-double envy and kept on running.
Tweed’s sponge bolt hit the buzzard right on the beak and a cloud of chili powder exploded from it. The bird squawked in surprise, sneezed violently and tumbled through the air on a wildly off-target trajectory. It crashed to the ground in a rolling heap at Zahara’s sandalled feet, bowling over its mistress in an explosion of Silly String, feathers and mummy princess outrage. As they ran, Pilot and the girls could hear Zahara-Safiya’s ancient Egyptian curse words and the vulture’s squawks.
“You guysh are in for it now!” Artie shouted, rushing to help free his malevolently magical mistress from the hopeless tangle of wings and strings. “Nobody meshes with Flappy and getsh away with it! You’re curshed now, for shure!”
“You’re making that up!” Cheryl shouted back. “Evil mummy princesses don’t name their hench-birds ‘Flappy’! And you’ll still have to catch us!”
The Princess’s vulture entanglements bought them precious time. The barn loomed up in front of them, a hulking black shape in the darkness, and the trio screeched to a stop in front of the doors. Tweed heaved the bar closure up and swung the door open just enough for them to slip through, and then pulled the door shut behind them, purposely leaving it unlocked. Turning around, she saw Pilot and Cheryl standing in front of the stack of pet carriers, which, by sheer coincidence, they had earlier piled up … in the shape of a pyramid. Cheryl was shaking her head, a wry grin on her face, and Tweed knew her cousin was thinking the exact same thing.
Pilot brought them back to reality. “Come on! They’ll be here any minute now. We gotta get this trap here ready to spring!”
They huddled for a brief moment and decided that the most effective use of the cats would be to unleash them all at once. Cheryl found a ball of twine in the workbench drawer and, working together with the kind of lightning speed and precision that their regular super-sitter training drills had given them, she and Tweed threaded it through all the carriers’ cage-door latches,
then sent Pilot up into the loft with the twine ball. The twins would act as “bait” and, once they had the Princess exactly where they wanted her, Pilot would pull the string, freeing the kitty commandos to leap forth and vent their righteous wrath on the vengeful undead!
At least, that was the plan.
If everything went according to the script …
As soon as Pilot was in position, the girls took up a back-to-back stance in the middle of the barn floor, flanked by the Moviemobile on one side and the wall of cats on the other. Silence descended in the gloom. They could hear the pattering and scratching of their adversary’s forces, no doubt scouting out the best way to attack.
“Cee?” Tweed whispered in the darkness.
“Yeah, Tee?” Cheryl whispered back.
“I may not get a chance to tell you this later—”
“Don’t talk like that, partner!” Cheryl interrupted her. “We’re gonna make it through this. You gotta believe.”
“I do. I do! I just … I just wanted you to know .”
“What?”
“That was some grade A hero patter back there in the lot.”
Cheryl turned to her cousin, blinking in surprise. “It was?”
“Oh yeah. Seriously choice. ‘Target that chicken’s six’? ‘Tea time’?” Tweed’s grey eyes were wide, her gaze serious and brimming with genuine respect. “And the ‘hot wing’ quip … masterful.”
“Will you two quit yakking and pay attention?” Pilot whispered from where he was hunkered down in the hayloft. “I think I heard something .”
On the floor of the barn, Cheryl and Tweed froze.
The gloom was absolute. The shadows deep and dark.
Stillness descended, tense and crackling with anticipation .
Suddenly, Bingo the croc-tot darted across the barn floor, spitting out his pacifier to snap and scrabble at Cheryl’s sneakered foot as he zipped past and disappeared once more into the shadows beneath the hayloft!
Both girls, to put it kindly, freaked.
There was jumping and screeching and flailing and the reckless pointing and shooting of Nerf bolts and staccato bursts of Day-Glo Silly String arcing through the air. After a moment … stillness descended once more. The croc-tot had vanished back into the murk, leaving the girls to wonder if he was the only one who’d managed to wriggle his way into the barn.
The girls stood back to back again, breathing heavily, weapons drawn.
When the scaly little Bottoms Beast didn’t reappear, Cheryl and Tweed lowered their cans and crossbow. Cheryl laughed (only a little nervously).
“All-righty,” she whispered. “That was a pretty close one. Let’s just—”
“Gasp!” Tweed said, gasping for added effect just in case she hadn’t made her point, which she also reinforced by pointing.
“What?” Cheryl turned in a full circle. “What are you pointing at?”
“You’ve been bitten!”
“What?” Cheryl stopped spinning and blinked at Tweed. “No, I haven’t!”
Tweed reached for the flashlight she’d shoved into her belt and clicked it on. By the light of the weak and flickering beam, they saw that Cheryl’s ankle, indeed, sported a crescent-shaped line of tiny, raised red dots on the pale, freckled skin between the rolled-up cuff of her overalls and the top of her sneaker. Aghast, Cheryl looked back up at Tweed.
“Wait,” she said, holding out a hand.
Tweed edged toward the gear bag, her stare never leaving Cheryl’s face.
“Tweed …”
Tweed’s grey eyes were wide. And brimming with regret. “I wish it didn’t have to end up this way, partner,” she said, her monotone growing squeaky with emotion.
“You know …”
“Tweed…”
“You know the rules! You know the monster-hunting rules!”
“Ya but—”
“We’ve both seen the movies! We both know the science! You’re gonna turn, pal. You’re gonna turn and it’s gonna get ugly and I can’t let that happen to—Yeoowch!”
Unnoticed by the twins, and employing the same attack strategy as Bingo the Biter, Crocface George—all scales and snappy teeth—had darted out from behind his car tire and scuttled across the floor on a diagonal trajectory, buzzing straight past Tweed. Now she bent down to examine the rip in her tights—and the row of teeth marks almost identical to Cheryl’s.
Cheryl raised an eyebrow at her cousin.
Tweed sighed. “I do appreciate the filmic irony of this moment.”
“Oh, definitely.” Cheryl nodded.
A third, even more tension-fraught moment of silence filled the dark, cavernous old barn …
Then, suddenly, both girls burst into frenzied actionsequence motion, with much acrobatic rolling and confusion and yelling. Tweed did an impressive sideways leap-flip into the back seat of the top-down Moviemobile, firing a double-barrelled blast of chili-darts as she twisted in mid-air. Cheryl threw herself over the car door and into a perfectly executed shoulder roll, landing in the front seat and aiming blindly over her shoulder with the can of string.
Both girls missed with their first volleys, but popped up almost instantly—only to each find themselves staring the other’s weapon in the face. Cheryl was nose to nose with Nerf. But Tweed was in her Silly String sights.
“Put that down, Tee!” Cheryl growled.
“You put that down, Cee!” Tweed snarled.
“You first.”
“No you.”
“You.”
&nbs
p; “Holster that string!”
“Holster that bow!”
“I’m—”
“telling—”
“POPS!!”
At that exact moment, Pilot stuck his head out over the edge of the loft to see what on earth all the ruckus was about. He clicked on the beam of his flashlight, the only one still working properly, and was astonished to see the twins frozen in a kind of Mexican standoff.
“What in heck has gotten into you two?” he shouted. “We’ve got a mu—”
On hair-triggers, the twins both spun, unleashing a barrage in his direction.
“Ow! Hey! What the?! Cut it out!!”
“Whoops.” Cheryl blinked and came to her senses.
“Umm.” Tweed did the same.
Pilot wiped a glop of string from his eyes and plucked off a dart that was suction-cupped to his forehead. “Dang!” he said. “That stuff stings, y’know …”
“Heh. Sorry about that, Flyboy …”
“Yeah, sorry, Pilot …”
The twins sheepishly lowered their weapons.
Cheryl turned to Tweed. “Seeing as how we both seem to be in the same boat, bite-wise, how’s about we just leave it up to Pilot to do the right thing the minute either of us starts to go scaly?” she suggested.
Tweed nodded solemnly and said, “Deal. Nice shoulder roll, by the way.”
Then she gave her cousin the C+T Secret Signal. Cheryl returned the winky-eye/pointy-finger/nose-nod gesture and, together, they began to climb out of the car—keeping a sharp eye out for the croc-Bottoms as Pilot swept the beam to and fro across the barn floor to keep the critters at bay.
The twins’ feet had just hit the ground when, suddenly, the barn door flew inward, crashing against the wall, and in strode Princess Zahara-Safiya, Artie Bartleby shuffling behind her, trailing feathers and bits of string.
“Now, Pilot! Now!” Tweed hollered.
Up in the loft, Pilot yanked with all his might on the twine ball in his hand, and down below, the latches on fifteen cat cages sprang open.
“What the heck?!” Artie exclaimed and jumped back, hiding behind a popcorn cooking oil storage drum. “Shtop, your majeshty! It’sh a trap!”
How to Curse in Hieroglyphics Page 10
