by Dave Barry
We ducked down and ran right, to the wall alongside the property that we followed coming up. It was dark next to the wall, which made me feel safer. All we had to do now was get back down to the dock.
“Tell Victor we’re going to the dock, and to let us know if they move,” I whispered.
Matt told Victor, and we started walking along the wall. The grass mounds kept us hidden from the path. Matt kept whispering into the Bluetooth, letting Matt know as we passed each mound. We heard men’s voices coming from our left. We were getting closer to them. When we were passing behind the fourth mound, Matt put his hand on my arm and whispered, “Hold it.”
“What?”
“Victor says be careful after we pass this hill because they might be able to see us from where they’re standing. Also, he has to land the drone and change the batteries.”
We crept forward until we were at the corner of the building. The voices were nearby and loud, guys telling each other to be careful about something.
I peeked my head out over the mound, just enough to see what was going on.
They were on the pathway, maybe twenty-five feet away: the Bevin brothers and three men I didn’t recognize. They had flashlights and were gathered around a big crate, next to a mound on the other side of the path. When a flashlight beam flicked past it, I noticed something weird: the mound had a door. The outside of the door was covered with grass, so when it was closed it would blend into the rest of the mound. But now it was partly open, and I caught a glimpse of a tunnel going down under the mound. What was down there? Why was the entrance hidden?
Another question was, What was inside the crate? Whatever it was, the men were trying to get it out, and they were having trouble. One of them had a stick with a noose at the end, which he kept poking into the crate.
“What’s happening?” whispered Matt, peeking over the mound.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “There’s some kind of—”
I was interrupted by shouting. The guy with the noose had got hold of whatever was inside the crate. He and another guy were pulling backward on it. These were big guys, but whatever was in there was giving them a battle.
They gave the pole a yank.
“Be careful!” Troy said. “Don’t hurt it.”
“We’re trying not to,” said one of the guys. “But this thing is strong.”
They gave the pole another yank.
This time it worked. The men staggered backward, and out of the crate came a head.
“Whoa,” said Matt, too surprised to whisper. “What is that?”
What it looked like was a dinosaur. It had a lizardish head, but way bigger than any lizard I ever saw—more like the size of an alligator. It was sticking out a tongue that had to be over a foot long. It did not like having the noose around its neck. It was shaking its head back and forth, trying to get loose, but the men were holding on.
Everybody was yelling now. The guys with the pole gave another yank and dragged more of the thing out. It was huge. It had weird wrinkly skin, and its front feet had major claws. Also it was extremely unhappy. Suddenly it opened its mouth and lunged forward. The two pole guys staggered back. The thing was heavy, and strong.
“Don’t let it bite you!” shouted the third man, backing away from the head, which was still whipping around, with the mouth open wide.
The pole guys got their balance again and gave another pull. This time the thing came all the way out of the crate.
“Ohmigod,” said Matt.
It had to be ten feet long. Its rear feet had the same huge claws as the front ones. Its tail was massive. Its whole body was thrashing around now; the two guys holding the pole were struggling to control it. I was glad I wasn’t standing next to it.
Now the pole guys were trying to maneuver the thing toward the doorway in the mound. This made the thing even more unhappy; it did not want to go into the doorway. It lunged again, but this time instead of going toward the two men trying to hold it, it went sideways, pulling them both off-balance. Then—this happened really fast—the thing whirled in the other direction, like 180 degrees. Its tail slammed into one of the guys, who went down and lost his hold on the pole. The tail kept going and hit the second guy. He didn’t fall, but he also lost his grip on the pole. The thing shook its head and the noose came off.
So now nothing was holding the thing. It started running.
It was running fast.
Straight toward Matt and me.
“Run!” I said to Matt.
He was already running. The two of us took off along the wall, heading for the canal.
Behind us I heard shouting. I looked back and saw guys running and flashlight beams waving around. Then I saw the thing. It had reached the wall and, unfortunately, turned left, the same direction we were running. It was really fast.
“Keep going!” I said to Matt, unnecessarily, because he hadn’t even slowed down to look back. We got to the end of the wall and Matt jumped onto the banyan tree like a monkey on steroids. In about two seconds he was on top of the wall.
I tried to follow, but I’m not as good a climber as Matt. My foot got snagged in a tangle of roots, and my sneaker came off. I reached down to grab it. The shouting was getting louder.
“Hurry up!” said Matt. “That thing is coming!”
I didn’t dare look. I grabbed my sneaker, stuck it in my shorts pocket, and started climbing again. This time I made it to the top of the wall, where Matt was crouched, waiting for me in the darkness under the branches.
“They caught it,” he whispered.
I looked back. They hadn’t actually caught the thing, but they had it trapped against the wall, the three guys and the Bevin brothers forming a semicircle around it, shining their flashlights in its eyes. It had its mouth open, looking to bite whoever got close, but you could tell it was confused by the lights. I almost felt sorry for it. One of the guys had the noose pole and they were trying to snag it again.
“Let’s go,” whispered Matt.
He started climbing down the other side of the wall. I waited until he was down on the dock, then turned and took one last look to where the guys were trying to catch the thing.
That’s when a powerful flashlight beam caught me right in the face.
“Hey!” shouted Troy. “Hold it!”
The flashlight started coming my way, fast. I didn’t try to climb down; I basically jumped off the wall, and I almost landed on Matt.
“They saw me,” I said.
We grabbed our boards and paddles, ran to the ladder, tossed the boards into the canal, and got on them as fast as we could. We stayed on our knees and paddled with our hands between two of the boats tied to the dock.
The metal door in the wall banged open. There were footsteps running on the dock and flashlight beams flashing around. Matt and I paddled around to the far side of the boat to our right and stopped, holding as still as we could.
“What do we do?” whispered Matt. I could see his face by the dim light from the houses on the other side of the canal. He looked terrified.
“Stay quiet,” I whispered.
“Palmer!” It was Troy’s voice, from the other side of the dock. “I know you’re there.”
Nick’s voice said, “You sure it was him?”
“Yes, I’m sure. He was on top of the wall. Come out, Palmer! Don’t make me come get you!”
There were more footsteps on the dock—the Bevins walking around, shining their flashlights, looking for us. Sooner or later they were going to figure out where we were hiding.
Troy said, “He must be on the other side of the boats.”
So it was sooner.
“Check that boat,” said Troy. “I’ll check this one.”
I decided our only hope was to start paddling like crazy. The Bevins would see us, but the only way they could catch us was by boat. Of course they had a bunch of boats right there. So my plan wasn’t really that great. But it was all I could think of at the moment.
&n
bsp; “Okay,” I whispered to Matt. “We need to get out of here.”
“Okay,” he whispered.
We crouched on our boards, getting ready to take off.
Then Troy yelled, “Hey!”
Then we heard a hum.
Then the Bevins’ flashlight beams were sweeping around the sky.
“There it is!” shouted Nick. “It’s a drone!”
Victor must have put new batteries in. From our side of the boat we could see the drone, hovering maybe ten feet over the dock, red light glowing. It rose a little and slowly drifted toward the metal door.
“That thing can take pictures!” said Troy.
The drone drifted slowly over the wall. Like it was luring the Bevins.
“We better get in there,” said Troy.
“What about Palmer?” said Nick.
I held my breath.
“We’ll get him later,” said Troy. “Right now we need to tell them about the drone.”
I heard running footsteps, then the sound of the dock gate opening and slamming shut.
I started breathing again.
“Tell Victor thanks,” I said to Matt.
“Wyatt says thanks,” he said to the Bluetooth. Then, “Victor says we better get out of here.”
“No kidding.”
Ten seconds later we were up and paddling. Also, thinking. I was thinking, anyway. Mostly I was thinking of questions.
Like, what was that dinosaur thing? Why did they have it? And why were they trying to put it into a hidden underground place?
Why did they even have a hidden underground place?
What else did they have in those mounds?
I had a lot more questions, but no answers.
“Wyatt!” Matt was calling from behind me. I stopped paddling so he could catch up.
“What was going on back there?” he said. “What the heck was that thing?”
“I have no idea.”
“Victor says we need to talk.”
“Tell him we’ll talk tomorrow. Right now I need to get home.”
I started paddling again. I was worried that my parents might have discovered I was gone. But that wasn’t my biggest worry. My biggest worry was that the Bevin brothers had seen me. Whatever was going on back there at their house, they obviously wanted to keep it a secret. And now they knew that I knew about it. As if they didn’t hate me enough already.
As I paddled, I kept hearing Troy’s voice.
We’ll get him later.
I got back to my house a little after eleven and climbed back in through my bedroom window. Then I went out to the family room, where my parents, believe it or not, were still binge-watching The Walking Dead. By that point they must have seen enough splattered zombie brains to cover a basketball court, but they were still into it. I said good night, and they kind of waved good night without taking their eyes off the screen. They never knew I was gone. So at least that was good news.
A minute later I got some bad news, as if I needed any more, when my phone burped. It was my sister, texting me a picture of…me. It showed me climbing in through my bedroom window. Taylor’s room is next to mine. She must have heard me coming back, leaned out her window, and caught me sneaking in.
I believe I may have mentioned that she can be annoying.
I went into the hall and opened her door. She was sitting on her bed, looking pleased with herself.
“Delete it,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Okay, then I’ll delete it.” I started toward her.
“If you take one more step, I’ll scream,” she said. “And Mom and Dad will come, and I’ll show them the picture, and Mom will kill you.”
I stopped, because that is exactly what would happen.
“Come on,” I said. “Delete it.”
“You could at least ask me nicely,” she said. “And you could apologize for just barging into my room.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry for barging into your room. Please delete the picture.”
“No.”
Sometimes I hate my sister.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I want to know where you went,” she said. In addition to being annoying, she is extremely nosy.
“None of your business,” I said.
“All right, then,” she said, holding up the phone. “Maybe you’ll tell Mom.”
“Okay, okay. I went to Matt’s house.”
“I know that.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I want to know where you and Matt went after that. With the paddleboards.”
I stared at her. “How do you know about that?”
She swiped her finger across her phone, then showed me the screen. It was another picture; this one was me and Matt getting on our bikes with the paddleboards.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Stella took it,” she said. “She saw you guys.”
Stella is Matt’s little sister. She’s also annoying and nosy, so naturally she’s one of Taylor’s many best friends. They love to get into their older brothers’ business. They’re like CSI: Annoying Little Sisters.
“You guys have nothing better to do than spy on people?”
She ignored that. “Where were you taking the paddleboards?”
I sighed. “The canal.”
“Really?” she said, sitting up. She was getting interested, which was bad, because now she’d want to know everything. “Where’d you go?”
“Bay Estates.”
“Why?”
“To rescue Matt’s ferret.”
“What? Rescue it from what?”
I realized she was going to keep asking questions, so I gave up and just told her the whole story. To be honest, I kind of wanted to talk about it anyway, even if it had to be with my sister. She listened with her mouth getting wider and wider open, so at the end she looked like that painting where the guy is screaming and his mouth is a big O. When I was done, she said, “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Tell me more about what the giant lizard thing looked like.”
So I told her—about the weird head, the saggy skin, the giant tongue, the big claws.
“I think I know what that is,” she said. “From science class.”
“What is it?”
Instead of answering, she grabbed her iPad and tapped on it for a few seconds. Then she showed me the screen and said, “Look familiar?”
It was a picture of exactly the thing I’d seen at the Bevin house.
“That’s it,” I said. “What is it?”
“A Komodo dragon.”
“Kimono dragon?”
“No,” she said, in an annoying I’m-smarter-than-you voice, “a kimono is a robe Japanese people wear. That’s a Komodo dragon. It’s from Indonesia, and it’s an endangered species. I bet it’s illegal for them to have it.”
My phone burped. It was a text from Matt.
MATT: u ok?
ME: yes u?
MATT: my sis saw us
ME: i know we need 2 talk
MATT: cant now tmrw ok?
ME: ok
“Who was that?” said Taylor.
“Matt.”
“What’d he say?”
“That Stella saw us.”
Taylor smiled. “You guys aren’t very good at this.”
“Really? We got Frank back.”
“Yeah, but now you’re gonna get killed by the Bevin brothers.”
I didn’t say anything, because she was right.
“So what are you gonna do?” she said.
“About the Bevin brothers?”
“No, the Komodo dragon that they should not have.”
“I dunno yet.”
“You want me to help?”
I looked at her. I was pretty sure that was the first time she ever said those particular words to me.
“Um, thanks,” I said. “I’ll let you know. Right now I’m going to b
ed.”
“Okay,” she said. Then, out of nowhere, she added, “I’ll delete the picture of you sneaking out.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she said.
This was absolutely the nicest conversation I’d ever had with my sister. It was so weird it almost made me forget how messed up the rest of the night was.
Almost. But not quite. By the time I was back in my room and in my bed, I was thinking about bad things again. I lay awake for a while in the dark, thinking about scary lizards and scarier people. I finally drifted off to sleep to the familiar sound, drifting in faintly from the TV room, of splattering zombie brains.
“A kimono dragon?” said Matt. “It’s a dragon?”
It was Saturday morning. We—me, Matt, and Victor—were at a Starbucks in Coral Gables. We rode there on our bikes and ordered coffees. Okay, to be honest, we ordered drinks that were basically milk shakes with a little coffee mixed in.
“No it’s not a dragon,” I said. “It’s a kind of lizard. And it’s Komodo, not kimono. A kimono is a Japanese robe.”
“If you really saw a Komodo dragon,” said Victor, who knows a lot of things about a lot of things, “you’re lucky it didn’t catch you. Those things can run twenty miles an hour, and they have poison glands in their mouths. They’ve been known to kill humans.”
“Whoa,” said Matt. “We’re humans.”
Sometimes “idiot” is too mild a word for Matt.
“What do you mean, if we really saw one?” I asked Victor. “We definitely saw it. You didn’t see it with the drone?”
“No. I saw a crate, but they must’ve taken the dragon out when I was changing the batteries.”
“So you didn’t see the tunnel, either.”
“What tunnel?”
“In one of the big grass mounds. It had a hidden door that opened up to a tunnel. That’s where they were trying to put the thing.”
“I didn’t see any opening.”
“Well, there is one. I bet all those mounds have tunnels. I wonder what else they have back there.”
“At least I got Frank back,” said Matt.
“Yeah,” I said. “Good for you. But the Bevins know I was there. They were already gonna kill me. Now they’re gonna kill me multiple times.”
