Scurvy Goonda Page 12

  “An AMBUSH! You dirty—” said Scozzbottle, but he didn’t have the time to finish his sentence before Dr. Narwhal tackled him and began slapping Scozzbottle with his flippers again and again, making terrific thwack sounds that rang out across the empty road. Wockgrass leaped onto Dr. Narwhal’s back and sunk his teeth into Dr. Narwhal’s aquatic hide, provoking Dr. Narwhal to yell, “Ted!”

  But Ted was paralyzed by thoughts about what he should have been doing, and he couldn’t move. He imagined slashing through the fray on the back of a huge horse and using the badminton racket to swat back the balls of flames that were leaping from Fyrena. He pictured himself flipping Scozzbottle over his shoulder like a judo champion, tossing him into a cage with his cohorts, and delivering them to Joelle-Michelle tied with a bow. He pictured Joelle-Michelle handing him a trophy and—

  “Ted! Get down here and help!” said Dwack, holding Fyrena’s neck, dodging the flames pouring from the cat’s mouth.

  “Come on, Vango!” yelled Dr. Narwhal.

  “No chance!” yelled Vango. “I was just supposed to be lookout. ‘Erka erka,’ remember?”

  Ted watched Dwack grab on to one of Fyrena’s scalding spots and cry out in pain.

  Oh geez, thought Ted, shifting his weight from foot to foot, waiting for his body to tell him what to do. He watched Scozzbottle pick up the cane Dwack had dropped and advance toward Dr. Narwhal, grinning.

  It was the same grin Duke had on his face every time he beat up Ted. And as Ted looked at that grin, something exploded inside him. He grabbed his badminton racket and charged.

  “GET AWAY FROM THEM,” yelled Ted, rearing back with his badminton racket and swinging it with all his might into Wockgrass’s stone body.

  POP!

  The goat disappeared in a mist of purplish muck that splattered on Ted’s body and face. It smelled a bit like mayonnaise.

  “My eyes!” said Ted, momentarily blinded. Dwack and Dr. Narwhal glanced over from their fights to see if he was okay, and that moment of distraction was all the remaining Presidential Guards needed.

  “Bloodsucker!” said Fyrena, swinging his massive paw against Dwack’s face and knocking him out.

  “Hey, big guy!” said Scozzbottle, whacking Dr. Narwhal on the base of the neck. Dr. Narwhal crumpled in an unconscious heap.

  Blinded by the purple muck, Ted could hear the sounds of the fights around him ending, and he was afraid. He flailed with his badminton racket but hit nothing. He heard footsteps approaching.

  “Stand BACK!” said Ted, pointing his badminton racket in the direction of the footsteps.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing that,” said Scozzbottle.

  Still blinded by the purple muck, Ted smelled Scozzbottle’s oily fur, and then he felt Fyrena wrapping a smoking, smoldering paw around his mouth and nose.

  Good night.

  VIII

  Carolina Waltz walked through the empty supermarket aisles searching for Ted Merritt. She was starting to worry about what might have happened to him. Not only did she want to apologize and tell him that she never really thought that he was crazy, she also wanted to ask him if he knew where Czarina Tallow might have gone. Has Ted dropped out of school? she wondered. Is he working at the supermarket full-time? She didn’t know where he could have gone, and the Stop to Shop seemed as good a place as any to look for him.

  She turned down another aisle and nearly tripped over a man who was sitting on a skateboard in front of a soup display. The man wore headphones and was singing along to a disco song.

  Carolina tapped his shoulder, and he looked up at her with watery red eyes.

  “Well there,” he said, and winked. “Pretty-pretty.”

  A creepy feeling ran all over Carolina’s skin.

  “Um, hi,” said Carolina. “I was wondering if you could help me find somebody.”

  “I think you just found him.”

  “Uh, no,” said Carolina, pressing on. “His name is Ted Merritt. He used to work here.”

  “‘Used to’ is right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Come over here and I’ll tell you,” he said.

  She didn’t want to get any closer to the man, but she lowered her ear so he could whisper whatever he had to say. His breath smelled like onion soup.

  “Curly hair,” he said. “Looks like you take care of it.”

  “Tell me what you were going to say,” said Carolina.

  “If you ever asked the night manager about it, he’d say that Ted was fired and never came back.”

  “Okay.”

  “But he did, once. He came back last week, and Jed chased him into the Crusher and hit the switch. I saw it myself. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still stuck in the gears. But you didn’t hear that from me, curly-curly.”

  “Can you point out this Crusher for me?” Carolina had a sick feeling in her stomach.

  “Ain’t supposed to be in the back if you ain’t an employee.”

  Carolina got an idea.

  “If you tell me where it is,” she said, “I’ll wait for you back there.”

  He grinned, and Carolina could see bits of something—fish skin?—stuck in his teeth.

  “Go back through those swinging doors marked ‘Authorized Personnel Only,’” he said. “Hang a left, and you’ll see it—ugly metal thing filled with cardboard.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll meet you behind it, as soon as I finish this shelf.”

  Carolina walked away, breathing deeply to prevent herself from dry heaving. She pushed her way through the swinging doors, looked to make sure nobody was around, hung a quick left, and there it was—the Crusher.

  Carolina could see straight to the bottom of the Crusher, which appeared to be made of overlapping sheets of steel. Those jaws, the idea of Ted caught in them … And then she spotted something that made her heart sink.

  In the back corner of the Crusher, there was a gap between the wall and one of the steel plates. A small amount of light seemed to be pouring through this crack, and hanging over the lip of the fissure was something that looked like meat.

  It can’t be, thought Carolina.

  She climbed down into the Crusher and crawled over to the steel panel until she was nose to slab with the meat.

  Is this a cut of Ted’s thigh, a piece of his shoulder? thought Carolina. Or could it be … bacon? She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the panel and slid it open, revealing a narrow compartment underneath.

  “Huh?” said Carolina.

  She lowered herself into the slot.

  It appeared that she was in a vent of some sort, and at the end of the narrow passage, she could make out a faint light.

  “Where are you, pretty?” she heard the creepy guy say above her. “Breaking promises gets you a bad reputation.”

  Carolina slid the steel panel closed above her.

  There was just enough light coming from the end of the passage for her to see where she was going. She could hear muffled sounds up ahead—hammers and drills.

  “I’m coming, Ted,” she said to herself, and followed the light.

  IX

  THUD! THUD! THUD!

  KA-SHOOM! KA-SHOOM!

  RRR-CLUNK! RRR-CLUNK!

  A bottle was placed against Ted’s lips.

  “Drink,” he heard Dr. Narwhal saying. He did what he was told, drinking deeply of whatever had been offered. The liquid burned his throat and shot him to a sitting position, making him spit and hack.

  “What is that?” yelled Ted.

  “Vango’s persssonal tonic,” said Dr. Narwhal.

  FZZZ-BOOM! FZZZ-BOOM!

  Looking around, Ted saw that they were in an office of some kind. There were a desk, a bookshelf, a halogen lamp, and a thick metal door.

  “What happened?” said Ted.

  “It seems that we are being kept prisoner,” said Dwack.

  “Where are we?”

  “Ever wondered where ab-coms come from?” said Dwack.<
br />
  Ted walked to a long window that was built into the wall behind him. Below was some sort of a chaotic workshop. There were tubes everywhere, clear gelatinous cylinders that hung down from the ceiling over conveyor belts and work-stations like tentacles. Ted could see what looked like light blue clouds moving down through the tubes. When the clouds reached the ends of the tubes, they were shot into enormous steel vats. Then workers in yellow suits marked WATCH-OUT! examined them and took furious notes on serious-looking clipboards.

  Dwack pointed to one of the clear tentacles hanging from the ceiling.

  “Those,” said Dwack, “are idea tubes. You can’t tell from here, but see the way they punch out through the ceiling? They extend to the edge of the atmosphere. Factories like this use the tubes to capture kids’ ideas that have floated out into space. That’s what those little blue clouds are.”

  “Ideas?”

  “Those light blue clouds are their ideas for friends,” said Dwack. “When kids generate ideas, the ideas fly from their brains—there is nothing in the universe that moves faster than the ideas of children, not even light—and those ideas find their way here, like flocks of geese.”

  “What do those guys in the suits do?”

  “They read the orders and start the building process. Their WATCHOUT! suits are standard protective equipment.”

  On the factory floor, some of the vats were filled with what looked like sculpting clay, others with various parts of ab-coms—hooves, antlers, legs, bodies, hats, coats, wigs, and paws. A WATCHOUT! worker stared down at an order and then sifted through the spare parts inside a vat until he found a raccoon tail and a baseball helmet. The worker placed these pieces on a conveyor belt, where they glided toward another group of workers, one of whom shook his head and put the pieces aside, dissatisfied for some reason.

  “Where do the spare parts come from?” said Ted.

  “That’s a bit of a morbid topic. Look over there,” said Dwack, pointing to a queue of depressed-looking abstract companions who were lined up outside a steel door, where two WATCHOUT! workers seemed to be collecting the ab-coms’ personal information on their serious-looking clipboards.

  “Everybody in the line looks miserable,” said Ted.

  Ted watched an old robot hug a fat ninja, hang its head, and walk heavily through the steel door. It looked like it was going off to meet a firing squad.

  “Many ab-coms have a hard time adjusting to their new lives in Middlemost without their friends. For these individuals, there’s a donation program, you could call it—they give themselves to future generations.”

  Moments later, a different WATCHOUT! worker emerged from the back room, pushing a wheelbarrow full of robot parts.

  “Is that…?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Dwack. “You’d be surprised how many companions choose that way out. It keeps the population down to some degree, but I’ve always found it all a bit distasteful.”

  The remains of the robot coasted along the conveyor belt to the WATCHOUT! worker who had put aside the baseball helmet and the raccoon tail. The worker nodded. Putting everything together with sculpting clay, he quickly assembled a baseball-playing robot raccoon, after which he placed the new abstract companion on another conveyor belt, which dead-ended above a tank of viscous maroon liquid.

  “Activator solution,” explained Dwack.

  “What’s it made of?” said Ted.

  “There’s some sunshine in there, some chocolate, some music, a little bit of campfire, some old stories, some snow, a little bit of the ocean. If it brings imagination to life, it goes in the pot.”

  The robot raccoon splashed down into the maroon solution. A mechanical arm fastened a lid on top of the tank, which immediately started to vibrate rapidly—VZZZZ. After a few seconds, the shaking abruptly stopped, the liquid drained from the tank, the mechanical arm removed the lid, and the whole vat FLIPPED on its edge, dumping the hacking and sputtering robot raccoon onto an inflatable cushion surrounded by padded walls.

  “It’s alive,” said Ted.

  “That’s how it happens,” said Dwack.

  A pair of WATCHOUT! workers came out with sponges and towels to clean the new ab-com, which was blinking into the light, trying to figure out what had just happened. The WATCHOUT! workers scooped up the robot raccoon and carried it on a gurney to the end of the thickest tentacle-tube in the room.

  And then … SLURP! The robot raccoon was sucked into the wide tube and disappeared.

  “That tube would normally take the new ab-com to a vent like the one you passed through, and from there it would be delivered to Earth,” said Dwack. “But because of the call to arms, I’m not sure where all the new companions are going. Directly into the army, if I had to guess.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ted. “When Scurvy Goonda showed up in my life, he’d already had tons of experiences before me. How is that possible if he was created for me here?”

  “Lots of kids want pirates as their ab-coms,” explained Dwack. “If there is a perfectly adequate one out in the world—like Scurvy, for instance—they’re often used again and again. Whenever Scurvy was cast off by one child, he would probably just find another. He must have liked his job. But at some point, he was made here, the same as everybody else.”

  And then came a voice from behind Ted and Dwack.

  “Ah … er … AHEM. You’re in trouble. I think. I mean, I know that you are. I think that I know. Ahem.”

  Ted, Dwack, Vango, and Dr. Narwhal turned around and saw a swimsuit-wearing Swamster standing in the doorway, chewing nervously on a piece of cardboard.

  Dwack recognized the intruder as a Swamster because he had known others—visiting Denmark, he had once met an entire team of water polo Swamsters—but there was something different about this one. Behind his gold medals, this Swamster didn’t seem the least bit confident.

  “You should really, uh, well I’m not sure what you should do,” said Swamster. “Hold on. I need to think about it.”

  “Who are you?” said Dr. Narwhal.

  “I’m your worst… nightmare?” Swamster said, and then slumped his shoulders, not quite sure his prisoners would believe him.

  They didn’t.

  “Bah-hah-hah!” laughed Vango.

  “Har-har-har!” laughed Dr. Narwhal.

  When Ted saw Dwack smile, he couldn’t stop himself from chuckling, and pretty soon, everybody was laughing at the Swamster.

  Who suddenly looked terribly sad.

  “Fine then, laugh,” said Swamster. “It’s not just me here, you know, but I figured I’d introduce myself to you first to be polite. But clearly you don’t care about any of that. So, GUARDS!”

  X

  “Okay, my lovely-bubbly,” said Persephone, “which of these invitations do you like?”

  Scurvy was wearing a cable-knit sweater and sensible khaki pants, and he was holding a martini glass. His hair was parted neatly on the side, and his beard had been deloused. A fire roared in the hearth, and the den was filled with tasteful leather furniture. Taxidermied animal heads hung on the wall.

  Persephone had taken Scurvy on a weekend out to the country—or rather, out to this exclusive spa and lodge located in the forest just outside Ab-Com City. Persephone liked to come here periodically to relax and have her bones bleached and lengthened.

  Scurvy stared down at three sample wedding invitations. All of them looked ridiculously fancy—one the color of crushed eggshells and made of velvet; another effervescent, with an almost gauzy feel to it; the third wrapped in a pink bow, with different cards for “directions,” “response,” and “reception.”

  He couldn’t believe he was getting married again. But it was marry or die, and he had been in relationships that felt like death before, so he decided to cut his losses and make Persephone an honest skeleton.

  “I don’t know, honey,” said Scurvy.

  “I want your pet name for me to be Ploopsie,” said Persephone.

  “Of course ya d
o,” said Scurvy. “As I was saying, I’m not sure which of them tah choose. They’re all so magnificent.”

  Scurvy looked around the room, searching for possible escape paths. Persephone had stationed her guards outside all the main doorways, but he thought that if he could tie Persephone to a chair, he might be able to extinguish the fire in the fireplace and crawl up and out through the chimney, like a reverse Santa.

  “Magnificent like me?” said Persephone.

  Scurvy paused.

  “Exactly like ya, Pooprie,” said Scurvy, lying.

  “Ploopsie.”

  “Rightie-o.”

  Persephone was content. Everything was working out exactly the way she wanted. She had her man. She was planning her wedding. She was about to attack Earth. Life was beautiful.

  “We’ll take the sea-green invitations,” said Persephone to the wedding planner standing on the other side of the table.

  “An excellent choice, President Skeleton,” said the planner. “Very elegant.”

  “But still fun!” said Persephone.

  “Very fun. I’ll have them printed up immediately. I love brief engagements—looks like the pressure is on for yours truly!”

  Scurvy didn’t like the planner, who was organizing the wedding and everything else that would make Persephone’s life easier until the big day. He was the one who had purchased Scurvy’s new cable-knit sweater.

  The planner skittered away with the invitations. Scurvy watched him scoot past Persephone’s guards, and Scurvy considered snapping a leg off the table and using it as a club as he made a break for freedom. If that didn’t work, he could use it to beat himself unconscious. Maybe Persephone wouldn’t marry him if he was in a coma?

  Persephone exhaled and put her wing bones around Scurvy’s shoulders. She pecked him with her beak, which was the way she kissed. Scurvy could feel his upper lip starting to bleed through his mustache.