by Tony Abbott
Danger Guys
on Ice
Tony Abbott
illustrated by Joanne Scribner
With love
for my mother and father
for starting off my life of books
—T. A.
Thanks to Nick Krenitsky and HarperCollins
—J. S.
ONE
It all happened in a flash.
It was my best friend Zeek’s birthday. I was standing on his doorstep, trying to ring the doorbell.
Under one arm was some of my skiing gear. Skis, poles, and boots. Under the other arm was the rest of my skiing gear. Gloves, goggles, and ski hat.
In my teeth was a half-eaten Gold Bar Waffle Deluxe ice cream bar. The kind wrapped in gold foil.
I love waffles in any form. From plain waffles to waffle sandwiches to waffle cookies to waffle chips, waffles are my absolute favorite food.
Anyway, I was just working loose some fingers to press the doorbell.
Then it happened.
KA-FLOOOM!
The door blasted open, and I was suddenly on my back. Some bug-faced thing all dressed in ski gear flew right across my legs, out the door, and onto the front lawn. Snow sprayed up behind it.
“Mom!” called Zeek’s sister, Emily, from the living room. “Zeek’s being dangerous again!”
Ah, so it was Zeek! Yeah, he’s dangerous. Well, I am, too. We have this danger thing. It just takes over, and we start doing incredible action stuff. It’s the way we are.
“He almost killed Noodle!” she added.
Well, yeah, that’s true, too. I looked down at the black ski marks across my jeans and the ice cream smear on my jacket.
But when you love danger as much as Zeek and I do, nearly getting killed is all part of it—part of being an official Danger Guy.
“Zeek-eek-eek! Pilinsky-insky!” he yelled across the lawn. “Gold-old medal-edal-edal!”
That’s Zeekie. Amazing sports guy.
I scraped myself off the doorstep, picked up my stuff, and limped over to him.
He pulled up his bug-face ski mask. “Yaaaah!” he shouted, like a crowd cheering.
I finished what was left of my ice cream bar and folded the foil wrapper into a circle. I gave it to him. “Gold medal,” I said. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks, Nood.” He smiled big and popped it into the pocket of his Danger Guy jacket.
“Check out what my mom and dad got me,” he said. “Aren’t these skis cool? And this mask?” He pulled the green mask over his face, flexed his arms, and posed like somebody from a comic book. “I look like a superhero, don’t I?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Bug Boy.” I laughed.
Zeek pushed the mask up to his forehead again, looked straight at me, and made a face.
That’s another thing about Zeek. His faces crack me up. He can do this tiny smile that no one else can see. He does it in class a lot when our teacher, Mr. Strunk, isn’t looking. It’s like a secret code.
He was doing one of those smiles now.
Then he pointed up over the trees at the big purple-and-white mountain in the distance. “Look, Noodle. Snow. Lots of it. That’s where my birthday ski party is going to be. My parents tried to keep it a surprise, but I figured it out.”
“Of course you did,” I said. “You can’t surprise Danger Guys. We’re ready for anything.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We save the surprises for bad guys!”
Zeek nodded at the skis under my arm. “Are you planning to build something, Noodle?”
I looked down at the chipped, brown boards I was holding. “These were my dad’s skis when he was a kid,” I explained.
“Your dad is that old? They look like scrap lumber! And those boots have laces! Wow, are those, like, the first ski boots ever made?”
“Skiing is a very ancient sport,” I said. “Remember what Mr. Vazny used to say?”
Zeek froze. “Mr. Vazny! You mean our old science teacher? Before he sneezed his brain loose and tried to blow up our school?”
I nodded. “He said that people have been skiing since prehistoric times.”
I shivered, remembering how we found our teacher’s secret laboratory under Mayville School and how he made us call him Dr. Morbius. When he tried to blow up the school, Zeek and I had to fly all over the galaxy in a rocket to stop him.
“The Sneezemeister!” Zeek whispered. “I’ll never forget his face.”
Yeah. Wispy hair. Evil grin. Drippy nose. Mr. Vazny’s sneezes were like nuclear explosions!
“He sure did have a sinus problem,” I said. “Now whenever anybody sneezes, I break into a sweat.”
“Me too,” said Zeek. “I even scare myself when I get a runny nose!”
I shivered again. “Good thing the army locked him up.”
“I hope they threw away the key.”
Beep-beep! Zeek’s dad pulled their minivan out of the garage. We ran over and helped to pack up.
Two hours later, we tumbled out of the van in front of a giant log cabin. Zeek’s mom, dad, and sister, Emily, went inside to set up for the party.
I stayed outside with Zeek. There was a plaque on the front of the building. “‘Mine Mountain Lodge,’” I read. “Cool! It says this mountain used to be the site of an old mineral mine. And this lodge was the owner’s house.”
I looked up. Smoke was rising from the chimney. It looked warm inside. It made me hungry.
“Let’s go in,” I said. “Maybe they have food.”
“No way!” said Zeek, pulling me over to the bottom of the slope. A blast of cold air rushed down the mountain and hit me in the face. I could see my breath. It was going to be one freezing-cold day.
Zeek snapped on his skis. “Noodle, the good news is that if we jump on the ski lift now, we’ll have time for one quick run before the party!”
Mine Mountain rose straight up like a giant snowy head. The ski-lift cable dangled like a skinny wire all the way to the top.
“And what’s the bad news?” I mumbled.
Just then a man came running down from the ski lift. He was a little funny-looking. Well, a lot funny-looking. He wore thick pink glasses and had a fluffy black mustache and strange hair. It was bright red and growing straight up.
Bad hair day, I thought.
Besides that, he was squeezing his nose tight as if he had a cold. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that his nose was big and pink and round.
Zeek nudged me. “Probably a surprise clown my parents hired for my party,” he whispered. “Don’t let on I figured it out.”
“Um, excuse me,” I said. “How’s the skiing today?”
“Dangerous!” the clown muttered under his mustache. He turned away quickly and disappeared behind the lodge.
I turned to Zeek. “If he’s a clown, how come I’m not laughing?” I started back to the lodge. “I’m going to eat some cake.”
I didn’t move fast enough. Before I knew it, I was sitting next to Zeek in a little chair sailing high above the snow.
Zeek took a deep breath and gazed around. “Ah, what a great day!”
My stomach didn’t think so. We were climbing higher and higher in that dinky little lift chair. I tried not to think about how high we were. Or how far away from the lodge we were going. After all, this was Zeek’s day, and he was—
GRRR! A motor growled and sputtered down below. We watched as the clown zoomed up the mountain on a sleek blue snowmobile.
“Hey, where’s he going?” said Zeek. “Shouldn’t he be tying balloons or something?”
POP! A chunk of something fell off our ski lift. I think it was a chunk of ski lift.
“Zeek? This doesn’t look good—”
ERRRCH! The lift jerked to a stop.
&
nbsp; It swung there for a second or two.
I looked at Zeek. He looked at me.
“Oh.” My voice went sort of weak. “Now I know what the bad news is.…”
KA-CHANK!—The lift cable suddenly swung loose, and we dropped like stones to the icy ground below.
TWO
My whole life flashed before my eyes.
WHOOSH!
It didn’t take very long.
By the time I started to scream—Floo!—I couldn’t. My mouth was full of snow, and I was buried headfirst in a deep drift, a mess of skis and poles and arms and legs.
“I’m smushed!” I cried, yanking my head out.
But, as Zeek would say, that was the good news.
The bad news was—no Zeek.
His skis were resting on the snow close by, but he wasn’t in them.
I pulled myself together, stood up in my skis on a little mound of snow, and looked all around. There wasn’t anyone in sight. “Zeekie!” I yelled.
“Maa-rrrrmmmf!” came the answer.
I looked down. There was a little pink mouth sticking out between my skis.
“Maa-rrrrmmmf!” it said again.
“Zeek!” I stepped off the mound and started digging around the mouth. A minute later Zeek burst out of the snow.
“Wha-wha-what happened?” he cried.
“We fell,” I said. “About fifty feet. From there.” I pointed up at the lift. “I knew it would break, I just knew it!”
“Hey!” Zeek shouted. “My skis!”
I whirled around. His skis were starting to slide across the snow down toward the lodge.
“I’ll get them,” I cried. I dug my poles deep into the snow. I leaped forward. My style was terrific.
Umph! My skis didn’t move. I fell on my face.
“Ski, Noodle! Ski!” Zeek yelled.
I tugged and tugged at my legs. They didn’t budge. It was like I was glued to the snow.
Meanwhile Zeek’s skis were zooming downhill as though an invisible skier was wearing them. They were really flying.
I tried to lift my legs again. “Aren’t skis supposed to slide?” Finally, one ski pulled loose. Big clumps of snow were stuck to the bottom.
“You need to wax them up,” said Zeek in a kind of flat voice. “See mine?” He pointed to his skis, just vanishing over a distant ridge. “Mine are waxed great.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess my dad did say something about wax, but I thought he said snacks, so I grabbed an ice cream bar.” I laughed a little.
Zeek didn’t think it was too funny.
Then I had an idea. “Hey, since my skis don’t slide too well, maybe we can make a signal.”
I took off my skis and formed an X in the snow with them. “This way, anybody looking for us will see them. My dad will be so proud I used his skis.”
“Yeah,” said Zeek, still staring at the spot where his own skis had disappeared. “That’s the main thing. Come on, let’s go.”
I took a step. SLUP! My right foot, with just a sock on it, plunged deep into the snow.
“My boot got untied in the fall,” I said, shivering. Zeek rolled his eyes while I pulled the boot from the snow, stuck my wet foot back in, and retied the laces.
We slowly started down the mountain, but we stopped at the top of a high ridge.
I looked over it. “The good news is, we can see the lodge.”
Zeek nodded. “The bad news is, we can’t get there from here.”
He was right. Just below the ridge a deep chasm ran like a gash across the mountain. It was total ice all the way down, and so deep we couldn’t see the bottom.
“I guess the snow buried the sign,” Zeek said.
“What sign?”
“The one that says ‘Pit of Death—This Way.’”
“Very funny,” I said. “Let’s hit the trail.”
Zeek looked around and frowned. “What trail?”
I smiled. “The one you’re going to make and I’m going to follow.”
“Oh,” he said. “That trail.”
We started back up around the ravine. It took us a long time, plowing through the deep snow. An icy wind bit into our faces.
“It’s getting colder,” Zeek said.
“At least it’s not snowing.”
That instant, a tiny snowflake fluttered down and landed on the tip of my nose.
“Never mind,” I said.
Two minutes later we were in the fiercest blizzard this side of the Ice Age. The air was white with huge flakes. The temperature zoomed down. Snow was freezing on my eyelashes. I didn’t like it.
Rrrrrrr! Something rumbled.
I didn’t like that, either.
Zeek turned. “Not that old stomach joke, Noodle? You see the lodge and you think log cabin and then you think maple syrup, and then you think waffles. And of course when you think waffles, your stomach thinks waffles and—”
RRRRRRRRR! The ground quaked, and the air roared all around us.
“Um … that’s not me, Zeek,” I said. “Really.”
The sound was coming from behind us. It was deep and booming, like a thousand bulldozers starting up. Or a stampede of cattle.
But I knew it wasn’t bulldozers or cattle. They don’t have those in the mountains.
They have something else in the mountains.
“SNOW!” I screamed.
“SNOW COMING FAST!” Zeek screamed.
“AVALANCHE!” we both screamed.
THREE
WHOOM!
A huge wall of white thundered down at us. It swallowed everything in its path. I watched it plow over my dad’s old skis, toss them high in the air, and roar closer and closer.
“Noodle!” yelled Zeek. “We’re doomed!”
Zeek was waiting for my brilliant plan to save us. I was waiting for my brilliant plan to save us.
Wump-wump-wump! The avalanche charged at us. Zeek was waiting. I was waiting.
“You’re right,” I cried. “We’re doomed!”
Suddenly—Thwank! Thwank!
Two warped brown boards plunked down in the snow just inches away.
“Your skis!” cried Zeek.
My brain worked lightning fast. “Surf’s up!” I yelled. In a flash we each jumped on a ski. Good thing my dad’s old skis were so wide!
WHO-OOM! The wall of snow broke and crashed behind us, scooped us up, and sent us surfing down the mountainside.
Snow was still sticking to the skis, but the avalanche was pushing us so hard, even those ancient boards took off!
“Goin’ for the gold!” Zeek yelled out.
We curled over and under the waves of snow like Olympic snow surfers!
“New category!” I shouted. It was incredible. We were really moving.
I figured at the rate we were going we’d be down the mountain in no time. I figured we’d end up right at the lodge, leap off the skis, and dig into some birthday cake. I figured—
I figured wrong.
Just ahead was something familiar. A long shadow in the snow. The avalanche was pushing us straight for it. What was that thing …?
“The Pit of Death!” Zeek cried.
My life flashed before my eyes—again. In three seconds I got from the hospital where I was born to the Pit of Death, where I would probably die.
Ka-Voom! The snow picked us up, and we went flying over the Pit.
My dad’s skis kept going, hit the far side of the chasm, and soared high up in the air.
Zeek and I dropped straight down.
“Ahhhhhh!” we screamed as we plummeted deep into the Pit of Death!
We would have screamed the whole way down, except about halfway there—SPLAT! SPLAT!—we crashed on a ledge.
“Ohhh!” I groaned. “Smushed again!”
I lay there in a heap for a while.
When my mashed-up brain could think again, I sat up and turned to Zeek. “Are you alive?”
“No.” He sat up, dusted the snow off, and wiggled his legs. “Well, mayb
e I’m alive, but I’m definitely shorter than I used to be.”
I looked around. The ledge led into an icy cave a few feet deep. On the back wall was an opening in the rocks about the size of a small pizza.
The cave floor was covered with a thin coating of snow that had drifted in from the chasm. Beneath that snow was total ice. I know. I slipped about a hundred times getting to my feet.
Then I saw it. Something on the wall just above the pizza hole. I slid closer to see.
It was a drawing. An old drawing. Right on the cave wall.
“Zeek, look at this. It’s … a cave drawing! Do you know what this is?”
“A drawing some person did in a cave?”
“No, a drawing some cave person did in a cave! I’ve seen pictures like this in art books. Holy cow, there are … ten figures here! Boy, they’re big! Cavemen, I bet. And these things are their clubs. Big clubs. Big hair, too. Very hairy.”
“All right, let me see.” Zeek slid over. He studied the drawing. “What’s with this big guy’s feet? They’re really long.” He pointed to two things coming out from one of the caveman’s legs.
I thought for a second. “He’s got skis on!”
“The ones your dad gave you?”
I made a face. “If only we could get back to the lodge and tell everybody—”
“The lodge!” cried Zeek. “I’m missing my party!” He slumped on the floor. “At this very moment, Emily is probably eating all my cake. She loves cake like you love waffles.”
I felt sorry for Zeek. Then I had a brilliant idea. I stooped down and started pushing some snow into a pile on the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a snow cake. For the birthday boy!” Zeek laughed. We both slid around the floor and pushed more snow into a pile.
Suddenly, we stopped. We looked at the icy floor. We looked into the icy floor.
“Zeek?” I whispered. “I think there’s something under the ice here.”
We stood up to look at the dark shape.
Zeek shuddered and backed away. “It’s a bear,” he whispered. “A huge bear!”
“Zeek…” I said.
“Noodle, don’t even say it. It’s a bear, okay?”
I just pointed down at the ice. “Bears have fur, Zeek. That’s not fur. It’s—”
“Don’t say it!”