by Mo O'Hara
“You spotted Sanj and Dustin this morning heading down to the woods?” I said.
“Urgh.” Igor nodded. Then he made a shape with his fingers like he was holding a pretend ray gun. “Urgh-zap, urgh-zap.”
23
“It’s a Nicifying Helpful Minion Ray,” I explained to Igor, but I could tell that didn’t really mean anything to him. “It’s part of their trap. That was the thing I thought they might want to use on you, Igor. They mentioned ‘trying it on the big guy,’ so you know, I thought of you.”
Igor slapped me on the back. I think it was supposed to be friendly, but it took me a minute to breathe again after.
“Y-yeah.” I coughed. “No problem, man. But I guess it wasn’t you they were after, or they would have used it on you then.”
“You don’t have an overwhelming urge to smile and drink tea, do you?” Geeky Girl asked. “Because that would mean you were shot with the ray, but didn’t realize it.”
I interrupted. “I don’t think Igor smiles easily, and if he did, it would be for totally evil reasons, right, Igor?”
Igor nodded.
“Look, Sanj and Dustin must have adapted the ray gun to do something else, or they would have used it on us too. It works on animals and makes them do what you say, so maybe they are using it on wild animals this time, instead of pets,” Geeky Girl suggested.
“They were setting traps the other day. They could have an army of animals by now,” I said.
“Urgh!” Igor said, and pointed to the woods again.
“Yeah, and that’s where the army is, then,” I said. “Let’s go and see what kind of trap they have in mind.”
Kids started coming out of their tents and heading off in different directions to work on their projects. I could hear some laughing and some mumbles of “Fake-in-ator” too.
“Igor is hanging with the Fake-in-ator, and that totally unevil-looking chick,” the Goth girl that was teamed up with Igor shouted. “He was only good for getting caught in our own trap, anyway. Evil loser.” She sneered and walked off with some of the other kids.
“Hey, Igor, you know, you can, like, push me over or something if you want to make it look like you’re not with us,” I said, bracing myself for his big arms to shove me. “Just don’t do it too hard, ya know, big guy.”
Igor shook his head and stomped off toward the woods. Great, so I was the loser of camp now, and everyone who went near me, even big old evil Igor, was labeled a loser too. I was not only ruined, I was toxic to anyone else. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but as Geeky Girl and I started to follow Igor, we were intercepted by Kirsty Katastrophe and Phillipe Fortescue walking back to the counselors’ tents.
“So Snake Kid is really Fake Kid,” Kirsty drawled. “I should’ve known. Rule One of faking an evil win is ‘Don’t get caught!’” Then she turned and called out to the other campers walking by, “Fake-in-ator here has given me an idea for a new evil mantra: Every day and every way you’re getting more and more pathetic.” Then as the other kids all laughed, she held up her hand, which was holding an evil pom-pom at the time, right in front of my face.
“But I didn’t mean…,” I started.
“Talk to the pom-pom, because the face isn’t listening,” she said, and strode off.
“I hope that your trap isn’t as embarrassing as your snake stunt, or you’ll be on the next canoe out of camp,” Phillipe added. “Tsk tsk. And you made a passable shrub as well,” he mumbled to Geeky Girl.
OK, so I have gone from hero to zero in less than twelve hours. Kirsty thinks I’m a loser. Phillipe thinks I’m a loser. Trevor probably couldn’t even be bothered to think about what I am, because I’m such a loser. I could still get kicked out for my smuggled vampire kitten at any time. If I could find her, that is! Even if I do find her, Fang will never speak to me again. Everyone is laughing at me except a totally not-evil computer-nerd girl and a big mostly evil thug, and now he’s probably not talking to me either. Not that there’s much talking with Igor, but not grunting at you in Igor speak is just as bad.
I almost wished I was back in that hole with the snake.
* * *
By the time Geeky Girl and I got to the edge of the woods, there was no sign of Igor, Fang or Boris.
Then we heard a whistle coming from deeper in the woods, and I spotted a green flash of feathers fly past in the trees overhead.
“Boris?” Geeky girl said.
24
“Maybe Boris has seen Fang?” I said to Geeky Girl.
We followed the sound of the whistle, and it led us to a clearing where there were already dozens of squirrels, raccoons and different birds and animals all standing still. Like they were waiting for something. It was spooky, but also familiar. I don’t remember everything from being shot with the Nicifying Helpful Minion Ray, but I do remember that stare. These animals had that same eerie stare. I got a shiver down my back.
“Boris!” Geeky Girl whispered up to a branch in a tree as she crept around behind it. Boris just sat there, though. He always fluttered down to sit on her shoulder (or creepily kind of hover over it), but this time he just ignored her. She stood there by the side of the tree while I moved into the clearing. If Boris was here, then maybe …
I looked around, and there among all the other animals on the ground I spotted a furry gray tail. “Fang?” I couldn’t hold back. I ran up to her into the circle of animals. “Fang? Are you OK?” I said as I approached. She hadn’t even flinched. Not a flick of her tail, not a swipe of her paw. It was weird.
Suddenly, Sanj and Dustin strode out from behind a tree and stepped into the group of animals.
“Consider this payback for stealing back the Evil Plans Notebook from my tent last night. There was gray fur on my pillow when I got back. Dead giveaway.”
“I don’t have the Evil Plans Notebook anymore. It got … well, it actually got shredded and peed on by a raccoon. But the point is, I don’t have it either, so now neither of us can use the stuff we came up with, and that kind of makes it even, right? Um … so you can just let the pets go and get on with whatever weird animal army thing you’ve got going on here,” I said.
“I don’t think so.” Sanj smiled a truly evil smile. “I thought I was happy when I got to use the ray gun on the annoying nasty kitten and the ridiculous bird, but now this is even better.”
“Sanj,” I said, “you need to let the pets go, or I will … I will…” I raised my fists.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Dustin tutted. “No unauthorized violence at Evil Scientist Summer Camp.”
“I’ll unauthorize you…,” I started to say, but stopped myself. “Look, you don’t need Fang and Boris for your trap to work, right? Whatever wacko trap you have going on, you must have had it all planned with the squirrels and raccoons and stuff, so maybe you can just let the pets go. And you can get on with finishing your trap, and we can get on with ours.”
“We?” Dustin said.
I looked around, about to say, “Yeah, Geeky Girl and me,” when I noticed that she was nowhere to be seen. She must have hidden when she saw Sanj and Dustin come out.
“I mean … ummm … we … ummm … me and the pets … yeah,” I covered. “You don’t need them, so just let them go.”
“Of course we don’t NEED them,” Sanj said, “but it’s so much more fun with them in the mix.” He smiled evilly. “Especially since you are now caught in the trap yourself.”
“I’m not caught in anything,” I said. “Like I’m so scared of a bunch of birds and squirrels, anyway.”
Then Dustin blew the whistle again and dozens more animals poured into the clearing. They formed a circle around me, and then started piling up into a kind of animal wall. It was weird. In minutes, the wall was taller than me. The shiver down my back turned into a full-on shudder as it climbed all the way back up my spine again. How many animals had they gotten in their trap? There must have been hundreds.
All I could see was this pile of fur and feathers. Fang was u
p and to my left, on top of a couple of raccoons and a ferret and with a crow perched on her back. I tried to reach out to stroke her, to get her to snap out of things. She hissed and swiped, but just stared ahead. She had no idea who I was or even if I was there.
“If you hurt Fang with this stupid trap…” I could barely get the words out between my clenched teeth.
“Please do be quiet, Mark. It’s hard enough to concentrate on things with all this squawking and hissing, but now I have to measure the radius of our trap so we can realign the perimeter reading.”
“What?” I shouted back.
“Just shhhh!” Sanj yelled. “Dustin, can you please put down the Nicifying Helpful Minion Ray and help me pace out the distance with this tape?”
I craned my neck to see through a hole in the wall of animals. There was a small gap. Just between the tail of a big gray squirrel and the ears of a pretty rough-looking rabbit, I could see Dustin leaning the ray gun against a tree. Then I saw a hand very slowly and quietly reach out and grab the ray gun.
25
Geeky Girl. Yes! Result! She got the gun!
“Right, Sanj, it’s seven meters,” Dustin said. “So I guess it’s time to try out the big guy.”
“You won’t find Igor around here to zap him with the ray,” I shouted.
“Who says we’re talking about Igor?” Sanj laughed a particularly wheezy evil laugh.
“Seriously, you should see a doctor about that, dude,” Dustin said. Then he blew the whistle in a different way.
Geeky Girl peeked her head out from behind the tree and tried to mouth a message to me. I think she might have been mouthing, “I’ve switched the polarity on the gun so that it reverses things. I’m going to try to isolate Fang and Boris in the beam, and hopefully that will free them from the hypnotic ray.” Or she may have said something about polar bears having a nice day.
I heard a muffled zappy noise and a rustling of feathers and saw Boris fly out of his perch between two dazed-looking blue jays.
Sanj and Dustin still seemed distracted, looking out into the woods for whatever they were waiting for.
Then another zap and Fang shook her head. She hissed at the crow and ferret and shook herself free. She looked over at me for a second, and she looked like she was going to run to me but changed her mind. She leaped out of the circle and ran toward the tree that Geeky Girl still hid behind, obviously still mad at me for last night. It was like a kick in the stomach. Even when faced with a wall of creepy-stare animals, she would rather run away from me than come to me.
“Did you hear something?” Dustin said, and turned around.
“Maybe it’s the big guy?” Sanj suggested.
So if “the big guy” isn’t Igor, then who is this secret weapon in their evil trap plan?
Did they hypno one of the counselors or trap a park ranger or something?
There was a rustling in the trees heading for the clearing.
“Sanj, did you pick up the Nicifying Helpful Minion Ray?” Dustin asked. “Because I swear I leaned it against that tree.”
Geeky Girl peeked out and mouthed me another message. I think this one said, “I’m trying to reset the ray gun so it can unhypnotize all the animals at once. That should free you.”
Then the rustling got louder and was followed by some serious stomping. Even with the noise from the stomping and the wall of animals, I could still hear my heart beating above it all. A large brown bear pounded into the clearing. Sanj and Dustin both stepped back.
“So there you are, big guy. You took your time,” Dustin said.
I quickly looked over at Geeky Girl and tried to mouth a message back to her that said, “Just be careful not to unhypno the bear at the same time, or we’re sunk.”
Her last mouthed message to me before she pulled the trigger on the ray gun said, “No, don’t worry, I won’t hit the skunk.”
26
The next thing I knew, the wall of forest animals around me started to crumble and fall. Birds flew off to nearby trees or pecked along the ground. Squirrels started digging around in the leaves, raccoons started chasing the squirrels, skunks started waddling off to wherever it is skunks normally go, and groundhogs just kinda sat there looking like grumpy groundhogs, really.
Geeky Girl ran over to me with the ray gun in her hand. “I did it, I did it!” She jumped up and down.
“You did it!” Sanj shouted at her. “You’ve ruined everything!”
“I think you totally ruined stuff first, Sanj,” I started to say, but was interrupted by a very loud
The bear was shaking its head and looking around, obviously confused. It looked unhappy and, worst of all, it looked kinda hungry.
“You unhypnotized the bear?!” Dustin screeched.
“Ummm, sorry about that,” Geeky Girl said.
“Ruuuuunnnnnn!” Sanj shouted, and started to move. Dustin grabbed his arm and held him firmly.
“Stand very still.” Dustin spoke quietly in a very calm voice. “If you run, the bear will run too.”
“Good.” Sanj nodded. “I want the bear to run.”
“The bear will run AT YOU,” Dustin added.
“Go for them!” Sanj shouted, and pointed over toward Geeky Girl and me. Boris flitted down onto her shoulder, and Fang crept along the ground till she was next to my foot. She kept her eye on the bear the whole time.
Sanj and Dustin now stood on one side of the clearing, and we were on the other. The bear stood between us. We were like statues: the only movement came from some slightly dazed groundhogs and squirrels still wandering around, bumping into things.
“We have to trap the bear somehow,” I said, trying to use a calm voice like Dustin had done, but really feeling my words shaking as they came out.
“Can’t you use that whistle thing on it again?” Geeky Girl whispered.
“Not since you’ve unhypnotized him, I can’t,” Dustin said.
“Look, I said sorry,” Geeky Girl said. “And I’ve already reprogrammed the ray gun to unhypnotize, so it can’t zap him again either.”
“The only way that bear is going to give up is when he’s already caught and eaten us,” Sanj said, “or you ideally.”
Then I looked over at Geeky Girl. “Or the bear THINKS he’s caught us?”
“Yes!” Geeky Girl very slowly reached into her bag. She gently lifted out the 3-D goggles and started to adjust the controls on the side.
The bear started to sniff the air and scratch the ground.
“This isn’t good, people,” Dustin said. “He’s smelling us and deciding that we would be pretty good to eat.”
“What on earth can you do with goggles that will stop the bear? Throw them at him?” Sanj asked. He started backing away and the bear growled again.
I don’t know anything, really, about bear behavior, but this bear looked ready to strike. I gently moved my leg in front of Fang to protect her. She rubbed against my ankle, and I felt a little furry shiver travel up my leg. She was scared too. I really hadn’t seen Fang scared of many things before. I didn’t know what to do.
“OK, it’s ready. But how do we get him to wear them?” Geeky Girl asked.
“I’ll do it,” I said as I took one step forward. Fang pounced on my jacket and clawed her way up to my shoulder. Suddenly, she wasn’t shaking anymore. Her grip was strong; I could feel her tail thwack against my jacket.
she kitten-roared, and the bear stared right at her.
27
“Get down, Fang,” I whispered. “I’ll do this. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I scooped her up, and whispered to her, “So just in case the bear wins, which he totally won’t, but just in case … um … thanks, Fang, for saving me from that snake. You totally had my back, and my front, really, and now I gotta do the same for you.”
Then I took another small step forward and turned to Geeky Girl. “On three, throw me the goggles, OK?”
She nodded.
“One evil genius, two evil genius, an
d … THREE,” I shouted as I tossed Fang to Geeky Girl, just as she tossed me the goggles. “RRRReEEWWWOOOWWW!” Fang shrieked as she flew through the air.
The bear reared up and growled.
I grabbed the goggles and ran. “AAAARRRR-GGGHHHH!”
“He has totally lost it,” Sanj said, covering his eyes.
I ran toward the bear with the goggles in my hand, not really knowing what I was going to do with them. And then, just above the bear, another evil lightbulb appeared, and I suddenly knew what I had to do. I had an evil plan!
I kept on running right past the bear, and just to make sure the bear noticed me, I growled at him as I passed. I really hoped what Dustin said before was true, because I needed that bear to run and to run after me.
“Mark, nooo!” Geeky Girl shouted after me, but I didn’t stop.
I could hear a loud growl answering mine, and then big heavy stomps heading behind me. The bear was on my tail.
I could hear Geeky Girl shouting, “Come on, we have to help.” And running. And then Sanj saying, “Well, I have to see what happens.”
I kept on running, dodging past trees and leaping roots on the ground. I was slowing up, but it wasn’t much farther. I could smell hot bear breath on my neck now. I hope you have never smelled hot bear breath, because it is more evil than anything on this camp. Blech.
* * *
The growling was in my ear as I jumped over the pile of branches and leaves on the forest floor. “I hope this is the right place!” I called as the bear followed me, and then I heard a crash of leaves and twigs and the thud of a bear hitting the ground. We had hit Bob and Diablo’s practice snake pit. I didn’t hear any hissing, so either the snake was in the real trap back at camp by now, or it was unlucky and was now snake pancake underneath the bear.