by Bill Myers
“Where’s Opera?” I asked.
She looked around the ruins, then shrugged.
“Opera?” I called. “Opera, where are you?”
No answer.
“Opera?” Wall Street yelled. She began moving stuff around. “Opera, can you hear me?”
“Opera?” I didn’t want to panic, but the guy wasn’t answering. “Opera, are you all right?” Still nothing. I began pushing some junk aside looking for him. “Opera?”
“Opera, answer me!” I could tell by the tone of Wall Street’s voice that she was starting to get scared, too. “Opera!”
We had to find him. If he was buried, we had to pull him out. If he was hurt, we had to get him to the hospital. I started digging more frantically, pushing and shoving more and more stuff out of the way “Opera! Opera!” We’d been best friends as long as I could remember. “Opera!” If something happened to him, I could never forgive myself. “Opera?”
Wall Street was shouting, too. “Opera! Opera!”
How could this have happened? How could my best friend have gotten hurt just because of some stupid lotto ticket? Just because we wanted to be rich? “Opera!” What had Mom said? “I’ve seen too many lives ruined over greed.” Was this one of them? Could I have lost my very best friend just because of—
“He’s over here!” Wall Street shouted from the other side of the room.
I raced over the piles of junk.
“Help me push this filing cabinet off of him,” Wall Street yelled.
I nodded, and with all of our effort (well, mostly with all of Wall Street’s effort), we managed to slide the thing off Opera and onto the floor.
He let out a slight groan.
“Opera!” I shouted. “Opera. can you hear me?”
“Opera!” Wall Street yelled. By now we were both on our knees beside him. “Opera!”
That’s when his eyes fluttered, then finally opened.
A wave of relief washed over me. “Opera,” I cried, “are you all right?”
He slowly nodded.
“Say something,” Wall Street urged. “Can you talk? Tell us how you feel!”
With the greatest effort, he started to part his lips.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Where does it hurt?”
“Come on, Opera,” Wall Street demanded, “say something to us!”
Then, with a faint smile crossing his face, he finally opened his mouth, and let out the world’s longest and biggest
“BURP!”
* * * * *
That little scare really shook me up. And it really got me to thinking about what Mom had said about loving money—about all the crazy things loving it makes people do . . . about all the crazy things it was making me do. Maybe she was right, maybe it would have been better if we had never won the Gazillion Dollar Lotto. I looked around the destroyed office and let out a long sigh. Well, at least we were safe in here. The animals could be roaming outside all they wanted, but as long as we stayed inside until daybreak and until we were rescued, we’d be just—
“Wally?”
I looked over at Wall Street. She was standing near a window . . . or at least where a window had been.
“Take a look at this,” she said.
I made my way through the broken glass, the broken office equipment, the broken everything. Once I was beside her, she quietly pointed outside. There, just a few yards away and sitting on a bench, was my cute little Baboon Baby. More important, in Baboon Baby’s hand was the lotto ticket—or what was left of it.
“Do you see what I see?” Wall Street asked.
“I’m afraid so,” I sighed.
By the looks of things the little critter had gnawed off more of the ticket—another one of the sevens was missing, which meant we only had four of the six winning numbers left. Now our 2.1 gazillion dollars, which had been reduced to 2.1 million, was only worth 2.1 thousand dollars.
Still, 2.1 thousand was better than 2.1 nothing.
I know we should have stayed in the building where it was nice and safe. Inside, where there were no running elephants, no lumbering polar bears, and no stampeding buffalo. Unfortunately, inside there was also no 2.1 thousand dollars.
“So what are we waiting for?” Wall Street asked.
“I don’t know,” I hesitated. “I mean things have really gotten out of hand . . .”
“Wally, the ticket’s right out there. All we have to do is go outside and grab it!”
“I know, but . . . look at all we’ve destroyed.”
“Exactly,” she nodded. “We’ve ruined everything we can possibly ruin. Nothing more can go wrong. Now all we have to do is get our hands on that ticket and the money will be ours.”
I was starting to weaken, and she could see it.
“Think of it, Wally, . . . 2.1 thousand dollars. Do you have any idea what you could buy with that?” She was right, of course. 2.1 thousand was still a fortune. Even split three ways, there was no telling what all I could buy with it. Yes sir, the ol’ greed was already starting to return. I knew it was time to fight it, time to take a stand, time to resist temptation and be a real man.
“So what are we waiting for?” I said. (So much for my manhood.)
“I’m with you,” Wall Street grinned.
“Can we take what’s left of the computer along in case we get hungry?” Opera asked.
With more than the usual amount of guilt, I joined my friends as we climbed over the remains of the office and finally made it outside. Actually, I wasn’t feeling too bad . . . because the more I thought of all that money, the more Mom’s voice seemed to fade from my memory.
Outside, it was sort of like the Garden of Eden, with all the flying parrots, crawling tortoises, antelopes, and everything. I figured as long as we kept our eyes open for any of the bigger animals, especially the meat-eating kind with sharp claws and even sharper teeth, we’d probably be okay.
There was, however, one type of animal we hadn’t counted on:
click-click.
“Hold it right there, kiddies.”
The two-legged kind with sawed-off shotguns.
“Turn around nice and slow.”
All three of us obeyed until we were facing our old pals, Big Lug and his girlfriend. They looked pretty mad. Add to that their greasy bodies, stringy hair, torn and shredded clothing (I guess surviving a buffalo stampede will do that to a person), and you get your basic unhappy bad guys.
“Now, where’s da ticket?” Big Lug growled.
“We don’t have it!” Wall Street answered.
“You know,” the woman said, waving her rifle at us, “I’m getting real tired of that excuse.”
“Yeah,” Big Lug agreed. “Can’t you think up another?”
“Honest,” Opera said, “we don’t have it.”
“Then where is it?” the woman demanded.
“There,” Opera pointed to Baboon Baby sitting on a nearby bench. By now he’d gnawed off all of the sevens and there were only three of the threes left. (Guess that made it 2.1 hundred dollars.)
The woman gasped. Big Lug gasped! And the three of us just sort of groaned and rolled our eyes.
Then, without a word, the woman lunged toward the baboon. The little guy screamed, leaped off the bench, and scampered around a hedge. We followed, but didn’t get too awfully far before we ran into . . . Mama Baboon. She was a huge animal. She clung to Baby Baboon with one hand and bared her fangs at us ferociously. Before we had a chance to introduce ourselves, she let out an unearthly howl that grew into a chilling scream. I wasn’t sure what she was saying, but by the way a dozen other angry monkeys and ape types came running to her side, I figured it wasn’t your typical, “How do you do?”
It only took a second for us to see what incredible danger we were in. And less than that for us to spin around and start running for our lives. But, believing in the old saying, “Monkey see, monkey do,” the rest of the apes did the same . . . they took off running for our lives, too!
&nb
sp; “Oo-oo ah-ah ee-ee!”
What they were going to do when they caught us was beyond me, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.
So there we were, five humans merrily jogging through the zoo followed by a dozen cute baboons, orangutans, and what looked like a couple of gorillas.
A couple of gorillas!!
So, there we were, five humans racing for all we were worth through the zoo, desperately trying to escape the killer apes.
We had to get away; we had to hide. Since I was in the lead (being the world’s greatest chicken also makes you the world’s fastest runner), I was the one who spotted the building we were fast approaching. “In here!” I shouted. “Let’s hide in here!”
Unfortunately, “in here” just happened to be the Snake Palace.
Unfortunatelier, (there’s that “word” again) no one bothered to question my wisdom. Well, no one but the apes who decided to stay outside. (Obviously, they knew something we didn’t.)
Like I said before, the Snake Palace is a neat place to visit in the daytime. You get to walk on a ramp just a few feet over a swarming snake pit, and you get to check out all the cool spiders and giant cockroaches in glass cases on each side—not to mention all the slithering lizards and other ultra-cool crawly things. At least they’re ultra-cool when they’re locked up and out of reach. They’re not so cool when they’ve been unlocked and are swarming all around your feet.
Especially if your feet are world famous for their klutziness.
The good news was, we made it about halfway through the Snake Palace before I finally tripped and fell. The bad news was, halfway is not the same as all the way. The badder news was that I was still in the lead. The baddest news was that when I fell,
“Oaff!”
everyone else fell, too.
“Oaff!”
“Oaff!”
“Oaff!”
“Oaff!”
So there I was, lying face down on the ramp, with more people piled on top of me than an NFL quarterback on a bad day. It was a little freaky opening my eyes and seeing the snake pit with all the hissing, slithering bodies just a few feet below me. But that wasn’t nearly as bad as when I finally looked up and noticed I was face-to-face with a giant . . . hairy . . . tarantula!
Now I had two choices. Be cool and watch as its hairy legs crawled onto my chin, dragging its creepy body across my mouth, and over my face . . . or be real and scream like a madman.
Being the down-to-earth kind of guy I am, I knew I didn’t really have a choice. I opened my mouth and:
“Augh!”
What on earth was that? I tried again:
“Augh!”
I guess with so many people on top of me that’s all I could squeeze out.
I watched in horror as Harry the Tarantula approached—his beady little eyes, not to mention his megasize mouth, crawling closer and closer to my own.
I figured now was as good a time as any to freak out. In sheer terror, I bucked and squirmed and twisted. Then I twisted and squirmed and bucked.
Wall Street and Opera managed to hang on.
Unfortunately, the woman and Big Lug did not. With more than the daily recommended amount of screaming (and words my G-rated fingers can’t type) they not only rolled off of me . . . but they rolled off of the ramp. No problem, except as I said, we were directly over the snake pit.
Well, Wall Street, Opera, and I were directly over the snake pit. The woman and Big Lug were now directly in the middle of it!
It was pretty creepy seeing the things slithering and crawling all over them . . . watching as a thousand tongues flickered in and out, licking the grease off their clothes, their faces, their hair. I suppose the two should have been grateful they were finally getting cleaned up—though I bet they would have preferred a good, hot shower, instead.
“Come on!” Wall Street grabbed my hand. “Let’s get out of here!” She pulled me up, and the three of us started to run out of the place.
Part of me wanted to stay and help, but with my birthday just around the corner and knowing how hard it is for dead people to unwrap presents, I decided to keep running.
“What about the bad guys?” Opera cried.
“They’ll be okay,” Wall Street shouted as we finally stumbled out into the moonlight. “None of the snakes are poisonous, and they’ve all been defanged.”
“That’s great,” I said as I stood there trying to catch my breath. “I just wish they would have defanged the mountain lions.”
“Defang mountain lions?” Wall Street scoffed. “Why would you want them to do that?”
“MROWWWwww!”
I raised my hand and pointed. Less than ten feet away, crouched and ready to attack, was a fierce (and I’m guessing pretty hungry) mountain lion.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only surprise . . .
Because, suddenly, we were bathed in a blinding white light. Then, overhead we heard
whop-whop-whop-whop.
We looked up to see a giant helicopter directly overhead. It was hard to make out the details because of the glaring light, but the best I could see, they had about a hundred SWAT-type guys leaning out, all aiming rifles at us. Then there was the little warning someone was shouting through a loudspeaker:
“THIS IS THE MIDDLETOWN POLICE. DON’T MOVE OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”
Don’t get me wrong, I was all in favor of not moving, especially if it meant another problem in unwrapping those birthday gifts we just talked about. But I had one minor problem:
“MROWWWwww . . .”
By the looks of things Ol’ Sylvester, perched on that rock, was just about to turn us all into cat chow.
“Nice kitty, kitty, kitty,” I called, giving him a friendly little wave.
Apparently the SWAT boys didn’t like my friendliness because, suddenly, a dozen little laser lights focused on my body. I was covered with more red dots than my brother’s face on a bad acne day.
“WE SAID, DON’T MOVE!”
“MROWWWwww . . .”
“All right,” I whispered to the others. “If anybody’s got some ideas, I’m open to suggestions.”
Chapter 9
Just Like Old Times
So, there I was trying to decide whether I wanted to become human cat food or SWAT Swiss cheese when, all of the sudden, Big Lug and his lady friend came staggering out of the Snake Palace. With the thousand snakes swarming all over them! I guessed they weren’t having the best of times . . . and by the way the woman kept screaming and waving around her shotgun I guess I had guessed the right guess.
Unfortunately for her, nothing attracts a SWAT team’s attention like a crazed person waving around a shotgun. Before I knew it, all my little red laser pals had migrated over to the woman. Now, my only worry was the growling mountain lion and . . . oh, yeah,
“Oo-oo ah-ah ee-ee!”
those dozen ape types who had just circled around the Snake Palace and were now charging at us.
I looked at Wall Street and Opera. Wall Street and Opera looked at me. And then we all did what we all do best. We screamed our lungs out!
The sound of hysterically screaming kids was new to Ol’ Puss ‘n’ Boots and for a second he drew back in fear. But a second was all we needed. The three of us took off running faster than Mom runs up credit card charges at Christmas.
The good news was, we were running fast. The bad news was that we were surrounded and had no place to run fast to . . . which is almost the same as not running at all . . . unless you count all of our running back and forth into one another:
K-Bang—“Ow!”
K-Bamb—“Sorry!”
K-Bop—“Watch it!”
To our left was the Snake Palace, to our right was the mountain lion, and racing directly at us were the monkeys—who by now were (get ready) . . . really going ape over us. (Hey, I warned you.)
Unfortunately, it was about this time that I noticed an escape route. “Up there!” I shouted. “In the tree!”
“Wh
at?” Wall Street cried.
“Let’s climb that tree! Hurry, we don’t have much time!”
Quicker than you can say, “Hey, wait a minute, don’t mountain lions also climb trees? And what about monkeys, don’t they climb trees, too? And what about the SWAT helicopter—if we climb the tree aren’t we just getting closer to all those guys with all those guns who can—”
(All right, all right, I get the picture!)
The point is, we were in too much of a hurry to think through those tiny details. And since you didn’t happen to be around to offer all of that swell advice, we just sort of kept climbing higher and higher and higher some more.
“Say, Opera?” I finally heard Wall Street ask from behind me. “Your breath stinks. Have you been eating raw meat again?”
“Not me,” Opera said. “It’s that person behind me.”
“There’s nobody behind you.”
“MROWWWwww . . .”
“There is now,” Opera shouted. “CLIMB!”
I threw a look over my shoulder, and sure enough, directly behind Opera was the big cat . . . and directly behind the big cat (in case he felt like leaving leftovers) were the . . .
“Oo-oo ah-ah ee-ee!”
big apes.
Things did not look good. Unfortunately, they were about to look a lot worse. It seemed the higher we climbed, the skinnier the tree got . . . and the skinnier the tree got the less it could hold our weight. Until . . .
CRACK
the top broke off, which led to your standard
“AUGHHHhhh . . .”
that was followed by
K-CRASH
tumble, “Ouch!” tumble, “Ooch!” tumble, “Eech!”
“YEEEEEOW. . . .”
Let’s see if I can sort out the details for you. The “AUGHHHhhh . . .” was us falling, the K-CRASH was us hitting the ground, the tumble “Ouch, ooch, eech” was me rolling away from my friends and down the world’s steepest ridge, which quickly turned into the world’s steepest cliff, and that should explain the “YEEEEEOW!”
Unfortunately, there was one more sound effect left to come:
K-SMRUNCH!
If the noise sounds strange, it should. That’s the sound of one very bruised boy landing on the back of one very startled giraffe. And the interesting thing about giraffes is that when they are startled they run!