Danger Guys
Page 4
“Good call, Nood!”
We wrapped a couple of my mom’s scarves around our heads like bandanas. Then we each slid on a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
“Are we cool, or are we cool!” said Zeek.
We were cool. And we were ready.
A minute later we were at the surfer camp. One of the guys was strumming a guitar. Another was playing bongos. A third was carrying a surfboard to a motorboat sitting in the water.
Zeek nudged me. “I’m the muscle man, remember?” He flexed his arms. “Just let me do all the talking.”
I nodded. Sometimes Zeek knows best. Sometimes he really surprises me. Like just now, when he walked up to the surfer with the board and started talking to him.
“Hail, surfer dude!” shouted Zeek. “Slide any choice channels lately?”
My mouth fell open. That’s Zeekie—a guy of many talents.
The surfer dropped his board and hugged us. “Fellow wave dogs! People call me Boomer.”
“Boomer?” I said.
“Funny, huh? Like, boom, suddenly they call me that.” Then he laughed. It sounded like a small explosion.
Zeek couldn’t wait anymore. “So, dig that Golden Crest, huh?”
“Yeah! We were just going to motor out to it.”
“Like, what is it?” Zeek said, nodding his head. “Spanish galleon? Dutch schooner?”
“Killer question!” said Boomer.
“I don’t know, though,” Zeek went on. “Golden Crest sounds English. A warship, maybe?”
“No, mini-dude. It’s a wave!”
“Whaaa …?” Zeek looked like he does when Mr. Strunk gives us homework on the weekend. His mouth hung open, and his eyes went hazy.
I tried to help him out. “You mean the Golden Crest is not a sunken treasure ship?”
“No, mini-dude! It’s a wave. But what a wave! Like—boom—it comes from nowhere. And you ride it for miles!”
“Yeah, well, no thanks,” Zeek finally said. Then he bent over to look at Boomer’s surfboard.
“Where is this wave?” I asked.
“Out by the island. There.” Boomer pointed out across the water to a tiny dot of land. “But you’ve gotta watch out for the Ugly Dude.”
“Is that another wave?” Zeek snorted.
“Unh-uh! A sea monster that lives near the island. Ugly. Huge bug eyes. Big snapping claws!”
“But there aren’t any sea monsters,” I said.
That’s when Zeek did this really dumb thing. For a guy who is so good at sports, he did something incredibly clutzy.
“Noodle,” he said. “Check it out!”
I turned to see Zeek holding up Boomer’s huge green surfboard. It was about ten feet tall.
“You can call me …” Wham! The board slid in the sand and slammed down on Zeek.
And on me. We both fell facedown into the motorboat with the board on top of us.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
When Zeek fell on me, his foot hit this little switch on the motor.
Vrrrooom! The motor burst into life.
The propeller hit the water.
And we took off like a jet-powered racing boat.
TWO
“Hey, mini-dudes! My boat! My board! Come back!”
Sure. If we could. But we couldn’t.
When Zeek hit that switch on the motor, he jammed it. There was no way to stop the boat.
“Noodle! Can’t you stop this boat?”
He also jammed the rudder so there was no way to steer it either.
“Can’t you at least steer it?”
I was about to make a face when—wham!—the boat’s nose bounced high off a wave.
“Whoa!” shouted Zeek. “This is like sledding on rocks!”
“Well,” I snapped back. “You wanted something different!”
“Yeah, but … Noodle, watch out!”
I whirled around.
Through the spray I could see a lady on water skis. She was crossing right in front of us.
She had a really big smile until she saw us. Then her smile kind of went away. Her mouth dropped open. And she screamed.
That’s when I saw the towrope.
“Duck!” I shouted to Zeek.
Vooom! Our boat shot under the towrope just in front of the lady’s skis.
I looked back. The lady was still screaming.
I turned to Zeek and gave him the thumbs-up.
He usually smiles when I do that. Not this time. He had a really strange look on his face.
“NOOOOODLE!”
I turned around. A huge iron buoy bobbled in the water just ahead. I jammed my eyes shut.
Wump! We hit a wave at incredibly the right time and incredibly the wrong way. We shot into the air and cleared the buoy by three feet.
Bam! Then we landed and really took off. Spray shot straight up on both sides of the boat. I could barely hold on. If I had eaten my cheeseburger, I sure would have lost it then.
“Okay,” I yelled. “You wanted different, you got it. But it’s not fun. So let’s stop now, okay?”
Zeek made a face, braced himself against the side, and kicked the motor with all his strength.
Sputt! The motor died. Everything went quiet.
“Hey, I said stop it, not kill it.”
Zeek shrugged and smiled. “Don’t know my own strength, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, great. Now how are we going to get back?” I looked all around.
It had been a short ride, but a fast one. I couldn’t even see the beach. We were drifting out to sea. The only thing anywhere near us was a small patch of land.
“Hey, what’s that?” Zeek asked. “Japan?”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “That must be the island Boomer was talking about. Let’s swim for it.”
“No thanks. I hate getting all wet, remember?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.”
“Anyway,” he said, “we’re better off staying in the boat. We’ll be spotted sooner.”
“No problem, pal,” I smiled. “We’ll just sit here in the … Say, what is the name of this boat, anyway?” I looked over the side. “Oh-oh.”
“Oh-oh what?” Zeek read the name. “Gilligan? He named it the Gilligan? Oh, we’re doomed. We’ll be marooned here forever, eating tree bark and seaweed, while everybody else gets to go to the movies and eat cheeseburgers!”
“Hey, don’t talk to me about burgers. I didn’t get to eat mine, remember?”
“You can forget about lunch,” Zeek said. “The next meal we’ll have will be breakfast. If we’re lucky.”
“And don’t start me thinking about—Hey, what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“This water in the boat. Was it always here?”
“Water? In the boat? Man the lifeboat!”
“Zeek, this is the lifeboat. Man the surfboard!”
I tossed the board over, and we jumped on.
It was slippery. We were trying to sit up on it, when—
“Rooaaarrr!”
Out of nowhere rose this giant black … thing! It was all slimy. It had a long snout. Huge bulging eyes. Two snaky with claws on the ends of them.
“The Ugly Dude!”
The claws snapped open and shut.
They were snapping at us.
And they were getting closer.
“Paddle!” I yelled. “Fast!”
THREE
Zeek paddled with all his strength.
So did I.
Only we weren’t paddling the same way.
So we didn’t move.
But the sea monster did.
RRRRRRRR! The snake arms shot out again from each side of the monster’s belly. They kept grabbing for us.
“Zeekie! It’s going to eat us!”
Then, as if we dreamed it—whoosh—the monster vanished beneath the water. The air was still. It was just Zeek and me on the surfboard.
“Noodle?” Zeek said. “Have we died and gone to surfer heaven? I m
ean, was there just a sea monster here? Or not?”
I looked all around. I was about to smile and give Zeek the thumbs-up, but I stopped.
Like they say, we were still in hot water.
Or at least, bubbling water.
The water began to churn all around us. It turned white and started to swell.
“Oh, no!” I cried. “The Golden Crest!”
Whoom! We were lifted up on the crest of a giant wave. It must have been thirty feet high.
The surfboard teetered at the top like a seesaw. Then the wave curled and crashed.
Shoooooom! Down we went. We hung on to the board as long as we could before it flipped over.
Wham! The board slammed into a rock, bounced up, shot back over the wave, and landed in the motorboat. Then the boat rode the wave back toward the beach where we started.
“Hey! Maybe we should have stayed—”
Wham. Wham. That’s when Zeek and I hit the water. Hard.
It seemed like ten minutes before the wave threw us up on the island. And I mean threw up! Yuck! We were totally soaked and covered with slimy sea junk.
When we finally got to our feet, the wave was gone, and the sea was calm again.
“This is all too weird,” I said.
“Yeah,” Zeek said. “Like—boom!” He grinned and looked around. “Well, Nood, here we are, on your favorite little island. Now what?”
I scoped things out. The island was bigger than it looked at first. Beyond the beach it got pretty thick with bushes and trees. And there was a hill with a tall tree in the middle of it.
“Okay,” I said, pointing up to the top. “That’s where we set up camp.”
“Camp? But we’ve got to be rescued soon. Shouldn’t we stay on the beach?”
“No way, buddy. First, the next wave might be bigger. Second, we can signal from up there. And third, don’t forget about the sea monster. Maybe it’s a land monster too.”
Zeek didn’t like that idea. “Okay, skipper,” he said, trying to smile. “Let’s climb.”
We crossed the beach, pushed aside some branches, and walked inland. It was thick, like a jungle. And hot, too.
Big leaves flapped our faces. Long, stringy vines dangled from tall trees. We could hear these crazy, screechy birdcalls all around us.
“Can you believe it, Zeek?” I said, slapping a mosquito on my neck. “We could be a thousand miles from Mayville!”
“Yeah, trekking where no one has been before. I love it.”
We wound our way through the jungle to the top of the hill. I was starting to feel like my old self again.
“Listen, Zeek,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Real waves don’t just come from nowhere.”
“Yeah, and what about real sea monsters?”
“Them either. I don’t know what that thing was, but mmrrrumf …”
Zeek suddenly put his hand over my mouth. “Shhh!” he whispered.
We crouched on the ground. I peered through the leaves.
“Look at that,” Zeek whispered. He pointed up ahead.
I followed his finger. “Zeek, it’s called a tree. It’s a pretty tall tree, but it’s only a tree.”
“No, Noodle. I mean, that!” He pointed to the trunk of the tree about ten feet up from the ground. There was a plank nailed into the trunk. Two feet above that was another plank. And then another and another, all the way to the top.
“Tree house!” I yelled.
“Mega tree house!” Zeek yelled.
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About the Author
Over the last two decades, Tony Abbott has written dozens of mysteries, comics, and adventure books for young readers aged six to fourteen, with series including Danger Guys, the Time Surfers, the Weird Zone, Underworlds, Goofballs, and the long-running fantasy series the Secrets of Droon. He is also the author of the fantasy epic Kringle and the realistic novels Firegirl (winner of the 2006 Golden Kite Award for Fiction), The Postcard (winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery), and Lunch-Box Dream. Among his latest novels is The Forbidden Stone, the first installment of the twelve-book saga the Copernicus Legacy. Tony has taught on the faculty of Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing, is a frequent conference speaker and visitor to schools, and presents workshops to creative writers of all ages. His websites include www.tonyabbottbooks.com, www.thecopernicuslegacy.com, and the literary blog www.fridaybookreport.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Robert Abbott
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8635-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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