by Bill Myers
The good news was the bike didn’t get a single dent. The bad news was it was because my leg cushioned its fall.
“YEOW!”
Once I got the bike back up, I switched to the other foot lever on the other side. I started jumping down on it again and again, and again some more. After about five and a half hours of this incredible fun, I noticed the ignition key.
My, what a novel idea. I reached over, turned the key, and
VAROOOM!
All right!
Next came the problem of finding the gas. I looked all over the bike but couldn’t find the gas pedal anywhere. In frustration, I grabbed the handlebar grips and threw my leg over the side to get off. One grip twisted in my hand and the bike shot forward.
I was grateful to have found the gas. I would have been more grateful if I had been sitting on the seat at the time. We zipped out of the parking lot and up the dirt road like a bolt of lightning. Well, the bike did the zipping. I was doing the screaming and the fighting to get back on.
Things might have been a little easier if I wasn’t also doing the world’s longest wheelie. It seems the more I struggled to crawl back onto the bike, the more I twisted the accelerator grip, and the longer my fantastic stunt continued.
Yes sir, it was quite a sight. And just about the time I thought I should be contacting Barnum and Bailey about a job in the circus, I managed to crawl back into the seat and the bike finally dropped down onto both wheels.
After a while I started to get the hang of the bike. Hm, I thought, if the gas was in the hand grip, then that must mean these little silver things are the brakes. I gave one a tight squeeze just to make sure I was right, and . . .
SCREECH!
The front wheel suddenly stopped. Unfortunately, the rest of the bike didn’t. Neither did its driver. I shot over the top of the handlebars like a human cannonball
“WOAHHHhhh . . .”
and sailed through the air, head over heels, until I hit a road sign.
KER-SPLAT!
As I carefully peeled my face off the sign, I couldn’t help noticing it read
Or, if you happen to be reading the impression on my face
What a comfort to know I was heading in the right direction.
I staggered back to the bike, lifted it up, and resumed my little adventure. If I was having such a great time getting there, I couldn’t imagine what fun and games awaited me when I arrived.
I didn’t have to wait long. In a matter of minutes, the lake came into view. But it wasn’t the lake that got my attention. It was the glowing form with the blazing hair moving across the road in front of me. The glowing form with blazing hair that I was about to have a major head-on with!
After letting out the necessary screams of horror, I reached over and squeezed the hand brake for the back wheel. Once again the bike skidded to a stop—this time without all that bothersome end-over-end flipping. Instead, the back end started sliding around.
Oh no, I was losing control! (What a surprise!)
A second later I’d dumped the bike onto my good leg—well it had been my good leg. Once again I began doing my bouncing and tumbling routine:
“Ouch! Ouch! Oooow! Boy does that smart!”
Finally I rolled to a stop.
I don’t remember much after that, except the crunch of gravel as Mr. Glow-in-the-Dark approached, hovered over me, and finally reached his gnarly claws down to me. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to stick around and see exactly how my life was going to end, I had more pressing matters to attend to . . . like passing out from total fear.
I must say, heaven was a bit of a disappointment. No music, no clouds, just the worn sofa I was lying on, a cool washcloth covering my forehead, and a little trailer home. What a let-down. I mean, here I had gone to all the trouble of dying, and this was the best God could come up with?
“Are you okay?”
I turned in the direction of the voice and saw the ghost sitting in a chair beside me. Well, it had been the ghost. Indoors and closer up, it looked a lot more human. The glow around its body was gone, and its hair now looked more on the pale-gray side than the eerie, glow-in-the-dark variety. Oh, and one other thing: At this range it no longer looked like an it; it looked more like a she.
“Are you okay?” she repeated.
I moved slightly and winced at the wrecking ball slamming around inside my head.
“Easy now,” she said. “You’ve had a nasty spill; you better rest quietly a few more minutes.”
“Wh-where am I?” I stuttered. “And who-who . . .” I swallowed and tried again, “Who-who-who—”
I guess she was getting tired of my owl impersonation and gave me a hand. “Who am I?” she asked.
I nodded, grateful for the help.
“My name is Dr. Ventura.”
“A doctor?” I croaked. “You were a doctor before you . . . you know . . . before you died?”
“Died?” she asked. “I haven’t died.”
“But how can you be a ghost if you haven’t died?”
She broke into gentle laughter and tossed her long, frizzy hair to the side. “Gracious me, I’m no ghost.”
“You’re not?”
“Of course not. Though I must say those rumors have certainly allowed me to continue my work in relative obscurity.”
“Relative what?”
“I’ve been able to continue my studies without too many curiosity seekers getting in the way. Though between this morning and last night, I’ve certainly had my share of visitors lately.”
My heart started pounding a little faster. “That was you last night?” I asked. “Up on the path, in the woods?”
She smiled. “So we’ve met before.”
I nodded.
“Well, I must say you look a little different with your pants on.”
I could feel my face heat up with embarrassment. “But last night . . .” I said. “Last night you were all glowing . . . and your hair was all white . . . and, I mean, you were lit up like a ghost.”
She touched her hair and answered, “My hair’s been white like this for years. Some people say it’s my finest feature.”
“Well sure, I mean it’s beautiful, but what about—”
She nodded across the room. On the peg next to the door was a pair of aluminum overalls. And beside them, metallic gloves. “I wear those whenever I go down to the lake,” she said. “The worst toxins have been cleaned up since Iatds started roaming the bottom, but those clothes are still a good precaution.”
I’d barely heard the last part of the sentence. It was the phrase Iatds started roaming the bottom that caught my attention. So there was something living in the lake. The mystery about the ghost may have been cleared up (though I still planned to keep my eye on her just in case she started floating around and passing through walls and stuff), but not the mystery of the monster. It was real. Not only did she know about it, but she had actually given it a name.
“Why are you up here?” she asked.
I started doing the usual blah-blah about Career Days and how I was assigned to the Water Management Facility and how I hated it and how Mom said to “bloom where I was planted.” The doc pretended to be interested, but when I finally got around to the gauges showing a major drop in the water level, her attention really picked up.
“I thought there was a problem,” she said, rising to her feet and beginning to pace. “That means someone is draining the lake.”
“They can’t do that,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“If they drain the lake, isn’t that going to pollute the reservoirs downstream? Won’t that contaminate Middletown’s drinking water?”
She nodded and looked even more worried. “Yes, whoever is doing this must have some very strong reasons.” She crossed to the phone. “We need to warn the authorities before the water gets too far into the system, before the townspeople start drinking it.”
She raised the phone to her ear but was stopped b
y a loud thumping. At first I thought it was my heart doing its usual cardiac arrest bit (after all, meeting ghosts, chatting about their pet monsters, and realizing your entire town is about to be poisoned isn’t the most relaxing way to spend your day). But when the doc crossed to the window to look outside, I realized it must be something else.
She parted the curtains just in time for us to watch a helicopter touch down between the lake and the trailer. It was less than a hundred yards away. I staggered to my feet for a better look. That would have been easier if I hadn’t been lying on one leg and if that one leg hadn’t fallen asleep. But after a couple of trips and stumbles along the way, I finally joined the doctor.
The helicopter looked pretty cool . . . except for the two men in suits and sunglasses who were climbing out. The first one, the passenger, was so tall he could have played for the Sonics. The second one, the pilot, was so short I doubted he’d ever be able to get on any of the roller coasters with those “You Must Be This Tall” signs.
But their height wasn’t the uncool part. The uncool part was the automatic rifles they slung over their shoulders. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad except for their turning and spotting us at the window and then racing toward us for all they were worth.
That was uncool. Way uncool.
Chapter 6
A Little Hide-and-Seek
Doc quickly pulled back from the window. “Come on,” she ordered. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“What about warning the officials about the lake?”
“That’ll have to wait.” She grabbed a set of car keys from the table and reached for a little portable radio device. “If we don’t get out of here, there’ll be nobody around to warn them.” She turned and headed for the back door.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Who are those guys?”
“I’ll explain later. Just follow me.”
Now the way I figured it, I had two choices: follow this woman who still might be haunting houses in her spare time, or stick around and chat with the rifle-toting suits. Who knows, maybe those guys weren’t so bad after all. Maybe they just came up here to do a little target practice. Then again, by the way they were racing toward us, it looked like they’d already picked out who their targets would be.
We arrived at the back door and Doc cautiously opened it. Her beat-up van was about fifty feet away. She moved down the steps and motioned for me to silently follow.
I obeyed . . . well, except for the silently part. It seems my left foot still hadn’t entirely woken up from its little nap. The first step went fine. It was the second one that got me. After that, everything went downhill . . . literally.
“WOAHhhh”—BANG, CRASH, CLANG!
The “WOAHhhh” was me crying out as I fell.
The BANG, CRASH, CLANG! was me bouncing down the steps face first.
“They’re around back!” I heard one of the men shout. “Around back!”
Doc stooped to help me, but by the time she pulled me to my feet, we could hear them running around the corner. They were practically on top of us.
“Under here,” she whispered as she grabbed me and shoved me beneath the trailer. “Hurry.”
I scrambled through the dead leaves and the slimy who-knows-whats. Doc was right behind. We’d barely settled in before the first pair of feet raced passed. And that’s all we could see: feet. The guy was so tall we couldn’t see past his ankles. A moment later, he was joined by his partner, who was so short we not only saw his feet, but also his legs, his stomach, and his chest.
“I don’t, uh, get it,” the tall one said, sounding a little short on brain cells. “She, was, uh, right here. I’m sure I heard her.”
“She couldn’t have gotten far,” Short Suit said. “Go and check out the van. Disable it if you have to. I’ll go inside the trailer and secure the place. Maybe she left the remote behind. That’ll make our job a lot easier.”
“Uh, sure thing, Boss.” Tall Suit headed out toward the van as Short Suit turned and climbed up the steps into the trailer.
Now, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t gross being sprawled out under the trailer in all that slime and stuff. I mean, who knew what type of creepy crawlies were starting to slither over our bodies?
“Don’t worry,” Doc whispered. “We’re safe here.”
I nodded, thinking this was obviously a new definition of the word safe. Already I could feel my legs itching with all sorts of imagined things crawling on them. Of course I knew it was just my imagination, but still . . .
I tried to take my mind off it by leaning over and asking her, “What’s going on? What do those guys want?”
She motioned to the radio control thingie she had scooped off the table.
“What is that?” I whispered.
“It’s Iatds’s controls.”
“You can control the monster?”
“If I invented it, I ought to be able to control it.”
“You invented it?”
“Of course. The Independent Analyzer and Toxin Disposal System has always been my brainchild.”
“The what?”
“The I.A.T.D.S. I’ve been developing it here with a government grant for months.”
“You mean it’s not a monster?”
“Hardly,” she whispered. “Iatds’s sole purpose is to go in and clean up toxic spills.”
My frown deepened.
She continued. “It’s like an automatic pool cleaner but much more advanced. I still have a few kinks to work out, but eventually Iatds will be able to patrol any body of water and clean and purify it independent of any human assistance.”
“So that’s what I saw on the monitor?” I whispered. “Just a fancy underwater robot?”
“If you’re talking about the monitor at the Water Management Facility,” she answered, “yes.”
Although this was all pretty interesting, it still wasn’t enough to stop my imagination about all the crawlies. Not only did I imagine they were swarming over my legs, but now I actually thought they were crawling around my waist. “Who are these guys?” I whispered. “Why do they want you?”
“They’re from Ecodyne; it’s a huge, international corporation. They don’t want me; they want Iatds. He can make them millions. They’ve made offers to buy him, but I won’t sell, not yet. Not until I get the kinks worked out.” She let out a quiet sigh. “But now it looks like they’ve stopped offering and are going to start taking.”
“What type of kinks do you have to work out?” I asked.
“Sometimes Iatds can’t tell the difference between pollution and life forms.”
“Life forms?” I asked, scratching and rubbing around my waist.
“Yeah, like fish, animals . . . sometimes even human swimmers.”
“That could be a problem,” I agreed. But the conversation was doing no good. I still couldn’t take my mind off the itching and crawling. In fact, it was worse than ever. I was even imagining them on my back and chest.
“Wait a minute,” she suddenly said. “Now I understand.”
“What?”
“These guys are the ones draining the lake. Of course. They’re planing to go out onto the dry lake bed and just scoop up Iatds.”
“What about the town?” I whispered, continuing to scratch my imaginary buddies.
“We’re talking millions, maybe billions of dollars. They don’t care about poisoning one little town. In fact, they could—” She finally noticed my scratching and came to a stop. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “It’s just my imagination. I keep thinking there are bugs under here and that they’re crawling all over me. In fact, right now, I actually think I feel them moving on my arms. Stupid, huh?” I held out an arm to her. “But as you can see, there’s nothing here but . . .” It was then that I noticed my arm was swarming with movement. “Nothing but a billion beetles . . . a billion beetles all crawling ALL OVER ME!!”
I kinda forgot to whisper that last part. Actually, I kind
a yelled it at the top of my lungs.
I guess you could say our cover was blown. We scurried out of there just as Tall Suit spun around from the van, spotted us, and began pursuit. We could also hear Short Suit running inside the trailer, anxious to join our little party.
“Run,” Doc shouted. “Run!”
I didn’t have to be told twice. Between the swarming beetles and the guys with guns, the last thing in the world I wanted was to stand still.
In a matter of seconds, Doc and I hit the woods, flying like the wind . . . which, unfortunately, is not quite as fast as flying like a bullet.
CRACK, zing
CRACK, zing
“They’re shooting at us!” I cried.
“Don’t worry,” she shouted. “They’re just trying to scare us!”
Suddenly the limb above my head exploded into a thousand splinters.
“They’re doing a pretty good job!” I yelled.
“Keep running!”
I tell you, for being an old-timer (she was way over thirty), Doc was in pretty good shape. And for being the world’s worst athlete, I did a pretty good job at keeping up. True, I would have done a better job if I weren’t busy swatting beetles and tearing off my clothes to get rid of them. But, other than that, everything was going fine . . . until I got my T-shirt stuck. I can’t exactly explain it, but there’s something about running through the woods while getting your T-shirt caught over your head that can create a few problems.
BAM—“OW!”
I don’t want to say that the trees were hard . . .
BAM—“OW!
BAM—“OW!”
Or that doing my imitation of a human pinball bouncing off them wasn’t fun . . .
BAM—“OW!”
BAM—“OW!”
BAM—“OW!”
But a guy can only take so many concussions before he starts to get a little bored with all the pain.
Fortunately, Doc came to my rescue and ripped the T-shirt the rest of the way off. Unfortunately, it felt like she also ripped off most of my ears. When I finally saw daylight, I noticed we had doubled back and were heading past the trailer toward the lake.