by Bill Doyle
Frank waved to the crowd and performed the opening coin toss. “It’s your call, Scream Team,” the ref said. “What will it be? Do you want to kick or receive?”
Because they hadn’t picked a kicker to replace Beck yet, Karl chose to receive.
“Big mistake,” Happy said as the Scream Team lined up on one end of the field. In a flash, Karl knew he was right.
He should have realized that the Bigfoots would be good at anything that had to do with their feet . . . like kicking! Too late now. Frank blew the whistle. And the game started!
Kablam!
Micayla the Bigfoot kicked off just right. The football hurtled toward the end zone like a cannon shot and bounced out-of-bounds—touchback. The Scream Team had the ball at their own 20.
Karl called the first huddle of the game. His heart was pounding. The monsters on his team were all staring at him, waiting for him to be a leader. Happy just giggled.
Panicked, Karl glanced to the sidelines, hoping for help from the Coaches Conundrum. They were too busy drawing X’s and O’s in the dirt and fighting over which was more important, offensive or defensive plays.
“How about a scream pass?” Patsy suggested.
“Good idea,” Karl said. “On two.”
Beck stayed in the backfield with Karl, while the rest of the Scream Team went to the line. Karl stood behind Happy, who was center, and held out his paws for the snap.
When he saw that everyone was ready, Karl said, “Set . . . hut one . . . hut two!”
Karl waited for the snap . . . but nothing happened. Happy didn’t move.
“Hut two!” Karl repeated. Still nothing. Then he started saying it over and over again. “Two, two, two!”
Frank finally blew the whistle. “Delay of game!” he shouted. “Five yard penalty. Offense.”
“Why didn’t you hike the ball when I said two, Happy?” Karl demanded once they were back in the huddle.
“Oh!” Happy giggled. “I thought you meant snap the ball on too. But you were saying two.” Happy held out the ball. “Here, do you want it now?”
“No!” Karl shouted. “That play is over. For the next one, let’s run razzle dazzle on two.”
When they were lined up, Karl barked, “Hut one, hut two!” Happy wouldn’t hike the ball, so Karl kept going. “Hut three, hut four, hut five!” He was on “hut twenty!” when Frank the ref blew the whistle and called another delay of game. This penalty pushed them back another five yards to their own 10-yard line.
The next play was the same story. Karl put out his paw for the snap.
“I’m waiting for the magic word,” Happy said in a singsong voice.
“Hut two, please,” Karl growled.
“Hmmm. No, that’s not it.”
“Abracadabra?”
“Try saying it on one foot,” Happy suggested.
After the ref blew the whistle and called another penalty, the Scream Team was back in the huddle and it was fourth and 30 from their own goal line. They needed to punt.
“Beck, your feet are three times bigger than any other bigfoot,” Karl said. “That means you could be three times better at kicking and punting. We need you!”
Beck seemed unsure but started walking to the backfield. With each step he took, Happy made a rude flip-flap sound as if Beck’s feet were giant noisemakers.
Beck was too embarrassed to punt now. He shook his head. “Sorry, team. I can’t do it.”
“Okay,” Karl said. He didn’t want Beck to feel any worse. “We’ll just try to run the ball.”
The Scream Team went to the line. This time when Karl said, “Hut two!” Happy just stood straight up. “Here you go,” he said, and held out the football to the defensive tackle, Josh the Bigfoot.
Josh was so surprised, he hesitated. J.D. spotted what was happening and knocked it away. The ball spun through the air and landed in the hands of Maxwell the mummy.
“Who is that?” Maxwell said in surprise, feeling the weight in his hands. His wrapping had slid over his eyes and he couldn’t see. “Eric, is that you?”
“Ish the foosball!” Dennis shouted, drool flying everywhere. “Runsh!”
“This way!” Mike called. He used his tail to pull on the end of Maxwell’s wrapping. Like a yo-yo on a string, Maxwell swung around.
Now Maxwell was running in the right direction! The closest Bigfoots were too far away to stop him.
“What a surprise turn of events!” Hairy Hairwell shouted. “Maxwell the mummy of the Scream Team can move! He’s on the 45, the 40, the 35, the 30—”
Phfft!
Maxwell vanished. He was just gone.
“Where did Maxwell go?” Karl yelled.
Still running down the field, Mike started to say, “I don’t—” Phfft! He dropped out of sight.
Beck rushed toward the end zone. “What’s happen—” And he was gone as well.
Karl sprinted toward the sidelines, and phfft!
The last thing he heard was the crowd gasp as he disappeared from the field, too.
Karl fell through a hole in the field. He hit the muddy bottom six feet down.
He was just getting to his feet when Mr. Benedict popped up through the bottom of the hole. “Hello, Karl,” the mole man said.
“What are you doing down here, Mr. Benedict?” Karl asked.
Mr. Benedict smiled. “I’m helping the referee dig tunnels underground so he can watch the game more closely.”
“How could the referee watch the game from underground?” Karl asked, shaking his head. “And who told you that’s what Frank the ref wanted?”
“Happy did,” Mr. Benedict said. “When he called me yesterday.”
Karl should have known! Happy had tricked Mr. Benedict! The mole man had created deep trenches and pits everywhere under the field.
As they crawled out of the hole together, Frank the referee was waiting on the surface. He threw flag after flag . . . after flag and started listing all the penalties while workers refilled the holes. “Delay of game. Extra player. Illegal burrowing. Offense. The Bigfoots will take possession of the ball.”
Luckily, the Bigfoot team couldn’t pass very far and they stumbled over each other’s feet whenever they ran the ball. Still, they managed to reach the 40-yard line. From there, the Bigfoots easily scored a field goal.
Karl shouted to Coach Wyatt and Coach Virgil. “You have to take Happy out of the game! He’s gone completely batty!”
“Heysh!” Dennis drooled. “Not cool!”
“We can’t!” Wyatt called back. “We need ten players on the field!”
The Conundrums put Patsy at center and Happy at wide receiver. But it didn’t matter what position he was playing. Happy kept finding ways of ruining things for the Scream Team. Happy tripped his own teammates and kept tackling Karl.
And he didn’t even bother trying to hide what he was doing. “Hee hoo hee!” Happy laughed proudly again and again.
Before Karl knew it, the referee fired the game cannon.
“And that’s the end of the game!” Hairy bellowed. “The Scream Team loses by 21 points on seven field goals from the Bigfoots.”
The teams trotted through the line and shook hands. All except for Happy. He was still laughing too hard. The rest of the Scream Team clumped together and watched him roll on the ground giggling.
“He’s going to do this every game,” J.D. said. “We’ll never win!”
Karl shook his head. If they kept losing they might not be invited to the Wolfenstein Muck Bowl. “Enough is enough,” he growled. “I’m going to do something to stop Happy.”
“What?” Mike asked.
Slapping his paws together, Karl answered, “Something drastic!”
“You’re throwing a party for Happy?” Patsy asked. “This is your drastic plan, Karl?”
Two nights after their first game, the Scream Team was packed inside Karl’s tree fort in his backyard. They were waiting for Happy to arrive.
“A party seems like a good wa
y to smooth things over with Happy,” Karl said. “You know, because we got off on the wrong foot.”
Beck was admiring Karl’s Wolfenstein “Wolfie of the Year” poster. His head snapped around. “Wrong foot? Who has the wrong foot?”
“Sorry, Beck, that’s not what I meant.” Karl changed the subject. “Let’s try to have a good time.”
Maxwell took a seat near the fort’s hatchway. “Ah, this chair is comfy,” he said.
“Umpph,” the chair said.
Karl didn’t have a talking chair. He looked more closely. Tentacles were waving underneath Maxwell. Happy must have popped up through the hatchway without anyone noticing. Karl rushed over to push Maxwell off of him.
“Sorry about that!” Karl said. “Welcome to the party, Happy! We can’t wait to get to know you better.”
Brushing himself off, Happy looked around, grinning. “What’s to know?” Happy said with a shrug. “My name’s Happy, I want to be a crunch bug puppeteer, and I’m going to destroy the Scream Team. If I manage to put up with you losers for the whole season, my uncle will buy me a puppet show.”
“Oh, right,” Karl said, trying to keep his temper. “Well, maybe you could get to know us. I like to collect sports stuff.”
Happy just yawned. “Boring! I’m out of here. I’ve got to get home and work on evil plots to ruin the Scream Team.”
“No!” Karl said. “Don’t go yet!” He took a key from the chain around his neck and unlocked the wooden coffin-shaped case in the corner. Inside were five different glass jars, resting on a bed of straw.
“I never even look at these things unless I’m alone,” Karl said. He pointed at one of the jars. “This one has a Wolfenstein sneeze complete with boogers.”
Karl touched another jar. “This one has the chunky foot fungus scraped from Wolfenstein’s socks.”
“How’d you keep mini mouth biters from eating that?” Happy asked. “They can smell chunky foot fungus from miles away.”
Finally! Karl thought. Something that interested Happy!
“The jar is airtight,” Karl said. “So the mini mouth biters can’t smell it.”
Happy reached inside the case and took out a jar marked BURP. He peered inside. “Why is this one empty?”
“It won’t be for long!” Karl said. “Wolfenstein always comes to the halftime show at the Muck Bowl. Teams who play in the bowl get to meet him. I can’t wait. I’m going to ask him to burp into the jar . . . and then my collection will be complete!”
Happy grinned. “My uncle says you’re only going to make the Muck Bowl if I stay on the team and you don’t lose every game. And even then, you’ll get destroyed by the Frankensteins. They’re so tough, they eat bricks like popcorn!”
Karl held up a paw. He didn’t want to hear that. “As long as we win at least one of the next two games, we’ll be invited. That’s why we all need to pull together and really push forward!”
“‘Push forward’?” Happy asked with glee. “You mean like this?” One of his tentacles shot out and pushed the vial containing the chunky foot fungus out of the case.
“No!” Karl shouted, and dove for the vial. Too late.
Clink! The vial hit the floor and shattered. The stench of the foot fungus instantly filled the fort.
“Wolfsbane!” Karl took a breath and tried to calm down. “That’s okay, Happy,” he said. “Accidents happen.”
Happy giggled. “Oh, that wasn’t an accident. And neither is this. Or this!” He knocked the jars with the sneeze and the armpit sweat out of the case. As they broke on the floor, Happy continued knocking loose the rest of the jars. Karl caught the last, but it was the empty one labeled BURP. All of the other vials in his most special collection had shattered!
“Hee hoo hee!” Happy laughed. “Got to go, but thanks for the party. I have a feeling the entertainment is about to arrive.” Karl and his friends could hear him laughing “Hee hoo hee!” as he climbed down and left.
An instant later, rumbling filled the air.
“What’s that?” Dennis wondered out loud.
Mike looked out the window and then back at them. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Get ready for trouble.”
Karl looked out the window, too. Using their tongues, a herd of nearly a hundred mini mouth biters was racing up the trunk of the tree.
“They’re after the foot fungus!” Karl shouted.
They poured into Karl’s tree fort and swarmed over the chunky foot fungus. In a flash, they gobbled it up. But the tiny, sharp-toothed monsters were still hungry.
They started chewing on everything in sight. Karl’s posters. His chairs. The table.
The Scream Team huddled together as the mouth biters started eating the floor. In seconds, the fort’s walls and ceiling collapsed, crashing to the ground twenty feet below.
Dennis shrieked and flew straight up, getting tangled in the top branches of the pus-bag tree like a kite. Three of the biters had the edges of J.D.’s legs and were pinning him against the tree trunk. And a few were chewing along strips of Maxwell’s wrapping like it was pasta.
The floor tilted and the rest of the monsters tumbled out. They all grabbed ahold of different branches, including Karl, who watched a table piled with football programs, old chin straps, and stitching from playoff-game footballs slide toward the edge of the fort.
As the table shot to the ground past him, Karl’s paw was slipping on the branch. He was going to fall!
Just then, a pus bag sailed through the air. It struck the mouth biter on the ground under Karl.
Splat!
The stinky pus in the bag exploded on the monster’s sharp teeth. Instantly the creature turned green, let out a “Blach!” and scurried out of the backyard.
“Mini mouth biters are allergic to pus!” Patsy yelled from her spot in the tree where she dangled over Karl. She was holding Eric between her ankles.
The bombs of pus bags kept raining down. Karl twisted around so he could see where they were coming from.
It was Beck!
The bigfoot was down on the ground and kicking the pus bags with sharpshooter accuracy. He’d pluck up a pus bag from near the tree and smack! He kicked with one foot and then the other, but always right on target.
One by one, Beck quickly drove away the mini biting monsters. In a few minutes, the backyard was clear and the Scream Team dropped from the tree. Eric bounced on the ground and started rolling in circles triumphantly around Beck.
“Beck, you did it!” Patsy said. “You saved the day!”
As the rest of the monsters gathered around him, Beck looked as if he might actually crack a smile. Something he hadn’t done since Happy joined them.
“Why don’t you kick like that on the football field, Beck?” Karl asked, slapping him on the back. “We’d win our next game against the Zombies for sure!”
Suddenly, Beck looked miserable again. “The team might win,” he said, “but I’d lose. Everyone would laugh at my feet.”
“Dude, you’re a bigfoot,” J.D. said. “Isn’t that kind of who you are?”
“Sure, I guess.” Beck nodded. “I just don’t want to be the biggest foot.”
He shuffled off, heading out the gate.
For a second, Karl thought he could still hear the echo of Happy’s laughter. “Hee hoo hee!”
All that week, Karl tried to talk to the Coaches Conundrum about Happy. But the Scream Team couldn’t get rid of him without forfeiting the season and giving up an invite to the Muck Bowl. Besides, Virgil and Wyatt were still too busy arguing about offense versus defense to deal with any other problems.
The night of the game against the Zombies, the coaches were on the sidelines but seemed to be on another planet. They were both wearing new headsets and yelling into the microphones attached to them.
“In this new play, we’ll score for sure!” Wyatt shouted, sounding offensive.
“No!” Virgil cried defensively. “If anything, with this new play we’ll get rid of the chance that we won’t scor
e.”
As the coaches bickered before kickoff, spectators kept pouring into the stands. Monsters were coming from all over to see the game.
“I’m not surprised,” Maxwell said. “I have quite a large fan club.”
But Karl knew the fans were there to watch a different player on the Scream Team . . . Happy. Everyone had heard about Happy’s tricks and wanted to see what pranks he would pull next.
And they didn’t have to wait long. When Hester the Zombie kicked the ball to start the game, Patsy waved her arm to signal a fair catch.
“Fair catch?” Happy shouted to the crowd. “Does she want to catch a fair?” Happy pulled out a toy merry-go-round and a mini roller coaster from under his uniform. He threw them at Patsy. “There’s your fair!” he cried.
Patsy got so confused, she caught the toys but not the football, which bounced off her head and rolled down the field. The Zombies recovered the ball at the 15-yard line, and the fans went crazy. As they cackled and cheered, Karl could see Happy’s grin get bigger and he took a little bow.
“What a ham!” J.D. scoffed. “He’s totally lapping up the attention!”
For the rest of the game, Happy ran offsides on purpose, tripped his teammates, and dipped their mouth guards in tongue-shrinking juice. All his pranks allowed the Zombies to easily beat the Scream Team by four touchdowns. The excited fans started chanting Happy’s name.
Karl could feel his dream of going to the Muck Bowl slipping away.
At their next game, against the Swine Creatures, the stands were even more packed with monsters. A dragon held up a poster that said HAPPY TO SEE YOU! and a three-headed dog waved a sign that read HEE! HOO! HEE!