by Laura Dower
I pulled out the map again.
Stores with lower level access were marked with symbols, one for each level down. I wasn’t sure I understood a lot of the words and symbols on the map, so I just guessed.
X seemed to be for windows.
Y seemed to be for stairwells.
Z seemed to be for fire lines.
One store had about three different Ys in its space.
“That’s the store we need to find!” I cried. It just made sense: The more stairwells the store had, the more access we’d get to the ground floor. “I bet the firequartz is down there somewhere!”
The power was out but the escalators were still accessible. What a difference it made walking here now. No people were in the mall, shoving and pushing us around. We walked the escalator all the way to the lowest level of the mall.
Wow. It was darker than dark down there—and Jesse’s penlight didn’t do much good.
We’d just reached the very bottom when we heard a boom. Plaster and other building material tumbled down the escalator steps behind us. The quiet of the mall was gone. Had something broken through a wall upstairs?
A Planet Q robot.
Somewhere up above us, in the midst of the rubble, I heard a deep beeping sound. I snapped my camera at the dark and noise.
“LOOK OUT!” Jesse cried.
All at once, we watched as a real, live robot appeared at the top of the escalator. It stood about eight feet tall. And it didn’t look happy.
“Oh no!” Damon yelled. We saw a chunk of metal railing at the top. It teetered and tottered.
“IT’S GOING TO FALL!” Stella wailed.
But it didn’t fall. It broke off and flew up just like the other toys had done that afternoon. It flew up and out of our view. That piece probably went all the way out through the giant hole in the mall ceiling and into one of the many metal piles in the parking lot.
“WHOA!” Damon yelped.
“This is getting scarier!” I cried and Jesse nodded.
We knew that the B-Force was at full force now. The robots had all the power. We had to move fast down here. We turned away from the escalator and followed the map into the belly of the lowest level.
With each step, I snapped more photos. As we walked past some shops, Jesse and Damon grabbed supplies. They wanted to get a first aid kit and a box of garbage bags. Just in case. We didn’t know where we were headed—or how long we’d be down there.
“Stella, where’s the store with access doors?” I cried. I needed her to tell me where to run.
But before we could go anywhere, the ceiling above us started to crash in. Another, even bigger robot appeared. It had a bulb glowing on its metal head! It stepped down, narrowly missing us.
Damon freaked out the worst I’ve ever seen him freak out about anything. He actually leaped into Jesse’s arms.
Stella the Ninja froze and screamed.
I raised my camera to take a photo, but an incredible thing happened.
My camera started to shake. I wrapped the strap around my wrist and held on for dear life. But it was no use. The magnetic force ripped it right out of my hand.
“Noooooo!” I wailed as the camera went up into the air, just like all the other objects we’d seen fly today.
But I wasn’t about to give up my camera to some B-Monster.
“Give it back!” I wailed. I put up my arms. Stella came alongside me and did the same. Together we yelled out, “KIIIIIIYA!”
All at once, two more huge robots showed up, knocking down a long, white brick wall and crashing through the escalator stairs.
It was like a scene from the movie. I remembered watching the people of Riddle tossed around in a sea of destruction and I didn’t want to get tossed around like they had.
“Make a break for it!” I cried.
“We need to find the store with all the Ys!” Stella said, waving the map. “It says Store LL310.”
I wanted desperately to stay and fight for my camera, but we needed to locate the firequartz. The clock was ticking. The bots were closing in.
Finding anything down here in the half-darkness was impossible. Some storefronts had numbers, some didn’t.
Finally we caught up to the right address.
313, 312, 311 . . .
“Here!” Jesse cried.
We stopped in front of the store marked LL310.
“No way,” I said with a deep sigh. My whole insides deflated.
I could hardly speak as I read the store’s sign: REELY GOOD THINGS.
CHAPTER 12
ARE YOU FOR REEL?!
I could hardly believe it! This was the store where Dad had brought Grandpa Max’s camera to be repaired before he gave it to me! I recognized the name right away.
As Damon would say, “Whoa.”
Reely Good Things had no people inside, but it had plenty of merchandise, just like Dad said. It was packed to the gills with music players and videos and DVDs galore, including some B-Monster movies. There were shelves of old Oswald Leery movie merchandise, too. Whoever owned this store really was a superfan.
There was even a reel-to-reel machine hooked up to show movies on a back wall. Hence the name: Reely Good. It was the kind of place I would love to explore on any normal day. But this day was anything but normal.
“Quick!” Jesse called out. “Find the access doors. They’re supposed to be right here . . .”
“Hey!” Stella said, circling the store. “I don’t see anything. They’re supposedly right here on the map, but I don’t see—”
All at once, Stella leaned against the wall and it began to rotate taking Stella with it. Just like that, she disappeared behind the wall for a moment and then came out the other side.
“Actually, that was fun,” Stella giggled.
“Let me try now,” Damon said, walking over.
“No!” I shouted. “We don’t have time for fun, you guys.”
I sounded like Stella.
While we bickered about the doors and how to find the right stairwell to the basement below, Jesse searched the store shelves for something to help us. He clicked off the reel-to-reel projector and took a look there, too.
Jesse plucked the last reel from the machine and held it up to see the movie.
“Oh, man!” Jesse cried. He looked like he’d just seen a ghost.
“What’s wrong?” we asked.
“Read this and weep,” Jesse said. He held up a reel in his hand. Some of the film unraveled to the floor. The label was half picked off.
THEY CAME FROM PLANET Q
ORIGINAL REEL
“ORIGINAL REEL?” I cried.
“How could this have happened?” Stella asked.
We all raced over and had a look. The reel had been watched—but only halfway.
“Maybe . . .” I said slowly. “If the reel was only half-watched . . .”
“Then only half the movie will come to life?” Stella blurted.
“You guys,” I said. “A B-Monster comes alive in the reel’s opening segment. After that all bets are off. The rest doesn’t matter.”
Damon grabbed the reel and shoved it into his backpack. We’d deal with its destruction later. Right now, we had firequartz to find.
“Hey!” Stella called out. She’d wandered to the other side of the store. “Over here!”
Stella pulled back a fancy curtain to reveal another secret door. It was marked on the map as a staircase, but this looked way more like the entry to a bank vault. Stella pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge.
“It looks as if it has been sealed shut for a century,” Jesse said.
“Wait. What’s this?” Damon shouted. He rubbed his finger along the edge of the enormous vault-like door. Then he showed us his finger tip. It was covered in a thin coating of red dust.
Red dust!
“Wow,” Jesse cried. “Just like Leery said!”
“It’s all over my shoes!” I said.
We had to get this heavy door open. The four
of us pressed and wiggled, nudged and leaned.
Nothing.
Somewhere upstairs, outside the shop, I heard a loud blast followed by a roar and a crash. More bots had crashed into the mall. They were catching up to us.
“We have to figure this out before the bots destroy the mall!” Stella cried.
“Forget the mall!” I said. “These bots will destroy us!”
“They can’t get the firequartz,” I said. “Push the door again.”
But four fifth-graders—no matter how motivated we were—were still no match for this heavy door.
Damon took off from where we stood.
“Hey!” I cried. “Don’t run away again!”
But this time, Damon wasn’t running. He was helping. Damon Molloy hit a button and the store register’s cash drawer went pa-ping.
“Hey!” Damon called to us. He held up a key. “What do you think this is for?”
Jesse grabbed the key and dashed over to the vault door. He shoved it right into the lock. Like magic, the key clicked.
As the door opened wide, a swirl of red dust blew into our faces.
CHAPTER 13
THE INCREDIBLE FIREQUARTZ QUEST
“After you,” I said to Damon, fanning the dust away from my eyes.
Some of the dust was probably firequartz, but most of the dust was just old cobwebs and floor dirt. This place hadn’t been explored in forever. All the dust that had been unearthed during the filming of They Came from Planet Q was now whirling through the air like a mini-tornado. It was hard not to cough and sneeze.
“Um . . .” Damon stammered, pinching his nose. “After you.”
“I knew there was no way that chicken-boy would go step into the untested unknown first!” Stella cried.
“Enough!” I cried. I went in first.
After all of our bad luck before entering the mall, we’d really lucked out finding the reel and the red dust in the same store! We were on a roll.
A rock and roll, actually.
Stella and Jesse crowded behind me as we stepped onto the shadowy, stone staircase that (we hoped) led to the firequartz. It was hard to see going down the stairs. Good thing Jesse and Damon had gathered a few supplies, like flashlights—and we still had that penlight.
We went slowly. The red dust left a thick coating on all of the stone steps, which made them slippery.
“No footprints in the dust,” Jesse commented. “That means no one else has been here, at least not for a whi—”
CCCCCCCCRASH!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZPPT!
BLOOOOOONK!
“What was that?” I stammered. But I knew what it was. And so did everyone else.
The bots were still coming. They sensed the rock. We had to move.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, Jesse shined the flashlight around.
I couldn’t believe the walls. Everything— everything—seemed to glow red down here. But this was just a room filled with red dust residue—traces of firequartz long gone.
The only source of power in the room was one slab . . . the one Leery had described to us . . .
“Hey, look at Stella!” Damon cried, laughing out loud. Jesse had his light trained on Ninja and she was covered from head to toe in red dust.
“Ugh,” Stella said, coughing. Then she pointed at Damon and Jesse and me, too. “Looks like we’re all covered in firequartz dust, bozo.”
We all laughed.
“Wait!” Stella cried. “Do you feel that?”
We all paused.
“Feel what?”
“Air!” Stella said. “I feel fresh, cool air. Where is it coming from?”
Jesse noticed a crack in the wall and the ground. We traced it with the flashlight.
“I bet this crack came from the tremors before the bots got here!” Jesse guessed. “And that’s probably when all the red dust swirled around, too! And now that the bots themselves have begun drilling, looking for the last piece of firequartz . . .”
There were jagged cracks in the darker rock. We flashed the light all around to see if the cracks had done more than open a passage for air. Had the cracks created a break in the rocks where we could actually go outside? We might have found an alternate exit from this dark place!
And then, right there, between two of the split slabs, I saw it. It was hardly even noticeable at first, but after a moment or two . . .
The hunk of firequartz rock was right there!
No one knew what to say or do.
“GET IT!” Stella said, assuming her karate pose.
“You get it,” Damon grumbled.
We all just stared. It wasn’t very big—just like Leery said. It was hard to believe it had much power. But we knew it did. We had to get it out of here . . .
“Grab it and go,” Jesse said.
I finally raced over and plucked it out. “We found you!” I cried to the slab of firequartz. It was about the size of a door.
I could have kissed it!
“So now what?” Damon cracked.
“What if . . .” I was thinking on my feet. “We could ask them nicely to leave Earth,” I offered.
Damon cracked up. “Are you kidding me? Ask them nicely how? With flowers and a box of candy?”
“Yeah,” Stella laughed. “After we sit down and have lunch together?”
Damon piped up, “And do you speak robot, Lindsey?” “Um, I hadn’t considered the Planet Q language barrier, but—”
“You guys!” Jesse yelled loudly. “I know you’re nervous. So am I. But we have to stop talking and start moving. We don’t have any more time!”
CCCCCCCCRASH!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZPPT!
BLOOOOOONK!
“Oh nooooo!” Stella yelped. “They’re all on the level just above us now! They’ll be down here soon! What are we going to do?”
“We need a zapper just like Roger Rogers used,” Jesse said. “And I have a good idea where we can find one. Grab the firequartz and follow me.”
Damon and I took opposite ends of the slab and carried it out. “We can beat these bots,” I said with confidence. “Let’s go!”
Then Jesse led us through the largest break in the rock wall, out into the loud, hot night.
CHAPTER 14
MAKE IT ZAPPY
When we got upstairs, we could hear the robots all around the mall, breaking up walls and crashing into cars and surrounding the area where we were. The magnetic field was so strong, it practically hummed. I felt it tug at me even though I wasn’t carrying or wearing anything metallic anymore.
I imagined the news headline the next day:
Through a set of windows in the mall, I saw a flash of light zapping in the distance. It looked a lot like the sunset earlier that day.
But it wasn’t sun. It was lightning. And Damon pointed out the flash wasn’t white like normal lighting. It was red.
This was B-Monster lightning.
Between the robots and the sunset sky and all this firequartz dust all over my clothes, everything seemed reddish.
I held my breath.
Was the world coming to an end? Had that woman in the mall been right all along?
I had a feeling we’d find our zapper outside. I was counting on Jesse to help pull it together. After all, he was the inventor of the group.
“Hurry!” I cried. “Let’s make a break for the front exit. We can get to the big pile faster from there.”
“Wait! Stop!” Jesse pointed over toward the mall. We could see the ceiling hole from here. It was bigger than ever and now a large, steely arm poked through. And I was terrified.
More enormous robot arms appeared. Then we saw robot heads. Red bulbs on top glowed like fireballs and they moved a lot more quickly than I expected. Weren’t they supposed to be slow and running out of power, after all!?
“Stand here or hide?” Stella asked.
“Hide!” Damon said. He was probably plotting to run away again . . .
“No,” I said. “We need to stand up
to them. All for one and one for mall!”
From the middle of the bot swarm, one robot appeared that was even bigger than the rest. It had three bulbs on its head!
“Oh no! Who is that?” Jesse asked.
Damon looked at him funny. “I thought you knew everything, dude.”
The supersized robot leaped toward us. All around it were the red laser beams, flashing like a portable electrical storm. But it looked a little sluggish. One thing was for sure: That bot had its eyes on me like I was dinner.
All at once, as the leader bot approached, my head tingled and my hair started to stand up on end. I noticed Damon’s and Jesse’s hair, and Stella’s, too. With a last-minute surge of power, our hair went vertical—electrified!
The moment to act was NOW.
Without thinking, I snatched the slab out of Damon’s hand and rushed out in front of that giant bot all by myself. I don’t know where I got the strength to carry that slab on my own. You know that story about a grandma who lifted a car to get to her kitty-cat out from underneath? I felt like that grandma.
Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrgh!
As I rushed forward, the biggest robot paused and raised up his steely arm. I held up that very large chunk of firequartz in front of me, sort of like an offering. I was testing the bot.
Would he take it?
“Stop!” Stella screamed. “He’s going to squash us like pancakes, I just know it. Lindsey, back up! Run away! This is dangerous!”
“No, he sees the rock!” Damon cried. “Way to go, Lindsey! He sees the rock! He wants the rock!”
He wants the rock!
Turns out, he didn’t go for the rock.
Instead he grabbed me and lifted me high into the air. I lost my grip and the slab went careening for the ground, breaking it in two.
CHAPTER 15
MAGNETIC NO MORE
I screamed.
Well, of course I screamed.
Who wouldn’t scream if a massive robot from outer space grabbed her with its metal claw?
“Lindsey!” the other three members of the Monster Squad cried. They were screaming, too—a lot. From where I was dangling, I could see them waving their arms around, too.