Sleep, it finally said.
Yes. Sleep. That’s what he needed. Sleep. Just because it was the middle of the day didn’t mean he couldn’t take a nap. Naps were awesome. So what if he hadn’t taken one since he was five? Naps were perhaps the best things ever invented.
Sleep. I just want to—
Why was everything shaking all of a sudden? How was he supposed to sleep when it felt like he was in the middle of an earthquake? He just needed a nap. It didn’t have to be for long, just a little while. If the world would just cooperate, he could be in dreamland. He liked dreamland. Dreamland was where—
“Hurry! Hurry!”
The voice was far away, barely loud enough for him to hear. But he didn’t want to hear it even a little bit. He just wanted to sleep.
But both the talking and the shaking continued.
Somebody please stop the shaking!
“I think he said something.” This voice was closer and different from the first. “Eric, can you hear me?”
“Stop the shaking,” he mumbled.
“Don’t worry about him,” the first voice said, not so distant now. “Someone get the back door.”
Eric wondered why these people couldn’t leave him alone. He just needed to sleep and everything would be all right. Everything would be just fine.
There was a thud, then someone said, “Oomph,” and someone else said, “Sorry.”
“You’re going to have to hold him on your laps,” the first voice said.
Eric could feel his head move lower than his feet, then he was jostled around for several seconds, and finally seemed to be level again.
From somewhere not too far away—everything seemed to be getting closer now—came a loud roar. It was followed by a second roar, and a third, and a fourth, each adding to the other until it was one giant thunderous rumble.
“Shut the doors! Shut the doors!”
Metal slammed against metal. Car doors, or at least Eric was pretty sure they were car doors. Then there was another roar, but this one was nowhere near as loud as the others. This one sounded like…a car engine?
He felt motion again.
“I think we’ve gone beyond an MA813,” a fourth voice said. This one was older, with an accent, a man’s voice. Familiar. Actually, all the voices were familiar. All but the beautiful one that had told him to sleep.
“What’s an MA813?” A girl’s voice.
“We have a ranking system for attacks. MA813 is…uh…was the strongest we’ve ever recorded.”
There was more movement. Just leave me alone, Eric thought.
“Eric. Can you hear me?”
Someone grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
“Hey,” he said, trying to bat the person’s hands away. “Just let me sleep.”
“That’s not sleep you feeling,” the older man’s voice said. “It’s my fault. We kept you under the scanner longer than we should have.”
Scanner? What was he talking about?
Eric tried to roll over so that he didn’t have to face whoever was trying to bother him, only there was nowhere for him to roll. The bed he was on was impossibly narrow, and even more uncomfortable than the cot he’d slept on at summer camp in July.
“Eric. You need to open your eyes. I know you can do it.” Maggie? Yes, it was Maggie’s voice.
Well, if Maggie wanted him to open his eyes, maybe it was okay. It felt like he’d slept for a little bit anyway. He couldn’t sleep forever, could he?
Distantly, in the very back of his mind, he heard the sing-songy voice again. Yes. Sleep forever. Yes. Yes. He tried to grab onto it, but it was already weak and fading fast.
Eric’s left eye opened just enough to let light rush in. He immediately jammed it closed, but the mere act of doing so woke him even more.
“Good. You’re almost back.” A girl’s voice. Not Maggie’s. “Try it again.”
Bracing himself for more light, he cracked open each eye so he could peer through his lashes. While it was bright, it was no longer too bright. He opened them a little more. Shapes and colors. He let his eyelids part even further. The shapes turned into arms and faces. Three faces.
Maggie, an older man, and another girl. Fi…Fi…Fiona. Yes, Fiona.
Fiona Trouble.
The Trouble family.
The attack at school. The plane. The beat-up sedan. Mr. Trouble. Mother Trouble. Keira. Uncle Colin. Uncle Carl.
The scanner.
His eyes shot all the way open.
Maggie, Fiona and the man—it was Uncle Carl—were all looking down at him from a strange angle. It took Eric a second before he realized he was lying across their laps.
Suddenly the whole world bounced, and he flew up a few inches before falling back down hard.
“Ow!” Fiona said.
“We’ve got to hold him,” Uncle Carl said. “That way we all move up and down together.”
“Where are we?” Eric asked. They certainly weren’t in the workshop any more.
“We’re in the car,” Maggie told him.
A car, of course. He, Maggie, Fiona, and Uncle Carl were in the back seat of the sedan. From his position Eric could see Mr. Trouble was driving. And though he could tell there was someone in the front passenger seat, he wasn’t sure who it was.
He started to sit up but immediately fell back onto the others’ laps, dizzy.
Mr. Trouble gave him a quick glance. “Hold on there, buddy. Pace yourself.”
From somewhere beyond the car, Eric could still hear the loud rumble he’d noticed before. Whatever it was, it was really whining away now.
“What…happened?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Uncle Carl asked.
Eric tried to think back. “The helmet vibrating on my head.”
“It’s not a—” Uncle Carl started to say.
“Shhh,” Fiona cut him off. To Eric, she said, “Go on.”
“Someone asked me if I was doing okay,” Eric continued. “And…and…and I was asleep. Then there was some shaking, and you guys woke me up.”
“Technically, you weren’t sleeping,” Mr. Trouble said.
“Then what was I doing?”
The look on Uncle Carl’s face was about as serious as Eric had seen it. “Enforced stupor.”
“Enforced what?”
“Stupor. A suspension of your conscious mind. Not asleep, but not awake either.”
“Enforced by who?”
“The Makers, of course,” Uncle Carl said. “Who else?”
“There they go!” It was Keira’s voice. Apparently, she was the one sitting in the front passenger seat.
Everyone turned to the windows. Eric pushed himself up so he could see, too. He was still a bit dizzy, but not nearly as much as he’d been a minute earlier.
They were driving up the side of the valley toward the ridge from where he’d first seen the Trouble family’s mobile headquarters. Only now the Lady Candice was racing down the makeshift runway.
“Who’s flying it?”
“Mom, of course,” Fiona said.
“But why? What’s going on?”
“Bug out,” Uncle Carl told him.
Eric looked at him, not understanding.
“It means retreat in a hurry,” Fiona explained.
“Retreat? Why?”
“Because the Makers found out where we were camped.”
“How did they do that?” he asked.
“You told them.”
13
“Watch out!” Keira yelled.
Mr. Trouble whipped the steering wheel to the left, sending the sedan off the dirt road and into the grassy field beside it. They’d been approaching a blind turn that dipped down into a shallow ravine, but just before they got there a bright red SUV came speeding out of it, directly into their path.
The sedan bounced wildly as Mr. Trouble drove in a wide arc around the SUV and back onto the road. Keira and Fiona looked out the rear window.
“They’re turni
ng around,” Keira said.
“Would have been surprised if they didn’t,” Mr. Trouble replied.
He increased their speed as they shot through the ravine then up the other side. Unfortunately, the SUV was faster.
“Here they come!” Fiona warned.
“Who are they?” Maggie asked.
“Maker surrogates, probably,” Uncle Carl said.
Mr. Trouble glanced into the rearview mirror. “Everyone, hold on!”
The sedan suddenly rocked forward as the SUV hit its rear bumper.
“They’re going to kill us,” Maggie said.
“No,” Uncle Carl told her. “They don’t want to kill us. Well, they don’t want to kill him.” He nodded toward Eric. “That would defeat their purpose.”
Eric was wide awake now. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Fiona said.
That was the last thing he wanted to hear. “I’m tired of no one telling me anything! Tell me what’s going on or I’ll…or I’ll…”
“Or you’ll what?” Keira asked. “Jump out?”
“Keira! That’s not helping,” Mr. Trouble said. “Eric, right now isn’t the time to explain everything so you’re going to have to continue trusting us for a little longer.”
Outside, the land was whipping past the window.
Eric was angry, and he was annoyed, and he was frustrated. But what choice did he have?
“How did they know we were going to be here?” Maggie asked.
“The talisman,” Uncle Carl said, as if that was answer enough.
“You mean that tiny gold ball?” Maggie said. “How could that have anything to do with the car chasing us?”
Uncle Carl muttered something to himself then looked at her. “Eric had direct skin-to-talisman contact for more than sixty seconds. That was plenty of time for it to mark him. Unfortunately, the scanner must have triggered the mark and that gave them our location.”
“The voice,” Eric said.
“What voice?” Fiona asked.
“When I was asleep, or in the…stupor, or whatever you want to call it, I heard a voice. It asked me where I was.”
“And you answered it?”
“I think all I said was something like ‘I’m here’ or ‘I’m right here.’ That’s it.”
“That would have been enough,” Uncle Carl said. “You gave them a temporary link into your mind. From that they could see where you’d gone.”
“A temporary link into his mind?” Maggie said, smirking. “Like that’s even possible.”
“Here they come again,” Mr. Trouble said. “Brace yourselves.”
While everyone else grabbed parts of the car, the only thing Eric could grab on to was Fiona.
Whack!
The back end of the sedan skidded a couple of feet sideways. For a split second it seemed like the car was going to spin all the way around. But Mr. Trouble fought the wheel, straightened out the sedan, and got it back on the road.
“We’ve got to get away from them,” Fiona said.
Keira looked back. “Nothing like stating the obvious.” She smiled at Eric. “You can let go of my sister now, if you’d like.”
Eric had forgotten he was holding onto anyone, and immediately released his grip. As he did, he caught sight of Maggie glancing at him. She had a strange look on her face, almost…sad?
“What?” he asked.
But she just shook her head and turned away.
“There’s the highway,” Keira said.
Mr. Trouble adjusted himself in his seat. “All right, everyone, I’m going to try to lose them up here. You’re going to have to hang on tight because it might get a little…well, just hang on.”
This time, instead of grabbing Fiona, Eric turned so that he could hold on to the back of Keira’s chair, then positioned himself to be able to see out the front windshield.
The highway was just ahead, separated from the wilderness by a wire fence that was only open where the dirt road passed through it. They’d be there in less than a minute.
Eric glanced over his shoulder to see where the others were and immediately wished he hadn’t.
“They’re going to hit us again!” he yelled.
Keeping his eyes on the SUV, he braced himself. But just before the truck could ram into them, Mr. Trouble swerved the sedan into the field.
The SUV rushed past but stayed on the road, racing ahead toward the opening in the fence. As soon as it got there, it skidded to a halt and blocked the entire exit.
“We can’t get through,” Eric said.
“Of course we can,” Mr. Trouble told him.
“But he’s in the way!”
Mr. Trouble just smiled and kept driving across the field, straight at the fence.
“You’re going to hit it,” Maggie said as they drew closer.
“I certainly hope so.”
Eric ducked behind the seat.
There was a loud whap as the car slammed into the fence. Eric expected the crash would bring them to a sudden stop, tangled up in wires and posts, but they kept moving.
A second later, as the ride smoothed out, he poked his head up and saw that they were on the highway. Looking back, he spotted the section of fence they’d hit. It was on the ground but not in a twisted pile. It had fallen as a single piece.
“We’ve learned in our business to be prepared,” Mr. Trouble said, catching Eric’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Uncle Colin and Uncle Carl are in charge of alternate escape routes. They fixed up that bit of fence last night.”
“Wait. You expected to be chased?” Maggie asked.
“Of course not,” Uncle Carl said. “But you never know, do you? That’s what being prepared is all about.”
“I hate to mention this, but we haven’t actually gotten away yet,” Fiona said, looking out the rear window. “They’re still following us.”
Sure enough, the SUV was on the highway, trying to catch up with them.
“Uncle Carl?” Mr. Trouble said.
“On it,” Uncle Carl replied. He started pushing Eric off him. “You’re going to have to move.”
“Where do you expect me to go?” Eric asked.
“I don’t care, just not on me.”
Eric wiggled around and repositioned himself so that he was only on Maggie and Fiona. Freed, Uncle Carl turned around and undid the latch holding the back of the seat in place. With lots of grunts and groans and awkward twisting, he pulled the back all the way down and crawled through into the trunk.
For the next several seconds, they could all hear him moving around and muttering.
“You’d better hurry,” Mr. Trouble said.
Eric glanced out the rear window. The SUV was only a few car lengths back.
“When I say ‘now,’ pop the trunk,” Uncle Carl yelled.
A few seconds later, Mr. Trouble said, “He’s getting closer.”
“Any time, Uncle Carl,” Fiona told him.
“He’s still getting closer,” Keira said.
“Uncle Carl?” Mr. Trouble asked.
“He’s almost—”
“Now!” Uncle Carl yelled.
Mr. Trouble reached down and hit the button that opened the trunk. Eric could see the lid jump up a few inches. It stayed there for half a second and then it suddenly thrust all the way up, blocking everyone’s view of the SUV.
From inside the trunk came a combination hum-whirl that grew in intensity until—
PAAAA-HEEEEEW!
Several seconds passed, then the trunk lid slammed shut. And while the SUV was still behind them, it was a long way back now, stopped in the middle of the road.
“How did he…?” Eric asked.
“Pulse gun,” Mr. Trouble said. “Point it at a car and pull the trigger. Kills all the electronic circuits.”
Uncle Carl climbed back into the passenger area, closing the seat back again.
Once he was settled, he said, “I don’t know about anyone else, but I could use a
bite to eat.”
Here Comes Mr. Trouble Page 12