by R. McGeddon
“Wait,” he hissed. “Listen.”
Emmie listened. At first, she heard nothing, but then it came creeping into her ears like some horrible insect: a steady thud, thud, thud that quickly grew louder.
All three kids slunk back into the shadows of a doorway as the street was suddenly filled by an army of Sitting Duckers. They marched in perfect formation, their eyes glazed, their faces all slack and droopy.
* * *
Signs Someone You Know Is in a Hypno-Trance
• Their eyes go all wonky.
• They say the same thing over and over again.
• They say the same thing over and over again.
• They say the same thing over and … oh, you get the point.
• They walk like their pants are too small.
• They talk like a robot.
• They do everything a supervillain says, even if it’s really nasty.
* * *
“We should follow them,” said Arty, as if the others couldn’t have figured that one out for themselves.
And so they did. It took a while, though, so please enjoy this poem about a cat until they get there.
A cat, a cat,
Is nice and all that,
But sit on it,
And it goes quite flat.
Moving stuff, eh? And the kids have just arrived, so the timing couldn’t be better.
Everyone in Sitting Duck had gathered outside the building formerly known as the Town Hall. They were jammed together like a forest of trees, as if they weren’t quite sure how they’d got there.
A speaker, which had been attached to the fence by a particularly acrobatic old woman on a trampoline, crackled into life. The same wobbly sound emerged, and the gathered townsfolk snapped to attention.
At the front of the crowd, a very familiar (and quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing) young woman stepped up onto a box and smiled her winning smile.
“Goode is good,” said Coach Priscilla.
“Goode is good,” chanted the crowd.
Sam turned to Emmie, keeping his head and his voice low. “You were right. They are in cahoots!”
“Cahoots!” agreed Emmie.
“Cahoots,” said Sam again, because it really is a fun word when you say it out loud.
“People of Sitting Duck,” Priscilla continued. “Show your love, appreciation, and undying loyalty for my father and your new Supreme Overlord, Doctor Noah Goode!”
The audience applauded, whistled, made oooowooo noises, and stamped excitedly on the ground. “Goode is good!” they cheered. “Goode is good!”
Priscilla stepped down from the box, making way for Dr. Goode. He waved and nodded at the adoring crowd, then raised both arms for silence. Instantly, a hush descended.
“I think you meant … Mayor Goode,” he said, and the crowd went crazy again.
Goode motioned for silence once again, and once again the audience instantly obeyed. Dr. Goode pointed his lumpy big face their way and twisted his mouth into something that was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like a sneeze waiting to happen.
“Now that I have you all under my complete control,” began Goode, then he gave a little snicker and slapped himself on the hand. “Naughty. I meant to say, now that you have elected me to represent you all as mayor, I shall deliver on my campaign promises.”
Another cheer went up from the crowd. “Goode is good!”
“Although to keep things interesting, I thought we might mix it up a bit. Originally, I promised to give you the world, but now I think I’d like you to give it to me.”
Sam, Emmie, and Arty swapped some worried looks.
“Tell me he isn’t going to say what I think he is,” Arty whispered.
“Look at him,” said Sam, gesturing over to the misshapen madman in his lab coat. “Of course that’s what he’s going to say.”
“Wait for it…” said Emmie.
Dr. Goode drew in a deep breath. “You, my Sitting Duckers, will be my army.…”
Sam sighed. “Man,” he muttered. “I hate it when I’m right.”
“… An army with which I shall conquer the entire world!”
* * *
Dr. Goode Character Profile
Name: Noah Goode (Dr.)
Age: Between 45 and 95—it’s hard to tell.
Job: Supervillain, Evil Science Division
Known Associates: Priscilla Goode (daughter)
Likes: Being mad, making things, plotting, scheming, blowing stuff up, turning things into other things for no real reason, laughing maniacally, brainwashing people for personal gain.
Dislikes: Being foiled, buffoons, shoddy workmanship, things that don’t turn into other things no matter how hard you try, wasps.
Ambition: TO RULE THE WORLD! (Did you really have to ask?)
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?” fretted Arty. It was the next morning, and he was pacing anxiously around the inside of his tree house, leaving a sluglike trail of terror-sweat behind him.
“Calm down,” said Emmie. “Now’s not the time to panic.”
“Everyone’s been brainwashed by a mad scientist with plans for world domination!” Arty reminded her.
“Yeah, fair point,” Emmie conceded. “It’s probably the ideal time to panic.”
After the rally, Mayor Goode had been whisked off somewhere, while Priscilla controlled the crowds. Sam, Arty, and Emmie had hidden among them until they could sneak off back home.
“You know what we need?” asked Sam. He was sitting by the window, gazing through the leaves at the rooftops of Sitting Duck.
“A miracle?” guessed Emmie.
“A false beard and a jet pack?” suggested Arty.
Sam shook his head. “A plan. We need a plan.” He turned from the window and looked at his friends. “I mean, obviously it’s going to be up to us to stop this. The adults of this town are useless.”
“You’re right. It’s almost like we’re the main characters in a series of stories,” said Emmie, who could be really quite perceptive sometimes.
“And what excellent stories they’d be,” added Arty.
“I agree, they would be excellent, and I would highly recommend them to readers of all ages,” said Sam, “but now’s not the time for that. We’ve got a town to save! Again.”
“So what’s the plan?” asked Arty, who was still secretly holding out for the false beard and the jet pack.
Grabbing a rusty nail from the windowsill, Sam began to scratch a map out on the wooden floor with quite uncanny accuracy. Unfortunately, it was a map of Belgium, and so of no use to them whatsoever.
He dropped the nail, turned to the others, and began to reveal his plan.
“Remember my mom saying he had a hideout in Mount Crumble?” he said. “Whatever he’s up to, it all started there. If we can get in, we might be able to find a way to stop him.”
“I’ll go!” said Arty. “I’ve always wanted to see inside a mad scientist’s laboratory.”
Emmie crinkled her nose in disgust. “Ew.”
“Laboratory,” repeated Arty. “Not lavatory.”
“Someone should hang around town and keep an eye on things. See what Doctor Goode and his daughter are up to,” Sam said.
“I could do that,” Emmie offered.
Sam shook his head. “No, too risky. I think Priscilla suspects you weren’t affected by the brainwashing. If she sees you she’ll get suspicious.”
“Well, I’m not hiding up here,” Emmie said.
“Go with Arty, then. You can protect him.”
Arty looked hurt. “I can protect myself!” He considered this for a second. “Actually, no I can’t, can I?”
“So it’s settled,” Sam announced. “You two check out the lab; I’ll check out the town. We’ll keep in touch by text.”
Emmie nodded. “Don’t get brainwashed,” she told him.
Sam nodded back. “Don’t get kille
d.”
“What?” spluttered Arty. “Killed? Why would we get killed?”
“We won’t,” said Emmie. “Probably.”
“Yeah,” said Sam. “You’re only breaking into the volcano lair of an insane scientific genius. Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen?”
* * *
Sam skulked along the streets, keeping an eye on things and watching out for nonsense. Everyone was going about their business as normal. Shopkeepers kept their shops, innkeepers kept their inns, and beekeepers sold honey that was nice, if a bit on the expensive side.
Up ahead, Sam’s dad stepped out of the paper shop, which immediately fell over and blew away. Mr. Saunders smiled when he spotted his son, and Sam smiled back because it would have been rude not to.
“Hey, Dad!”
“Hi, Sam,” said Mr. Saunders. “What you up to?”
“This and that,” Sam replied. “What about you?”
“Not sure,” said Sam Sr. “Just sort of milling about and not really sure why. It’s like I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what.” He laughed. “Sounds silly, I know.”
“Ha ha, yeah,” said Sam, forcing a laugh. “Really silly. Anyway, Dad, I was wondering if…”
There was a screech from the nearest speaker, then that weirdly wobbly tone started to drift down the streets of Sitting Duck. Mr. Saunders’s eyes glazed over in an instant.
“Goode is good,” he said, and Sam could hear the same sentence repeated by everyone within earshot. “Goode is good.”
“Come to me, people of Sitting Duck,” commanded a voice Sam recognized as Priscilla’s. “Come and lend your allegiance to Mayor Goode.”
“Goode is good,” droned the townsfolk. “Goode is good.”
Mr. Saunders about-faced and joined the throngs of other Sitting Duckers who were all making their way back to the Town Hall. Sam had no choice but to follow. The crowd swept him along like a big river of people who have been brainwashed.
“So here we are again,” Sam said with a sigh. “If it isn’t zombies or aliens, it’s a power-crazed supervillain threatening the safety of everyone in town.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think we should all just stay in bed.”
The crowd surged on toward the under-construction Town Hall. This time, though, they didn’t stop by the fence. The gate had been thrown wide and they pushed in, jostling and bumping Sam, and giving it all that “Goode is good” stuff in his ear.
Beyond the gate, they headed toward the big tarp. Sam caught a glimpse of his dad up ahead somewhere, as the tarp was lifted enough for everyone to duck underneath.
When Sam made it through to the other side, he clattered straight into the guard with a weapon.
“Oops, sorry,” he said, and then from the corner of his eye he saw Coach Priscilla. She turned to look at him suspiciously.
Sam let his eyes glaze over. “Goode is good,” he said.
“Goode is good,” replied the guard.
Priscilla gave a nod and then turned away. Sam shuffled past the guard and got his first look at the Town Hall.
ONLY IT WASN’T A TOWN HALL!!!!!
Didn’t see that coming, did you?
Where the Town Hall should have been was a tower of steel girders. It stood a couple of stories high, wide at the bottom and tapering to a point at the top. Townsfolk clambered over it like insects, screwing in bolts and hammering in studs. The tower looked like the little transmitter that had popped up out of Goode’s glasses, only many times bigger and not attached to anyone’s face.
Major Muldoon was perched near the top, mustache bristling, eyes glazed, whacking a bolt with a great big wrench.
“Goode is good,” he droned.
Arty’s brother, Jesse, was up there, too. He was attempting to knock in some rivets with a spoon, which was going about as well as can be expected, really. His eyes were also glazed over—but then that was his normal look, so no change there.
“Priscilla is lovely,” he muttered. “Priscilla is lovely.” Sam began to suspect that Jesse wasn’t brainwashed at all, at least not using the same method everyone else had been. He was already brainwashed by Priscilla; maybe you couldn’t be brainwashed twice. He worked tirelessly, though, lugging steel and tightening bolts and battering stuff with his spoon.
KA-LANG!
The echo of metal on concrete reverberated around inside the tarp, making Sam’s teeth vibrate. All eyes turned to Tribbler the Dribbler, who had accidentally let one of the iron bars topple to the floor.
With a gesture from Priscilla, the guard with the weapon stepped forward. He turned the barrel toward the Dribbler and Sam felt the world grind into slow motion. He raised his hand. He opened his mouth. But before any sound could emerge a crackle of blue energy spat from the gun.
As the blast struck Miss Tribbler, she froze. Literally. At first it looked as if she was sporting some rather dashing glass slippers, but the ice quickly climbed and spread across her body until she was encased from head to toe.
With a satisfied nod, Priscilla gestured for the guard to get back to work looking menacing. Sam realized there was another guard standing beside the coach, ready to do whatever she bid.
The Sitting Duckers, who had watched the freezing of the Dribbler, turned back to their work as if nothing had happened. Sam ducked into the shadows and took out his phone.
Freeze guns, he thought. Hypno-rays. These were no average villains he was dealing with. Dr. Goode was a fully paid-up evil genius.
His thumb jabbed at the buttons as he started to write a text but before he could finish, the phone was knocked from his hands. It bounced on the ground with a crack and the screen went dark.
Sam looked up. His face fell. His eyes widened.
“You!”
* * *
How to Be … Brainwashed
You’re stuck in the middle of a brainwashed mob, trying to avoid detection while you attempt to bring down their leader. We’ve all been there. Luckily, blending in isn’t difficult with this cut-out-and-keep guide.
DO copy what everyone else is doing.
DON’T do anything different.
And, er, that’s about it. It’s probably not worth cutting out, really.
What, I never said it was going to be a long guide, did I?
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emmie and Arty pedaled up the steep winding path that led to Mount Crumble. Fortunately for Arty, he had built a completely silent electric motor into his bike some weeks previously. As far as everyone else knew the bike was completely normal, but the motor meant that Arty was able to keep up with Emmie without his lungs exploding or his legs falling off.
The trip hadn’t started well. Arty had a rough idea of where the lab was supposed to be, because he really embraced all that nerd stuff, and he knew where most of the science-y stuff in town is. The problem was that people kept getting in the way.
Hundreds of them, there were. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, even.
Actually, no, that’s too many. Let’s stick to hundreds.
They filled the streets with their glassy, doll-like eyes and their lurching, I’m-under-an-evil-scientist’s-hypnotic-command-like walks. They shambled in their ranks through the streets, all massing toward the center of town.
Unfortunately for Arty and Emmie, they were trying to go in the opposite direction with two great clunking bikes, and what should have been a speedy cycle out onto the open road became a long-winded battle through a whole load of brainwashed people.
But all that, like Sitting Duck itself, was now behind them. The path zigzagged up a steep incline, forcing Emmie to pedal harder and Arty to secretly change gear.
“It’s hard work, this,” he said, the pedals spinning his legs around without any real involvement from him whatsoever. “Not much farther now, though.”
He wasn’t wrong (but then, he rarely is). As soon as they had crested the hill, Mount Crumble lay directly ahead of them. It rose from the ground like a
big mountain with the top cut off. Wisps of gray smoke drifted from the hole in the top, and once or twice a minute the volcano made a noise like an elephant sighing.
“It’s not going to blow up on us, is it?” Emmie asked.
“Mount Crumble has been dormant for over four hundred years. So knowing our luck it’ll probably erupt on the one day we come to visit it,” Arty joked.
* * *
The Greatest Supervillain Lairs … Ever!
Over the years, supervillains have come up with some pretty amazing places from which to carry out their evil deeds. Here are a few of my personal faves.
Villain: The Magpie
Lair: A vast nest situated at the top of a towering Canadian redwood tree, from which the Magpie could swoop down and steal the jewelry of unsuspecting lumberjacks, until one of them chopped it down.
Villain: Baron von Fishy-Wishy
Lair: Von Fishy-Wishy’s lair was cunningly hidden inside the belly of a blue whale. This meant the villain could travel throughout the world’s oceans, carrying out evil in all its diabolical forms. Unfortunately, he could never find a way to steer, and no one has any idea where he or his lair ended up.
Villain: The Kangaroo
Lair: This pint-size Australian villain didn’t have the wealth or resources to build his own lair, so he took a tip from his animal namesake and set up shop in one of his mom’s pockets. Things went pretty well for the Kangaroo for a while after that, until his evil reign was brought to an end when his mom put the coat he was hiding in through the wash.
* * *
There was a sudden beep from Emmie’s phone.
“Message from Sam,” she said.
“What does it say?”
“Followed trucks. Snuck under tarp. You won’t believe it, but—”
“But what?” Arty asked.