Curse of the Were-wiener

by Ursula Vernon

  “We’re looking for an old friend of ours. A, uh, potato salad.” Danny mimed a big, vaguely lumpy shape. “We think it lives down here.”

  The rat appeared to consider this.

  “Are you expecting an answer?” asked Wendell.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Danny, “rats can’t talk.”

  The rat turned and scurried into the dark pipe.

  “Just wait . . . ” said Danny, waving a hand at him.

  The rat reappeared, made an impatient squeak, and ran back into the pipe. Its expression said clearly: Are you guys coming, or what?

  Following the rat was a little tricky. Danny had to swing himself over the balcony and step down into the pipe, and then grab for Wendell when he did the same. Once inside the pipe, they had to walk bent over.

  “At least we’re not swimming,” said Wendell.

  The rat scurried ahead of them, stopping frequently to peer back at them and chitter. “Do you think it’s really leading us to the potato salad?” asked Wendell worriedly.

  “Absolutely,” said Danny. “This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s totally mythological. Heroes follow the animal guide and it leads them to awesome adventures!”

  “Seriously?”

  “It happened to my cousin. He followed a white peacock for three days.”

  “Where’d he wind up? ”

  “The mall,” Danny admitted. “But he got a great deal on a plasma-screen TV, so it totally worked out.”

  “Joseph Campbell is spinning in his grave,” muttered Wendell.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  The pipe crossed another, larger pipe, and the rat turned left down it. They followed.

  A few minutes later, they reached a larger room. The rat hopped nimbly from the mouth of the pipe to a nearby walkway, and Danny and Wendell followed, scrambling over the railing.

  The walkway ran around the edge of the circular room, which fell away into darkness below.

  The rat hurried around the walkway, to a narrow doorway. In it sat another rat.

  The first rat pointed a paw back at Danny and Wendell and squeaked.

  It’s always awkward to have people talk about you as if you’re not there. It’s significantly more awkward when it’s being done by a pair of small rodents. Danny and Wendell stood and fidgeted.

  The second rat stepped aside. The first rat—the one that Danny was thinking of as their rat—chittered cheerfully and hurried through the doorway.

  “What’s happening?” muttered Wendell.

  “I don’t know. I don’t speak Rodent,” said Danny. “But I think the one is a guard, and our rat just told him we were cool.”

  They followed their guide through the door. As they passed the guard-rat, Danny bobbed his head politely to it. It met his eyes with its small, beady black ones, let out a rat-sized sigh, and looked away.

  Their rat led them into a maze of tunnels, turning left and right so rapidly that Danny was hard-pressed to keep the rat in the bobbing circle of the flashlight.

  “I’m completely lost,” moaned Wendell.

  “So am I,” Danny admitted. “But I’m sure the rat will lead us back afterward.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “It’ll be fine, Wendell.”

  Danny was glad to hear that turning into a were-wiener hadn’t affected his best friend’s ability to sigh very, very loudly.

  The last tunnel was much lower than the others. Danny and Wendell had to drop to their knees and crawl through it.

  “Slow down!” begged Wendell.

  The rat looked back and squeaked at them, but waited.

  The low pipe only lasted for a few turns, which was good, as far as Danny was concerned. Wendell was pressed so close behind him that he kept kneeling on the dragon’s tail.

  “Wendell! Tail!”

  “Sorry,” said Wendell, “but it’s dark back here!”

  “There’s a light up ahead,” said Danny.

  The rat stopped in the mouth of the pipe. Danny came up behind it and looked out over its head.

  “Oh...”

  “What is it?” Wendell demanded. “What?”

  The potato salad’s lair was a large circular room, crammed with trash and refuse. There were broken chairs, old egg cartons, junked roller skates, discarded brooms. There were dustpans, dustbins, dust bunnies, and broken DustBusters. Danny couldn’t see the walls for the piles of trash.

  On every surface perched rats—big ones, little ones, black and white, scurrying and still. Most of them were watching the newcomers.

  Their rat hopped down and gestured to them with a paw. Danny gulped and stepped out of the pipe, his feet making wet noises on the soggy cardboard that covered the floor.

  “What? Why—oh . . . ”

  At the end of the room, enthroned on more junk, squatted the vast form of the potato salad.

  “It’s huge . . . ” breathed Wendell. “How did it get so big?”

  “Well . . . ” Danny stared at it. His old lunch was now ten times as big as Danny himself. “Whenever she peels potatoes, Mom dumps the skins into the garbage disposal in the sink. If that happens every time, and all the potato bits came down here . . . ”

  As if to confirm this hypothesis, a rat ran in from the side of the room, carrying a small bit of something white in one paw. It trotted up to the swollen potato salad, and patted the little white bit—a chunk of raw potato?—into the side of the salad, then ran off with a satisfied squeak.

  “The rats are feeding it,” said Danny. “Or . . . err . . . growing it, any way.”

  “That is either amazingly cool or incredibly gross,” said Wendell.

  “No reason it can’t be both.”

  Their rat marched down the aisle of trash as well as a rat can march. It halted several feet from the potato salad’s throne, went up on its hind legs, and bowed. Then it squeaked, pointed back at Wendell and Danny, and squeaked again.

  Danny and Wendell followed the rat, stopping well back from the throne. Wendell said, “Errr.” Danny waved.

  A glopping, glorbling noise came from the salad, a sort of sticky rumbling belch. The vast mound of potato bits leaned forward. Dozens of beady black eyes watched from around the room.

  There was a long awful moment when Danny thought he’d miscalculated the gratitude of a renegade school lunch.

  What if the potato salad didn’t remember? Would the rats attack? Could he breathe fire to keep them off if they did? Would the Tabasco sauce even work on rats?

  Then the potato salad belched a long positive note. The rat squeaked happily. All over the room, the rats relaxed.

  “So anyway,” Danny said, “it’s great to see you! You’ve got a great place down here!”

  Wendell started to mutter something about the smell, and Danny kicked him in the ankle. The potato salad gave another enthusiastic belch.

  “Anyway, we came down here to ask for your help.”

  The potato salad growled wetly. Wendell cringed. “I know!” Danny said. “They’re totally awful! And of course, everybody knows that potato salad and hot dogs are ancient enemies—”

  Rats nodded around the room. Wendell rolled his eyes. “Am I the only person on earth that doesn’t know this?”

  “—so of course we thought of you.”

  The potato salad gurgled thoughtfully. Danny grew slightly more hopeful.

  “The alpha wurst is holed up somewhere near the cafeteria,” he explained. “And we think we can take it out—we have silver skewers and everything—but the problem is the minions. Almost all the kids at school are infected, and will try to protect their leader. So we were hoping you could—y’know—go up there and hold them off.”

  A dubious gurgle. The potato salad shuffled in its throne.

  The potato salad didn’t seem to be buying it. Danny wondered if he’d overestimated the hatred between wieners and potato salad.

  Wendell stepped forward. “Um—Your Potatoship?”

/>   The potato salad didn’t exactly have eyes, but there was a definite shift of attention to Wendell.

  “One of the minions we’re worried about is Big Eddy. The one who tried to eat you. You bit his hand. Do you remember him?”

  Wet, volcanic laughter filled the room.

  Apparently the salad DID remember Big Eddy.

  “So if you or the rats could help us stop Big Eddy and the others, we’d be really grateful.”

  “Good thinking!” whispered Danny.

  Wendell scuffed at the ground with one foot.

  The potato salad considered for a moment, and then it . . . well, it couldn’t really stand up, but it seemed to ooze into a more upright position. Long gloppy growths, like arms, extended, and the potato salad lifted them overhead.

  Whatever it was doing, the rats seemed hypnotized. They swayed in time to the belching noises. Danny and Wendell stood and listened politely, even though neither one could tell what was being said.

  “Maybe he’s saying ‘Let’s crush the minions!’” Danny whispered.

  “Maybe he’s saying ‘Let’s eat the dragon and use the iguana’s bones for toothpicks,’” muttered Wendell.

  The potato salad roared. A squeaky cheer went up from the assembled rats.

  The salad let its arms drop and turned its attention back to Danny and Wendell.

  “You’ll help, then?” asked Danny.

  An affirmative rumble. Rats nodded and their guide rat chased its own tail in delight.

  “Great! Thank you! Uh—tomorrow at lunch-time, then? That’s when we’ll make our move, if you want to . . . uh . . . send troops . . . ”

  The potato salad twisted in an approximation of a nod, then settled back into its throne. The rats began leaving the room, streams of furry bodies funneling into pipes and down drains.

  Their guide rat sat up, tugged at Danny’s shirt, then led them toward the drain. Apparently their visit was at an end.

  “I think that went well,” said Danny as the rat led them back through the tunnels.

  “We’ll find out tomorrow,” said Wendell.

  FOOD FIGHT!

  Danny had thought that yesterday afternoon was long, but this morning was way worse. He couldn’t concentrate. Would the rats come to help? Would they be able to communicate?

  In the desk next to him, Wendell itched. He looked terrible. If he was being honest, Danny would say that he didn’t look so great himself. They hadn’t gotten back from the sewers until three in the morning.

  A number of students were missing. Apparently the itching had alerted their parents that something was wrong. As far as Danny was concerned, that was fine—it meant fewer minions.

  Big Eddy, unfortunately, was not one of the ones who had stayed home. He didn’t look well at all.

  “Now, students . . . ” said Mr. Snaug, “take out your social studies textbook.”

  Danny winced. He’d left his books at home, in order to fit the silverware in his backpack.

  “Mr. Dragonbreath?” asked Mr. Snaug wearily. “Your textbook?”

  “I—uh—forgot it, Mr. Snaug.”

  “Share with Wendell, then.” His teacher sighed.

  “Cheer up,” whispered Danny. “Just another hour until lunch!”

  Wendell looked sick. He felt like he was waiting for the dentist. What if they couldn’t find the alpha wurst? What if the skewer didn’t work?

  What if Big Eddy threw them through a wall?

  Plus, he itched. It was even worse than the one time he got a mosquito bite on his eyelid. He itched in places he hadn’t known could itch, between his toes and under his tongue and behind his eyes. His brain itched.

  When the lunch bell rang, Wendell was so sunk in misery that he didn’t comprehend what it was.

  “C’mon!” said Danny. “It’s time!”

  Wendell dragged himself to his feet like an iguana going to his execution.

  Danny’s pack clinked as they walked.

  They got through the lunch line and stood with trays in their hands, stumped. “Err . . . what do we do now?” asked Wendell.

  “I was sort of hoping the rats would be here,” muttered Danny.

  “Well, they aren’t.” Wendell frowned. “We need to get into the kitchen. The wurst has to be back there somewhere.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Wendell scratched at his neck. “I think so. It sort of . . . itches more in that direction.”

  He had not previously realized that you could itch directionally. Wendell could have gone on quite happily without knowing that.

  “The lunch ladies aren’t gonna just let us back there,” said Danny. “Some of them might be minions too . . . ”

  That there might be grown-up minions had not occurred to Wendell. He groaned.

  Big Eddy crossed the cafeteria, two tables away. Danny grinned suddenly. “I think I know just the thing.”

  He picked up his slice of pizza. Orange grease dripped off the cheese. He took aim.

  He fired.

  “Bull’s-eye!” Danny crowed.

  Big Eddy roared, pizza dripping off his head, then whipped around, searching for his unknown assailant. Unable to spot one immediately, he threw his own slice of pizza wildly into the crowd.

  Wendell, seeing Danny’s plan in action, grabbed his own open milk carton and flung it. His aim was terrible, and instead of Big Eddy, he hit a third-grade newt on top of the head. She began shrieking and throwing handfuls of french fries.

  The kids of Herpitax-Phibbias School for Reptiles and Amphibians temporarily forgot their mysterious itching, their unexplained hair, and the presence of authority figures. As one, they rose, responding to that most ancient of battle cries.

  “FOOD FRIGHT!”

  Danny was having so much fun flinging food that he almost forgot they had a mission. Then Wendell grabbed him and yanked him to one side.

  The lunch ladies poured from the back of the cafeteria, ready to do battle. In the general confusion, Wendell and Danny slipped behind them and into the kitchen. “Where to?” whispered Danny.

  “I . . . uh . . . left, I think, but . . . oh, it itches!” Wendell had to stop in the middle of the room and scratch furiously. His scales were starting to come off. Danny winced in sympathy.

  They peered down the hallway toward the freezers. At least, Danny peered. Wendell just huddled and scratched.

  “This way?” asked Danny. Wendell grunted, sounding not unlike the potato salad. They hurried down the hallway, still hearing cries and splatters of food from the main cafeteria.

  Danny paused outside the walk-in freezer where he’d found the were-wiener package, but Wendell didn’t. He was holding his head and blinking his eyes a lot, but he stumbled forward. Danny followed, wondering where the iguana was headed.

  “Down here,” panted Wendell. “It’s got to be close...”

  Danny remembered the lunch lady saying something about the Big Freezer. Could it be the home of the alpha were-wurst?

  Apparently so. Wendell had halted. “In here,” he said, eyes scrunched closed. “It’s got to be in here. Oh God, it itches!”

  Danny dropped his backpack and rummaged inside. He came up with the biggest fork, a meat server with glittering tines.

  The Big Freezer was even colder than the smaller one. Ice crystals slicked the walls. Their breath hung in the air like fog.

  Wendell felt strangely better. The cold seemed to help the itch. He didn’t want to scratch his own eyes out anymore. Unfortunately there was something else—a kind of hissing in his brain, something that slithered over and under the edges of actual sound, so he wasn’t sure if he was hearing it or just thinking it.

  It was a little like he’d felt looking at the moon.

  Danny didn’t know what he’d expected—sides of beef hanging from the ceiling, maybe—but it was just giant racks, holding boxes and mysterious tubs as big as his torso. “BUTTER” said one in big letters, and “VEGETABLE OIL.” “LARD” said another.

  �
��Eww . . . ” said Wendell. “That can’t be healthy.”

  “You can write a letter to the principal after we’re out of here.” Danny brandished his fork. “We’ve got wurst to slay.”

  “Can’t . . . let you . . . do that . . . dorkbreath . . . ” hissed a deep voice behind them.

  With infinite dread, Danny turned.

  In the doorway, he saw a massive, slump-shouldered silhouette. Big Eddy.

  His eyes were glowing red.

  BARBEQUE

  “We’re dead,” said Wendell.

  Danny didn’t answer him. Behind Big Eddy, there were more kids, and worse yet, two of the lunch ladies. All of them had glowing red eyes.

  The lunch ladies were almost worse than Big Eddy. Danny hated Big Eddy, he was terrified of him, but the Komodo dragon was only a kid. (A mountain-sized kid, but still.) The lunch ladies were grown-ups. You didn’t fight grown-ups.

  Whether it was the fear or the excitement, he didn’t know, but the back of Danny’s throat was burning. His chest felt hot and tight, and smoke was leaking out of his nostrils and mixing with the fog of breath in the freezer. He felt dangerous.

  Nobody stood back. Big Eddy actually took a couple of steps forward. Apparently Danny didn’t sound as dangerous as he felt.

  Wendell gulped. Danny would have, but his throat was burning so bad that he thought he might throw up if he did.

  “I’m gonna break you in half, dorkbreath,” rumbled Big Eddy.