by Dann Gershon
“I’m sorry, comrade,” Roxie said softly. “I tried to get you out of the werewolf outfit as fast as I could, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough.”
“It was the salt tablets, wasn’t it?”
Roxie nodded.
“SALT is an acronym for Synthetic Alteration of Life Trans-formation. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but the cos-tumes play an integral role in the process. The tablets create a chemical reaction that causes a genetic mutation, combining your DNA with anything you are wearing. The result is a total transformation. In effect, if you’re dressed as a werewolf, you become a werewolf.”
“I don’t feel like a werewolf,” Einstein said.
“To achieve that requires encyclopedia-like knowledge of
115 the material,” Roxie told him. “Every camper at Creepy Time has that in common, except for you. They were handpicked out of thousands of candidates for that reason. Between the countless hours spent watching reruns of the old horror flicks and reading vintage comic books, they have become experts on the material. That expertise creates the inner monster, so to speak. It’s known as the ARMS effect.”
“The what?” Einstein asked. “Absorbed Reaction to Media Stimulation,” Roxie replied, and then repeated the letters in the acronym slowly.
“So, let me see if I have this straight. I’m going to look like a werewolf, but I’m not going to act like one.”
Roxie nodded again.
“This really sucks,” Einstein groaned.
“Look at the bright side, Houdini,” the ghost said, tugging on the boy’s beard. “If you ever get out of here, you’ll be able to go to an R-rated movie without being carded.”
Einstein ignored him and tried to wrap his arms around the problem at hand. Every problem had a solution. All you needed to do was find it. “Toss me a Twinkie, will you, Greeley?” Ein-stein said. “I think better on a full stomach.”
“Could I have one too?” the ghost asked, eyeing the pile.
“NO!” Roxie and Einstein shouted in unison.
Einstein paced across the room, eating the Twinkie while he pondered the problem. Why would anyone want to trans-form kids into monsters? It didn’t make any sense. Big Al and his crew were either insane or being paid for their efforts, ei-ther of which was possible. If they were being paid, whoever was paying them was just as crazy as they were. Who in their right minds would release a plague upon the Earth? Suddenly, it dawned on him. “That’s it!” he shouted. “It’s a plague!”
“What are you talking about, Fleet?” Roxie asked.
“I’ve uncovered some conspiracies in my time, but this one takes the prize. It’s absolutely brilliant. Why would you want to turn kids into monsters?”
Roxie and Greeley both shrugged.
“I’ll tell you why in two words,” Einstein said. “Fear and profit. Who stands to benefit the most if real live monsters were released into the general population?”
“Is it a multiple-choice question?” Greeley asked.
“The government and the big pharmaceutical companies would,” Einstein shouted, pounding his fist on the chair. “The government benefits by getting increased budgets for military spending all across the board. The big pharmaceutical com-panies make out on both ends. They make money selling the government the salt tablets to create the disease and even more on the back end.”
“What back end?” Roxie asked.
“They sell everyone who has been infected the antidote!” Einstein shouted.
“If there is an antidote,” Roxie asked, “how do we get our hands on it?”
“That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet,” Einstein replied as he headed for the door. “But I will.”
“Where you going, Fleet?” Roxie asked.
“Out for some fresh air,” he told her. He grabbed a fresh Twinkie and pointed a hairy finger at Greeley. “It’s still a bit ripe in here, if you get my drift.”
11 “Be careful out there,” Roxie warned as he walked out the door. She waited until he was gone before saying another word. Roxie could feel the ghost’s eyes burning a hole in the back of her head. “What is it?”
“Don’t you think you should have told him the whole story?”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Greeley replied. “Look what happened to me.”
Cha p te r
5
IDay Seven — 10:32 A.M.
’ve been thinking, honey,” Shirley said to her husband. Norman put down his newspaper and stifled a groan. Anytime his wife started a sentence with “I’ve been thinking, honey” it always signified trouble.
“Thinking about what, Shirley?” “I think you should give Einstein a call to make sure he’s all right.”
“We discussed that,” Norman said. “It’s against the rules, remember?”
Shirley gave him the look. After twenty years of marriage, Norman knew that look all too well. He had one of two choices. He could either make the call or prepare himself for a full day of the silent treatment.
“What’s the number?” He sighed.
Shirley read him the phone number listed in the brochure and he dialed. After twenty rings he hung up and dialed again with the same result. “Nothing,” Norman grunted. “Not even a machine.”
“Try the operator and see if the number is working.”
Norman called the operator and waited. On the fifteenth
10 ring, he was connected to an automated service. After a half hour of inane questions and rerouting through the system, he finally reached a human being. She spoke in a monotone drone that made the automated voice seem positively cheerful. The operator attacked Norman with a barrage of silly questions as to why he couldn’t follow instructions to get what information he needed from their state-of-the-art automated service. Only after she had succeeded in making Norman feel like a com-plete and total slacker did the operator relent and agree to see if the number was in service. Ten minutes later, she finally got back on the line and told him that not only was the number not in service, but that there was no Camp Creepy Time listed in Saugus or anywhere else in California for that matter. Before Norman could say another word, sh
e called him a bonehead and then severed the connection.
“What did she say?” Shirley asked.
“She said that there isn’t a listing for Creepy Time.” He could see the look of terror on his wife’s face and tried to ra-tionalize the situation to calm her down. “Maybe they went on a field trip or something and forgot to leave on the answering machine.”
“Maybe there was an accident!” Shirley screamed, working herself into a frenzy.
Norman shook his head. “If there was an accident, some-one from the camp would contact us. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“I told you that he wasn’t ready for sleepaway camp,” Shir-ley said. She put her face in her hands and started to sob.
“What are you talking about?” Norman replied defensively. “You were the one who insisted that a summer of fresh air was just what the doctor ordered, remember?”
“Well,” Shirley said, the tears beginning to flow. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“Maybe we were both wrong,” Norman replied.
“I want to see Einstein,” Shirley said between sobs.
“Me too,” Norman said as he rifled the drawer for his keys. “I’ll go outside and fire up the Volvo while you get dressed. We’re taking a road trip.”
11
Cha p te r
T
Day Seven — 11:20 A.M. he code name for the plan is Operation Knuckleball,” Ein-stein announced to the others. “Our mission is to locate the antidote. Our objective is to do so without getting killed. Any questions so far?”
Roxie raised her hand.
“Yes?” Einstein said, taking her question.
“How do you plan to do that?” she said. “Beside the fact
that we are outnumbered and outgunned, we’re not even cer-tain there is an antidote, let alone how to find it.” “First of all, we need to even the odds,” Einstein began. “To accomplish that, Greeley will have to possess one of them.” He stared down the ghost. “You think you can handle that?”
“Piece of cake,” Greeley snapped back. “It’s all in the hand-book.”
“What handbook?” Einstein asked.
“Possession for Dummies,” Greeley quipped. “There’s a whole chapter on the subject.”
“Great,” Einstein replied. “From there we move on to phase two of the operation and give camp management a taste of their own medicine.”
“You mean to feed them salt tablets?” Roxie asked.
“That’s exactly what I plan to do, Agent Rosenberg. Unless Nurse Knockwurst changes into a beauty queen, I’m sure that they will lead us directly to the antidote.”
“We don’t even know if the antidote exists,” Roxie reminded him again.
“Second, we need to retain a positive attitude,” Einstein re-plied, wagging his finger at Roxie. “Negative thoughts produce negative results.”
“What about weapons, Fleet?”
“It’s already been taken care of,” Einstein replied. He picked up a burlap sack and dumped the contents on the floor. “How did we do, Greeley?”
“It’s all there,” he answered, grinning like a ghoul. “Rolls of lanyard material, Popsicle sticks, superglue, marbles, balloons, masking tape, and everything else you asked for, including every last salt tablet I could find.”
“Good work, comrade.” Einstein gave the old man a pat on the back. “My uncle is a bigwig at the post office. If we come out of this in one piece, I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“I’m permanently retired,” the ghost replied, “but thanks anyway.”
Einstein grabbed a handful of Popsicle sticks and went to work. He glued the sides of six sticks into a perfect hexagon, then filled the inner space with marbles and gently squeezed. In a few seconds the glue set and the sticks were locked in place. Einstein carefully wrapped layer upon layer of yellow lanyard around the sticks, stopping every so often to check the tension.
1 “What are you doing?” Roxie asked.
“These seemingly harmless items can be obtained almost anywhere, but in the hands of a master such as myself, they are actually the most lethal weapons that the L.A. public school system has to offer unless, of course, you happen to own an Uzi.” Einstein loaded a marble into the makeshift peashooter and blew. The glass ball sailed across the room and hit the wall with a loud thud. “Think of it as a weapon of class destruction. Just a little something I picked up during my formative years in the jungle.”
“You learned to make a peashooter out of Popsicle sticks in Africa?”
Einstein shook his head and laughed. “Junior high school. I was talking about the other jungle.”
“Can you make me one of those?” Greeley asked.
Einstein reached into his pack and pulled out several pea-shooters. They were longer than the homemade version and looked a lot sturdier. “Here you go, Greeley. We use them as giveaways when you sign up for membership on the website. Take one and pass the rest out to your friends.”
The ghost examined the weapon and smiled. On the side it read, Compliments of The Smoking Peashooter. “Thanks. I’ve always wanted one of these things.”
“Why did you bother to make a peashooter if you already had an arsenal stashed in your pack?” Roxie asked.
“You know what they say about idle hands,” Einstein re-plied. He looked down at his watch and checked the time. “Speaking of which, we’d better go to work.”
Under Einstein’s direction, Greeley dissolved several hand-fuls of salt tablets in a shallow bowl filled with water. The ghost stirred until they were whipped into a fluffy white paste and then injected the mixture into the center of a dozen Twinkies with a straw. Einstein inspected his work, resealed the cellophane, and then loaded the spiked Twinkies back into the twelve-pack carton. That done, Einstein poured more in the bowl and stirred the remaining salt tablets until they liquefied. The water was murky, but no worse than the water that came directly from the tap. He put a funnel into the mouth of one of the counselor’s canteens and poured. Einstein marked a second canteen with an X and filled it to the brim with fresh tap water.
“Who’s that for?” Roxie asked.
“It’s for me,” he replied. “It’s hot as an oven in here. I’m thirsty
.”
Greeley picked up a balloon and began to inflate it. With a few twists and turns the balloon took on the shape of a toy poodle. “I love these things,” he cackled.
“Me too,” Einstein said. He selected a yellow balloon from the pile and went to work on the next item on his list. He care-fully filled the balloon with superglue until it was about a quar-ter of the way full and made a whoopee cushion. Einstein had tested the item once on his vice principal’s swivel chair and it had worked like a charm. In addition to receiving a three- day suspension from school, his parents had to cough up sixty bucks for a new pair of slacks.
“Peashooters and glue balloons.” Roxie sighed. “How did I let you talk me into this?”
“This battle will be won with wits, not weapons,” Einstein re-plied. “Besides, we have the element of surprise on our side.”
15
“Not for long,” Greeley said, pointing at the window. Einstein peeked outside and saw the pickup truck. Bucky and Curly were headed straight for the cottage.
“Any other bright ideas, General?” Roxie asked.
“Just one,” Einstein whispered. “Everybody hide!”
Cha p te r
C
Day Seven — 11:45 A.M. urly watched as Bucky drove off, leaving a trail of dust be-hind. They had flipped a coin to see who would check out the cottage and who would go to the infirmary to help Nurse Knockwurst load the mummies into the pickup. Curly won the toss and selected the easier of the two assignments. The cook had expected to find the cottage deserted, but he was wrong. From the pile of contraband sitting in the center of the room, it was obvious that someone had been here. Judging by the collection of crumpled cellophane wrappers strewn about the floor, that someone had to be Einstein. He scanned the room for any sign of the boy. Taking no chances, Curly pulled a flat metallic object out of his pocket and held it in front of him. “This here is a Gregorian Model 3-P6 Plasma Blaster, one of the deadliest weapons ever made,” he shouted. “It has three settings: stun, sting, and kill.”