by Dann Gershon
“Be careful, Fleet,” Roxie shouted. “She’s a trained killer.”
“Don’t worry about me, babe,” Einstein said with confi-dence. “I can handle this hag with one hand tied behind my back.” To illustrate the point, Einstein put one hand behind his back and made an indecent gesture at the nurse with the other.
Nurse Knockwurst flew into a rage and charged at him like a bull, screaming at the top of her lungs. She lifted the scorpion jar over her head and prepared to hurl it at Einstein. “You’re going to regret that, chubby!”
Much to Roxie’s surprise, Einstein stood his ground. Sud-denly, his other hand appeared from behind his back, holding his homemade peashooter. “Say hello to my little friend.”
Nurse Knockwurst looked at him and laughed. “Are you kidding me?”
Einstein smiled at her as he loaded a marble into the make-shift weapon. “You messed with the wrong camper,” he said as he aimed the peashooter at the nurse. Einstein took a deep breath and blew hard, raising his aim at just the last second. It was a direct hit. The glass shattered on impact, freeing the deadly scorpions inside. Two of them landed on her oversized bun and were cautiously climbing down. They reminded Ein-stein of rock climbers, rappelling down a vertical cliff. Three others clung to Nurse Knockwurst’s white dress, stinging her repeatedly through the thin cotton material. The last scorpion landed on one of her shoes. It climbed up to her ankle and began to attack.
In a matter of seconds, the venom began to take its toll. Nurse Knockwurst felt woozy and her vision blurred. She saw two of everything, including Einstein. She lunged at the wrong one and missed, running headfirst into a metal filing cabinet. Nurse Knockwurst moaned and then collapsed on the floor, curled up in a ball. Einstein knelt down, put two fingers to her neck, and felt her pulse to make sure that she wasn’t play-ing possum.
“Is she dead?” Roxie asked.
“She’s fine, but I can’t say the same for the scorpions,” he replied, pointing at the floor. All six scorpions were also curled up in fetal positions. Einstein kicked one of them across the
1 10 room to be sure. It ricocheted off the wall and lay there. He picked up another, examined it, and then tossed it aside. “I thought you were afraid of spiders,” Roxie said.
“These little things?” Einstein snickered. He walked up to Roxie and gave her a twirl. “Want to hang out for a while?” “Get me down, Fleet,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.” Einstein cut her down and untied her. They wasted no time
securing the nurse. She was already showing signs of life, de-spite the massive dose of venom flowing through her system. With some difficulty, Roxie and Einstein hoisted her off the floor and laid her on the examination table. They secured her body to the table with electrician’s tape, making sure that she couldn’t move a muscle. Einstein had learned a trick or two from his stay in the infirmary.
Roxie pulled Einstein aside and spoke to him. Capturing Nurse Knockwurst was one thing, but squeezing the location of the antidote out of her was an entirely different matter. The woman was a hardened criminal and wouldn’t break easily. Most people were squeamish when it came to this sort of thing. She wondered if Einstein was one of them. “Are you sure that you can handle this?”
“I’m in seventh grade. Trust me, I know a little something about torture. Give me fifteen minutes with the old crone and she’ll be singing like a canary.” He filled a pail with water and dumped it over the nurse’s head. “Wakey, wakey.”
Nurse Knockwurst woke up groggy and mean. She struggled to free herself, but to no avail. Unable to do anything else, she gave Einstein the evil eye. “When I get loose, I’m going to turn you into an oversized pretzel,” she threatened.
Einstein ignored her. It wasn’t the first time that someone had threatened to do him bodily harm. “Where is the antidote? We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The choice is up to you.”
“I’m not going to tell you a thing, you little twerp.” “We”ll see about that.” He walked around the table and considered how to best approach the situation. The nurse was already bound to the table with sixteen rolls of electrician’s tape. Normally, the next step would be to lock her to the jan-itor’s closet until recess. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one in the lab and the nurse was too large to stuff into a cabinet. Einstein decided to go with a couple of the old tried-and-true methods, starting with lugie torture. He climbed up on the table and leaned over her, positioning his mouth directly in line with her mouth and began to drool. He let the strand get within an inch of her lips and then sucked it back in. Einstein repeated the process a few times, but the results were minimal at best.
“That the best you got, chubby?” the nurse challenged.
“I was just getting warmed up.” Einstein could see that the old bird was going to be a tough nut to crack. He would have to up the price of poker. There was torture and then there was torture, but one was feared above all others. It was time to pull out the big guns. He covered her head with a bedsheet and climbed under with her.
“You going to read me a bedtime story?” the nurse asked.
Einstein ignored her and concentrated on the job at hand. He mustered up thoughts of the chili con carne that they served in school and let loose with his first shot. It was an
11 1 SBD, the most deadly fart in his arsenal. Although one couldn’t hear a disgusting flatulent sound with the “silent but deadly” brand, it was normally twice as smelly as the run-of-the-mill fart. This one was no exception. The nurse began to gag and then went ballistic.
“You call that a fart, you little pig! Try this on for size.” Nurse Knockwurst fired off a shot of her own, and it was an A-bomb. Obviously, the woman was no stranger to this game. Einstein threw off the sheet and ran for cover. Nurse Knock-wurst laughed at him. “There’s plenty more where that came from, porky!”
Einstein walked away from the table and stood next to Roxie. Both of them were holding their noses. “She’s one tough old bird,” Einstein whispered.
“Let m
e give it a try,” Roxie said, setting the blaster to sting and blowing a hole through the middle of her bun. The smell of singed hair filled the lab. Nurse Knockwurst watched as Roxie adjusted the setting on the blaster from sting to kill. “Where is the antidote?”
“It’s in that cabinet over there,” the nurse screamed. “The key is on the chain around my neck.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Einstein said, smiling at Roxie. He yanked the chain from the nurse’s neck and went to see if she was telling the truth. On the top shelf was a large jar filled with square black pills, just where Nurse Knockwurst said they would be.
“I see she blabbed,” Greeley said, materializing by the table.
“They always do, comrade,” Einstein replied.
Nurse Knockwurst stared at the ghost in disbelief. “We killed you,” she said. Her jaw dropped and Einstein took the opportunity to gag her. He’d heard enough from the good nurse for one day.
1
Cha p te r
G
Day Eight — 1:35 P.M. reeley guided Einstein and Roxie to the containment area, which was located on the second level of the ship. The campers were sound asleep, safely packed in individual pods. Four sets of steel manacles secured their hands and feet. As an extra precaution, electrician’s tape had been liberally wrapped around their bodies, anchoring them to their beds. A clear dome covered each pod, making it possible to look inside. “Anyone care for monster under glass?” Einstein joked. “It’s the special today.”
Roxie walked up to one of the pods and pulled the latch underneath. The clear dome immediately sprang open and a familiar stench filled the room. “It’s Billy Armstrong,” she said. “He’s not asleep—he’s been sedated.”
“Why don’t we leave him there?” Einstein said. Roxie glared at him. “It was just a suggestion.”
“It was your idea to free the campers, remember?” she re-minded him. “So, let’s get to work. I figure that we have less than an hour to distribute the antidote, somehow get them untied, and sneak them off the ship. That doesn’t leave us a lot of time.”
“How do you know the antidote works?” Greeley asked. “Nurse Knockwurst could have lied.”
“He’s right,” Einstein said. He opened the jar and removed four black tablets. The label said to take one to two pills a day over a few days. The campers would return to normal in less than a week. They had less than an hour.
“What are you doing, Fleet?” Roxie asked.
“Greeley’s right,” he said, swallowing the tablets. “We need a guinea pig.”
A minute or two passed and nothing happened, so Einstein doubled the dosage. Roxie tried to stop him, but he knew that there was no other way. A couple more minutes passed, but nothing happened. His body was still covered with patches of brown fur. Nonetheless, Einstein felt different. Suddenly, his crotch began to itch.
“It’s not working.” Roxie sighed.
Einstein turned around and looked down the front of his pants. “It’s working,” he said, his voice cracking. “Give every-one eight tablets of the antidote and remember to save some for the eleven missing campers.”
Roxie shook her head. “We know that the antidote works, but we still can’t be sure that a massive dose won’t have ad-verse effects. Let’s start with two tablets each, just to be on the safe side.” She poured most of the tablets into the inside pocket of Einstein’s pack. It was a subtle reminder to Einstein that she would not be coming with him. He would be respon-sible for administering the rest of the antidote, if they made it to safety.
Roxie and Einstein started opening the pods, releasing the
15 manacles, and administering the antidote to the campers, while Greeley stood guard by the door. The ghost had seen Big Al in the main cabin of the ship, waiting for Mucho Fahn to send down the coordinates. Bucky and Curly, however, were nowhere to be found. Roxie assumed that they were in the engine room, checking to make sure that all of the equipment was in working order.
“Whoever tied these guys up knew what they were doing,” Roxie said, examining one of the campers. She pulled a mean- looking switchblade from her pants pocket and flipped open the blade. “Do you still have your pocketknife?” she asked Einstein.
He shook his head. “It’s a long story,” he said, smiling at Greeley. “If we live through this, remind me to tell you about it one day.”
Roxie looked at Greeley and had an idea. “Do you think that you could transport all of the campers outside the ship?” she asked the ghost.
“I could take two or three,” he said, “but not all of them. Even if I could, we would still need to cut them loose. We’d have to be connected in a circle.”
“We need another knife or a pair of sharp scissors,” Roxie said. “We’ll never make it in time otherwise.”
“I’ll go look,” Einstein volunteered.
As he started for the door, Roxie called to him. He turned and she tossed him her blaster. “Be careful, comrade.”
Cha p te r
E
Day Eight — 2:00 P.M. instein jogged down to the main cabin of the ship and qui-etly looked around. He saw a sharp object that looked like a pair of scissors sitting on one of the consoles, but they were impossible to get at without being seen. Big Al was sitting in the middle of the room, leaning back in his swivel chair with both feet resting on the control panel. He seemed preoccupied. Every few seconds, he would look at his watch and stare at the control panel. Einstein used the opportunity to sneak into the control room and hide beneath one of the empty stations.
“Who’s there?” Big Al said, noticing a movement out of the corner of his eye. He drew his blaster and looked around the room. Big Al looked at his watch again.
In less than thirty seconds Mucho Fahn would make con-tact. Once Big Al confirmed that the mission was complete and it was safe, Mucho Fahn would provide him with the coordi-nates. That would leave exactly thirty minutes before the force field surrounded the barn. The plasma shield was designed to contain the damage to the immediate area around the barn during liftoff. There was no sense destroying Earth in t
he pro-cess of a routine kidnapping. Once the force field was engaged, the wormhole would open and the ship would be transported millions of miles through space in a matter of seconds. Big Al smiled. In a few more days he’d be kicking back on the blue beaches of the planet Pomdor. While he sipped Flaming Purple Peacocks at his leisure, his money would be earning a cool eight percent. Whoever said that crime didn’t pay wasn’t very good at it.
The red button on the control panel lit up, indicating that the transmission had begun. Big Al put on the headset and listened to the voice on the other end.
“Do you have my monsters?” Mucho Fahn asked. He was direct and to the point, as always.
“All of them,” Big Al replied, “and some new material for you to review.”
“More Earth stories?” Mucho replied. “How interesting.”
The “Earth stories” Mucho was referring to were movies. Big Al had brought old black-and-white monster classics back to Mucho Fahn the last time he was on the planet. He knew that they would fascinate Mucho even if he didn’t fully comprehend that they were only make-believe.
Mucho Fahn had been watching the same movies for over forty years. With the passing of each year, his desire to add the monsters from the “Earth stories” to his zoo had increased until it became an obsession. He was willing to pay a prince’s ransom for each and every werewolf, mummy, and vampire that Big Al could capture. The problem was that they didn’t exist other than on film.