by Stuart Gibbs
“You said this wouldn’t happen!” the driver yelled. He had a strong accent that I immediately recognized; he was the receptionist who had answered the phone at the paleontology lab.
“It wouldn’t have happened if you idiots hadn’t taken so many breaks!” That was the fake Dr. Chen. Her voice was a bit more shrill and nasally now, as though she had been acting all the times we had spoken to her before.
“It’s not like we were carrying a bunch of throw pillows!” the receptionist said angrily. “That skull weighs a quarter of a ton!”
“I was carrying things too!” fake Dr. Chen snapped. “And you don’t hear me whining about it.”
I now noticed there were some other items tumbling around the back of the truck with me: two medium-size blobs wrapped in plaster. The longer one had HUMERUS written on it in Sharpie, while the bulkier one said ISCHIUM. Additional bones. That was probably what fake Dr. Chen had been carrying. As if making off with only the skull hadn’t been enough, she had swiped a few extra pieces of Minerva from the dig.
I turned my attention to the skull itself. The plaster had eroded during its time in the river, but still remained mostly intact, save for a few small holes here and there through which I could see what might have been rock or bone. I assumed that meant Minerva was still in good shape.
We hooked through another turn, going so fast the bones and I were thrown against the inside wall of the U-Haul.
The minivan stayed right on our bumper, tires squealing on the road. The driver and the other four thieves inside the van were glaring at me menacingly.
“We just made a right,” I informed my parents, looking out the back of the truck. “By a really big oak tree. Are the police on their way?” I asked.
“We haven’t even talked to them yet,” Mom said sourly. “We’re still on hold.”
My phone buzzed. It was Summer. “Can you guys hold on?” I asked my parents. “I’ve got another call.”
“And you’re taking it now?!” Mom asked.
I didn’t bother arguing. I simply switched calls. “Hey—” I began, intending to tell Summer what was going on.
Only, she had news of her own she couldn’t wait to share with me. “I just heard from Rick. The shipment’s coming in now!”
“Now?” I repeated. “Like right now?”
“Ten minutes from now. He actually called a little while ago, but I missed it because I was in the shower. Where are you? It sounds like you’re in a tunnel or something.”
“I’m in the back of a truck,” I said. “With the dinosaur skull.”
“You found it?!” Summer exclaimed.
“Yes. But we haven’t quite recovered it yet. We’re kind of in the midst of a high-speed chase.”
“You always get to have all the fun,” Summer said.
“This isn’t fun!” I told her, then yelped as we took another turn and my feet went out from under me.
The giant skull pitched to the side. The ropes holding it groaned ominously under its weight.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“What now?” Summer asked.
Both ropes snapped with loud cracks, allowing the skull to roll free around the back of the U-Haul. To my chagrin, the first direction it rolled was toward me. I scrambled out of the way as it thudded into the wall of the truck, hitting so hard that it left a dent.
“What was that?” fake Dr. Chen exclaimed in alarm from the cab.
“I have to go!” I told Summer. “Get to Snakes Alive!”
“I’m already on my way!” she told me. “Daddy’s driving me! And I called Tommy Lopez too. But he’s an hour away.”
I dodged to the left as the giant skull tumbled through the truck toward me again. I probably should have been focused on not getting crushed, but Summer’s statement had alarmed me. “An hour away? He’ll miss catching the guy making the delivery!”
“Maybe there’s a way I can slow them down!” Summer told me. “You deal with your thing. I’ll deal with this!” Then she hung up before I could ask how she intended to deal with it.
That concerned me, although I didn’t have time to worry about it. We made another turn and the skull came tumbling back through the U-Haul again. I dodged, but not quite fast enough. The skull grazed my leg as it rolled by.
“I think something’s loose back there,” fake Dr. Chen said in the cab.
“Should we stop?” the receptionist asked.
“No way,” fake Chen replied. “We can’t let them catch us.”
I returned to the phone call with my parents. “Mom, Dad, I’m back. But I’m in trouble. The skull is loose and rolling around in the truck with me.”
“What?” Mom gasped, horrified.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Dad said. “We’re coming as fast as we can.”
There was a slight shift in the ground below me. We had started to go up a hill. Unfortunately, the skull was now near the cab of the U-Haul while I was by the rear, meaning that as the truck tilted upward, the skull would come my way fast. Plus, the back of the truck was still wide open, meaning there was nothing to stop the skull—or me—from falling out into the road.
The skull started rolling toward me.
It would have been safest for me to simply jump out of the way and let the skull roll out of the truck, but I doubted it would survive tumbling down the hill—or smashing into the pursuing minivan. And if it was destroyed, then it would be lost to science in the same way as if it had been stolen.
So I dove for the rope that controlled the roll-down door.
At the same time, the hill suddenly got much steeper. My momentum picked up rapidly—as did that of the skull. It careened through the U-Haul like an enormous, prehistoric bowling ball.
In the minivan directly behind us, everyone’s eyes went wide in terror as they saw the skull coming for them. The driver swerved off the road to avoid it.
I nearly went flying out the door ahead of the skull, but managed to snag the rope. My weight yanked on the door, which dropped down quickly.
Then I threw myself against the wall of the U-Haul to avoid being flattened.
The door didn’t make it all the way down before the skull slammed into it. There was still a two-foot gap left. The door crumpled and part of it ripped off its track, but it held firm enough to keep Minerva from escaping.
The impact shook the U-Haul and made it veer wildly.
Out in the road behind us, I heard a screech of tires and a crash. I peered through the gap under the door and caught a glimpse of the minivan smashed into an oak tree on the side of the road.
The U-Haul evened out as we reached the hilltop, and then tilted steeply in the other direction as we started down the other side of the hill.
For a few seconds the skull remained wedged into the busted door at the back of the truck. And then gravity took over. The skull pulled free, skittered back through the U-Haul, and slammed into the wall behind the cab hard enough to put a two-foot dent in it.
I heard a cry of surprise from the receptionist and a groan of pain from fake Dr. Chen. The U-Haul skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the road. “Alice!” the receptionist yelled, sounding panicked. I figured that was fake Dr. Chen’s real name. “Alice! Speak to me!”
There was no response from Alice.
“Dang it,” the receptionist said, not sounding concerned so much as annoyed. “Stupid skull.” I heard him turn off the engine, then open his door and jump down out of the cab.
I figured he was coming to see what the situation was with the skull. Which meant he was going to look into the back of the U-Haul and find me there.
I didn’t know anything about the receptionist except that he was a thief, and thus probably a jerk, and I didn’t want to be in the back of the truck when he got there. There was no exit besides the rear door, so if I stayed where I was, I’d be trapped.
The gap at the base of the broken door was just big enough for me to fit through. I slipped underneath and circled around the U-Haul on the pass
enger side, going the opposite way from the receptionist.
As I did, I glanced back at the minivan. Smoke billowed from under the smashed hood. The van was totaled. The thieves all seemed to be fine, however. They were all getting out, yelling at one another, angry about how everything was going wrong.
One of them spotted me, pointed my way, and yelled, “Stop that kid!”
On the other side of the U-Haul, I heard the receptionist pause and yell back, confused, “What kid?”
All the thieves started running my way.
I ran past the front of the U-Haul. Alice, the fake Dr. Chen, was slumped against the passenger door, unconscious. The big dent the skull had put in the back of the cab was directly behind where her head would have been. It appeared that Alice had been knocked cold by Minerva.
The road ahead of the U-Haul sloped downward through a forest. Since I was at the crest of a hill, I could see far ahead; there wasn’t another turn or junction for miles. It was one of those long, lonely Texas backcountry roads that almost no one ever drove on. Barbed-wire fences ran along both shoulders, indicating that I was between two ranches. My chances to outrun all the thieves on foot and get to safety weren’t good.
There was only one secure place I could think of.
I scrambled around the cab of the truck. The driver’s side door still hung open.
The receptionist was still by the rear of the U-Haul, trying to understand what was going on. He was a skinny guy with wiry hair and glasses who gaped in surprise when he saw me.
I climbed into the cab, slammed the door, and locked it.
Fake Dr. Chen moaned.
The receptionist ran back to the door and banged on it angrily. “Get out of there, you stupid kid!” he shouted.
In the side-view mirrors, I could see the other thieves running my way. They all looked angry too.
The keys to the U-Haul were still in the cab. The receptionist had left them there.
I now had a way to get away from all the bad guys and take the skull with me.
Of course, there was one big problem: I had never driven a truck. The only time I had ever driven at all was on Sage’s ranch, and that was merely puttering along his driveway at ten miles an hour.
But I still knew the basics of driving. And driving seemed like a much better option than staying where I was. The thieves and the receptionist all looked like they would be perfectly happy to drag me from the truck and cause me some serious bodily harm.
So I started the truck.
“No!” the receptionist yelled. “Do not do this! If you start driving, I will kill you!”
I inspected the steering wheel and the gear shift of the U-Haul. They looked similar enough to the ones on Sage’s old car.
I put the truck into drive. It instantly started creeping forward, due to gravity.
The receptionist ran alongside it, banging on the door. “Pull this truck over right now!” he demanded.
I didn’t. Instead, I veered back onto the road. The truck was more sluggish than Sage’s car had been, but I was already getting the hang of things. I placed my foot lightly on the gas pedal. The speedometer moved up slightly, to ten miles an hour, and the receptionist dropped away, screaming curses at me.
In the side-view mirrors, the looks on the thieves’ faces went from anger to surprise and concern.
I sped up to twenty miles an hour, which seemed good enough, and drove on for a minute, leaving the thieves and the receptionist behind.
Then I stopped the truck on the shoulder of the road and got back on my phone. “Mom? Dad? Are you still there?”
“We are!” Mom exclaimed, thrilled to hear from me again. “Where are you now?”
“I’ve taken the truck from them,” I replied.
There was a pause. “Did you say you’ve taken the truck?” Dad asked.
“Yeah.” I looked in the side-view mirrors again. The thieves and the receptionist were all running after me. I was a few hundred yards away from them, but I realized I would still be safer if I kept moving. I looked down the long road ahead; in the distance, I could see a single billboard. It was too far to read, but I could make out the image on it: the head of a cobra. Suddenly, an idea came to me. “Have you guys been in touch with the police yet?”
“Yes!” Mom said. “They’re trying to find you! Just like we are!”
“I’ll make it easier for everyone,” I said. “Call them back and tell them to go to Snakes Alive.”
24 TOTAL CHAOS
Right after I told my parents where to go, the call dropped. As I had feared, the cell phone service was extremely weak out on that desolate road. That provided me with one advantage: Maybe the thieves couldn’t make calls either, which would mean they would be stranded out there until I could send the police for them.
However, no cell phone service meant I couldn’t use the GPS on my phone. But then, I didn’t need my GPS to find Snakes Alive. I simply had to follow the billboards.
The way I figured it, the police wanted to recover the dinosaur skull, and if I could lure them to Snakes Alive with it, then maybe they could bust the reptile smuggler too.
I started up the U-Haul again. The thieves were still coming down the road after me. In the side-view mirrors, I watched their faces fill with dismay as I drove off, leaving them in the dust once again.
I headed down the road at thirty miles an hour, which seemed like the maximum speed I should attempt, given that I’d never had any driving lessons.
At that speed, it took me two minutes to get to the billboard with the cobra on it. It sat at the junction of two roads and announced that Snakes Alive was only seven miles away. I turned and headed for it.
Driving the U-Haul turned out to be easier than I had expected—at least on long country roads with few turns and even fewer cars—and I was getting the hang of it quickly. Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure how long the smuggler would be at Snakes Alive. So I stepped on the gas and increased my speed.
The skull seemed to have wedged itself into the wall of the cab, so it wasn’t rolling around anymore. Fake Dr. Chen remained blissfully unconscious, although she did startle me at one point by sleepily murmuring, “I swim, but the potatoes come.”
The only real challenge arose when I reached the highway. Thankfully, I only needed to drive on the access road, which moved much slower, but I was still encountering traffic for the first time. My first merge onto a road with other drivers resulted in a chorus of angry honks and shouts and one middle finger aimed in my direction—although I knew from watching drivers in the FunJungle parking lot that this was extremely common. I continued onward, white-knuckling the wheel, and managed to get within sight of Snakes Alive without enraging too many more drivers.
The sound of sirens echoed along the road. In the side-view mirrors, I saw three police cars far behind me, bubble lights flashing. For a moment, I feared they were coming to bust me, then realized they were heading to Snakes Alive, as I had requested. So I kept on driving that way, hoping to get there at the same time.
It was still relatively early in the day. Snakes Alive wasn’t open yet, so the parking lot was empty—except for two vehicles.
One was a beat-up old pickup that I realized, with concern, belonged to Vance Jessup. (Vance was technically only two grades above me, but he had been held back a grade several times, which made him old enough to drive.)
The second vehicle was a midsize cargo truck almost the exact same size and shape as the U-Haul I was driving. It was parked so that the rear faced a side door of Snakes Alive. The smuggler’s truck, I guessed.
I didn’t see any of the McCrackens’ cars. Apparently, I had beaten Summer there.
Rick and the smuggler were moving back and forth between the truck and Snakes Alive. The smuggler was a young guy with long, stringy hair and heavily tattooed arms. They were carrying large plastic tubs like the kind Rick had kept reptiles in. I assumed that each one had a smuggled reptile in it.
Tim and Jim Barksdale were followi
ng them.
Everyone looked up, surprised, at the sound of the police sirens.
The police cars had almost caught up to me. I started to pull off the road to let them pass.
Then fake Dr. Chen woke up.
Her eyes snapped open, then widened even farther when she saw I was at the wheel. “You!” she exclaimed, then desperately tried to make sense of things, although she was still dazed and groggy. “What are you…? How did we…? Where are…?” She trailed off, hearing the sirens. “Cops! We need to get out of here!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m stopping.”
“No!” Fake Dr. Chen was either scared stiff or not thinking straight after her accident. Possibly both. She seized the wheel of the U-Haul and tried to steer me back onto the road, sliding over and slamming her own foot down on the gas pedal.
Meanwhile, the tattooed smuggler was also frightened by the approaching police. He dropped the plastic tub he was carrying, leaped into the cab of his truck, and started to drive away, not even bothering to lower his own roll-down rear door first.
I stomped on the brake at the same time fake Dr. Chen was trying to speed us up. The U-Haul swerved into the parking lot while the police cars came flying around us. The smuggler, who was trying to speed away, did his best to avoid us, but we sideswiped his truck, making him veer wildly. He smashed into the fence of the Snakes Alive petting zoo, tearing it from the ground.
All the fainting goats immediately passed out.
The smuggler’s truck then clipped the corner of the hyena paddock. A smart person would have realized the game was up and hit the brakes, but the smuggler was desperate and made a last-ditch effort to try to speed across the parking lot of Jerk-ee’s. The police cars cut him off and he lost control of his truck once more, crashing right through the grand entrance of the giant convenience store.
Despite the early hour, there were already plenty of customers at Jerk-ee’s. They fled for cover as the truck smashed through the front windows.
My own U-Haul stopped with far less fanfare, spinning out right by the petting zoo, where two dozen regular, non-fainting goats, and the single, ornery llama, had just discovered their freedom and were scattering into the parking lot. Before fake Dr. Chen could try to speed off again, I turned the truck off, took the keys, and leaped out.