“Don’t move,” Homer whispered to Hercules. Then he thought about this “not moving” idea, and it didn’t seem so good. “Maybe we should run.”
“No,” Lorelei said. “They attack if you run.”
How would she know that? Lorelei had spent her life living in The City, selling soup from a soup cart and sneaking into movie theaters and museums. What made her an expert on bears? But, on the other hand, Lorelei had proven to have a keen instinct for survival.
Sticks and moss hung from the bear’s dense fur. Its nose glistened like a wet river rock. Having never stood face-to-face with the king of the forest, Homer was unprepared for the stench that wafted his way. If a perfumer were to describe the odor, he might say, “The base is wet dog with undertones of decay and high notes of rotten fish gut.” In other words—super stink.
Dog growled louder. His feet splayed, he pointed his long body at the bear like an arrow. Homer wanted to reach for the leash but didn’t dare. “What do we do?” Hercules whispered.
“I think we should walk away,” Homer whispered back. “Very, very slowly.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not leaving,” Lorelei said. Someone looking on might have thought that Lorelei and Homer were practicing to be ventriloquists the way they held their faces in a frozen grimace, their words slipping out between unmoving lips. “This is the spot. X marks the spot. The membership coin is here somewhere.”
The hairs on Dog’s neck bristled as he growled louder.
Homer tightened his jaw to stop the quivering. “But we have to get out of here.”
“You’re going to give up membership just because of a bear?”
Was she crazy? “I’m not giving up membership,” Homer said, so afraid to move that he barely breathed. “I just think that our lives are more important than the coin.”
“I want that coin,” she said, balling her fists with determination. “And no stupid bear’s gonna stop me.”
“But, Lorelei—”
Hercules, still sitting on the ground, tapped Homer’s shin. “Could you two debate this later? We’re about to be eaten.”
The bear opened its mouth. Teeth, lots and lots of teeth, dripping with saliva, protruded from a vacuous hole as the mouth opened wider. A roar, deep as a bass drum and loud as a fighter jet, filled the clearing. The bear’s fur rippled as the magnificent roar reached its crescendo. Homer’s heart thumped in his throat. Lorelei took a quick step back, then another, pulling Dog along with her. “Okay, I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “We need to get out of here.”
That’s when Daisy the rat scurried into the scene, her long, rubbery tail held high. Carrying the granola bar in her teeth, she darted left and right as if incapable of walking in a straight line. She stopped at one of the bear’s front paws. Entranced by the new odor, she dropped her precious granola bar and sniffed the paw. The bear closed its mouth, dropped onto all fours, and licked the granola bar.
Food, Homer thought. “Lorelei, do you have any more granola bars?”
“Maybe, but I need them. They’re the only food I brought.”
She was completely crazy. “That bear is hungry,” Homer said. “Give it all the granola bars and we can get out of here.”
“Fine,” Lorelei said. “But they’re in my backpack.”
“Be careful,” Hercules whispered.
As the bear ate the granola bar, Homer crept forward. Lorelei’s backpack hung on her back. As Homer unzipped the main compartment, Dog stuck his head between Homer’s shins. His trembling could be felt through Homer’s leech-proof socks. “It’s okay,” Homer whispered. Slowly reaching into the backpack, Homer found the clue box, identical to his own, the two scrolls and the plastic honey bear. “Hey, what about this?” He grabbed the honey bear. As the grizzly licked its lips, Homer stepped in front of Lorelei and Dog. “Get ready to run,” he said. Hercules got to his feet. Lorelei clutched Dog’s leash.
“One,” Homer said as he pulled open the honey bear’s lid. He squeezed its plastic belly. The sticky syrup oozed out. The grizzly sniffed, catching the sweet scent. “Two,” Homer said as he held out the honey bear like an offering. The grizzly raised its head. “Three!” Homer tossed the honey bear. The grizzly caught the little plastic version of itself between its slipper-size paws. It licked the lid and a soft purring sound came from its throat. “Now,” Homer said.
They ran out of the clearing, back into the dense forest. Homer expected any moment to be swatted from behind. Struggling to keep up with the others, he bashed his shoulder on a tree and lost his Panama hat to a low-hanging branch. But there was no time to stop. The only thing on his mind was getting as far away from the bear as possible. And that’s why he forgot all about the booby traps.
And why he landed in a hole, right on top of Hercules and Dog.
“Get off me!” Lorelei cried from the bottom of the pile. Pushing Dog away, she pulled herself free and shot to her feet. “I can’t believe we fell into one of these stupid traps!” She kicked the dirt wall. “I can’t believe it!”
Dog licked Homer’s face. Homer slid off Hercules. His shoulder throbbed and his tailbone still hurt. He ran his hands over Dog to make sure he was okay. While happy to once again scratch his best friend’s rump, he wanted to kick the dirt wall, too. So he did. He scrambled to his feet and gave it a huge kick. Falling into a booby trap one time was bad enough. But twice?
“I can’t believe I’m in another stupid hole,” he cried.
“It’s all your fault,” Lorelei said, pointing her finger right in Homer’s face. Her freckles were smudged with dirt.
“My fault?” He pointed right back. “I was following you.”
“Yeah? Well don’t follow me.”
“Don’t take my dog and I won’t follow you.”
Hercules moaned and grabbed his ankle. “I landed on this tree root. I think my ankle’s broken.”
“What?” Homer’s arm fell to his side. “Broken?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Lorelei said. “Well, I guess that means you two won’t be getting out of here.”
“We’ll get out of here,” Homer said, pointing his finger again. “Believe me, we’ll get out of here and we’ll get out of here before you get out of here.”
“Oh really?” She stuck out her lower lip. “I wouldn’t be in this stupid predicament if you hadn’t told me to run.”
“What are you talking about? I saved your life,” Homer said. “You should be saying, ‘Thanks, Homer, thanks for saving my life.’ ”
Lorelei narrowed her eyes. For the briefest of moments he thought she might actually thank him. But then she folded her arms. “I should have stayed up there. While that bear was eating the honey, I could have been searching for the coin.”
“Then you should have stayed there.” He folded his arm. “Why don’t you go back there? I don’t care.”
“I will. I will go back there. Because I’m going to get that coin. You’ll see.”
“Urrr.” Dog poked Homer’s shin with his nose.
“Hello?” Hercules said, cradling his leg in his hands. “Broken ankle, remember?”
Homer and Lorelei knelt beside Hercules. After rolling up his pant leg and inspecting his ankle, which had turned red and was beginning to swell, everyone agreed that it was, indeed, broken. Dog watched worriedly, his chin resting on Hercules’s knee. “What are we going to do?” Homer asked.
A clump of dirt tumbled off the dirt wall. Everyone looked up. Daisy the rat peered over the edge of the booby trap. Then, nose first, she scurried down the wall, her little claws clinging to the dirt as if she were weightless. Lorelei picked her up and set her on her shoulder. Then she looked long and hard at the boys. “You guys are a mess.”
It was true. Hercules’s rugby shirt was torn in two places. Strands of dried seaweed, from the night on the beach, clung to both their shirts, along with clumps of moss. Scratches from the forest covered their necks, hands, and faces, along with the welts from the mosquito attack.
Lorelei ran her hand over her hair. A bunch of leaves and twigs fell out. “Guess I’m a mess, too.” She smiled.
A flash of memory hit Homer. The first time he’d met Lorelei on the streets of The City, she’d smiled at him just like that. She’d shared her tomato soup and crackers from her soup cart. She’d shown him her secret room in the back of the soup warehouse. They’d been friends. That’s what he’d thought.
Hercules moaned again. “It’s throbbing with pain,” he said. “I need to get to a hospital.”
“Hey?” Homer leaped to his feet with a sudden flash of hope. “Where’s Zelda? She’ll get us out of here. ZELDA!” he called.
“ZELDA!” Hercules cried. “HELP! ZELDA!”
“She’s not here,” Lorelei said. She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked away.
“Of course she’s here. I saw the cloudcopter.” Homer cupped his hands around his mouth. “ZELDA!”
“HOWOOOO!”
“I left her in Gloomy Moor.”
“What?” Hercules winced. “But she’s supposed to be on the quest with you. I went with Homer. She’s supposed to go with you. That’s the deal.”
“She was supposed to provide me with transportation. I took the cloudcopter when she wasn’t looking.” Lorelei slid her backpack off her shoulders. “Zelda is loyal to Homer. I don’t trust her for a minute.”
“But she took an oath to follow the rules of L.O.S.T.,” Homer said. “She wouldn’t break it. Zelda would never do that.”
“Do you really believe that?” Lorelei searched the side pocket of her backpack. “The moment Zelda saw you in trouble, she’d break her oath. If your life was ever in danger, she’d abandon me in a heartbeat. Oaths are ridiculous. You only keep them as long as they’re easy.”
Homer frowned. Lorelei didn’t know Zelda the way he did. “Everyone who joins L.O.S.T. has to take an oath, Lorelei. And they have to stick to it.”
“You don’t have to stick to anything you don’t want to stick to.”
“Maybe you don’t, but you shouldn’t break an oath if you want to live your life with hon… hon…” Homer tried to remember the word.
“Honorificabilitudinity,” Hercules said.
Lorelei snorted. “I want to live my life the way I want to live it. And no oath is going to get in my way.” She pulled a rope from the side pocket. “Here’s what we do. I’m the lightest one here. If I stand on Homer’s shoulders, I’ll be able to reach the top and pull myself out of the hole. Then I’ll tie this rope to a tree and you can climb out.” Homer and Hercules shared a knowing look. “What? You don’t trust me? Do you have a better idea?”
Even if he did trust her, which he didn’t, Homer had yet to master the skill of rope climbing. But Hercules was incredibly strong. “Do you think you can do it?” Homer asked him. “Even with the broken ankle? Do you think you could pull yourself out, then me and Dog?” Hercules nodded. “Okay, Lorelei, we’ll try it. But you can’t leave us here. Hercules has to get to a hospital.”
“I know that.” Lorelei threw the rope over her shoulder.
Dog, who’d been walking around the perimeter of the trap, dragging his blue leash behind him, began to sniff the ground. Hercules didn’t take notice, for what is unusual about a dog sniffing the ground? Sniffing the ground is an incredibly ordinary thing for a dog to do. Except, of course, if the dog can’t smell.
Both Homer and Lorelei inhaled a quick, excited breath. Daisy scampered down Lorelei’s arm and jumped onto the ground. She sat on her hind legs and watched, her whiskers alert.
Dog snuffled, then rubbed his back against the wall. Lorelei reached for Dog’s leash, but Homer grabbed it first, flashing a quick, triumphant smile. Dirt flew as Dog furiously dug into the wall.
“Hey,” Hercules said, turning away from the flying dirt. “Don’t let him do that. That wall might cave in.”
But Homer wasn’t about to stop Dog, nor was Lorelei. “He’s found it,” she whispered, her eyes sparkling. “It’s behind this wall.”
34
Tunnel to Nowhere
The ferocity with which Dog dug treasure always amazed Homer. How could those stubby legs move so quickly?
“Ur, ur, ur, ur, ur,” Dog grunted, digging as if his life depended upon it—as if he were starving and about to uncover the world’s juiciest mammoth bone.
“The wall’s crumbling,” Hercules cried, scooting as far away as he could, which, in the tight space, was only a few inches. “We’ll get buried alive. Why don’t you make him stop?”
“Stop being such a chicken,” Lorelei said. She stepped back as a section of wall landed at her feet. A gap appeared in the wall. Dog stuck his head into the gap, then dug until he could fit his entire body through. As soon as he was all the way through, Daisy followed. Clutching the leash, Homer got on his knees and reached his arm after Dog. “I think there’s a tunnel back there.”
“A tunnel?” Lorelei opened her backpack and pulled out a flashlight. She tried to push past Homer, but he blocked the way.
“No, you don’t. He’s my dog. I’m going first.”
“Oh really?” Lorelei said. “Then where’s your flashlight?”
“It’s in my backpack.”
Lorelei smirked. “So where’s your backpack?”
“I dropped it when I jumped out of the plane.”
“Right. You jumped out of a plane.”
“He did,” Hercules said. “He jumped out of a plane. We all did.”
Lorelei’s eyes widened. “Really? I’ve always wanted to jump out of a plane.” She looked at her flashlight, then shrugged and handed it to Homer. He switched it on and stuck his head through the wall.
“Yep, there’s a tunnel, tall enough to stand in,” he reported. Dog, desperate to get down the tunnel, made little choking sounds as he pulled on the leash.
“Where does it go?” Lorelei asked, pushing on Homer’s shoulder as she tried to get a view. “Can you see?”
“I can’t see very far, but it must go somewhere. Maybe it’s the way out. Come on.”
“No way,” Hercules said. “I’m not going into a tunnel. What if the ceiling caves in? I don’t have my helmet.”
Homer thought about his Panama hat, now swinging from the end of a branch. Mr. Tuffletop had probably lined the hat with some sort of protective shield or maybe a motion detector that would warn him of an imminent cave-in. “You stay with Hercules,” he told Lorelei. “I’ll go in.”
“Why should I stay with him?” she asked. “You stay with him. He’s your friend.”
Homer looked back at Hercules. Hercules hadn’t wanted to go on this quest. He could have stayed in the safety of his bedroom with his dictionaries and little carts of food. But he’d come with Homer out of a sense of honor. Many a friendship had been built on far less than that.
And he’d saved Dog’s life! He was his friend.
Hercules groaned and grabbed his leg.
Homer tightened his grip on the flashlight. “We need to get Hercules out of here. We don’t know where this tunnel leads, so let’s use the rope like we planned. We can get Hercules to the beach to meet his butler. Then you and I can come back here with Dog.”
“Leave and then come back?” Lorelei shook her head. “No, we can’t do that. We’re so close. Look how Dog’s tugging on the leash. He smells it.” She whispered those last three words right in Homer’s ear.
“We’re helping Hercules first,” Homer said.
Lorelei opened her mouth and was about to say something when a honey bear landed at her feet. Mangled and torn open, the plastic bear had been licked clean. The stench of rotten fish descended into the hole, along with a gust of hot air.
Hercules whimpered.
The grizzly lay at the top of the booby trap, licking the last remnants of honey from its lips. It reached into the hole, swiping its paw at Lorelei’s backpack. Lorelei squealed and squeezed through the gap in the wall. Hercules needed no further convincing. Dragging his leg, he scooted t
oward the gap. The grizzly hung its head into the hole and growled.
Homer crawled through the gap. With the leash’s handle wrapped around his wrist, he dropped the flashlight, reached out, grabbed Hercules by the arms, and pulled. With a push of his good foot, Hercules propelled himself through the gap and landed on his back inside the tunnel.
“You okay?” Homer asked.
“I’m alive,” Hercules said. He sat up. “Where are we now?”
Lorelei picked up the flashlight and ran its beam over the stone walls, which glistened and dripped with water. “Whoever dug the booby traps didn’t dig this place,” she said.
“Might be some kind of cave system,” Homer said. Light filtered in through the gap in the wall, which turned out to be a hollow spot between two enormous tree roots.
Lorelei pointed the beam up the tunnel, where it bounced off a slab of granite. “Dead end.”
“Ack.” Dog choked as he pulled on the leash. Lorelei swung around and pointed the flashlight beam at Dog. Straining at the edge of his collar, he pumped his front legs and pointed his nose down the tunnel. “Ack, ack, ack.”
“Why is Dog acting like that?” Hercules asked.
Homer held fast to the leash. “He probably needs to piddle.”
“Yeah, piddle.” Lorelei squeezed past Homer. “Let’s go.”
“What if this leads to the bear’s cave?” Hercules asked. “And what if the bear has cubs?”
Lorelei pointed the flashlight in Hercules’s face. “What makes you think the bear has cubs? Did you see a cub?”
“No.”
She groaned. “Jeez, you scared me.” She dropped the beam. “Stop worrying about everything. You’re making me start to worry.”
A frustrated growl shot through the gap as the bear stuck its head deeper into the booby trap.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?” Homer asked as Hercules struggled onto his good foot.
“I think I can limp.” He took a step, then cried out. “No. That won’t work. I can’t walk.”
“You can piggyback him,” Lorelei said. “I’ll take Dog.”
Smells Like Treasure Page 20