by Dan Gutman
And what about Mrs. Higgins? What about those crazy bowler dudes? What about the other Genius Files kids who might be gunning for them so they could claim the million dollars?
And what about Dr. Warsaw? Maybe he had survived the fall and was out there somewhere, concocting more intricate secret messages and plans to kill them.
As the twins walked back to their room to pack up their stuff and check out of the motel, two maids were blocking the hallway with big carts loaded up with towels, cleaning supplies, and those little plastic shampoo bottles they leave in the rooms.
“Excuse me,” Pep said politely, assuming that would be enough to send the message that they needed to get past.
The maids didn’t turn around. One was holding a broom and the other was fiddling with a vacuum cleaner.
“Pardon me,” Coke said, a little more forcefully. “We need to get to our room.”
“No speakee Engleesh,” said one of the maids in a vague accent.
Coke rolled his eyes and pushed his way past the two carts, and gestured for Pep to follow him. That’s when both maids clapped their hands over the twins’ mouths and grabbed them forcefully from behind.
“What the—”
“Keep your mouth shut and you won’t get hurt!” one of the “maids” grunted in a male voice as Pep tried to bite the hand over her mouth.
“Let us go!” Pep tried to holler.
The maids dragged Coke and Pep roughly down the hall and used a key to open a door with no room number on it. Then they shoved the twins into the room, followed them inside, and slammed the door behind them. It was a storage room, with racks filled with towels on the walls.
“Who are you?” Pep demanded. “What do you want from us?”
The maids ripped wigs off their heads and smiled broadly.
“Mya!” yelled Pep.
“Bones!” yelled Coke.
Now, if you had read The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable, you would know who Bones and Mya are. If you didn’t read that book, well, maybe next time you’ll listen when I tell you to do something.
Bones was the custodian at the twins’ school who had watched over them and initiated them into The Genius Files program. Mya was also on The Genius Files team. It was Mya who had given them wingsuits so they would survive their plunge over the cliff back home in California.
There were hugs all around. The twins were grateful to see them, even if Bones did look a little strange wearing a maid’s uniform.
“Do you work here at the motel?” Pep asked.
“Of course they don’t work here, you dope!” Coke said. “They’re disguised as maids so people won’t know who they really are.”
“We’re undercover,” Bones said. “I’m glad to see you two are alive and well.”
“Barely,” Pep said. “Yesterday this crazy teenager trapped us in a giant french fry cage and tried to drop us into boiling oil. What a way to celebrate our birthday.”
“Happy birthday!” Mya said cheerfully. “We wanted to get you presents, but we didn’t have time.”
“Saving our lives would have been a nice present,” Coke said as he pulled the ticket to the french fry simulator out of his pocket and showed it to Bones and Mya.
“‘Hated day happy,’” Bones read off the ticket. “What do you think that means?”
“I figured it out,” Pep said. “It means ‘happy death day.’”
“This teenager who tried to kill you,” Mya said. “What did he look like?”
“He was kind of nerdy-looking, chubby, and he had bright red hair,” Pep told them. “Like Archie, from the comics.”
Bones and Mya looked at each other.
“Archie Clone,” they said together.
“You know that kid?” Coke said.
“Oh yeah,” Bones said. “We know him. The Genius Files kid. The renegade.”
“This is precisely the reason why Dr. Warsaw had to end The Genius Files program,” Mya told them. “He thought he would simply recruit genius kids from all over the country to solve America’s problems, and they would do whatever he told them. But kids don’t always do what we grown-ups tell them to do. And geniuses like Archie Clone, well, you never know what crazy thing they might do.”
“We suspect that he might be criminally insane,” Bones added.
“Kids made fun of him at school,” Coke said. “Maybe that’s what messed him up.”
“How did Archie Clone get that big truck?” Pep asked. “And all that french fry apparatus? It must have cost somebody a fortune.”
“He figured out a way,” Bones said. “He’s a very bright and resourceful young man. Some say he’s trying to follow in Dr. Warsaw’s footsteps. He may be trying to take over The Genius Files program now that Dr. Warsaw is gone.”
“He told us he was going to kill off all The Genius Files kids,” Pep said, “so that when he turns twenty-one, he’ll be the only one left and he’ll get to keep the million dollars.”
Bones whistled.
“Did he say anything else?”
Coke and Pep thought back, trying to remember anything Archie Clone had said that might be important. Pep couldn’t think of anything, but suddenly Coke snapped his fingers.
“He did say two things.”
“What?”
“One, he collects hats,” Coke said, “and two, he said he had to give us the tour right away because he was on his way to Washington.”
“Washington, D.C., or Washington State?” Mya asked.
“He didn’t say,” Coke replied.
“Probably D.C.,” Bones said.
“That’s where we’re heading,” Pep said.
“So are we,” said Mya. “We’ve got to stop him before he hurts anybody.”
“How are we going to do that?” asked Coke.
“We don’t know,” Bones replied.
“How are we going to find him?” asked Pep.
“We don’t know that either,” replied Mya.
“You don’t know a whole lot, do you?” said Coke.
“We’ll be in touch,” Bones said. “You kids can relax now. Try to enjoy your vacation. Have fun with your parents. Mya and I will head for Washington. Hopefully this whole thing will be over before you get there.”
“Can you give us a cell phone number or some way to reach you?” asked Pep.
“Too dangerous,” Mya replied. “We are constantly being monitored.”
“Here,” Bones said as he reached into the maid’s cart and handed the twins a plastic bag, “take some of these.”
“You’re giving us little bars of soap?” Pep asked as she looked into the bag.
“It’s not plain old soap, you dope!” Coke told her. “It’s exploding soap, right? You throw it at somebody and it can take their head off. Like a hand grenade. That stuff is cool.”
“It’s not exploding soap,” Bones told him.
“I know,” Coke said. “It’s special GPS soap. You plant it on somebody and then you can track them, even when they’re in the shower. And then it melts away without leaving a trace. How do you people come up with this stuff? It’s brilliant!”
“Uh, no,” said Mya, “there’s no such thing as GPS soap.”
“I know,” Coke said excitedly. “You put two of them over your eyes and they function as night-vision goggles, right?”
“It’s just soap,” Bones said wearily.
“What are we supposed to do with plain old soap?” Coke demanded.
“You wash yourselves with it,” Bones said. “I figured it might come in handy in your RV.”
“How do you expect us to save the world with little bars of soap?” Coke asked. “We need some weapons, and preferably cool weapons, like the kind they have in action movies.”
“We don’t have any cool weapons,” Mya said. “This is strictly a low-budget operation.”
“Hey, you’re the ones who are geniuses,” Bones told them. “You figure it out. We need to go now.”
“Before we leave I need
to ask you something,” Mya said. “Did you tell your parents anything about The Genius Files?”
“We tried to, but they didn’t believe us,” Pep replied.
“Good,” Mya said. “They must not know. Ever. If they find out, their lives will be in danger too.”
“Hey, one last thing we need to know before you go,” Coke said. “Is Dr. Warsaw dead or alive?”
“We think he’s dead, but we’re not sure,” Bones said. “We searched for his body in the woods around The House on the Rock, but by the time we got there, it was gone.”
“Good luck,” Mya said, hugging each of the twins. “Be careful. We are with you always.”
“If you’re with us,” Coke said, “you would give us some of those Frisbee grenades you have, or a flamethrower, or something that we could actually use to defend ourselves.”
“Goodness no,” said Mya. “That would be dangerous!”
“Then at least clean our room,” Pep said. “It’s a mess.”
Chapter 6
LET’S KILL TWO
Mrs. McDonald checked out of the motel while her husband loaded up the RV and consulted his road atlas. Everybody piled in and Dr. McDonald pulled onto I-294 South. Des Plaines is only about half an hour from downtown Chicago.
The kids amused themselves in the back while Mrs. McDonald fired up the GPS. Then she reclined her seat a few inches and began to leaf through an Illinois guidebook.
“Look, Ben,” Mrs. McDonald said, “the grave of Robert Earl Hughes is in Illinois.”
“Who was he?” Pep asked, not quite sure she wanted to know the answer.
“Robert Earl Hughes was the world’s heaviest man,” her mother explained. “He weighed over a thousand pounds. Poor guy. He was only thirty-two when he died. They say he was buried in a grand piano.”
Unfortunately, the grave site of this amazing man was in Benville, over four hours away. It was tempting to go there, but in life you have to set your priorities. Four hours would be a long drive to see a gravestone, even if it was the gravestone of somebody who was buried in a piano.
Equally tempting, at least for Mrs. McDonald, would have been a trip to see the world’s largest statue of Abraham Lincoln, in Ashmore, Illinois. And then, of course, there was the Grain Elevator Museum in Atlanta, Illinois. But that was 154 miles away, and in the wrong direction. Nobody had the enthusiasm to drive so far.
“It’s a shame we’re going to miss those grain elevators, Mom,” Coke said, sharing a silent giggle with his sister. “They sound really cool.”
None of the McDonalds was conscious of it, but there was one thing they all wanted to see—a city. Ever since they’d left California a week earlier, they had been driving past deserts, prairies, billboards, cornfields, dairy farms, and lots of small towns. They missed the excitement of a city.
Soon, the suburbs gave way to office parks, the office parks gave way to the enormous O’Hare Airport, and from Route 90 East the majestic skyline of Chicago came into view.
“The Windy City!” Coke proclaimed.
“The City of the Big Shoulders,” said Dr. McDonald. “That’s how Carl Sandburg described it.”
“Didn’t he play for the Cubs?” asked Coke.
“That was Ryne Sandberg,” Dr. McDonald corrected him. “Carl Sandburg was a poet.”
“Ha!” Pep proclaimed to her brother. “You don’t know everything!”
“Okay, here’s today’s agenda,” Mrs. McDonald announced from the front seat. “First, the International Museum of Surgical Science. They have antique instruments that doctors used to drill holes in skulls, and they also have some skulls with holes drilled into them. And get this—they’ve got a copy of the death mask of Napoleon! It will be perfect for Amazing but True.”
“That place sounds gross, Mom,” Pep commented, despite her fascination with morbid things. It was Pep, after all, who’d convinced the family to visit the Donner Party exhibit back in Nevada—which was all about cannibals.
“Second, the Museum of Science and Industry,” Mrs. McDonald continued. “They have an exhibit called Body Slices. It says here they have male and female cadavers, each cut into half-inch slices and preserved between sheets of glass.”
“Ugh!” said Pep, despite her obvious fascination. “That is disgusting, Mom. We don’t want to look at that stuff!”
“Well, the good news is, you don’t have to,” Mrs. McDonald said cheerfully. “I’m going to look at that stuff.”
“Where are the rest of us going?” asked Pep.
Dr. McDonald leaned over, pulled three tickets out of the glove compartment, and waved them in the air.
“Wrigley Field, baby!” he yelled.
“We’re going to see the Cubs play?” asked Coke excitedly. “All right!”
Dr. McDonald dropped his wife off at the Loop in downtown Chicago and proceeded up North Lake Shore Drive until he found a parking lot that would admit recreational vehicles and wasn’t too far from the ballpark. They got out and walked the rest of the way to the corner of North Clark Street and West Addison.
“This is historic ground,” Dr. McDonald said, throwing an arm around each of his children. “It’s one of the oldest Major League ballparks still standing. Babe Ruth hit his famous ‘called shot’ home run here back in 1932, you know.”
“Can we get cotton candy?” asked Pep, no big fan of baseball.
“Sure,” her dad replied. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s still your birthday today.”
The game had already started, so they rushed inside to find their seats on the third-base side. Dr. McDonald bought cotton candy for both twins and pointed out the distinctive ivy-covered outfield walls.
Wrigley Field felt like a sanctuary to Coke and Pep.
Here, for a change, they could forget their troubles—lunatics in bowler hats, evil health teachers, maniacal teenagers who resembled comic-book characters—for a few hours at least.
The ballpark was packed. The visiting team was the St. Louis Cardinals, longtime rivals of the Cubs. The crowd went wild when the Cubs scored a couple of runs in the second inning. When the Cards tied it up in the third, boos rained down on the field.
When that inning was over, Dr. McDonald told the kids to look at the video screen below the scoreboard. This message was flashing:
HAPPY 13TH BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY
TO COKE AND PEP McDONALD!
Then, next to those words, the “Fan Cam” box appeared and there was a video image of Coke and Pep. When they saw themselves on the screen, they smiled and waved. Everybody cheered.
“How did they know it was our birthday?” Pep said excitedly.
“I called ahead,” Dr. McDonald said.
“Isn’t that expensive, Dad?” Coke asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dr. McDonald replied. “One of my old college buddies works for the Cubs.”
The message flashed several more times, and then the screen faded to black. A few seconds later, it was replaced by this message:
Everyone stared at the video screen, confused.
“Huh?” said Dr. McDonald. “I wonder what that means.”
“Hey, check it out!” somebody a few rows behind them hollered. “The guy running the video screen musta had too many beers!”
Coke squinted at the message and looked over at his sister quizzically.
“It looks like a cipher,” Pep whispered in his ear so their father would not hear.
“What does it mean?” Coke whispered back.
“How should I know?”
“Well, you’re the queen of the ciphers,” Coke whispered. “You’re supposed to be good at this stuff.”
“This stuff takes time,” Pep told him.
The message disappeared from the screen and was replaced by an ad for a Chicago pizza parlor. Luckily, Coke had gazed at it long enough to burn the symbols into his memory.
“Somebody knows we’re here,” Pep whispered nervously to her brother. “We need to go.”
“Dad, c
an we leave?” Coke asked.
“Leave?” he replied. “It’s only the top of the fourth inning! Let’s at least stay until the seventh inning stretch.”
“Okay,” the twins grumbled.
For the next two innings, Coke and Pep had little interest in watching the ball game. They were too busy scanning the crowd, looking out for guys with bowler hats, evil health teachers, Archie Clones, or perhaps even Dr. Herman Warsaw. Their names and faces had been up on the video screen. There was no telling who might be watching them through binoculars from some distant point in the ballpark—or what that person might be planning. They were strangely quiet while eating hot dogs their father bought from a vendor.
The Cardinals scored three runs in the fifth, and the mood of the crowd was turning sour. There’s nothing more dangerous than an angry Cubs fan. You would think that after a hundred years without winning a World Series, they would get used to losing ball games. But they never do.
It was 6–2 at the end of the sixth inning, when a female usher came over to their row and tapped Coke and Pep on their shoulders. They both jumped.
“Would you two come with me, please?” the usher said sweetly. “We have something special for you.”
Pep looked at her father, terrified. Surely he would protect them.
“Go ahead,” Dr. McDonald said, a big smile on his face. “This is part of your birthday present too. Have fun.”
The twins got up and followed the usher up the steps and through a doorway. There was a tunnel there that led to the press boxes.
“What’s this all about?” Coke asked.
“Nobody told you?” said the usher. “You’re in for a treat. Your dad must know somebody pretty important. They don’t let just anybody lead the crowd in ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ during the seventh inning stretch!”
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!” the twins said.