by Rob Vlock
“You think this is a joke?” I shouted as threateningly as I could manage.
“Um, Sven?” Will said shyly. “That’s an apple.”
I looked up at my hand. I was holding a small apple. Darn. I must have reached into the wrong part of Alicia’s backpack.
The leader of the clown snakes slithered over to me, skewered the apple with its tongue, and swallowed it without even chewing. Then it wrapped itself around me and hissed in my ear: “Let’ssssss visssssit our friend Dr. Shallixssssss.”
CHAPTER 27.0:
< value= [We Redecorate Alicia’s Place (Not in a Good Way)] >
I FOUND MYSELF BEING SHOVED toward the living room door without so much as an apple to defend myself with. As I was dragged past the table in the center of the room, I looked around frantically for something I could use as a weapon. All I saw was the lighter Alicia had used to light the candles when we came in. I grabbed it.
The clown snake paused when we neared the door and called out to Will and Alicia, “Hey, kidsssss, time to diiiiiiie.”
If you ever decide to become a clown, I recommend that you stay far away from open flames.
Because as soon as I touched the lighter to the rainbow wig of the clown snake that was dragging me to the door, it erupted into flame. Its laugh was replaced by a deafening, agonized shriek. It let go of me, reared up, and tried to shake the fire out. But all it succeeded in doing was setting the rainbow wig of the clown snake next to it on fire as well.
Before I knew it, nearly every one of the monsters was screeching, trying to extinguish the burning wigs on their heads. And the smell! Let’s just say it kind of reminded me of the time my dad singed all his hair off trying to get the grill going using a whole can of lighter fluid.
As the creatures writhed and slithered around the room, their flaming heads darting this way and that, they started setting other things on fire—tattered curtains, peeling wallpaper, a threadbare rug. If we stayed there much longer, we were going to get cooked.
The clown snakes scattered, suddenly far more concerned with extinguishing themselves than killing us. This was our chance. We had a clear path to the door. At least, if you didn’t count the smoke and flames now engulfing almost every part of the room.
Alicia struggled to her feet. Will and I each supported one of her arms and we took off at a run, shielding our faces against the searing heat as best we could.
We were almost out of the room when the lone clown snake who wasn’t on fire slithered into our path. We moved to the right, but it lashed out with its tail and stopped us in our tracks. We darted to the left, but its head and deadly tongue were waiting for us.
It smiled at us and croaked, “Leaving so sssssoooooon? Why not sssssstay awhiiiiile? We can all buuuuurn together.”
We looked around for another way out.
There wasn’t one.
Will let out a feeble whimper. But then something happened that I had never seen before. His whimper grew in volume and pitch until it became a bellow of rage.
“Let us out!” Will screamed. “Get out of our way, you clown school dropout!”
“And ifffffff I don’t?” the monster countered.
Will deflated like a punctured balloon. “I’ll . . . I’ll . . . make you?”
The clown snake laughed hysterically. “Sssssuch defiancccccce! Perhaps I’ll eat you firssssst!”
It slithered toward Will.
Stupid move.
As the creature slid by me, licking its lips hungrily, I flicked the lighter that was still in my hand. Instantly, its rainbow wig ignited in a fiery halo. It shrieked and writhed frantically, adding one more voice to the symphony of agonized clown wails.
We sprinted down the hall and emerged into the cool, fresh afternoon air, stopping under a huge maple tree, where we caught our breath.
“Will!” I said when I had regained the ability to speak. “That was brilliant!”
He turned to me with a dazed expression on his face. “What was?”
“The way you stood up to that stupid clown thing and distracted it so I could burn its ugly clown head,” I told him.
He shook his head in confusion. “I did?”
Then his knees gave out and he collapsed to the ground in a dead faint.
Flames licked from the empty window frames, blackened the walls, and consumed the roof of the house. The screams of the clown snakes inside rapidly faded into silence.
We had escaped.
I smiled and turned to Alicia.
But she wasn’t there.
I was just quick enough to spot her disappearing through the front door of the burning building.
“Alicia!” I screamed after her. “Alicia, stop!”
But she didn’t stop. In a moment, her form was completely obscured by smoke and flame.
Despite every sensible impulse, I sprinted to the burning house and dove through the doorway after her.
“Alicia!” I shouted. If there was an answer, it was drowned out by the angry roar of the fire burning all around me. “Alicia!”
The hallway behind me collapsed in an avalanche of flaming wood. There was no going back, I realized with a sudden rush of horror.
I pushed forward, trying to shield my face from the searing heat.
I called her name until my voice, scorched by the thick, black smoke, contracted into a strangled cough, but I heard no response.
By the time I made it into the kitchen, I felt like my lungs had shriveled into dried-out scraps of leather.
I couldn’t breathe.
Blackness closed in on my vision, and I was vaguely aware of my consciousness being torn from me as I fell in a heap to the floor.
CHAPTER 28.0:
< value= [We Are the Schmidts] >
SOMETHING WAS SHAKING ME.
I opened my smoke-ravaged eyes and squinted up at the silhouette of a gangly form looming above me.
Will’s voice assailed my ears. “He’s alive,” he screamed. “Alicia, he’s alive!”
“He’s also a moron,” she snapped, pushing Will away and grabbing me by the shirt. “What the heck is wrong with you?”
“What?” I asked. Confusion clouded my brain like the smoke billowing overhead. “Alicia? What’s happening?”
She yanked me into a sitting position and gestured over her shoulder toward the blazing ruins of her house.
“That’s what’s happening! You ran into the building like a big, dumb, brainless Tick!” she snarled. “I barely managed to drag you out the back door! Why would you do something so stupid! Why did you do that? You’re such an idiot!”
“Alicia,” I croaked through parched vocal cords. “I . . . I . . .”
“You what?” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Tell me, Sven. You what?”
“I . . . I went in there for you.”
She let go of my shirt and gawked at me. “You . . . you went in there for . . . me?” she asked in almost a whisper.
I nodded and broke into a fresh fit of coughing.
“Such an idiot,” she said, the anger in her words belied by the tremor in her voice. “You are such an idiot, Sven Carter.”
Pulling a bottle of water out of her backpack, Alicia pressed it into my hand.
“Why did you go in there?” I demanded once I had taken a few sips of water.
“Money,” she replied bluntly, any hint of concern that might have surfaced from behind her cool façade evaporating in a flash. “I had some stashed in the dining room. Figured we could use it.”
For the second time that afternoon, fire trucks wailed in the distance. They were quickly drowned out by a low, angry-sounding growl.
“Sorry,” Will said, reddening with embarrassment. “That was my stomach. You guys got anything to eat? All I’ve had to eat over the past couple of days were some gross gray squares that Dr. Shallix gave me when he let me out of that machine.”
Alicia nodded toward what was left of her house. “I had some stuff in there, but it’s pro
bably a little too well done by now. We need to find someplace to stay.”
“Where?” Will asked. “We can’t go home. He knows where we live.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have the perfect place in mind.”
• • •
“This place?” Alicia sneered as we stood outside the Manor House Inn, Schenectady’s biggest and fanciest hotel. “I can’t even think of how many things are wrong with this idea.”
“Well, thinking never was your strong suit,” I snapped. “Listen, this is probably the safest place in town to be right now.”
“Really?” she asked skeptically. “How do you figure that?”
I rolled my eyes. “What’s the last thing Dr. Shallix would want right now? To be discovered. What do you think would happen if he sent a bunch of snakes with clown heads after us here? Or a giant Mega-Shallix? Half the city would see them. There’s no way he’d let that happen.”
“Fine,” she admitted. “That makes some sense. You’re not as dumb as you look, Sven.”
“Actually,” Will interjected, “um, he might be. This place probably costs, like, five hundred bucks a night.”
“Relax, Alicia got money out of her house.” I turned to her. “So, how much do you have?”
She dug around in her pocket for a moment, then pulled out a fistful of dollar bills and coins. “Let’s see,” she said, counting them up. “Twelve dollars and fifty-eight cents.”
“You ran into a burning building for twelve bucks?” I asked. “Let me guess: Money didn’t exist in the Settlement, did it?”
Alicia sneered at me. “Of course it did. We just didn’t have much of it, that’s all.”
And I suddenly felt like a real jerk. “Sorry,” I said quietly.
Alicia shrugged, then scratched her chin thoughtfully. “Listen, I think I have a way. Just follow my lead, okay?”
We walked into lobby of the hotel and took a seat on an overstuffed leather couch that smelled like furniture polish. Alicia kept her eyes glued to the front desk. After about fifteen minutes, a roundish middle-aged couple dressed in Hawaiian shirts approached the concierge.
Alicia jumped to her feet. “Stay here,” she whispered.
“Hallo,” the Hawaiian-shirted man said with a thick German accent. “My wife und I would like to check out of room two fifty-four.”
The concierge typed something into her computer. “Ah yes, Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt. I hope you had a pleasant stay?”
“Ja, ja, sehr gut! Very good,” the Hawaiian-shirted woman said.
That was when Alicia sprang into action.
I watched in dismay as she scooped up an expensive-looking vase filled with cut flowers from a side table and lobbed it through the air toward Will and me.
We only had time to exchange wide-eyed gasps before there was an explosion of ceramic, water, and flowers at our feet.
The entire lobby went silent. Every eye in the place was on us.
Which, evidently, was what Alicia was shooting for.
While everyone was staring at us, she slid one of the couple’s key cards off the desk and slipped it into her pocket. Then she slunk away toward the elevator.
We met her in front of the elevators. But only after we spent several minutes apologizing to the angry concierge and promising we’d go straight to our parents, who she assumed were staying at the hotel, and ask them to punish us for destroying hotel property.
• • •
Room 254 was a heck of a lot nicer than Alicia’s place. In fact, it was probably the fanciest room I’d ever been in. It had two huge king-size beds, a giant bathroom with a big hot tub right in the middle of it, and a balcony with a breathtaking view of downtown Schenectady. Well, as breathtaking a view as Schenectady had to offer, anyway, which was pretty much just some old buildings across the street.
“Nice room,” I said to Alicia. “There’s only one problem. Those people just checked out of it. As soon as housekeeping comes to clean it, they’ll realize we’re not supposed to be here.”
She grinned at me. “I thought of that already. Watch and learn.”
She picked up the phone and dialed the front desk.
“Ja, ja,” she said in a totally lame-sounding fake German accent. “This is Mrs. Schmidt in room two fifty-four. We liked our visiting to your beautiful hotel so much, we change our mind und are wanting to stay another few days. You can please charge it to the credit card we have given you, ja?”
She listened for a few seconds, then, “Ja, sehr gut. Dunkin’ shines.” She hung up the phone and looked at me like a smug know-it-all. “And that is how you do it.”
She took off her backpack and placed it on a desk along the wall. Soon, the rhythmic scritching of metal filled the room as Alicia methodically honed her knife with a small sharpening steel.
Will threw himself down on one of the beds, picked up the TV remote, and started channel surfing.
And I slumped down heavily in an armchair, the energy leaving my body in a flood the moment my brain sensed we were temporarily safe.
I sat quietly, lost in my own head, thoughts of Shallix Squirrel’s offer to turn me into some kind of immortal Super Sven ricocheting around the walls of my skull. I couldn’t help but wonder why he had made me such a loser in the first place. If my mission had always been to kill all humans, surely Dr. Shallix and his Tick overlords could have come up with something better than a weird, trash-eating kid.
On the bright side, though, at least I wasn’t as weird as Fake Me.
At the thought of my bizarro Tick stand-in, a frigid sense of dread fell descended over me. When Mom and Dad figured out Fake Me wasn’t really me, what would they do? And what kind of disaster would be waiting for me back at school after days of having a jabbering idiot stand in for me?
It drove me crazy to think about, so while Will and Alicia argued about what to watch on the hotel TV, I picked up the cordless phone from the desk and slipped into the bathroom with it.
I dialed my number.
A few rings later, someone answered.
“How’s it goin’?” a voice that sounded exactly like me said.
I sighed. “Hi, can I speak to Mom, please?”
“Who is this?” Fake Me asked.
“It’s me. Sven.”
“I’m Sven,” Fake Me argued. “Who is this?”
“The real Sven,” I spat.
“Who?”
“Me. The kid who you’re a copy of.”
There was a long pause, then Fake Me said, “Oh, the other Sven.”
“What’s up, my peeps?” I heard a muffled voice on the other end of the line say. “Who’s on the phone?”
“No one,” Fake Me said. “It’s just weird Sven.”
“Weird Sven? I’m weird Sven?” I asked angrily. “You’re the one with the face where your butt should be!”
“Say, ‘What’s up, my peeps’ from me,” Butt Face mumbled.
“He says, ‘What’s up, my peeps?’ ” Fake Me told me.
“Listen, I need to talk to—”
“Hey,” he interrupted. “Guess what I’m gonna do at school tomorrow.”
Cold fear pulsed through my body. “What?”
“I’ll tell you what. I’m entering the talent show, that’s what.”
“No! No, please tell me you’re not going to . . . What are you going to do . . . You don’t have any talent!”
“Speak for yourself,” Fake Me said. “Butt Face and I worked out this really funny ventriloquism routine. See, I start a knock-knock joke, then Butt Face finishes it. It’s hilarious!”
I couldn’t stand to hear any more. Just the thought of Fake Me humiliating me in front of the whole school by telling knock-knock jokes with his butt made my stomach clench up like a wad of crumpled tissues. “Noooooo!”
A second later, the bathroom door burst open.
Alicia rushed in, knife in hand. “What’s wrong?” When she saw me standing there with the phone, she scowled. “Who are you calling?”
“Um, no one,” I lied.
A tiny voice called out, “How’s it goin’?” from the earpiece. I hung up.
“You called your house, didn’t you?” Alicia growled. “What is wrong with you? You’re going to get us all killed!”
She was probably right. I shouldn’t have made that call. But I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction.
“What’s the big deal?” I asked with a shrug. “It was just a phone call.”
Alicia shook her head grimly. “Now that we’ve blocked his tracker, Shallix is going to look for other ways to get to us. Maybe a watcher at your house. Or maybe he’s tapped your parents’ phone. You ever think of that? Now we have to assume he knows exactly where we are and will send some Ticks after us. This is about the worst thing you could have done!”
I stared at her. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a tiny bit?”
She gripped her knife more tightly. “Are you willing to bet your life that I am?”
We stared at each other until I finally broke the standoff, pushed past her, and wilted back into my chair.
I clenched my teeth angrily. I didn’t know who I was madder at, Alicia or myself. She was being kind of a jerk. But she was also kind of right. Which meant I was kind of wrong. I mentally kicked myself for being so stupid.
But it wasn’t like I was trying to let Dr. Shallix know where we were. She should understand that. I just wanted to talk to my mom. Let her know I was okay. I mean, there was nothing so terrible about that, was there? I was trying to be a good son. I didn’t want her to worry. That was what good kids did, right?
Or was it? Maybe I wasn’t being a dutiful son. Maybe I was being a dutiful Tick. What if everything I did really was just because of my programming and there was no real me at all, just a collection of 1s and 0s that determined every single thing I did? Every single thing I thought?
I looked down to find my fingers drumming tensely against the arm of the chair.
Am I a person?
Or am I just a machine?
Will’s stomach let out a long rumble of complaint, breaking me out of my thoughts.