License to Thrill

by Dan Gutman

  “What are you doing?” Coke asked. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Maybe,” Pep said softly.

  She was moving the sack back and forth slowly, like a bullfighter taunting a bull. Herman raised his head slightly, moving it left to right as if it was trying to get a better view. Pep’s fingertips were trembling.

  “Careful,” Coke said.

  And then, in a flash, Herman rattled his tail and jabbed his head forward to strike at Pep. He hit the center of the sack with his face and Pep quickly closed it around his head. Then she took Coke’s T-shirt and wrapped it around the end of the sack, tying a tight knot. Herman’s head was trapped inside while the rest of his body was sticking out of the sack.

  “Nice!” Coke shouted. “Did you learn that in Girl Scouts?”

  Pep grabbed Herman at his middle. Then she swung him like a baseball bat against the side of the pit.

  Coke’s eyes bugged out. He had never seen his sister do anything as aggressive as that. Up until this moment, he was usually the one who got them out of these situations. He was the one who forced them to jump off the cliff back in California. He was the one who gave the boot to Dr. Warsaw back in Wisconsin.

  After she smashed Herman’s head into the rocks, Pep turned around and swung him against the other side of the pit.

  Her eyes were on fire now. She was in a frenzy, slamming the rattler from one side of the pit to the other. Poor Herman didn’t have a chance. But Pep just kept going, grunting with each swing.

  “Stop! Pep!” Coke finally shouted at her. “Stop! He’s dead!”

  Pep whacked Herman a few more times for good measure. Then, panting, she let go of the sack and fell against the ground. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Wow!” her brother exclaimed. “I thought you said you were against cruelty to animals.”

  “I don’t know what came over me,” Pep said, still gasping and sobbing. “I killed a living thing! It wasn’t some bad guy. It wasn’t a robot. It was alive, and now it’s dead because of what I did. It was an instinct, or adrenaline, or something.”

  “It was awesome,” Coke said, putting his arm around his sister.

  Up above, at the edge of the pit, John Pain clapped his hands in appreciation.

  “Impressive!” he said, reaching down to help the twins climb out of the pit. “You’re almost as sadistic as I am, young lady.”

  “So you’ll let us go?” Pep asked.

  “I’m a man of my word,” John Pain said. “I said if you got outta this mess, you’d be free to go. So skedaddle! But needless to say, if your parents find out about this, I’ll kill them.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pep told him. “Our parents don’t believe anything we tell them anyway.”

  “Let’s blow this pop stand!” Coke said.

  The twins took off before John Pain had the chance to change his mind. As they were running away, he shouted to them, “But you two ain’t seen the last of me, I promise you that.”

  Chapter 14

  THE OLD HOPI

  Coke and Pep ran. They just ran. They didn’t know where. It didn’t matter. Anywhere. Away from that lunatic, John Pain.

  “That guy was nuts!” Pep said after a couple of blocks. She stopped to catch her breath.

  “I can’t believe you killed the snake!” Coke said.

  “I can’t believe you tried to feed it freeze-dried ice cream!”

  Across the street, a lady was pushing a stroller. Coke jogged over to ask her how to get back to Albuquerque’s Old Town section. She pointed out the direction, and from there it wasn’t hard for the twins to find the Rattlesnake Museum. Their parents were standing out front, looking worried.

  “Where’s your shirt?” asked an exasperated Mrs. McDonald as soon as she saw her son.

  Not Where have you been? or Are you okay? His mother’s overriding concern was with what happened to Coke’s shirt.

  “Funny you should ask, Mom,” he replied. “Pep wrapped it around a rattlesnake’s head so she could beat it to death.”

  “Very funny,” said Dr. McDonald.

  “It’s true,” Pep insisted. “You don’t have to believe him if you don’t want to.”

  Mrs. McDonald simply shook her head, counting how many perfectly good T-shirts Coke had ruined on the trip so far. Five? Six? She had finally reached the point where she wasn’t going to fight about it anymore. There was no use. The boy was a T-shirt-wrecking machine. She made a mental note to buy him only cheap T-shirts from now on.

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Albuquerque NM.

  In the B box, type Lupton AZ.

  Click Get Directions.

  The McDonalds had a quick dinner and checked into the Econo Lodge West for the night. It was just a few blocks from Coronado Freeway—also known as I-40—which was the main road heading west out of Albuquerque. In the morning, the family got on the road early. It would be a long day, in more ways than one.

  Almost immediately, the highway flattened out. The stores and gas stations became few and far between. Pep worried silently, trying to figure out where Dr. Warsaw might decide to set off his nuclear bomb, and what they could do to stop it. Coke daydreamed, thinking about John Pain and the last thing he’d said to them: “You two ain’t seen the last of me, I promise you that.”

  There wasn’t much to look at out the window, except for the occasional billboard, announcing things like INDIAN VILLAGE and MOCCASINS FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY!

  “Ooh, can we go?” Pep asked.

  “Those places aren’t real Indian villages,” Mrs. McDonald told them. “It says in the guidebook that they’re just tacky souvenir shops.”

  “Ooh, can we go?” Coke asked.

  About an hour from Albuquerque, the speed limit slowed down to 35 miles per hour and a few stores popped up here and there. And then this appeared at the side of the road. . . .

  “That’s right!” Dr. McDonald said, slapping his forehead. “I forgot all about it. This is the Great Divide!”

  Dear reader, if you recall The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable, you know the McDonalds first crossed the Continental Divide heading east through Utah. It’s an imaginary boundary line that begins in Alaska and continues all the way down through South America. Now they were crossing it again, heading west.

  “Rivers on the west side of this line flow into the Pacific Ocean,” Dr. McDonald reminded the others, “and the rivers on the east side of the line flow into the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “That’s cool,” Pep said.

  “I read somewhere,” said her brother, “that when you flush a toilet in the northern hemisphere, the water swirls in the opposite direction than a toilet flushed in the southern hemisphere.”

  “That’s one of those urban legends,” his father told him. “It’s totally not true.”

  “It sounds like it could be true.”

  “Trust me, it’s not.”

  “Who cares which direction toilet water swirls?” Pep asked. “And what does that have to do with the Continental Divide?”

  Nothing, of course. But you know what, reader? Sometimes people talk about nonsense. Especially people who have been cooped up in a car for four weeks.

  Clustered on the road around the Continental Divide were several “Indian Villages” selling rubber tomahawks, purses, belts, hats, and “kachina dolls,” whatever they were.

  “Pull over, Ben!” Mrs. McDonald shouted.

  “Why, Bridge?” he replied, hitting the brakes.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Pep.

  “I want to get a snack,” said Coke.

  “We need to buy some T-shirts for Coke,” said Mrs. McDonald.

  Reluctantly, Dr. McDonald pulled over.

  Indian Market was a pretty standard souvenir shop, stuffed with bins full of cheap trinkets that most people regret buying as soon as they get home. Dr. McDonald refused to have any part of such nonsense, and h
e said he would wait in the car while the rest of the family wasted their time and money. Pep went inside to use the bathroom. Mrs. McDonald checked out the T-shirts. Coke walked around looking at the knickknacks. Several employees eyed him suspiciously, as storekeepers do when teenage boys enter their place of business.

  Most of the employees didn’t look like Native Americans at all. But one of them did. He was an old man sitting in the corner, carving a piece of wood with a pocket knife. Next to him on a table were some painted wooden dolls, decorated with feathers and outfitted with brightly colored costumes.

  “I am Hopi,” the man said to Coke. “Every year our spirits—the kachinas—come down to the villages to dance and sing. They bring rain for the harvest and give gifts to the children. We carve these dolls in the likeness of the kachinam. You want to buy one?”

  “No, thank you,” Coke said politely. “But they are very beautiful.”

  He started to walk away, but the old man grabbed him by the elbow.

  “Wait,” he said. “There is something I need to tell you.”

  Coke rolled his eyes. The last thing in the world that he needed was a kachina doll. But he didn’t want to be rude to the old man.

  “What?” he asked, pulling his arm away.

  “Forty-nine minutes and eight seconds,” whispered the man. “Twenty-eight minutes and forty point five seconds.”

  “Huh?” Coke replied. “Excuse me?”

  “Listen,” the man said, looking into Coke’s eyes. “This is very important. Did you hear me? I said forty-nine minutes and eight seconds. Twenty-eight minutes and forty point five seconds.”

  “So what?” Coke asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Write it down,” said the man.

  “I don’t need to write it down,” Coke said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

  Coke hurried away from the Hopi man and walked out the front door. Pep was waiting for him there.

  “Who was that guy you were talking to?” she asked.

  “Some old dude who lost his marbles,” Coke told her. “He kept saying the same thing over and over again. ‘Forty-nine minutes and eight seconds. Twenty-eight minutes and forty point five seconds.’ The guy is probably senile or something.”

  “He’s not senile!” Pep said. “Can’t you see? It’s another cipher!”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” said Coke. “Forty-nine minutes and eight seconds. Twenty-eight minutes and forty point five seconds. What could that possibly mean?”

  “It has something to do with time, obviously,” Pep said.

  “Sure, but what?”

  “Mom, can we borrow your laptop?” Pep asked once they were in the car and back on I-40 West.

  She clicked on Google and had her brother type in “49 minutes and 8 seconds. 28 minutes and 40.5 seconds.”

  The first thing that came up was a list of high scores for the computer game Halo. The next few hits were about the TV show Glee.

  “Try forty-nine point zero eight,” Pep suggested.

  Coke tried it. “49.08” turned out to be part of the Texas penal code. Apparently, there are severe penalties if you kill somebody while driving drunk in Texas.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Coke muttered. “That old guy was just senile, like I said.”

  “It means something,” Pep insisted. “The ciphers always tie together somehow. We just have to figure out how.”

  She added the new entry into her notepad . . .

  CIPHER #1: MAY 28, 1937, VOLKSWAGEN IS FOUNDED

  CIPHER #2: 49:08. 28:40.5

  Mrs. McDonald showed Coke some new T-shirts she had bought for him, and they had a brief argument over whether or not they were cool enough to wear in public. Soon they were driving through the town of Gallup, New Mexico, which is nicknamed “Indian Capital of the World” because three tribes call the surrounding area their home.

  “Hey, it says here that a movie was filmed in Gallup,” said Mrs. McDonald. “Maybe we should stop and look around.”

  “What movie?” asked Dr. McDonald.

  “Natural Born Killers.”

  “Keep driving!” the twins shouted.

  The family rode in silence for the next twenty miles until they came to this. . . .

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Lupton AZ.

  In the B box, type Sedona AZ.

  Click Get Directions.

  Chapter 15

  YOUR FUTURE WILL COME

  “Woo hoo!” Coke hooted as the Ferrari crossed the border. “The Grand Canyon State, baby!”

  Outside, Arizona didn’t look all that different from New Mexico. Mesas—or were they plateaus?—lined both sides of the road. A truck stop called Speedy’s was quickly followed by the Tee Pee Trading Post and a line of other souvenir shops hawking cheap jewelry and moccasins. But even so, just crossing another state line made everyone feel like they were just a little bit closer to home.

  “How much farther do we have to go, Mom?” Pep called from the backseat.

  Mrs. McDonald looked it up on her laptop.

  “Nine hundred and fifty-eight miles,” she reported.

  “A hop, skip, and a jump,” said Dr. McDonald as he continued on I-40 West.

  Mrs. McDonald dropped her New Mexico guidebook in the trash and opened a new one—Arizona Arisin’. She flipped through the introduction. . . .

  “Let’s see . . . soaring mountains . . . red-walled canyons . . . vast deserts . . . ,” she mumbled. “Hey, did you guys know that Arizona has more mountains than Switzerland and more golf courses than Scotland?”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell us about all the oddball museums and weird stuff there is to see here, huh, Mom?” asked Coke.

  “Well, the official state neckwear is the bolo tie,” Mrs. McDonald said. “In fact, there’s a bolo tie museum close to Phoenix.”

  “Please say we don’t have to go there,” Pep begged from the backseat. “Please?”

  “You guys are no fun,” said Mrs. McDonald. “Hey, you want to go to London Bridge?”

  “Isn’t London Bridge in London?” asked Coke.

  Actually, it is and it isn’t. There are several London Bridges. But one of them was sinking into the Thames River so England put it up for sale in 1967. An American bought it, and he had all 10,246 bricks shipped to Lake Havasu, Arizona, to be reassembled there.

  “London Bridge is on the other side of the state, five hours from here,” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “I’m not driving five hours to see a bridge,” said Dr. McDonald. “I want to see natural beauty. I want to see the Grand Canyon, the red sandstone at Sedona, Monument Valley . . .”

  Forty minutes after crossing the state line, they were still arguing about what to see in Arizona. That’s when they came to this sign. . . .

  Dr. McDonald pulled into the parking lot at the visitors’ center. It was at least a hundred degrees outside, and Mrs. McDonald made sure everyone had a bottle of water and was covered by sunglasses, hats, and sunscreen. A park ranger was just starting a short walking tour, so the McDonalds rushed to catch up.

  The Petrified Forest isn’t a “forest” in the common use of the word. It’s more of a rock garden, with spectacular colors. That’s why part of the Petrified Forest is called the Painted Desert.

  “I don’t get it,” Pep said to the ranger. “If this is a forest, where are the trees?”

  “We get that question all the time,” said the ranger, a tall man with blond hair. “Usually when a tree falls, it decays over time. But these trees fell into rivers and were buried in water, minerals, and volcanic ash. So they remained intact and became fossilized. That is, they turned to stone. Some of them are two hundred and twenty-five million years old.”

  Mrs. McDonald took some notes for Amazing but True. After a short walk, the ranger stopped and knelt down to point out a flat rock that had a pictur
e of an eye carved into it.

  “Graffiti?” somebody asked.

  “You might say that,” said the ranger. “These pictures are called petroglyphs. Prehistoric people made them over eight thousand years ago.”

  Everyone got down on their hands and knees to examine the petroglyph. There were others depicting a squatting man, a caterpillar, a ladder, and a spoked wheel.

  “What do they mean?” Pep asked.

  “There are lots of theories,” the ranger told her. “They might have been primitive maps, or astronomical markers. Or maybe they were religious symbols, or boundaries between different tribes. We really don’t know for sure.”

  Pep, always interested in codes and secret messages, was fascinated by the petroglyphs. Her brother—he of the short attention span—had wandered a short distance away from the group. He happened to look down to see a large gray rock with these letters written on it. . . .

  EDIWEFER

  Coke called his sister over.

  “Look at this,” he said. “The ancient people couldn’t have known English, could they?”

  “Of course not.”

  Pep knelt down and touched one of the letters with one finger. It rubbed off. The message appeared to be written in chalk. Clearly, it was recent. A good rain would have washed those letters away.

  “What do you think?” Coke asked.

  “I think it’s another cipher,” Pep replied.

  So now there were three . . .

  CIPHER #1: MAY 28, 1937, VOLKSWAGEN IS FOUNDED

  CIPHER #2: 49:08. 28:40.5

  CIPHER #3: EDIWEFER

  Or whatever that meant. Pep couldn’t see the solution right away, and the heat was making it hard to concentrate on the cipher. The twins rejoined the group, which was heading back to the visitors’ center.

  Someone was trying to tell them something, that was for sure. Probably Dr. Warsaw. When they got back in the car, Pep turned to a clean page in her notepad and wrote it down. . . .

  EDIWEFER

  Why did Dr. Warsaw have to use codes and ciphers all the time? Pep wondered. If he has a message to get across, why doesn’t he just say it?