“They’re bigger than yesterday,” Ratface squawked. “Get ’em offa me!”
“Those squids are the least of your problems,” Cody said. “Can everybody swim?”
They all bobbed up and down in the water, nodding. A familiar face appeared at their sides.
Cody scrambled out of the water and got into his diving suit as fast as he could. “They’ll be here any second,” he panted. “Our only hope is to get into the sub and get out of here.”
“But how?” Carlos treaded water and flung a baby squid off his nose. “We can’t all swim down that far.”
“We could use that hydraulic winch if we could somehow attach the sub to it,” Sully said.
“I’ll swim down and attach the chain,” Cody said.
Cody dived straight for the sub. Ratface was right. The other squids were bigger now. Cody could barely see past all the squids blocking the view.
Cody clipped the chain to the submarine and swam back to the surface as fast as he could.
The winch hauled up on the chain until the sub smashed its way through the crack in the pool floor and bobbed to the surface of the water.
They crawled inside. It was a tight squeeze in there. Arms, feet, knees, and tentacles were everywhere, with barely room left to breathe or move.
When everyone was inside the sub, Cody climbed behind the controls and tried to figure out what to do. Lights. Check. Now what?
The door to the pool room rattled. Victor and the other boys had locked it and barred it shut with oars and rescue hooks, but that only slowed the angry teachers for a moment. They smashed through the barricade. In came Farley, Eelpot, Bilgewater, and Threadbare, still bickering loudly.
“Now would be a good time for us to disappear,” Carlos told Cody. “I’m just say in’.”
Cody slammed down every lever that he could find. The submarine shuddered and groaned, then it tipped, nose-first, under the water, through the hole in the pool floor, and into the undersea cave.
“We did it!” Ratface cried. “We got away!”
“Not so fast,” Sully said. “We’ve still got to get out of here. Preferably without drowning or causing an atomic explosion or anything. Remember, this is a nuclearpowered sub.”
They sank in the dark water. Cody fumbled with the controls. “How do you drive this thing?” he muttered.
“Oh, we’re dead, we’re dead . . .” Ratface moaned.
Flick. Cody found the switch that turned on the lights.
“Whoa,” Carlos said. “Look at that.”
All around them undersea life bobbed and swayed with the gentle currents in the pool.
“Amazing,” Sully said. “It’s so much better than a nature show on TV.”
“Hey, Cody, we’re tipping to one side,” Ratface said. Cody wrestled with the levers, and the sub slowly corrected itself. Cody smiled. He was catching on. They were really doing it! He was really going to drive this underwater boat out of there for good! Maybe they could get home in time for Christmas. Maybe there would be presents under the tree . . .
A speaker crackled to life on the control panel. “Cody Mack,” a familiar voice cried, “this is Headmaster Farley. You get back up here at once!”
“Yeah, right,” Cody shot back. “In your dreams, you lunatic bloodsucker! Adios, non-amigos.”
The submarine lights swept along the bottom of the cave. Swimming squids swirled like butterflies on the breeze of the undersea currents in the cave.
“There’s got to be a way out,” Cody whispered. He covered the radio with his hand so Farley wouldn’t hear them. “Water gets into this cave somehow. Mugsy! Get your brother’s tentacles out of my ears.”
“There.” Sully pointed at the cave wall.
It was a tiny crevice, barely wider than their hands.
“That must be why all the squids are trapped in here,” Carlos said.
“So we’re stuck,” Ratface said. “Our big getaway is doomed!”
Something slammed into the other side.
“Hello, boys,” Farley’s voice called through the radio. “That’s Professor Eelpot in her true shape, knocking on your door. I don’t suppose you’d like her to succeed in tearing your sub apart, would you? Remember that since you left the pool you are no longer on the grounds of Splurch Academy. When Dr. Eelpot reaches you, her only difficulty will be choosing which boy to eat first.”
“Then let’s not let her reach us,” Cody said. “Weapons ready?”
“Check,” Sully said.
THOOM-THOOM-THOOM. A cloud of murky dust erupted up ahead. When the water settled, they saw that the torpedo had opened a wider hole in the cave wall. Tiny squids began escaping through the hole, while little fish began streaming inside.
WHAM! Professor Eelpot punched the nose of the submarine so viciously a pane of glass cracked.
“We won’t survive this,” Sully wailed. “The ship can’t take it much longer!”
“He’s ri-ight,” Farley’s voice crackled.
“Zip your dead lips, Farley,” Cody shouted. “FIRE TORPEDO.” Victor punched a button. The other torpedo came spiraling out of its case and racing toward Eelpot. Once again, she avoided it.
THOOM- THOOM-SHEBOOM. The fissure in the cave wall opened even wider.
Professor Eelpot, the human shark, swam into view once more in front of the sub. She wiggled her fearsome sharky body like she was having tons of fun playing a game of chase. Then she bolted forward, her jaws stretched wide.
Cody let go of the controls. This was it. There were no more torpedoes.
“Bye, guys,” he whispered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE TORPEDO
FW.W.W.UMP!
Something knocked Eelpot off course—something so heavy and so fast and furious it was like an underwater charging bull.
“It’s Bilgewater!” Ratface cried, peering through the sub windows at the creature brawling with Eelpot. “See her nurse’s cap? Bilgewater saved us!”
“She what?” Farley screeched in the radio. “Tell her to stop! This will be noted on her yearly performance evaluation.”
“Stuff a squid in it, Farley,” Cody yelled. “We’re gone!”
Eelpot and Bilgewater went tumbling, tail over tentacle, in an epic battle, leaving a clear path for the sub to exit the cave and sail underwater all the way to New York City or Chesapeake or, for that matter, Singapore.
“See you later, Splurch,” Cody sang, punching the levers forward. “Here we go!” He focused on the controls and steering the sub carefully through the still-narrow opening in the cave wall.
“What was that?” Carlos said.
“What?” Cody muttered.
It was a squid so massive, its trunk was like a redwood tree, its arms like elephant trunks, and its suckers like toilet plungers. It was the hugest living creature Cody had ever laid eyes on. But what chilled Cody’s blood in his veins was the squid’s face—if you can call it that on a squid. As Cody got close enough to see it, he saw that all around its skin were scars, running in long, jaggedy lines all over its exposed surface. Whereas all the other squids ranged from white to pink to red in color, this big monster was a sickly grayish-green.
“That’s no squid,” Sully breathed. “That’s a Frankensquid.”
“What?” Victor said, incredulous. “How? Why?”
Sully pointed behind them to Mugsy and his squiddy twin. “This squid was mutated with Mugsy’s DNA. That one”—he pointed to the massive monster squid outside—“was mutated with Fronk’s.”
“Try to maneuver around it and get out through the hole,” Ratface said. “Fast!”
“Give me maximum power, Victor,” Cody said. “Squeeze all you can get out of that nuclear reactor.”
They accelerated toward the opening. The mighty squid sailed by. Had it noticed the submarine? Maybe not! Could they scooch on by him through the gap in the wall and onto freedom?
“Almost there,” Ratface chanted. “Almost clear! No squiddy corpse monst
er’s gonna keep me from getting home!”
The nose of the sub was through the crack . . . its headlights were sweeping a broad expanse of ocean floor . . .
SNAP.
Their heads jerked forward and then their necks snapped back.
“We’re stuck!” Ratface cried. “We need more power to break through!”
Sully shook his head. “We’re not stuck on the rocks,” he said. “We’re caught.”
Long, tentacled arms wrapped themselves around the sub’s windows and sides. It pulled the underwater boat back inside the cave, overpowering the nuclear reactor engine like it was run by hamsters. The massive Frankensquid had their submarine in its clutches. It flung the submarine against the back of the cave, sending it skidding across the sand and crashing into the shipwreck. Then it advanced on them again. They saw its full bulk approaching them, slow and green and menacing in the boat’s headlights.
Cody struggled to steer the submarine out of the tangled wreckage. For the first time since he had transformed, Mugsy spoke.
Mugsy knocked his head against the buttons Victor had used to fire at Eelpot. “Us!”
“I think he wants you to shoot him and his squid brother out like torpedoes,” Sully said. Mugsy nodded hard. “Yeah, that’s right, that’s what he wants.”
“He’ll eat you guys like lollipops,” Cody protested. “Guys, talk him out of it!”
But Mugsy and his squid brother grew more insistent. Finally Cody nodded. They slithered into the weapons canisters, lickety-split.
The giant squid was nearly upon them now. Cody aimed the sub straight at it.
“What’s going on down there?” Farley demanded over the radio. “What do you mean, ‘Fire Mugsy Two’? Get up here this instant.”
“Are they okay?” Cody said. “Can you see? Can you tell?”
Sully shook his head. “Can’t see a thing,” he said. “We’ll have to hope for the best for them.”
“So much for that,” Victor said. “Got anything else we can shoot?”
“Here’s Mugsy’s ketchup bottle,” Carlos said. “Maybe we can use it to send our parents a message. A final good-bye.” Cody maneuvered the sub for one last desperate shot at the breech in the cave wall.
SCHLOOMP.
Two long, massive arms wrapped around the sub and pulled it toward the squid. Their view disappeared in a sea of churning legs. The lights of the sub illuminated a chomping beak and a gaping mouth.
GULP.
The Frankensquid swallowed the sub.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE BUTTON
All they could see were squid innards everywhere they looked. Everything was strangely calm and quiet. The lights of the sub illuminated the grayish inner body walls of the massive squid. The engine sloshed in the squid’s vat of stomach acid. Even inside the great creature there were surgical stitch marks!
“Geez, he’s a Frankensquid, inside and out,” Ratface said.
Sully whipped a pencil and notebook from his pocket and began to sketch. “This is amazing.”
“Does this squid count as living if it’s part Fronk?” Carlos asked. “Isn’t it more of an undead zombie squid?”
“I can’t believe you guys are debating this.” Victor ran a hand through his hair. “We’re all going to DIE, and nobody will ever see Sully’s eyewitness drawings, and no one will care whether the Frankensquid is living. It’ll be a lot more living than we will be in another few minutes.”
“Good thing Mugsy and Mugsy got out when they did,” Carlos said. “Now maybe they can be free together. Squid brothers for life. At least someone will remember us, maybe, after we’re gone.”
“What’s it gonna feel like to be digested?” Ratface’s voice quivered. “Slow and painful?”
“We’re not dead yet,” Cody told him, flipping every lever and pressing every button he could find. “So long as we’re alive, we fight! Let’s give this Frankensquid a monster stomachache.”
From inside his dark body, they heard the Frankensquid groan and gurgle. They heard the thump of its heart and the shooshing of its blood through its veins. Every sound the hideous creature made was amplified inside. Every move it made made their stomachs slosh.
Dr. Farley’s voice fizzed over the radio once more. “Boys! Are you still down there? I request a status report immediately.”
“Our status is mind your beeswax, Farley, and leave us alone.” Cody covered the radio again and addressed the other boys. “Guys, help me,” he said. “I’ve pressed every button. I don’t know what else to do. Look for anything I may have missed. Some hidden switch? Something?”
“Here’s one that says ‘Release stale air,’ ” Victor said. “That oughtta give our Frankensquid a major stomachache.”
“And a case of the burps,” Cody said. “Let’s do it.” He jammed his finger on the button.
Huge bubbles of air exited the sub. “Hope it leaves enough for us,” Sully said.
The monster squid made a grunting sound that echoed through the boys’ ears. Then it squeezed its body together so tightly that more panes of window glass cracked on the sub. Squid stomach juices began pouring into the sub.
“We’re gonna drown!” Ratface yelled. “Our pitiful lives will end desolving in squid digestive acid!”
Farley’s voice crackled over the speakers once more, issuing orders to his staff members beside the pool. “Prometheus Fronk,” he said in a deep voice. “You are my monster servant now. I command you to go get those boys and bring them to me.”
From over the radio, they heard a loud SPLASH.
“That’s Fronk, jumping in to try and find us,” Cody said. “Lotsa luck, Fronkie. You’ll never be able to beat this huge guy.”
Suddenly the giant Frankensquid’s movements stopped.
“Bring the boys to me,” Dr. Farley repeated. “Bring them to me now.”
The Frankensquid started to swim off again. They could feel the pulsations of its body.
From deep inside the squid, Cody heard deep, groaning sounds. “Aaaaaaaarr . . . Eeeeeeeee . . . Mmmmaaasssss . . . Errrrrrrrrrrr . . .”
“The squid is talking!” Sully cried.
“No way,” Ratface said. “Maybe it’s trying to go to the bathroom. Don’t you ever talk to yourself in the bathroom? Sometimes I sing.”
And then it all clicked in Cody’s head. Talk to yourself . . . Fronk, the teacher, jumping in the water, and the giant Frankensquid, grunting and swimming. He covered the microphone so Farley couldn’t hear the squid’s sounds. Aarr . . . Eeee . . . Mmaasss . . . Errr . . . Farley, Master!
“Guys,” he said. “The Frankensquid’s not fighting with Fronk. The Frankensquid IS Fronk. He’s become Farley’s slave somehow, and he’s bringing us back to his master.”
“We are so doomed,” Ratface said. “Doomder than doomed.”
Cody’s mind raced.
“I hope Mugsy has a happy life,” Ratface sniffed. He wiped his eyes. “I hope he finds himself a nice squid girl someday, and they have little squid babies, and maybe they could name them after us.”
“Disgusting!” Carlos said. “A squid wife? And babies? Gross!”
“Quit the sappy stuff,” Victor said.
The other boys nodded. They all stared at one another. It was the end, and they knew it. Nobody could speak. Nobody needed to. Then Victor noticed a button.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE EEL
Everything went black.
Everything went white.
Everything went helter-skelter, spinning like a tornado, roaring like the end of the world, sizzling like bacon fat in a frying pan. Arcs of high-voltage electricity snaked out from the exploding ship. Clouds of atomic radiation blossomed like ashy flowers. And chunks of foul, putrid, gray-green, undead squid flesh rained down on the whole world, slapping the pool like hailstones, slapping the spectators like rotten fish burgers from above.
Cody opened his eyes and saw nothing but light. Am I in heaven? he wondered. He shook him
self. What would the odds of that be? We survived. I can’t believe it.
On the deck of the pool, buried under a huge Franken-tentacle, lay Dr. Farley, temporarily stunned and unconscious. Good, Cody thought. He can stay that way. Not far off, lying facedown, was Mr. Fronk—with his own legs back. Hey, he got unsquidified, Cody thought.
Miss Threadbare clambered to her feet and watched the water anxiously. “Bilgey?” she called. “Bilgey, are you all right?”
But there was no sign of the octopus nurse. Miss Threadbare paced, growing more anxious each second.
Then Nurse Bilgewater’s body rose, bobbing to the surface, facedown. Miss Threadbare shrieked in dismay, then fished her from the water with a rescue hook.
Bilgewater sat there in a soggy heap while Threadbare fanned the air in front of her face.
Cody looked over at Carlos and Sully, who’d crawled over beside him. “Explain?”
Sully adjusted his glasses. “Who can explain anything around here?”
“Well, for starters, how is Professor Fronk back to normal?” Cody asked.
“Ah.” Sully scratched his head. “I guess the radiation from the nuclear fallout reversed the spliced mutations. Remember how Farley had to use radioactive rocks to mutate and transfer the genes in the first place? This time Fronk got his genes back from the Frankensquid. Probably the Frankensquid got his genes back from Fronk before he blew up.”
“I’m not sorry to see that big, gross squid gone,” Ratface said. “Eating us? Not cool. And those stitches inside his belly gave me the creeps.”
Carlos wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Too bad Mugsy and his twin squid couldn’t get fixed, too,” he said. “Poor Mugsy.”
The Trouble with Squids Page 6