The Nerdy Dozen

by Jeff Miller

  Sam hurriedly pulled the inflation valve, and seconds later, a yellow life raft sprang out like a blossoming, waterproof flower. A floating hexagon that could hold them all.

  “Okay. Now, let’s get in. We’ve got to get moving,” Trevor ordered. He edged the raft toward the water.

  “That’s the wrong way,” Neil and Sam started to say both at once. “The island is that way.”

  Neil looked up to realize that he and Sam were pointing in completely opposite directions.

  “Wait,” Sam said, trying to understand what had just happened. “Where is it?”

  But no one could agree. Riley and Jason 1 each pointed to different places, too. Somehow, in their haste to come up with a plan, they’d completely lost their sense of direction. It didn’t help that everything on the island looked the same, just ostriches and beach and, in the distance, foam-capped waves. Neil tried to search the shoreline for a landmark of some kind, but he saw nothing but more waves and the occasional sandbar.

  Wait, that sandbar looks familiar, Neil thought. He examined it more closely, wondering if it was just some memory from being stuck on the island earlier. Then it struck him. Feather Duster! This was the starting line for the final level, the race against Ozzie Tritch. The path that he had followed between sandbars through shallow water and that led all the way to the warehouse. Harris must have really based the game on this island!

  “Guys, I know this might sound crazy, but I think . . .” Neil hesitated. “I think we need to ride those ostriches.” The five of them looked out at the countless birds running across the beach, pecking at whatever bits of food they found on the ground.

  “Are you serious?” Sam asked.

  “Actually, I am,” Neil said, and explained about the game, and how this was the landscape of the final race. “If we can saddle up these bad boys, I’m pretty sure we can ride them to the warehouse.”

  “I can catch one,” Jason 1 said, immediately sprinting after a bird. Neil watched as it sped away from him, irritably flapping its small wings. Neil started to approach one of the ostriches and then remembered Weo’s words about the peanut butter sound. He cleared his throat to produce a thick, guttural noise.

  “Are you choking?” Sam exclaimed, hurrying forward, ready to administer the Heimlich maneuver.

  “No! Weo told me this is how to calm them down. Ostriches, they like the sound of you trying to eat a sandwich with too much peanut butter,” Neil explained. He continued, cupping his hands around his mouth while his tongue made a slick, noisy thwack.

  Trevor started laughing at Neil, but the sound worked—seconds later, a large ostrich was making its way toward Neil, sporadically tilting its head as it moved forward. Neil held his hand out, and the ostrich softly pecked at it, scouring every knuckle for the potential of food.

  Riley, who was known in certain regional faire circuits as Ye Olde Swine Whisperer, worked his magic with four other ostriches roaming the beach, gathering them all together into a gray-and-black-feathered ostrich flock.

  “Hey there, buddy,” Neil murmured, walking up to his ostrich hesitantly. “Wait, sorry. Buddy’s a dumb name. I’m going to call you Reggie. Reggie the Ostrich.”

  The bird squawked in approval.

  “Nice. I wish Biggs were here to see this. Something tells me he’d be right at home with this type of thing.” Neil placed his left hand on the ostrich’s wing and took a huge, bracing hop, swinging his body up onto the flightless bird.

  “You guys can do it!” he encouraged the others once he was safely seated on Reggie.

  As the others started to jump onto their respective ostriches, Neil experimented with how to control Reggie. When he pulled gently on Reggie’s wings where they connected to his body, the bird pranced in a high-stepping circle. Neil had to focus on balancing or else he would slip right off. As he held on tight using leg muscles that were previously unknown to him, Neil wondered if this was what riding a unicycle was like.

  “Okay, guys, let’s move,” Neil said once everyone was settled. The birds bounced and chortled and flitted around, clearly excited to be moving in a group. “We have to get there by four,” he added.

  “What happens then?” Sam was leaning completely forward, her arms wrapped tightly around the bony neck of her ostrich.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure,” Neil admitted. “But we’ve got to find out.”

  With a squeeze of his legs, Neil guided Reggie toward the sandbars dotting the horizon. Seeing this, the other ostriches followed, their claws flicking wet sand behind them up in the air. Reggie moved in jagged, huge strides, covering great swaths of ground with ease. The flock headed in the direction of the afternoon sun and slowly curved right, following the thin strips of sand emerging from the water. Neil could feel hot and humid ocean breezes on his face.

  “This is nuts!” Sam laughed as she drew even with Neil, their ostriches sprinting ahead. “I’m gonna beat you!”

  Jason 1, however, passed both of them, and as the flock sprinted together, they saw a flash of light ahead. It was the edge of the bubble Harris had somehow created. They had unknowingly broken through, and they looked up to see a shimmering bubble encompassing the island.

  “Whoa,” Neil said as he guided Reggie to step in, then out, then back into the silvery bubble broadcast. It was flawless, almost like being inside a Chameleon. Neil couldn’t believe it. Harris had somehow taken the scales and used them to project invisibility so that no one outside the dome could see what was happening within. It was genius.

  Trevor’s and Riley’s ostriches soon caught up, bleating under their weight. They stepped into the bubble and peered back in the direction they’d come from.

  “How is he doing it?” Trevor wondered aloud.

  Neil swallowed unsteadily. The question wasn’t so much how as it was why. He had to figure out what Harris was plotting.

  STILL SITTING ATOP THEIR OSTRICHES, NEIL AND THE OTHERS paused on the wet sand to look at Harris’s compound from a new angle. They could see how it was carved into the rock of the island with a tumbling waterfall rushing down its side.

  “That’s how we get in,” Neil said, nodding at the waterfall.

  “Wait, you’re not serious,” Trevor argued.

  “Yup. Just trust me. You’ll need some speed, and get ready to jump once you break through the water,” Neil explained. He felt calm. For the first time in his life, he actually knew what was coming in real life—because he had already played it in a video game.

  “I cannot do this,” Riley said. “The fall of the waters, I like it not.”

  “Come on,” Trevor snapped, even though just seconds ago he had seemed afraid too.

  But Neil was thinking. They didn’t all need to go inside. And there was something else Riley could do that would help them.

  “Riley,” Neil said, “do you think you could ride back the way we came?”

  “Of course. I can ride for you, my liege,” Riley said, bowing his round head in Neil’s direction.

  “Okay, basically you just need to follow the path we just took and head into the middle of the jungle. Once you pass a rock shaped like an old man’s face and see something that looks like it could be called snake mountain, start making noise—a lot of noise. My friend will find you,” Neil instructed. “His name is Weo. Tell him Neil needs his help. And keep an eye out for trip wires—he makes one heck of a net.”

  “I will not let you down, sire!” Riley gushed.

  “Fare thee well, Lord Riley,” Neil said. Riley smiled and turned to start heading back toward Ostrich Island.

  “I’ll go with him,” said Jason 1. “No way is anybody back home gonna believe this.”

  “You’re sending them to Weo? The kid who held us hostage?” Trevor asked, disbelieving.

  “We need backup,” Neil said. But that wasn’t the whole reason he’d thought of Weo. He remembered the car ride with Harris, how he’d recoiled at the mention of Weo’s name. Neil knew that some extra help might be their best
chance at stopping him, and Weo and Harris had a history. “Trevor, if you don’t want to face the waterfall, you can go back to the other island, too,” he offered.

  Trevor paused, looking back at the sandy path they’d just traversed, then up at the waterfall. “I’ll stay,” he said, glaring. “You two wouldn’t last long without me. And hey, this is a team, right?”

  “You know it. And I’m glad you’re on it,” Neil responded.

  “Whatever.”

  “All right, let’s save the lovey-dovey stuff for the postgame interviews, boys,” Sam interrupted, her ostrich restlessly flapping its wings.

  Neil turned to face the waterfall again. He took a deep breath, then urged Reggie forward, gathering speed until he was running at the waterfall headfirst. With two more steps, he jerked back on Reggie’s bony wings, urging him to leap. With water beading on his feathers, Reggie leaped from one foot over the wide abyss, just like in the video game. Neil peered down and saw magma swirling under thin cracks in the volcanic ground below. It really is just like the game.

  Neil turned back to make sure the others were okay. He watched as Sam, then Trevor, successfully splashed through the sheet of fast-moving water and over the abyss. Once they had safely joined him, he pivoted to peer down the rocky tunnel, its damp walls echoing the soft, persistent sound of rushing water.

  With a nod to the others, Neil dismounted from Reggie and darted off, running down the long, dim tunnel. It wasn’t long before he noticed the temperature cooling off, the air growing less damp. And then the tunnel emerged directly into the main room of Harris’s warehouse.

  Neil stood in a corner of the vast room, blinking in shock at the scene before him.

  The warehouse was now barely lit, and dramatic shadows from boxes and equipment were cast down on the floor. Only one of the giant ceiling lights was on, spilling out a single beam. Harris stood on a temporary platform in the center of the room, wearing a skintight silver bodysuit. It literally sparkled, its exterior reflective and metallic. He even wore glasses made of the same material. Around him, his guards stood in a huge pack, all wearing identical costumes. But Neil’s eyes were drawn to the object next to Harris, some kind of glowing spire. It looked almost like it could be powering something—like an island-sized bubble of invisibility, for instance, he thought. Neil wondered if it could be drawing on the electromagnetic power from the lava below.

  “But why sell it now? We could do so many more things!” Neil heard one of Harris’s cohorts ask. Neil held out an arm to keep the others back. They still hadn’t been seen. “We could rob banks! Take on whole armies!”

  “We don’t need to rob banks!” Harris exclaimed. “This is just the first two billion dollars. Now that we have the technology, we can clone more of it later. With this money, we’ll be one step closer to the grand relaunch. Actually, two billion steps closer.”

  “But your game got canceled! How are you relaunching?”

  Trevor and Sam tiptoed forward, and Neil followed, still utterly silent.

  “It’ll be easy to relaunch when there are no other games to compete with!” Harris snapped. “As soon as this wire transfer is complete, I will be able to purchase every video-game manufacturer on the planet and destroy them all. I want to eliminate all the competition, and to do that, I’m going to have to go to the source.”

  “But what will we do when there’s no more video games?” a slow-sounding, thick-fingered goon asked.

  “You won’t need any other games! No one will! Feather Duster and Feather Duster 2: Eclectic Bugaboo are the only games anyone needs! The only games anyone will be able to get!”

  “Did . . . are the controls more lifelike?” asked a curious guard.

  “The controls are perfect!” Harris yelled shrilly. “You’re fired for asking that!”

  The giant screen looming behind him, previously blank, lit up with some kind of video chat. Except instead of a face, the square for the other person displayed a red UNAVAILABLE sign. In the bottom corner of the feed was Harris’s face, projecting from where he stood in front of a sleek computer perched atop the control console.

  “As promised, before the transfer is complete,” Harris said to whoever was on the other end of the video chat, “a look at the technology you’re paying for.”

  “Good,” said the gravelly mysterious voice.

  Neil noticed that underneath the video chat was a bright-blue progress bar showing the status of a transfer of just over two billion dollars. The progress read 81% and was slowly crawling toward completion. At this rate, it would take only a few minutes to finish.

  Harris signaled to a nearby crony, who flipped a switch near the radiant tower in the center of the room. And slowly, just like the Chameleon did and just like the island had, Harris drifted out of sight. Whoever was watching the video feed would be able to see that he was still there as he plopped his white captain’s hat onto his invisible head.

  “I trust you will find ways of making this useful,” Harris said to the person on the other end.

  “Oh yes, indeed,” said the voice. “And the technology will transfer to me immediately when this monetary transaction is complete? Of course, I wouldn’t dream of taking it until the transaction has gone through and you are satisfied.”

  “Of course,” Harris said. “It is programmed to send immediately upon confirmation from my offshore bank.”

  “Very well,” the voice said, and then the transmission ended.

  “Guards!” Harris called out, and the same mouth-breathing crony flipped the switch again and returned Harris to a visible state.

  “Okay,” Neil said, turning back to Sam and Trevor. Both looked as terrified as he did, their faces pale. “You guys heard that, right? What do you think we should do?”

  In the corner, Neil could see the now-empty office that they had been held captive in earlier, and his eyes scanned the broken glass as he tried to think of a plan. But then footsteps sounded behind him. Reggie had followed them from the tunnel—and had apparently decided it was time to speak up. He honked loudly, the noise echoing through the warehouse like a fire horn.

  At the sound, Harris and his cronies looked up sharply. “Well, well, well,” Harris said. “Look who decided to come back.”

  With a smirk, Harris reached for the hefty lever on the device next to him. And he and his henchmen all turned invisible.

  “THEY’VE GONE INVISIBLE!” NEIL SHOUTED, THOUGH HE knew that he was sort of stating the obvious. He lifted his hands in defense, thinking of the way he walked through the frozen-foods section with Janey on the loose: Always alert. Invisible enemy. Try to momentarily blind her by ripping open a bag of frozen peas.

  Neil moved forward with sporadic and jerky motions, swinging his arms as if they were garden hoses gushing water. His right arm connected with something, so he swung at it, hoping he might actually do some damage, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Neil then felt an invisible hand grab his left arm, and he thrashed around, trying to shake off his camouflaged assailant.

  Trevor and Sam ran farther out into the main room, punching and kicking into the empty space. But after only a few seconds of battle, invisible arms and hands tugged at their limbs, too. They were immobilized by forces they couldn’t see.

  “Harris!” Neil shouted.

  “Right here, ManofNeil,” said a voice in front of Neil.

  As Neil scratched and clawed at an invisible guard still holding on to him, the status on the screen above crawled toward completion. Neil kicked in the direction of what he assumed was the guard’s pudgy gut and connected, feeling the hands grabbing him release in pain.

  “Ninety-two percent!” hollered Trevor.

  “Harris, now’s your last chance to give up!” Neil shouted. But a kick to his back sent him to the floor. He felt an invisible body pounce on top of him.

  “Oh yeah? And who will make me? You and your puny friends?” Harris laughed, an invisible madman. He cranked his arm around Neil’s neck and squeezed down t
ightly. As Neil’s cheeks grew red from the pressure, he heard the shouts of his friends being restrained, and an uneasiness washed over him.

  Searching for anything, Neil’s hands scrambled up to Harris’s face. He could feel Harris’s glasses. Neil grabbed them and threw them to the ground. Now Harris wouldn’t be able to see, either.

  “Ah! My glasses!” Harris squealed. The two wrestled and rolled over each other, the blind fighting the blind—or, in this case, the invisible.

  Neither of them was exactly a skilled fighter. Unsure of where to attack, they both sliced down with their hands and forearms, occasionally making contact and sending the other into a mad flurry of slaps whenever they did. There was a lot of dramatic yelling and some pinching, but neither of them dared to do too much more.

  Keep moving, Neil thought, swiveling his head. But as he bobbed, weaved, and turned to bob again, something connected with his face.

  It was the hardest punch Neil had ever taken. Worse than Tommy Scott’s. Worse than Janey’s. Harris’s fist had landed with a spark of pain right on Neil’s jaw. Neil dropped to the ground and quickly grabbed his swelling cheek.

  For being a code-writing video game nerd, Harris can sure throw a punch, Neil thought. Neil’s breath quickened. He looked over to see Trevor being taken out by invisible hands grabbing at him. Sam was being held tight in an invisible bear hug, her legs kicking in the air.

  “The download is nearly complete,” Harris crowed as he turned Neil’s head to the looming screen. “I want you to have a front-row seat for what will happen next.”

  He felt a tug at his neck as Harris ripped off his dog tags and threw them to the ground. He couldn’t believe that after all this, after they’d come so close, he was about to watch as the Chameleon’s scales technology fell into some stranger’s hands.

  But then, in the distance, he heard someone approaching, and it didn’t sound like the plodding feet of Harris’s goons.

  “Verily we ride, my lordship! Onward, my avian brothers and sisters!” Riley’s voice amplified down the hallway.