“Shoo,” I say, waving a hand in her direction. Of all the scary things I’ve seen today, a lazy basset hound is the least of my worries.
She gives another half-hearted growl.
“No, ma’am. That’s bad manners.”
Glory puts her tail between her legs then trudges down the porch heading for the Raccoon Creek exit. If all the infected creatures are that easy to handle, tonight will be a breeze.
The Fulton twins finally answer the door decked out in orange capes and oversize work boots. “We’re not ’pposed to open the door by ourselves no more. But we looked through the peeping hole and sawed you,” Collin says.
“Thanks, guys.” I poke my head around them. “Nate here?”
“We wanted him to toast our waffles, but he didn’t. He’s being a toot-face. He said if you came to tell you he was sick.”
I force a smile. “No worries. I’ll get him up.”
Benny spreads his little arms wide, blocking the doorway. “He’s sick.”
The twins look up at me with big, stubborn eyes. They’re tough negotiators, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s the way to the Fulton heart. “If you let me in, I’ll toast your waffles. Extra syrup and butter.”
They eye each other, then swing the front door wide open. After I fix a hulking stack of waffles, I stalk down the hall to Nate’s room. It’s dark inside, but I can still spot a Nate-size lump in the middle of his messy bed. I click on the light. “Get up.”
“I’m choosing to use my remaining hours in a matter I see fitting,” he mumbles from beneath the covers.
“Sporemageddon hasn’t won yet. I’ve got a plan.”
“It’s time we face the inevitable, Mags. We are the last of humanity and these are the end days.”
“Will you get out of bed already?” I toss a sneaker at the Nate lump.
“Ouch! Don’t you have any respect for the gravely ill?”
I push my hands through my hair. Collin was right. Nate is being a toot-face. My eyes drift to a pile of Midnight Kingdom comics spread over his floor. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I clear my throat and don my best movie announcer voice. “Would Brigadier Ajax give up in the face of death? Would he let his people and his good name be defeated by a monster of unknown origins and unfathomable capabilities?”
The blankets shift and Nate peeks out from under his comforter. “A tribe of hostile robotic dolphins once dipped him into hot lava.”
“And did he give up?” I ask, hoping my general knowledge of Midnight Kingdom plots holds true.
“No way, that’s when he developed his seventeenth superpower—heat resistance. He jumped out of that volcano totally unscathed. It was epic.” Nate sits up, looking suddenly reenergized. “Ajax took down the dolphins’ evil praying mantis emperor and made the rest of the robots repair his spaceship.”
I put one hand on my hip. “Well, that’s what we’re going to do.”
“But we don’t even have a spaceship,” he says, flipping his curls out of his eyes.
I pull the bills out of my pocket and slap them against my hand. “But we do have five hundred big ones, and that’s nearly as good.”
“How’s that going to stop the outbreak?”
“Remember how Old Man Bell used to spray down his woods with that crop duster? My theory is the plane was filled with a fungicide that kept Ophio from spreading to the rest of town. Then when Bell died and quit spraying, it got out.”
Nate wrinkles his forehead. “But you saw that weird moth with the stalk before he died.”
I pause. He’s got a point. “Maybe it slipped out. I don’t know, but right now the crop duster is our best bet.”
“So… you want us to fly a plane?” Nate asks, looking intrigued. “I mean, I’ve played some pilot video games. I guess I could probably––”
“We’re not flying anything. We just need the fungicide. We could always snoop around Bell’s cabin for some, but the plane seemed like a less creepy option.”
“Not the ghost hut,” Nate murmurs with a slight shudder.
“The crop duster it is, then,” I say. “The only tricky part is figuring out a way to get the fungicide out of the plane and onto everything that’s infected.”
“So a siphon pump, for starters.”
I tilt my head. “A what?”
“You know, the thing that’s gonna get the fungus killer out of the plane and into something else.” Nate shrugs like the whole thing’s totally obvious.
“Right. I hadn’t really thought that far out yet.” I pick at the hem of my T-shirt. Finding some random pump on short notice could be a problem.
Nate gives a sideways grin.
“What? Why are you smiling?”
“No reason. It’s just kinda nice knowing something you don’t.”
“How exactly do you know anything about siphons, anyway?”
“Remember when Benny poured lemonade into my dad’s gas tank on Christmas Eve and I couldn’t go with you to the Sunny Day Nursing Home party?”
“Your dad was super ticked.”
“Yeah, well, he made me watch YouTube videos until I figured out how to fix it. It was pretty easy. Just had to raid his supplies for some PVC pipes, duct tape, and a plumbing hose.”
“You wouldn’t happen to still have that siphon lying around the house, would you?”
Nate shakes his head. “Nope.”
My shoulders fall.
“It’s not in the house. It’s in my dad’s woodshed.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” I smile, glad that he’s back on the team.
“I’m a regular international man of mystery.”
“You so are. Now let’s get moving.”
Nate jumps out of bed and grabs his camcorder off his nightstand. As we hurry through the living room, Benny pops his head up from the couch. “Whatcha doing?”
Oh no. The twins. Somehow, I’d completely forgotten that we can’t just leave a pair of diabolical three-year-olds home alone.
“Ah dang.” Nate grimaces. Clearly the boys had slipped his mind too. “You think we can take them with us?”
“To the epicenter of the fungal outbreak?”
“I guess not,” Nate says. “I can’t leave them alone. They’ll burn the place down, or worse.”
I need Nate. This was our mission from the beginning. He’s the para to my normal. The action to my sit-and-think. I can’t do this without him. I plop down on the couch next to Collin, all the adrenaline of the breakthrough seeping from me.
Nate grabs the kitchen phone. A second later he’s talking to somebody on the other end. “Hey, bro, any chance you can do me an ultra-huge favor?” Nate grins. “You’re a true hero.”
Fifteen minutes later, there’s a rumbling out front and a skinny, dark-haired boy in ripped jeans and a muscle shirt waltzes in the front door. It’s Nate’s cousin, Ricky. “What’s up, dude?”
“Just saving the world with Mags,” Nate answers.
Collin and Benny straddle themselves around each of Ricky’s legs. He laughs and tussles their hair. “Saving the world, huh?”
I nod. “That’s actually pretty spot on.”
Ricky glances around the place. “You guys got any frozen corn dogs?”
Nate wriggles his eyebrows. “Half a box.”
“Then I’m all set.” Ricky flops down on the couch and grabs the TV remote. The twins rest their messy heads of hair on his shoulders.
“Keep the twins inside, will ya, Ricky? There’s some nasty junk going around.”
“You got it, bro. We’re going to binge-watch old TMNT and eat our weight in junk,” Ricky says. The twins exchange high fives.
“Where to?” Nate asks as we head out the door.
“We suit up, then head to the armory.”
Nate arches an eyebrow. “Shady Pines has an armory?”
“Better known as Goodman’s Pharmacy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
We assemble our homem
ade hazmat suits, then snag the siphon pump from the woodshed.
On the way out of the trailer park, I glance up at the tree house and notice the old oak it’s built in is covered in bulbous blue growths. Putting Albert’s jelly up there definitely didn’t help the situation.
We jump on our bikes and ride downtown. The streetlamps are just flicking on as we arrive. Normally there’s a steady trickle of people coming and going, but tonight the sidewalks are empty and no cars are parked at the meters. Nate leans his bike against the side of Goodman’s. “What exactly are we looking for in here?”
“We’re striking back, and we need combat gear.” I grab a cart and make a beeline for the seasonal aisle. I lurch to a stop in front of a display of half a dozen high-powered squirt guns.
Nate’s eyes sparkle. “The MegaBlaster 3000.”
“Let’s load ’em up,” I say, grabbing an armful. “Two for each of us, plus a couple more just in case.”
When we’ve cleared out the display, Nate holds up a bag of army-green water grenades. “What do you think?”
“This is war. Throw them in. All of them.”
At the checkout, I slap two of the hundred-dollar bills on the counter and say a line I’ve always dreamed of using: “Keep the change.”
Kiki blinks back at me, her eyes dull as dirty pennies. “Whatcha doing with all the squirt guns?” She hands me a bag, her fingers flickering like the neon lights in front of Banjo’s Pool Hall.
The fungus is spreading through town fast.
I grab Nate’s arm. “Time to go!”
We race out to the street and strap our gear onto the back of our bikes with a couple of bungee cords we swiped from the woodshed. As we pass the sheriff’s department, a voice calls after us. “It’s not safe for you youngins to be runnin’ the streets at night. Come on inside.” Sheriff Huxley, trailed by Deputy Ronald and Kiki, shuffle toward us in a horizontal line.
“Don’t you want your receipt?” Kiki calls, stretching out her glow-in-the-dark arm. “No refunds without a receipt.”
I start to pedal and notice Nate holding his camcorder, filming the whole thing. “Your Internet stardom can wait. We’ve got sporemageddon to wrangle!” I yell.
Nate slides his camera into his backpack. “You looked fantastic saying that last line. Just fantastic.”
As we pump away, we pass the fire station and my feet lose their grip on the pedals. A fleshy cyan mushroom as tall as one of the twins rises up from the station’s lawn. A cyclone of spores whirls out from the top. I yank my bandanna over my nose and pedal harder.
As we reach the forest, the moon casts silvery light onto a dark line of trees. We grab two blasters each, abandon our bikes, and start out on foot.
My garbage bag suit sticks to my skin and sweat rolls down my back. We follow a path of shimmering sapphire mushrooms. It’s like someone’s rolled out a neon carpet leading us straight to the heart of the forest. A lone owl hoots as we dodge thorny brambles and ghostly oaks draped in moss.
Up ahead, something white flutters from a pile of dried leaves. I kneel. It’s crumpled-up papers held in place by a silver cell phone.
“What is all that?” Nate asks.
I click a button on the phone. An image of Ezra, Jack, and Zion appears on the home screen. “It’s Ezra’s phone.” I smooth out the papers. “And the pages Ezra tore out of Dad’s journal.”
“Your bro’s throwing out his stuff in the woods. That doesn’t seem like a good sign.”
I peer down at the papers and read one of Dad’s entries. It’s dated six months ago.
Today I found a box of green powder waiting for processing. A rat family with some weird growths had made its home in there. I tried to dump them outside, but they made a break for it before I could catch them. I told A.E., but he says not to worry. He’ll take care of everything. Something seems off about it. I think I’ll run a couple of tests of my own.
At the bottom of the page there’s a sketch I never really noticed before. Rats with squiggles at the back of their heads. The rats, Albert, the fungus. They’re all connected. “No wonder Ezra didn’t want anyone to see these pages.”
Nate peers over my shoulder. “Ophio was working its charm on him already.”
“Dad knew something was wrong at the factory. If the Crofts hadn’t fired him, he might’ve put the pieces together.”
“Sure would be nice if he could tell us how to take down the ol’ Spore King.”
For a moment I imagine Dad tromping through the woods by my side. He’s decked out in the same trash bag suit and goggles. We’re stalking through the night, MegaBlasters hoisted on our shoulders. We’re not scared or lost or confused. He’s with us and we know we’re gonna win.
My boots crunch over fallen twigs and the daydream fades away. I slip Ezra’s phone and Dad’s crumpled pages into my backpack. We walk in silence until we come to the downed crop duster. Moss and vines twist around the plane, making it look like a relic from some long-forgotten war. I just hope it’s got enough oomph left in it to help us win this battle. “So how exactly does this work?” I ask.
“All we gotta do is connect one end of the hose to the fungicide tank and the other to the MegaBlasters. Gravity will do the rest,” Nate says.
“Where do you think the tank might be?” I walk around to the nose of the plane.
“It’s not all that big. It can’t be that hard to find,” Nate says, then gives a dry, raspy cough.
“You okay?”
“So far, so good.” Nate squats beneath one wing and eyes the ground. “Hey, remember all those mushrooms that were over here before?”
“I guess so.” I shrug. It’s not like mushrooms are any big surprise around here anymore.
“They’re all shriveled up now. Plus, there’s a bunch of gunk that looks like black Tic Tacs.”
“Ew.” I peer under the plane. Sure enough, the mushrooms look like they got stuck in a dehydrator and turned to fungus jerky. “Some of the fungicide must have dripped down and killed them off. That’s a good sign.”
Nate fiddles around the bottom of the plane for a few minutes, grunting and muttering to himself. Then he slides his head out. “I found the tank, but I can’t get the cap off. Can you find me a rock or something I can bang against it and loosen it up?”
I circle the plane but there’re only leaves and sticks. A few yards away there’s an opening in the side of an earthy hill, like a miniature cave. I trot over and dip my head in. The walls are low enough that I have to crouch, but its plenty wide. As I shuffle around, I bump into something warm. It squeaks and I scuttle back.
A storm of black shapes flaps out of the cave. Hundreds of furry masses whirl upward, surrounding us with wings beating in a wild dance.
“Bats!” Nate shrieks. “Bats are as bad as spiders!”
They squeal as they soar over us, blocking out everything except the view of their leathery wings. My trash bag shifts, then flaps against my chest as a writhing bat flutters underneath. Reports of rabid bats infecting unsuspecting hikers whip through my mind. That and an image of a ghoulish vampire straight out of a horror movie. I screech and spin around in a circle until I shake the thing out.
My trash bag has a three-inch tear down one side, and there’s bat guano on my rain boots. But the sky is finally clear and the bats’ squeaks have faded away.
“Are they gone?” Nate peeks out from behind his hands.
“I hope so,” I say and scrape my boots against a rock.
“This forest needs to be burned to the ground.” Nate grabs a stone from the mouth of the cave, then peeks under the plane. After a thorough inspection, he drops under the crop duster again. There’s a few seconds of banging, then Nate announces he’s got the cap off. “Hand me the pump. I don’t want to be under here any longer than I have to.”
A cloud shifts over the moon, and the forest grows darker. A sawing sound drifts from the trees, like cicadas only deeper and louder.
Nate pokes his head out. “
Do you feel that buzzing?”
“There’s a sound, but I don’t feel anything.”
Nate shakes his head. “My bones feel like magnets and something in the woods is yanking on them.”
All I feel is the hot stickiness of the trash bag against my sweaty skin. “Let’s just fill up the blasters and get going.”
Nate pushes himself up. “I’m gonna check it out.”
“What? No way! We need to stay together.” But Nate’s already marching down a path sprinkled with aqua fungi. The trees quiver and there’s a whooshing sound like a jet taking off. “Nate? Is that you?”
The dazzling lights of the forest suddenly disappear. I’m in total darkness when I hear his voice.
“You’ve returned at last. Welcome.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
In the clearing up ahead, Nate stands stock-still. I jog after him. “Nate, come back!”
He doesn’t move.
Albert Eldridge steps into a sliver of moonlight. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us.”
I duck behind a clump of rotting tree limbs, pulse pounding.
Nate squeezes one fist. “I’m not joining anything. You’re a bad guy. A really, really bad guy.”
“Bad?” Albert slinks closer. “There is no good or bad. Only survival or extinction.”
I can’t decide between racing to Nate or sneaking back to the plane and filling up the first blaster. So I stay put, eyes darting from Nate to the plane.
“People have stalks growing out of their heads.” Nate shuffles backward, his rain boots bumping over gnarly brambles. “That’s not a positive thing, sir.”
Albert inhales and the leaves on the trees seem to draw closer to him. “You still don’t understand, but you will. The world needs our kind.”
“All right, well that’s just creepy. And, uh, news flash: You’re not a fungus. You’re a dude.”
“Since I met Ophio, everything has changed. Now I’m a host to something new. Working as one for the common good.”
“And what’s that? Turning everybody into a bunch of zombified mushroom people? ’Cause nobody wants any part of that. So why don’t you just haul your moldy rumpus out of here?”
The Mutant Mushroom Takeover Page 13