The Fat Man (14 page)

Now I was scared.

“We need to tell Santa,” Dingleberry said.

“I don’t think he’d believe me,” I said. “Cane’s done a pretty good job of framing me. No, Candy Cane’s going to have to confess.”

“How are you going to get him to spill?” Rosebud asked.

“We’re going to frolic and play, the Eskimo way,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Dingleberry asked.

“I think the phrase ‘cold-blooded’ might have something to do with it,” Rosebud said.

“You need to be careful, Gumdrop,” Dingleberry said. “Mr. Cane is not taking any chances. Since no one has found you yet, he’s locked himself up with the toys and put a guard outside.”

“After the Forest of Mistletoe, I think I can take care of a guard,” I replied with as much strut as I could manage.

“Not this one,” Dingleberry said. He reached into his pocket, pulled something out and tossed it to me. When I caught a pecan, I knew who Cane’s guard was and I winced at the pain heading my way.

“Oh, Tannenbomb.”

CHAPTER 16

D
ingleberry and Rosebud were fine with me going after Candy Cane all by my lonesome, but they would not hear of me taking on Tannenbomb solo, and I was in no position to argue. Not only was my engine sputtering on fumes, Tannenbomb was a serious piece of bad news.

Guarding Candy Cane was a monster nutcracker, a twenty-two-foot Amazon shell splitter who killed for peanuts. Legend has it that the oak Tannenbomb was carved from was struck by a mean bolt of lightning, spiking the wood with a hard-boiled venom that the devil himself envied, turning the nutcracker into one sadistic assassin for hire. Fire, silver-bladed axes, termites—nothing could defeat Tannenbomb, so Santa and Kringle Town’s finest always tried to keep him occupied with long hunts in the wilderness for the Rat King. If Tannenbomb were half as smart as he is strong, he’d know he was on a snipe hunt, but his brain is mostly drift-wood, so the ruse has worked for years. I don’t know how Cane found Tannenbomb and trained him to take orders, but he did it. There Tannenbomb stood, guarding the inner sanctum of Cane’s Xanadu lair and there was no getting around him. The clap of his wooden jaw sounded like your casket closing.

I was feeling about as tough as a Sugarplum Fairy.

Still, I had to do something. Cane was hiding behind the door ahead of me, thousands of toys with him, hoarding them so he could be the new Santa once the Fat Man shriveled up from exhaustion. I was the only one who could stop Candy Cane’s plan, but when I looked up at the Cashew King Kong I literally hoped I wasn’t, well, nuts.

“Here goes nothing,” I told Dingleberry and Rosebud. “I’m making this up as I go along, so just listen and watch. And pray.”

I stepped into the entrance hall of Cane’s private quarters. The room was huge, the walls as tall as a canyon. In the middle was a Christmas tree, one of the biggest ones I’d ever seen. It was so big Tannenbomb looked like a toy beside it. The tree was decorated with large golden balls, millions of them, and about thirty miles of silver tinsel. The gaudiness made my stomach churn. It looked like the tree of a robber baron. I came around the tree and faced the nutcracker, but Tannenbomb stared straight ahead, a good soldier. He didn’t even see me, so I thought I could possibly tiptoe around him. I took a few quiet steps to my right, keeping my eyes on the nutcracker.

I should have kept at least one eye on where I was going because less than ten steps away from the door, I walked all over a pile of discarded pecan shells. The noise sounded like a T. rex cracking its back.

Tannenbomb flared his nostril with a perturbed snort, and the growl that boiled out of his chest sounded like a freight train with a toothache. A hard, merciless eye found me among the nutshells, but it warmed when Tannenbomb realized he had something to kill. He lifted a boot to smash me.

Tannenbomb was quicker than I thought. As his foot came down, I dove forward as fast as I could, but felt the whoosh of the near miss run up my back like an ill wind. Splinters of pecan shells rained through the air like arrows, so, instead of standing up and running, I had to crawl like a bug scampering for a dark place to hide. Cane’s door was only a few feet away, but it might as well have been at the South Pole. In the next blink, Tannenbomb’s broadsword swept me across the room like a ball of dust.

The world was spinning and listing starboard, but I knew better than to sit still. I could feel Tannenbomb stomping toward me, so I got to my feet and let my legs do the best they could. Above me was Tannenbomb’s open hand, big and not looking as cozy as I had hoped. I gave my head a shake to clear my eyes and guessed I would have a chance if I zigzagged at Tannenbomb’s feet. I guessed right.

As a rule, giant monster nutcrackers made of solid wood are not as nimble as the dancers that play them in the ballet. It takes a lot of effort to swing that lumber around, and Tannenbomb was about a second late. And a second was all I needed.

I darted between Tannenbomb’s legs, put my hand on the door handle and yanked. The door came to me, but then slammed back into place. Tannenbomb had returned the door with a thump of his paw and bounced me back into the middle of the room. I was a sitting duck.

Tannenbomb’s arm was about to fly down and slap me redheaded, when a pecan bounced off his noggin. I turned to see Dingleberry with an empty, guilty slingshot. Rosebud was beside him, ready to heave another handful of nuts at the giant. “Step away from the elf, stick boy,” Rosebud said with a snarl. “Or Momma will huff and puff and blow your house down.”

I’m pretty sure Dingleberry wet himself just then.

I wasn’t so sure how long I was going to stay dry either.

At first Tannenbomb looked hurt at Rosebud’s remark, as if she’d told him their romance was over and that she had fallen for a marionette.
“It was beauty that killed the beast.”
Getting past Tannenbomb was going to be easier than I thought.

But just as I let out the tiniest of breaths, the big nut ape reached down and swooped up Rosebud in his mitt and held her above his head at what looked like cloud level. I was back at the drawing board and running out of chalk.

Rosebud screamed like a cold shower. Since I had known her, Rosebud had always been flatline calm, but I guessed that when a twenty-foot nutcracker is looking at you like you’re a goober to be gobbled, you’re allowed to have a hissy fit or two. She kicked and squirmed, pounding her tiny fist on Tannenbomb’s big wooden fingers. “AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHH!” she screamed loud enough to be heard on Pluto, but Tannenbomb could only hear his heart skipping a beat.

“GUMDROP,” Rosebud yelled with bloody tonsils. “DO SOMETHING!”

Dingleberry was frozen. Apparently, years of studying every heroic feat of
By George
had not prepared Ding for actual combat. In desperation, Dingleberry flung his empty slingshot at Tannenbomb, but his nerves had gotten to him and Ding couldn’t hit soot if he fell down a chimney. I needed to think of something fast because it was starting to look like the nutcracker wanted to be alone with Rosebud and that meant sending Dingleberry and me to Shell Town. But how do you hurt a sequoia?

You get the sequoia to chop itself down.

“Follow me,” I said to Dingleberry. “Watch me carefully and do what I do.” I didn’t wait for him to ask for more instructions and I jumped into the air like a rocket with good old wonderfully loyal Dingleberry right behind me.

We made a wide circle around Tannenbomb’s gigantic head, buzzing by close enough to get his attention. His empty hand went to swat us down, but we inched up in altitude just out of reach. This made Tannenbomb mad, and he lurched at us, jumping as high as he could, which wasn’t much.

With Dingleberry right behind, I made a wider circle and came around the giant tree, hooking one of the golden ornaments with my hand. I zoomed back to the sky above Tannenbomb, dropping the ornament so it would hit Tannenbomb square on the head.

Bull’s-eye.

Dingleberry did the same, landing a direct hit.

Our elf air force came around again a few more times, launching ornament bombs at the big ape with all the fight we had in us. Golden glass rained like a rainbow had exploded. The only thing louder than the ornaments crashing was Rosebud’s shrieks. She was either scared out of her mind by now, or was trying for some kind of record.

Tannenbomb was getting steamed, using his one free hand to slice the air like a madman shooing away flies. Dingleberry and I kept just out of his grasp, but Tannenbomb wasn’t giving up. He put Rosebud on his shoulder, grabbed the huge Christmas tree and started to climb. Every few feet, he’d grip the tree with one hand and take a swing at me and Dingleberry, but we were too quick for him.

“Keep throwing those ornaments, Ding,” I hollered. “And keep making him climb. Just watch that big hand of his.”

“Roger,” Dingleberry said. “Bogey is padlocked and I’m kicking up to warp one for a knife fight in a phone booth with fangs out, over.”

“Dingleberry, why are you talking like that?”

“In issue 988 of
By George Adventures
—
Mangy Dogfight,
George joined Captain Billy ‘Souptooth’ Cigar’s air squadron and he talked like that,” Dingleberry said. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

Tannenbomb continued to climb and Rosebud seemed to scream louder for every foot he made it up the tree, but, from my point of view, things were going according to Hoyle. The higher Tannenbomb got, the more the big balsam shook. Decorations were starting to rattle off and all the noise and the mess was putting bats in the big nutcracker’s belfry. When he slapped the angel off the top and grabbed the roof of the tree, I knew we had him. Me and Dingle went around in a wide circle, flinging ornaments and blowing raspberries. Tannenbomb roared like a grizzly and thrashed the air like an unhinged windmill. Rosebud held on for dear life, her lungs raw. The breaking point wouldn’t be long in coming.

About the time I finished that thought, Tannenbomb let go of the tree and lunged at Dingleberry, missing him completely. Tannenbomb hung in the air for a brief second, in a lather that he missed the little elf-fly again, but then he realized that his world wasn’t as solid as it used to be. He quickly turned to Rosebud, looking at her for what he knew would be the last time. It would have been sweet had it not been so ridiculous. Then, Tannenbomb simply gave up and let gravity take over. He shot to the earth like a lame comet, ornaments and tinsel and branches exploding in his wake. Rosebud had enough wits about her to let go and, when she did, I swooped in like one of those guys in a cape and caught her midair. I was feeling pretty good about my heroics, but Rosebud gave me a cold slap of krypton. “Remind me to get you a watch, Coal. What took you so long?”

“Timber!” Dingleberry yelled, happy as a clam.

When Tannenbomb hit the ground it sounded like a couple of bowling alleys having a fender bender. Wooden arms and legs snapped with a boom, the logs crashing into each other so hard you could feel it in your teeth. Tannenbomb’s mouth lever cracked and bounced across the floor, causing his mighty jaw to fall slack and harmless. He was dead.

Rosebud, Dingleberry and I landed beside the heap and stared at Tannenbomb, all stumps and splinters. “Welcome to the Termite Buffet,” Rosebud said.

“Getting rid of Tannenbomb ought to help your case with Santa, Gumdrop,” Dingleberry said to me. “He’s been causing Kringle Town trouble for years!”

“The only thing that’s going to get me out of Dutch with Nick is proving that I didn’t kill Hall,” I said. “So let’s go see if Candy Cane can help me.”

“You know what’s funny?” Rosebud asked. “All that racket right outside his door and not a peep from Cane.”

“What do you think it means?”

Rosebud started moving as she answered. “I think it means we better open this door.”

CHAPTER 17