The Giant Smugglers (2 page)

Charlie toggled a button on his headset, switching to audible disguise mode to make his voice deeper, mechanical, and menacing. “Scared they're going to have to scrape you off the pavement,” he shot back.

Then Charlie heard a stern man bark through the static. “Jamie, I told you to shut that off. You've got work to do!”

“Bye-bye,
Jamie
,” Charlie mocked in a singsong tone, which sounded even more condescending with his voice buzzing way down low. “Daddy says you gotta go.”

“You better hope I never get my hands on you.”

Fitz
disappeared before Charlie could snap back a reply. One by one, the other drivers signed off. Charlie could imagine parents yelling to knock it off with the games. No one would yell at him tonight—his mom was out with DJ, her boyfriend. Charlie shuddered. He hated thinking about his mom dating. It was just one more way real life in Richland Center continued to suck. He powered down the game and heard muffled screeching from the apartment below.

Uh-oh.

Charlie had been playing
Total Turbo
for so long that he'd forgotten all about Pansy, the cat downstairs. He'd promised Mrs. Lundstrom that he'd feed her nasty beast by six at the latest. It was nearly eleven. With no more roar from the game, he heard the cat yowling like crazy.

He kicked his way through the moving boxes on the floor of his new room, which was even worse than the one in their last crummy apartment. He and his mom had been in this cramped place for only a week, their third home in the past two years. Rita Lawson had made Charlie promise to finish unpacking before she got home. What was the point? The boxes would just have to be loaded up again, dragged around to wherever they were going to live next.

More caterwauling told him that chore would have to wait. He threw a hooded sweatshirt over his scrawny frame, went out the back door, and bounced down the wooden stairs from his second-floor apartment.

“Hang on, Pansy.” Charlie turned a key that Mrs. Lundstrom had left for him under the mat. He seethed as he remembered how the old lady had thought he was eleven (not his actual thirteen going on fourteen) when she asked him to feed her cat while she was on a bus trip to the Indian casino. He pushed the door open.

Pansy, all black and all business, dashed right between his legs and out into the night. Charlie yanked the door shut with an angry bang. He wasn't in the mood for stupid games.

The cat postured on the sidewalk, taunting him, her eerie yellow eyes glowing in the night. “You want to get fed or not?” Charlie took only two steps toward her before she dashed toward the old warehouse across Church Street.

He chased Pansy to the back of the building and down a murky alley, finally cornering the cat by some trash cans. “C'mon, cat,” he said. “I got better things to do.”

But Pansy had other ideas. She jumped through a shattered ground-floor window and into the old building.

Charlie hesitated. Chasing her into an alley was one thing; following her into the creepiest building in town was another. The AD German Warehouse, built by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright around 100 years ago, had been abandoned for as long as Charlie could remember. In fact, it reminded him of Wonka's chocolate factory: Nobody ever went in and nobody ever came out. The warehouse stood about four stories high, with huge, casted-concrete Mayan hieroglyphics etched into its roofline. It seemed weird and otherworldly, as if a UFO had swung by and dropped an ancient ruin into the middle of town.

Taking care not to cut his hands, he pulled the biggest shards of glass from the shattered window pane. Then he crouched down and peered inside, finding only darkness.

“Pansy?” he called. There was no response.

Cursing the cat, Charlie contorted his body and squeezed through the opening. There wasn't enough of a gap for a normal-size eighth-grader to wedge through, so for once being a shrimp played in his favor.

He swore that the temperature fell fifteen degrees as soon as he dropped out of the window onto a cold concrete floor in a small room. No cat in sight. He went through a stout metal door into a short hallway.

“Pansy?” he called, with not so much as a meow in response.

Charlie breathed in the dank air, which became mustier as he passed out of the hallway into an enormous room. The skeletons of small birds and rats littered the cement floor. The warehouse was even spookier on the inside, if that was possible.

Rough, jagged concrete ran along the walls where the building's floors had once been. The place had been hollowed out. It was more a four-story cave than building now.

“C'mon, you stupid cat,” he shouted.

The moon cast eerie shapes through the slit windows that ran near the ceiling, creating just enough light to see by. Charlie crept in farther, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the concrete. The cavernous room was empty except for a few odds and ends: a rickety-looking table with a single chair; two stacks of crates balanced on wooden pallets; a large wooden box with a hinged lid—man, did it stink; and, for some reason, an old bathtub.

A muffled noise froze him.

He peeked in the direction of the sound. It had come from the crates. He crept over and inspected the nearest stack, hunting for cat hiding spots. The lid of one of the boxes was askew. Maybe Pansy was holed up inside. He slid the top all the way off, finding a bunch of fat cylinders wrapped in brown paper and tied up with rough twine in bundles of six. Charlie lifted out a pack and grunted—the mystery bundle was a lot heavier than it looked. As he turned it over, moonlight caught the side of a crate. ItTNI read
DANGER: EXPLOSIVES
.

Dynamite!

Had someone blasted out all the floors inside the warehouse? That would explain a lot, though Charlie couldn't figure out how it could have been done without alerting the entire town. He eased the deadly weight back into the carton.

“Pansy?” he called, hoping she'd just pop out from wherever, and they could leave. No response.

He investigated a metal accordion door that hung off the side of a large, square opening jutting out of the wall. It was way too big to be a chimney. Charlie guessed it could have been an elevator shaft at one time, but there was no car inside. He slipped his head into the cavity, half expecting to get a face full of bats. No bats—but no Pansy, either. He looked up the shaft and saw stars in the night sky. It was open at the top.

Then the floor shook and little hunks of concrete rained down all around. He gave a yelp and stumbled back away from the shaft. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pansy dart out of the dark with a frightened mewl and hightail it down the hallway.

Two huge, bare feet landed in the elevator shaft, kicking up a cloud of cement dust. Despite their size, the feet barely made a sound as they hit the ground.

Charlie's instinct was to run from whoever or whatever those huge feet belonged to, but fear nailed his own feet to the floor. It was the most inconceivable, unbelievable, utterly incredible thing he'd ever seen in his life. Charlie tried to will himself to run, but then there was a rush of air. Something grabbed him and thrust him up, up, up into the moonlight.

He found himself face to face with the impossible.

The only word to describe his captor was
giant
. The behemoth had no trouble holding Charlie's entire body in his fist. The giant pushed his face, big as a tractor tire, toward Charlie's and examined the boy like a jeweler who'd just come into possession of an unusual gem.

Charlie finally found his breath and let out a high-pitched yell.

The giant put his free index finger over his lips in the universal sign to “keep quiet
.
” The gesture, surprisingly human, shocked Charlie into silence.

He still was desperate to escape. But pushing against the monstrous fingers was useless. His captor had to be at least twenty feet tall and probably twenty times as strong as Charlie. He forced himself to check out the giant's face, which was dotted with the soft black stubble of a guy who was old enough to shave but hadn't gotten around to it yet. His wild hair was pretty crazy-looking, thrusting every which way. Was he wearing a toga? He looked like an overgrown, emo caveman.

The giant cocked his head to the side. “Hi.”

The greeting surprised Charlie almost as much as the fact that he was being held in a huge fist. Whatever the giant was up to, he didn't seem threatening. “Hi?” Charlie responded. “You … speak English?”

The giant's lips parted into a smile, revealing an unattractive set of yellowed, neglected teeth. His breath smelled like a combination of fish and oatmeal.

Charlie had taken a trip to Crazytown. Giants didn't exist, let alone live across the street. He spat over the side of the giant's hand, just to test reality.
Splat.
Yep, it sounded real. There he was, twenty feet in the air.

“Think you could put me down?”

The giant lowered Charlie to the floor and loosened his grip. Charlie's first instinct was to run, but just as he hit the floor, his phone went off. The ring tone, thumping dance music, echoed in the warehouse. Charlie did a double-take as the giant pumped his fist in the air and bobbed his head to the beat.

The screen said the call was from Charlie's mom, probably checking in on him. Charlie silenced it, and the giant held out his hands as if to say, “You just killed my jam!”

“Who are you?”

The giant stared back, unwilling or unable to give an answer. Apparently, the English only went so far.

“I'm Charlie,” the boy managed, now 90 percent convinced that the giant wasn't going to eat him.

“Ch-ch-charlie?” the giant stuttered, trying to pronounce the unfamiliar name.

“That's right, Charlie.”

Then both their heads jerked in the direction of a loud crack from out in the hallway. Someone was coming.

A beam of bright light snapped on in the hallway. The giant nudged Charlie into the dark of the elevator shaft. The giant held his index finger to his lips once more and signaled for the boy to stay put. Sounds of heavy footsteps mixed with an accelerating skitter of claws on concrete as the ominous light bounced toward them. A German shepherd bounded into the main room of the warehouse, tail wagging.

“Powder!” chuckled the giant. Shielding Charlie's position in the elevator shaft, the giant bent down low and held out his enormous right hand. Powder licked the tip of his huge finger, still red and sore from the pinch at the silo.

The beam of light disappeared just before a flashlight clanked on the old table. The silver-bearded old man in his leather duster coat hobbled into the moonlight. Charlie edged deeper into the darkness of the elevator shaft.

“Welcome to your new digs,” said the old man. “For a little while anyway.” He pulled up the splintery chair and collapsed into it. “People in town couldn't care less about this place, but don't push it. I can't be around all the time, and there's not much I can do to keep you in here. But remember, this isn't just about you—there's your family and others to think about. You'll see them soon. Sitting around in here's no picnic, but you'll just have to make the best of it.”

Powder raised her nose in the air and sniffed. Then she turned toward the elevator shaft and seemed to stare right at Charlie in the darkness. He thought he was a goner for sure and held his breath.

The giant intervened. He bent down to one knee and scratched her head with a colossal finger. The dog flopped onto her back so her belly could be rubbed. “Powder stay?”

“You two, together? No thanks,” the man grumbled. “Best thing you could do during your time here is rest up. You'll need it for the next leg of your trip.”

The giant nodded his head and yawned an outsize yawn, letting the old man know it was time to go. Charlie smirked. It sure looked like the giant was playing the guy, the same way Charlie played his mom when he wanted to sneak in a few more
Total Turbo
races.

“All right, we're taking the dump truck back. Don't expect to see much of us when it's light out. Not worth the risk.” The old man hobbled away, dog at his heel. “We'll be back with some breakfast before the sun comes up.”

“Okay, Hank.”

The giant waited until the sound of a door shutting echoed down the long hallway outside the room. “Charlie!” The boy tiptoed out of his hiding spot—the coast was clear. “Secret!”

“Dude.” Charlie held up his fist for the giant to bump. The big guy looked down, confused by the gesture. Charlie bumped his own two fists together to show him how, then offered his up again. The giant grinned and dropped his huge paw down in front of Charlie, who bumped it hard. “Yeah! Like that! That means we're cool.”

“Cool?” the giant said, trying out the expression.

Charlie's phone buzzed again. This time, there was a text from his mom:

Be home in 5. Expecting to see some empty boxes.

He knew she wasn't kidding. There'd be heck to pay if he hadn't touched the boxes, and he was off somewhere else on a school night. It wasn't like he could tell her about the giant—she'd think he was nuts. Or worse, she'd want to come over and investigate. He had to go—he didn't have a choice. Finally something had happened in Richland Center. He'd just stumbled into the weirdest, most fantastic thing of his life, and he had to unpack moving boxes.

Unbelievable.

The giant was on his hands and knees, trying to get a better look at Charlie's glowing phone. The boy stuffed it into his pocket. “I'm really sorry, but I got to go.”

The giant's face sagged.

“But I live right across the street.” He gestured toward the apartment. “So I'll be back. Tomorrow. First thing.”

The giant sat back against the wall. “Cool,” he said, showing off his new word.

Charlie took one last look at the most unbelievable person he'd ever met and waved. Then he ran as fast as he could back down the hallway, squirted through the window, and dashed back across Church Street. His mom's boyfriend's truck was nowhere to be seen, which meant she wasn't home yet. Pansy was back on her stoop, like nothing unusual had happened. Charlie let her in, threw some food in her bowl, and rocketed up the steps to his apartment.