The Goonies (21 page)

Andy walked to the end of the plank. She looked down. The surface of the water sparkled below. The brothers held us at knife
point, facing the water, making us watch. Andy tried to say something, but her throat must've been as dry as mine. Mama was
right behind her.

“Hold your breath, sweetie,” cackled the old witch, and jabbed Andy with the blade.

Andy jumped.

And fell.

She splashed into the water.

She was gone.

“No!” cried out Brand. He ran forward, out of line, and before anyone could stop him, his hands still tied, he leaped over
the rail and followed her down to the murky depths.

“Brand!” I yelled. But he was already under water, he couldn't hear.

I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see them drown, or see the squid eat them, or see their heads bashed in on the shoal, or
see sharks smell blood and come in, or see Mama's smile or Mouth's fear, or the jewels on the deck, or anything. All I wanted
to see was my parents and my house, and the only way I was ever going to see that was to close my eyes.

All I could hear was Mama Fratelli's cold, scabby voice. “Two down. Who's next?”

They tied Mouth and Stef together, back to back. I heard Stef whisper, “How long can you hold your breath?”

“An hour,” bragged Mouth. “Hour of Power, they call me.”

“Be serious for once.”

“Actually… about ten seconds.
You
were the one who was always champion of that underwater shit.”

“Clarke?” she whispered. “When you run out of air, just turn your face to me and I'll share whatever I've got left.”

Mouth looked really moved, you know, but the jerky Fratellis didn't give him a chance to say anything nice back. Mama just
herded them over to the plank and pushed them to the edge. They lost their balance trying to avoid the sword's point and wobbled
and started toppling over.

That's when we all heard the scream.

Not scared or wacked out. More like a Tarzan scream or a Crimson Pirate scream. More like a battle cry.

We looked up to see Sloth swinging down from the mast. I mean, I didn't know his name was Sloth then, that's just what Chunk
told me later. He wore a pirate hat and had a sword strapped to his waist, and he swung down on this heavy-duty rope and scooped
up Mouth and Stef before they hit the water. Then he gave another bellow and kept swinging back up the deck, where he put
them down like a box of candy.

Then he faced Mama and his brothers, and growled that first animal growl I'd heard the day before in the lighthouse. Then
he flexed all his muscles, and his shirt ripped and his chest bulged, and I swear I've never seen a better body in my life.
It was totally awesome.

“Hunk city,” said Stef. And she'd been around.

With everyone's attention directed at this giganto pirate monster standing between us and the Fratellis, nobody
much noticed Chunk climb over the side behind us. He picked up a knife off the floor and started cutting my bonds.

“Chunk?” I whispered.

“Captain Chunk to you,” he said softly, and kept cutting.

Meanwhile Mama pointed her boys at Sloth. “Get him,” she ordered.

Jake and Francis came slowly forward, swords extended. Sloth set himself like a defensive lineman. Francis swung his sword.
Sloth ducked, came up holding Francis over his head, and threw his creepy brother all the way over to the foredeck. Francis
landed with a crash, out cold.

Chunk got me free, and both of us went to work on the other kids' knots.

As soon as Jake got over his surprise at Sloth's swift move, he lunged for the big guy with his saber. And then I'll be damned
if they didn't have a swordfight.

My dad told me once about these kids called idiot savants, who are like born totally out-to-lunch about everything, except
they each have one thing that they're a genius in. Like sometimes a kid like can't even tie his own shoes, but he's a musical
genius and he plays concertos on the piano. Or maybe a kid can't talk or read or feed himself, but he might be a math genius
and spends all his time writing equations and calculations and stuff.

I think Sloth was a swordfight idiot savant.

They went at it up the deck and down, in the rigging and on the rails, advancing and retreating and lunging and parrying and
clanging away like real pirates. I mean, Jake was no slouch, but he was no Sloth, either. Sloth was just something beautiful
to behold. I don't know, maybe he
learned it from all the old pirate movies on TV or something. I mean, that's all he did, watch TV, right?

Anyway, while that was goin' on, we got Data untied, and the others, too. As soon as Data was free, he screamed, “Pinchers
of Peril!” and fired his clapping teeth right at Jake.

Those Pinchers of Peril, man, they're Data's only invention that ever worked much. They shot out this time and clamped down
right on Jake's crotch. Doubled him over. Sloth grabbed the sword from him and broke it in two and blasted him in the chin
with a right uppercut that sent him skidding across the deck into a pile of cannonballs. Out for the count.

Mama was just standin' there watchin' it all, real upset, like her party was wrecked or she hated seeing her children fight
or something.

We all ran to the rail. Andy and Brand were wading in the water right below us. “C'mon, jump!” called Brand.

“How'd you get loose?” I shouted. Boy, was I ever glad to see them.

“Cut my ropes on a broken bottle, and then I cut Andy's and pulled her to shallow water. Now quit yappin' and
c'mon
!”

The other guys began jumpin' over the side. I turned back to see about Sloth and Mama. They were facing off near the hold,
Sloth growling, Mama pointing her sword.

“Okay,” she was saying, “so maybe I treated you bad, keepin' you locked up in that little room. It was for your own good,
though.”

Sloth growled louder and took another step toward her. Mama looked scared.

“I ain't always been bad to you, though,” she said. “Don't you remember? When you were little? We had
some good times then. Remember when I used to sing you to sleep?”

Sloth grabbed the sword out of her hand and threw it overboard. Then he picked up Mama and carried her to the rail, ready
to throw
her
overboard. She began to sing, though. “Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”

Sloth stopped. Listening. He got this sweet, gentle smile on his face, like he was rememberin' a real warm memory, and he
began to rock her in his arms.

Seemed like he was gettin' second thoughts about what a creep his mom was, which didn't seem like such a good deal for us.

“Mikey, c'mon!” shouted Mouth. They were already halfway across the lagoon. Nothin' more I could do here, so I jumped.

I started wading as soon as I hit the water. Up top I heard Mama singin', “When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall…”

And Sloth dropped her into the water. And then
he
sang, in this really grotty voice, “And down will come baby, cradle and all.”

Mama went under, and I took off as fast as I could, half swimming, half running. The rest of the guys were near the far shore
already. Sloth climbed the rigging, grabbed hold of a rope, and swung out over the water, landing even farther than me. He
made it to the shore a little before I did, and we all huddled there for a few seconds, catching our breath and figuring what
to do next.

I saw Mama climb back onto the ship—so that was one thing we didn't have to worry about immediately, at least. They weren't
coming after us right away.

And we were safe. And we'd found the treasure, and I'd found Willy, and we were all safe.

I looked us all over, and my gaze came to rest on this totally weird demento in a pirate hat two sizes too small.

Chunk stepped forward. “Guys, this is Sloth. He's just like us. A reject.”

Sloth smiled and growled real low.

“What are we gonna do now?” said Mouth.

“I thought I saw some light comin' from behind those rocks over there,” said Chunk. We started workin' our way around the
edge of the cavern, over these huge rocks, into the water sometimes, and then out. It was bringin' us closer to the ship again,
which made me kinda nervous.

All of a sudden I heard a loud clanking and looked up to see this trapdoor on deck fly open, and Willy's skeleton hoisted
up to stand in front of the wheel. The opening trapdoor hit a cannonball, though, which rolled down a track until it hit a
beam, which fell over, releasing, a bunch of loose rocks onto a balance that dislodged a bigger beam that was tied into the
support system of a whole section of wall, causing the wall to start to collapse.

The whole cavern shuddered and rumbled. Big sections of ceiling began caving in, dropping rocks down on the ship, on the water.
On us. We ran toward where Chunk said was light.

An entire curve of wall crumbled away, leaving an enormous opening, high up, on the other side of the ship. An opening to
daylight.

Wind filled the sails, and the ship half righted itself, just as the Fratellis ran up on deck. The tilting threw them across
the floor to the rail, where stones and rubble rained down on them.

The ancient anchor began raising on some reactivated pulley system, its rusted chains groaning in all the other noise. This
caused some additional lurching, which tossed the Fratellis overboard.

It was like an earthquake. The ground was breaking up, the walls cracking, rocks crashing to the ground, the whole place shaking
so bad, you could hardly stand.

And then we saw the exit. Light at the end of a long tunnel, light to the outside. We ran for it.

The Fratellis were moving in our direction but not getting very far. They were being pelted with rocks and dirt, and the lagoon
was getting wavy now, too.

We made it to the tunnel entrance, but it started collapsing, like everything else. Boulders clunked down in front of it,
earth started shifting, piling up. We all held back, except Sloth, who went right on ahead. Went up to the entrance and held
his arms out against the walls and wedged his back up against the low ceiling. And held the damn thing up!

“
Rrwrgh
,” he said to us, and it was pretty clear what he meant. One by one we crawled between his legs, into the tunnel. The rocks
kept comin' down everywhere, man, but he didn't flinch, didn't move a muscle.

Chunk was the last one in. He called back, “Sloth, c'mon, take my hand, you come, too!”

Sloth still didn't move, though. He just kept starin' out at the lagoon. I followed his eye. He was lookin' at his mama and
his brothers, in the water, half-drowned, struggling for their lives. He was probably thinkin' about all the shit they'd dumped
on him all those years and how he was finally gonna be free of it, but then I guess he must've thought about how he loved
them, too, and they were part of each other, I guess the way I feel about Brand even when he's being a royal pain in the ass.

Anyway, I thought all that because Sloth just turned his head toward Chunk, with a tear in his good eye, and said, “Mom,”
and gave Chunk like a little kiss on the cheek
and then turned and stepped back into the cavern, back to his family

“Sloth! No!” called Chunk. But too late. Falling boulders sealed off the entrance forever.

And that's not all.

The exit to the daylight was buried in the same moment.

We were sealed in the tunnel.

No way out.

Well, obviously Brand started freaking right away.

“We gotta get outta here,” he said in this real thin voice.

No lie. The ground was still rumbling, stones were falling in on us—it was like major bad news.

Brand's voice was getting louder. “Data, we need one of your lights!”

Data fumbled in his backpack for one of Chester Copperpot's flares, then lit a match, then lit the flare. The sparking light
just showed us that the situation was even worse than we'd imagined—the tunnel was smaller, dirt was filling in at both ends
like there was no tomorrow. Like there wasn't even any tonight.

And that wasn't all. In the dim flickering light Data noticed something funny about the flare. “Hey, this isn't a road flare,”
he said. “It's… it's… dynamite!”

He dropped it, and we all ran to the near end of the tunnel, crying, huddling, and shouting. The stick just lay there, its
wick sparking lower, ten feet away. Suddenly Data jumped up, ran over to it, carried it to the far end of the tunnel, stuck
it in a crack there where the earth just kept falling in, and ran back to us. We all closed our eyes, held our ears, and pretended
it was an air raid drill.

There was a giant BOOM, and the ground shook even more, and more dirt fell. When it quieted some, I opened my eyes to find
a large hole blown in the wall.

Beyond the hole was ocean.

We ran like crazy through the hole and stumbled out into a little rocky alcove, just as the entire passageway collapsed in
a cloud of rock dust.

Pebbled beach spread out in two directions, and the great Pacific Ocean washed up on our feet.

It was over.

The heavy rumblings changed to muffled echoes in the background, like it was already a memory or a daydream. Willy's caverns
and tunnels were being buried forever. Only his story was left.

I breathed in the fresh sea air and looked at us. Bruised, scratched, dirty, and tattered. We'd been through so much, so together.
It made me feel… strong. Like we weren't Goony kids anymore. Like we were heroic.

I took another deep breath, and I don't know what it was, but somehow I just knew my asthma was gone, too—buried in the tunnels
somewhere.

We hugged and cheered and jumped up and down and like were totally stoked, except Chunk was kind of bummed out about losing
Sloth. That's when he told us about
his
adventures.

I told you most of it already. Him and Sloth went into the skull tunnel right after the Fratellis and followed them down the
river to that giant, foggy lake. Chunk said Sloth had a real hard time handling the fog—he just sat in the middle of their
raft, all hunkered down, sort of whimpering and tryin' to swat at the mist like it was flies on his neck. Chunk said he just
sat there and comforted the big guy the whole time—petted his back and scratched behind his ears and sang him jingles of all
the TV commercials he could remember, especially food commercials. So Sloth started doin' better by the end and even started
singin' along with Chunk a little, like a regular hootenanny.