The Scavengers (25 page)

I put my cheek nearly to the ground, and sure enough, there it is . . . a crack in the slate. I almost break a fingernail clawing at it, then I pull out my knife and—Toad would chew me out if he knew I was doing this—use the blade to pry one side of the flat rock up.

I lift it away and set it aside, and there, in a hollowed-out space, are four small objects. They are long and narrow, like pencil boxes. I pick one of them up. I undo the small clasp on the side, press a button, and the case springs open to reveal a slender glass tube corked with a rubber stopper. The tube is cradled in soft padding, and inside the tube I can see coils of what looks like . . .
hair
.

I snap the small case shut. There is a glass jar in the hole, with a folded piece of paper inside it. Unscrewing the lid, I remove the paper and unfold it. It’s Dad’s writing again.

Dear Ford Falcon:

I knew this day might come, and planted these items some time ago. If you’re here, then I guess there has been trouble. But if you are here, that also means that against all odds, this plan is working.

I can’t take any chances with this one, so it’s mostly riddle free. It’s terribly important that it not fall into the wrong hands. Memorize it as soon as you can, then destroy it.

Leave the tubes in their cases. The cases are waterproof and very strong.

Leave one case right here.

Regarding the rest, here is the plan:

I read the directions. They’re written in plain English, but they’re still pretty complicated. At the end, Dad wrote:

When everything is in place, invite the Authorities to visit. The Fat One and the Skinny One. Settle for no one else.

Love,

Dad

Possibly my life could get weirder.

But I’m not sure how.

I remove three of the cases and hide them—one in my shirt, one in my sock, and one in my ratty hair. The fourth I leave in the hole. I can’t stay down here long enough to memorize the note without raising suspicion, so I fold the paper and sheath it with my knife. I replace the slate and heap sand on it. Then I take the last of the carrots and grab a limp parsnip. If someone is watching, I need them to believe I went down here to get vegetables for the soup.

Good thing, too. Because as I step out of the root cellar, I catch a glimpse of two very yellow eyes watching from the brush beside the trail. I take a big crunch from the carrot and hold the other one out in front of me.

“Hey, you fake!” I say, talking with my mouth full. “Want a carrot?”

Silence.

“Might help those sick yellow eyes of yours.”

They blink, and disappear.

Just in case someone is still watching, I finish making the soup. It’s pretty awful.

And then I prepare for the busiest week of my life.

And after the year so far, that’s saying something.

54

IT TAKES ME A WEEK TO DO IT ALL. FIRST I MEMORIZE THE NOTE
and burn it. Then I have to convince Toad to load up the
Scary Pruner
and go to Nobbern.

“Now?” he says. “But yer pater . . .”

“This is about
pater
,” I say quietly.

Next I have to convince him to let me take his cross-eyed muskrat to town with us.

“But . . .”

“
Pater
,” I say. Then, in the most respectful tone I can, I say, “Toad, in order for the plan to work, many of the details can be known only by me.”

He never asks another question.

Two days later we make the trip. Among the scrap iron we deliver to the blacksmith shop is a short length of pipe. It is crimped at both ends, and hidden within—unbeknownst to anyone on earth but me—is one of the test tube cases. “Oh-ho-ho, I’m afraid that little hunka pipe’s not worth the ink it would take to write up the BarterBucks slip,” says Al. I just smile at him and follow Freda into the shop. With Al out of earshot I speak quietly. “Freda, this is an odd thing, but you are always honest in your dealings with us, so I am putting my trust in you.” I hold out the pipe. “Put this high in the rafters in the darkest corner of your blacksmith shop. Someplace Al will never go. If a man arrives one day and says he is looking for a corn cob pipe, give it to him. Tell no one.
Especially
Al.” Freda smiles and nods, like this sort of thing happens all the time in the blacksmithing business.

At Magical Mercantile I ask Toad to wait outside with Toby while I go in with the cross-eyed muskrat. Magic Mike takes one look at it and through gales of laughter says, “I can sell a lot of things, but I’ll
never
be able to sell that.”

I reach out and grab him by his polka-dotted bow tie. The laughter stops and his eyes go wide.

“Listen to me very carefully, Magic Mike.” My face is about half an inch from his, and I can hear him gulp.

“I recently visited a Bubble City. I guess you could say it was a business trip, because it certainly wasn’t pleasure. While I was there I got reunited with a pig.
Porky
Pig.”

Magic Mike’s face is now the color of his green eyeshade.

“Y’know, if word got out that a fellow like you, in a business like this—where you deal with some powerful and mysterious clients—couldn’t be
trusted
, couldn’t be relied upon to protect the sources of his most unusual merchandise, boy, now that could be real hard on business.”

“I . . .”

“You’re right about one thing, Magic Mike. You’re not gonna sell this muskrat. You’re gonna
stock
it, but even if someone is crazy enough to buy it, you’re not gonna sell it. Unless—and this is very important, so stop swallowing your tongue and listen carefully—unless that person says he or she is looking for a cross-eyed corny gift.

“Those
exact
words, Magic Mike. Cross-eyed corny gift. Now put it on the shelf.”

Just before I step out the door, I look back, and Magic Mike is already climbing down the rolling ladder. The muskrat is on a topmost shelf. And within his cotton-stuffed belly is a small case containing a test tube.

When we finally stop to see Banker Berniece, I again ask Toad to wait outside. When I explain my situation, her face remains as expressionless as the bun at the back of her head. It takes us awhile to sort everything out, and it is a highly unusual transaction, but from beginning to end her voice never changes from its usual flat tone, even when I thank her and she bids me good-bye.

We fight a few GreyDevils on the way home, but my heart really isn’t in it. We still have to defend ourselves, and I will, but ever since I found out about Dad, I’ve wondered just who might be behind those tortured yellow eyes.

After we drop off Toby, it’s a quiet ride and I have time to think. Dad had left me two more clues I had yet to use. They weren’t that difficult, and I had figured them both out easily.

When everything is in place, invite the Authorities to visit.

When I was memorizing that line, it hit me: I’ve had this whole thing backward. I’ve been twisting my brain into knots figuring how to sneak Dad into the Bubble without the Authorities snatching him, when what I really need to do is make the Bubble come to me. They still have all the power, but at least my boots will be on home turf.

And so the day after all of the pencil cases are in place, I sit with Toad and Arlinda and lay out the rest of the plan. Then I hike up to Skullduggery Ridge, stand on the hood of the Falcon, and knowing full well there is a GreyDevil with fake eyes out there somewhere, holler, “I’m ready to give up my dad.”

Nothing happens, but I know someone is listening.

“Knock on Toad Hopper’s gate one week from now. And leave your yellow eyes at home.”

How do you prepare to deal with someone who has all the power? We know if they want to they could crush us. Evaporate us. The only thing we have on our side is their uncertainty. And Dad’s secret, I guess. Maybe the best we can hope to do is go down swinging, or at least telling them the truth to their faces. Like a frog swallowed by a stork, we can’t escape, but we can maybe scratch their throats on the way down.

One week later I am helping Toad clean the chicken coop after lunch when a helicopter clears Skullduggery Ridge, passes above us twice, then settles in a cloud of dust just outside the gate. We walk to the gate to wait for the knock. When it comes, five men, four of them armed and uniformed, one in a suit, are waiting. Mr. Suit says, “I’m here to arrange the details.”

“The exchange happens here,” I say. Mr. Suit starts to argue.

“They want him, they come and get him. And they bring Ma.”

He starts to speak one more time, and I cut him off again.

“And we only deal with the Fat Man and Lettuce Face.”

“Who . . . ?” says the man, genuinely confused.

“Figure it out,” I say. “We can’t stop them bringing guards and soldiers and whatever else, but if those two aren’t here, no Dad.”

The man looks around nervously. GreyDevils have begun appearing. It’s their time of day, and hearing the helicopter they think there might be corn about. The guards quietly thumb the buttons on their weapons, and the gunsights glow hot red.

“And if you’re concerned about your safety, we can do the exchange inside the BarbaZap gate,” I say. “But no one inside other than two pilots for that whirlybird, the Fat Man and Lettuce Face, and my ma.”

More and more GreyDevils are appearing. They’re getting worked up way more quickly than when they come after us on the
Scary Pruner
. The guards raise their weapons.

“Noon,” I say. “Three days from today.”

And that’s that. Walking in a tight knot, the man and his guards scuttle quickly to the helicopter. Just as they reach the stairs, a GreyDevil moans and stumbles toward them. Two of the guards raise their weapons. There is a deadened
whup!
sound, the GreyDevil’s chest caves in like it was kicked by an invisible boot, and down he goes.
That was no rubber bullet
, I think, and then I feel a chill as I think,
Coulda been Dad
. As more GreyDevils break into a mad shuffle toward them, the five men run up the steps, the hatch seals behind them, the blades spin, the dust boils, and they are in the air and sailing back over the ridge. A cluster of GreyDevils stands in the spot where the helicopter launched. Their heads are tipped back, and they are moaning toward the sky.

“What’s up with the GreyDevils?” I ask Toad.

“The URCorn,” says Toad. “They can smell it in the Bubblers. Comes out in their sweat. They’d eat ’em alive to get at it.”

I look at Toad, my eyes wide. “But if that’s true, how did Dad . . .” And then my eyes go even wider. All those times I teased Dad about eating garlic and how it made him smell—he was doing it on purpose, to hide the scent of the URCorn and protect himself from GreyDevils!

“Garlic! Toad! Dad needs—”

Toad grins, and then he nods. “A dozen of Arlinda’s best cloves. In the bag with his corn.”

Three days. It’s gonna feel like forever. Dad is out there alone, and the Bubble Authorities won’t stop looking for him. But at least I can relax about one thing: he smells like garlic, not URCorn.

55

ON THE MORNING OF THE THIRD DAY, I CLIMB SKULLDUGGERY RIDGE
and raise the dinner flag. Upside down.

When it is time, I will be ready. Just invite me to an upside down dinner for lunch.

I look out across the valley. Dad’s out there somewhere. Watching this hill.

I hope.

What if he doesn’t see the flag? What if right this moment some Bubble Authorities goon has him in his sights? What if he’s just now waking up beside some bonfire, in a heap of GreyDevils?

I hike back down to Hoot Holler, and we wait.

When they arrive, it’s quite a show. I climb up on the tilapia tank ladder so I can see over the fence. The military vehicles come first, big-wheeled trucks and vans and transports that arrange themselves around the giant BarbaZap gate that guards the entrance to the Sustainability Reserve, where the new planting of URCorn is several feet tall, and tiny ears of corn are already starting to form. Then comes a large helicopter escorted by four smaller helicopters. The small helicopters hover while the large helicopter lowers itself within the Sustainability Reserve, then the choppers retreat to four separate corners of the sky. The helicopter rotors stop, the hatch goes up, and the steps slide down.

And out steps Ma. My heart leaps, and I get a lump in my throat.

And right behind Ma, Lettuce Face, in a pair of baggy coveralls that make him look even skinnier.

And behind him, fat and sweaty as ever and wearing his regular old squeezy suit, the Fat Man.

Dad is still nowhere to be seen.

Toad and I step out of the gate together. Arlinda is right behind us, holding Dookie tightly by the hand. All morning Dookie has been walking in circles, saying “
Shibby-shibby-shibby
” over and over. I tried to calm him down but nothing worked. And he’s right. It’s shaping up to be a
shibby-shibby-shibby
kind of day.

When Dookie sees Ma, he says, plain as day, “
MA!
” and jerks against Arlinda’s hand. It’s all she can do to hold him. I can’t blame him. I want to run to her too.

Ma moves toward the BarbaZap gate, Lettuce Face and the Fat Man on either side of her, each gripping one of her arms. Ten feet from the entrance, they stop.

“WHERE’S YER OLD MAN?!?” hollers the Fat Man.

“Oh, he’ll be . . . ,” I start to say, but my voice cracks, because I have no idea where he is and suddenly I’m realizing how real this is, and how crushing it will be if he doesn’t show. I clear my throat to try again when a voice behind me completes the sentence I could not.

“. . . here.”

I turn, and there he is. Dad, looking surprisingly healthy as he moves around me so we are standing side by side.