Ignatius MacFarland (23 page)

WHAM!
I slammed into the ground face-first as my arms and legs smashed down awkwardly.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG! I looked over and saw all the guards hit the fence, their swords and axes banging against the bars, then saw them start to scramble up using their weird three legs and feet-hands in a way that showed they were pretty good at climbing things.

“Oh, God, C’MON!” yelled Karen as she grabbed my shirt again and pulled me up. Fortunately I didn’t seem to have any bones that were broken, although even if I had I think I was too scared to feel anything.

Karen and I sprinted down the road and into the city as more and more of Mr. Arthur’s army ran out of the White House yard after us.

Man, for a guy who had consistently flunked gym class, I was now doing an awful lot of physical activity.

We flew down the road as I heard the pounding feet of the gorillas behind us. They were our main concern at the moment, since they were one of the few creatures in this frequency that had any speed on the ground. Unfortunately, Mr. Arthur’s army seemed to have an endless supply of them. I looked back and saw a few of the giant babies chugging along behind the gorillas but they looked like sumo wrestlers who were about five seconds away from having massive heart attacks.

It wasn’t until we ran through the first intersection that I realized the gorilla guards weren’t the only army members who were going to cause us problems. Coming down both streets on either side of us were two large groups of the giant rolling potato bug creatures and the four-legged octopus things with the fly-heads. They all seemed to have even more speed than the gorillas, with the potato bugs rolling like speeding tires and the octopuses galloping like some kind of creepy noodle-legged horses.

I could hear the loud metal clicking of the spiked weapons the octopuses had on their feet, which sounded like an enormous stampede of huge dogs whose nails hadn’t been clipped in years. The potato bug guys were all twirling their wagon wheel blades and glaring at us with their tentacle eyes. We zoomed through the intersection and, a few seconds later, the potato bugs and octopuses merged with the gorilla guards and continued to chase us, their weapons ready to do whatever damage to us they darn well pleased.

Karen looked over her shoulder and saw the huge army of creatures that was now hot on our tails.

“We’re not gonna outrun them,” she yelled, then looked forward for some sort of escape idea. She saw the theater where
Hamlet
was playing up ahead. “Iggy! In here!”

Karen sprinted over to the theater door, where a feel was dressed like an usher, and pushed it open with a bang.

“Hey, where’s your ticket?” yelled the feel as Karen and I ran past him. I saw him look back just in time to see the horde of army guys running at him. “Oh, no!” was all I heard him say as the gorillas and potato bugs crashed into the doors of the theater, knocking them off their cheap hinges and sending the usher flying.

Karen and I ran through the lobby and then through a second set of doors into the theater. We slammed them shut and Karen slid her sword through the handles to keep the doors from opening.

“That’ll hold them for about three seconds,” Karen said with a snort.

“Shhh!” we heard someone say behind us.

We turned and saw that the play was in midperformance. The audience in the large, dark theater was filled with creatures, and onstage was a one-eyed extendable weasel guy who was dressed in tights and wearing an outfit that looked vaguely like a costume you would see someone wearing in a real Shakespeare play. He was talking super loud, way louder than you’re really supposed to talk when you’re in a play even though you have to talk loud enough so that the people in the back of the theater can hear you.

“To be or not to be, that is the questio —”

BOOM! The army of creatures all smashed against the door, which surprisingly withstood their first impact. The sword in the door handles buckled and bent but didn’t give way. The weasel onstage stopped and looked at the back of the theater, completely confused and startled.

“Hey, shut up back there!” he said as he extended his body up to full height and put his hands on his hips. “I’m acting here.”

The entire audience also turned to look, but by that point Karen and I were running up the main aisle.

We jumped on the stage as the weasel spun around trying to figure out who we were. Then he saw Karen and got a terrified look on his face.

“The Anti-Art!” he screamed in a high-pitched voice like a little girl.

BOOM! The army burst through the doors, sending splinters of wood everywhere. As the army guys swarmed through the theater and the audience screamed and ran for their lives, Karen and I bolted into the backstage area.

Karen looked around for a door but there wasn’t one. “You’ve gotta be kidding me! He didn’t even build a stage door?!”

We heard the sound of the army running through the theater and realized we had to do something quickly.

“Oh, man, I don’t even have my freakin’ sword!” said Karen angrily as she stared at the approaching armed creatures. Then she looked over at something. “Quick! We’re going up!”

She ran over to a ladder that was bolted onto the back wall of the stage and started to climb it. I looked up and saw that it led to a catwalk high above. I had no idea what we were going to do once we got up there but since the alternative of just standing still and getting wiped out by hundreds of metal blades didn’t seem very appealing, I ran to the ladder and followed her up.

The army guys all swarmed the stage and ran after us into the wings. Karen was already at the top of the ladder as I struggled to make the halfway point.

“Hurry!” she yelled down at me as she jumped onto the catwalk.

“Why?” I yelled back. “There’s nowhere to go up there except back down.”

“Wanna bet?” she said as she reached up and knocked her hand against the very tinny and cheap-sounding ceiling.

The ladder shook suddenly and I looked down to see gorilla guy after gorilla guy jumping onto it. The ladder started to moan from all the weight, and the bolts that were holding it on to the wall started to pull loose. This gave me the extra adrenaline rush I needed to get to the top.

As I jumped onto the catwalk, Karen pulled a metal pole out of a railing that had a rope tied to it. The rope unreeled off the catwalk like fishing line that had been cast into the middle of a stream and we heard the huge painted backdrop for the
Hamlet
play go crashing onto the stage, falling on top of the army creatures. They all started yelling and thrashing around under the huge piece of canvas as the gorillas on the ladder looked down, surprised. They then started climbing faster as the ladder continued to creak and more bolts started popping out of the wall.

POONK! Karen punched the metal pole through the ceiling. “Man, this place is such a piece of junk,” she said as she started pulling down on the pole and cutting through the ceiling the same way you would open a can with one of those Swiss Army knife can openers.

Karen and I looked down and saw that the gorillas were almost up to the catwalk.

“Um, unless you want us to get killed, I’d do something about those guys,” she said, nodding her head over at the guards as she continued to open a hole in the metal roof.

I ran over to the ladder just as the top gorilla was about to grab the catwalk. I kicked the top of the ladder to push it away from the wall. The good part was that it immediately broke loose and started to fall back into the theater. The bad part was that the top gorilla grabbed my pajama leg and held on as the ladder started to fall.

I was immediately yanked off my feet. I fell down face-first and grabbed on to the grated metal floor of the catwalk with my fingers to keep from getting pulled over the side. The ladder stopped with a jerk as the gorilla held on to my pajama bottoms, using me to keep the ladder from falling backward.

“He’s got the leg of my pajamas!” I screamed.

“Then take them off !” Karen screamed back as she turned and saw my predicament.

“Are you out of your mind?!” I yelled back. I mean, an emergency was an emergency but it still didn’t mean you had to show the world your underwear (which fortunately I was still wearing!).

Karen pulled the metal pole out of the ceiling and ran to me. She reached over the side of the catwalk and swung the pole down onto the gorilla’s hand with all her might, just missing my leg.

The guard screamed and opened his hand in pain, causing the ladder to resume its fall backward.

“Nice work,” Karen said as I pulled myself back up onto the catwalk and we watched the ladder crash down onto the stage and into the seats of the theater as gorilla guards tumbled painfully off of it. “That’ll buy us some time.”

Before I could thank her for saving me, we heard a ripping sound. We looked down at the stage and saw the octopus guys tear through the canvas and start climbing straight up the wall with their sucker feet.

“So much for time,” said Karen as her eyes went wide. We both jumped up and ran to the hole in the ceiling. Karen grabbed a coil of rope off the catwalk, then jumped up and hoisted herself through the hole. I looked down and saw that the octopus guys were almost at the catwalk.

“Give me your hand!” Karen yelled at me as she held her arm down through the hole. I went to take her hand, which was cut from grabbing the jagged edge when she climbed up.

“You’re hurt,” I said, both worried about her and, embarrassingly, a little grossed out to grab someone’s bloody hand. I know, I know. That’s the last thing I should have been thinking about at that moment. But, hey, what do you want from me? I was only twelve and a half at the time.

“And you’re going to be hurt worse if those guys get to you. C’mon!”

She wiggled her fingers at me impatiently and I reached up and grabbed her wounded hand. She gave a little groan of pain and then pulled me up through the ceiling. I looked around as Karen jumped up and ran noisily across the roof, each hit of her feet shaking the thin metal. We were on top of a five-story-high building. There was nowhere to go.

“What do we do now?” I yelled over to Karen, who was taking the coil of rope off her shoulder.

“I’m doing it,” she yelled back. “Guard the hole!”

“What?
How?
”

She turned and sidearmed the metal pole across the roof at me. It clattered up to my feet and before I had a chance to wonder what she was talking about, an octopus guard’s head popped up through the hole. I screamed in an embarrassing manner, then quickly picked up the pole and hit the octopus right on top of its fly-eye. The octopus gave its high-pitched whistle of pain and dropped back down into the hole. But just as quickly two tentacle arms reached through the hole and suctioned onto the roof. I hit them hard with the pole and they let go and disappeared back inside. But immediately another head popped up through the hole. I kept hitting the heads and they kept falling down and popping back up, like the world’s easiest but most disturbing game of Whack-a-Mole.

I looked back at Karen and saw that she had tied the rope into a kind of lasso and was getting ready to throw it at the skyscraper across from the theater, aiming it at a flagpole that was flying a flag with Mr. Arthur’s face on it.

As Karen flung the lasso onto the flagpole, a tentacle popped up through the hole and grabbed the metal pole out of my hand. An octopus head came up and said, “Let’s see how
you
like it!” It then swung the metal pole at me.

Fortunately, all the times as a little kid I had been made fun of for jumping rope with the girls paid off because I immediately leaped in the air, just avoiding the metal pole that would have easily broken both my legs. I turned and saw Karen pulling the rope tight as the octopus guy shot straight up through the hole and landed in a battle pose, brandishing the metal pole like a weapon.

“Here I come!” I yelled as I sprinted over to Karen. She climbed onto the edge of the roof and tensed her grip on the rope, positioning herself to swing. I dived toward the rope as the octopus ran after me, grabbed it just above Karen’s hands, and suddenly we were swinging directly toward the windows of the skyscraper, five stories above the street.

The octopus guard flew through the air after us but didn’t jump far enough. As we swung at the window I heard the sound of squeaking glass and saw the octopus sliding down the skyscraper’s windows, trying desperately to get his suction cups to stick.

Before I could see if he was successful or not, Karen yelled, “Stick out your legs!”

31

SMASH!!!

The window shattered and we flew through the cloud of exploding glass and landed heavily on our backs inside a big empty office.

“Ow!” was about all I could say as I tried to get back the breath that had just been knocked out of me.

. . . SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK . . .

Karen and I exchanged a look as we heard the mysterious sound outside the broken window. Suddenly, a tentacle popped up and slapped down onto the floor. Apparently the octopus had gotten his grip on the windows after all. As another tentacle slapped down and his fly-head popped up, Karen and I bolted out of the office, slamming the door behind.