Ignatius MacFarland (29 page)

Peepup and Feep Feep suddenly appeared through the crowd, dodging desperately to avoid being knocked over by the panicking guards. They ran over to us, Feep Feep holding Peepup’s arm and dragging his slithering coils along.

“Herbert got away!” yelled Feep Feep. “As soon as he saw the fires start, he pushed us down and ran into the White House.”

Karen looked at me. “If he has that machine you told us about, then he might be trying to escape.”

“Fine,” I said, confused why Karen would even care. “Let him go. He’s a jerk.”

“Iggy, you don’t get it,” she yelled as the roar of Lesterville on fire practically drowned out her voice. “If he escapes in that machine, then we may never have another chance to get out of here.”

“Oh, man, you’re right,” I said, suddenly excited at the thought of getting to see my parents and friends again. “Let’s go!”

As we took off sprinting toward the White House, I looked up at Foo, who was flying above us. She smiled down at me. Suddenly feeling weird, I forced a smile back at her. As much as I wanted to go home, I hated the idea of leaving this beautiful flying girl who liked me and believed in me. I would never have anything this great happen to me back in our frequency, I thought. There was no way.

Before I could even process that depressing realization, I saw a bunch of flying people who were chasing the army bank off and fly with their torches over the White House. My eyes went wide. If they set that place on fire with the transporter inside, Karen and I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Karen and I ran through the fence and then across the lawn to the front door as the flying people gathered overhead. They stopped when they saw Karen and me heading for the door and hovered over the White House, torches crackling. Then Herfta came flying over quickly and hovered in front of his people.

“Iggy and Karen, we must also destroy this house,” he called down to us. “It is the will of the people.”

“I don’t know,” I called up to Herfta. “There seems to be an awful lot of burning going on right now. And —”

Before I could tell them we needed to go inside to find the machine, suddenly Herbert Golonski burst out of the front door. He pushed Karen away violently, then grabbed me and held what I immediately knew to be a gun against my head.

“Burn this building and I’ll kill him,” Herbert yelled up at Herfta.

My eyes darted over to Karen, who was getting up slowly, afraid to freak out Herbert. Herbert had the barrel of the gun pressed so tightly against my temple, I thought it was going to break through my skull and kill me without even firing.

The flying people all looked confused, clearly never having seen a gun before. Herbert saw this, then quickly took the gun away from my head and fired it into the ground at my feet. Dirt exploded everywhere as all the creatures around us jumped a mile. Herbert then quickly put the now hot gun barrel back against my head and yelled, “The next one goes into his brain.”

“Release the boy,” Herfta called down. “There is no escape from any of this.”

“Fly away and leave this building intact,” Herbert yelled back. “I have nothing to do with any of this. You have taken your revenge against Chester. Your revenge should not extend to me.”

“We know who you are,” said Herfta. “We have seen what you have done to the ground creatures in your camp. We know that you are taking the yellow rock from the ground. You are responsible for all that has happened here as much as is your president. Now, release the boy and get away from the building.”

I could feel Herbert was breathing hard and I could only imagine his eyes darting around as he tried to figure out what to do. I saw Karen was ready to pounce on him but clearly there was no way she could do it without getting me killed. I looked up at Foo, who was hovering above, looking helpless.

“You have five seconds to leave,” Herbert yelled up at the flying people, who stared down at him, not moving, their torches burning brightly. “Five.”

“Let him go,” Karen said calmly to Herbert. “Nothing’s going to stop them.”

“Four.”

“Father, do what he says!” yelled Foo at her father.

“Three.” Herbert’s count was starting to sound angrier. He wasn’t fooling around.

“
Please,
don’t hurt him,” Karen said, sounding like she actually cared about me.

“Two!”

My heart skipped a beat as I felt Herbert’s arms tense around me and the gun push hard against my head. I heard everybody gasp as I prepared to find out just what it felt like to have my head blown off.

“ONE —”

“RAAAAARRRRR!!!” Suddenly, from out of nowhere, I saw a blur of something shoot past the corner of my eye. I heard Herbert scream and then the gun dropped from my temple as he was knocked sideways.

I looked and saw the cat who thought it was a dog hanging onto Herbert Golonski’s face with its claws as it bit him over and over again, its back legs kicking furiously against his neck, scratching his skin. It really looked painful as Herbert rolled around shouting, “Get it off !” as he tried to pull the cat away from his head. Karen ran forward, kicked Herbert’s gun away, and pulled me up as Foo flew in and hugged me.

“Stop!” I yelled at the cat. “Let him go.”

The cat immediately jumped off Herbert and leaped up into my arms, licking my face like crazy. Herbert’s face was bloody and he lay there dazed, trying to catch his breath, looking like he was in major pain. Then we heard the sound of many voices. We turned and saw a huge crowd of creatures from the city heading toward the White House. Many of them were carrying the torches that the flying people had thrown down onto Lesterville. And then, coming from the direction of the gold camps, we saw all the slaves and prisoners marching our way.

The crowd walked up and surrounded the White House. They looked like they wouldn’t be happy until even this building had been destroyed. It was pretty scary, since the creatures had all seemed so harmless up until now. Apparently you can only push people so far.

Karen and I stared at them, unsure what they were going to do. Herbert sat up and saw what a bad situation he was in the middle of. Foo looked around at the crowd and then said to me, “They really didn’t like Mr. Arthur, did they?”

And all of a sudden, the creatures lobbed a volley of torches through the air. The flaming projectiles crashed through the windows of the White House just as Mr. Arthur ran through the crowd. The house started on fire as he stopped and stared, looking almost resigned to the fact that he was losing everything he had made.

“Nooo!” yelled Herbert as he jumped up and ran into the house.

“There’s no way he loves gold that much,” Karen said, turning to me. “He must have that machine in there that can take us back. C’mon! Before it’s too late.”

I looked at Karen, then at the White House, which was quickly starting to burn more and more. The thought of running into a raging fire didn’t seem at all like a good idea to me, and yet the thought of never being able to get home again didn’t seem to be a great option, either.

I turned to Foo, then put the cat who thought it was a dog by her feet.

“I have to do this, Foo,” I said as she stared into my eyes, confused. “Thank you for liking me.” I then leaned in and kissed her cheek, very gently, so as not to hurt her. She smiled at me, then nodded understandingly. I bent down and rubbed the top of the cat’s head, then said, “Thanks for saving me. Now you’ve got to take care of Foo.” The cat licked my hand, then looked up and meowed at her.

“Iggy,” said Karen. “We’ve gotta go.”

I turned to Karen and said, “Yeah, I know.”

And with that, we ran into the burning house.

36

TIME TO GO

The house was quickly filling with thick black smoke. It burned our eyes and made it almost impossible to see.

“It’s upstairs,” I yelled to Karen over the sound of the roaring fire and all the glass breaking from the heat.

We ran up the stairs as flames leaped up the walls and spread out across the carpet. The bottom floor was burning so fast that I didn’t know how much time we had to get to the secret room on the second level. And I hoped like crazy that the machine I had seen would actually take us back to our frequency. Maybe it was just some sort of weighing scale and Herbert
was
nuts and
was
simply running inside to get burned up with his gold. He seemed too smart to do that but when everything’s falling apart, who knows what some people will do?

We got to the top of the stairs and ran toward the green door at the other end of the hallway. Smoke was starting to come up through the gaps in the floor. We could feel the heat of the fire through the bottoms of our shoes as we ran. It wouldn’t be long before the downstairs ceiling burned completely and the second floor collapsed. “Oh, man,” I said as the realization that we might be going back to our home frequency washed over me. “Dad’s gonna kill me when he finds out I lost his Shakespeare book.”

“Let’s hope we get home alive so he
can
kill you!” Karen yelled over her shoulder.

We ran up to the green door and I pulled it open.

Herbert Golonski was frantically picking up the gold bars that were stacked against the wall outside of the machine and tossing them under its arch. He was sweating and cursing loudly to himself. Flames were starting to appear through the floor around the outer edge of the room. A big burst of fire suddenly flared up underneath the pile of gold he was taking bars off.

He screamed as the flames made him jump back, then shook his hands in pain. He looked up and saw us standing in the doorway.

“You haven’t stopped anything!” he yelled at us as the fire started to melt the gold bars against the wall. “No one can stop the inevitable!”

He looked at the bars that weren’t in the machine as they began to sweat and then dissolve into small rivers of yellow metal, dripping down the pile like butterscotch on an ice-cream sundae. He looked upset, the way you do when you realize that something you’ve been working on for a long time is now all about to be for nothing. He then said, “I can’t believe I have to come back here again,” and ran to the machine. He quickly ran his fingers in some weird pattern over the computer screen and stood underneath the arch.

“See you back home!” he said with a strange smile.

Everything under the arch began to glow as a loud, low humming started to drown out the sound of the fire. As smoke came up through the floorboards, the whole room began to shake. Suddenly, Mr. Arthur pushed past us and ran into the room as he clutched my dad’s Shakespeare book in his hand.

“Wait for me!” he yelled, and dove at the arch, which was glowing so brightly we could barely look at it.

BOOM! There was a huge explosion that knocked Karen and me off our feet as a bright flash of light hit our faces like a burst of hot air. We fell back onto the floor, which was now very hot from the fire downstairs, and then both of us sat up quickly to see what had happened.

Under the machine’s arch, there was nothing.

Herbert Golonski, Mr. Arthur, Dad’s book, and the bars of gold were gone.

As Karen and I exchanged a look, flames exploded up through the floor behind us.

“Get in the machine! Quick!” she yelled as we jumped up and ran over to it.

The smoke was now very thick and pools of liquid gold were running onto the floor in flowing puddles. We got to the machine and looked at the screen that Herbert had waved his hand over.

“I think I saw what he did,” I said to Karen right before I went into a coughing fit from the smoke.

“Then do it!” she yelled. “Two more coughs and we’ll be out of time.”

I waved my hand over the screen and moved my first and second fingers back and forth quickly, a move that I had seen Herbert do.

Suddenly, the arch started to glow again. We stood underneath it as the rumbling once more grew loud. Flames burst up through the floorboards as the green door started on fire and the hallway outside the door collapsed.

“Hurry up, machine!” Karen yelled as the rumbling became deafening and the room started to shake. The wall next to the melting pile of leftover gold caved in and flames shot out of the next room, burning the hairs on my right arm.