Mission Unstoppable (11 page)

Now she was getting somewhere! With her brother fully awake and whispering in her ear, Pep kept writing down letters, alternating between the top line and the bottom line. It didn’t take long to work out the entire message that way.

And when she added spaces where they seemed to fit . . .

“
THOTR
?” whispered Coke. “What’s
THOTR
? That part must be a mistake.”

“No, it’s like a signature,” his sister whispered back. “THOTR must be the person who’s been sending us these messages!”

They looked at the letters
THOTR
carefully. They didn’t look as if they were anybody’s name. The word
hot
was in there.
Hotter
?
Other
?
Throttle
?
Otter
? Pep switched the letters around, looking for words that might fit.
TROT. TO. TOT. ROT. HOT TO TROT
?

And then, simultaneously, they both figured out what
THOTR
meant.

“The house on the rock!”

Mr. and Mrs. McDonald nearly woke up from the noise.

“
THOTR
stands for ‘the house on the rock’!” Pep said. “We need to be there at one o’clock on June twenty-fifth.
That’s our birthday!”

“It’s also four days from now,” Coke informed her.

“But we don’t even know where this stupid house is,” Pep said. “It could be
anywhere
. How are we supposed to find it?”

“Beats me.”

Chapter 16
Dads Gone Wild

C
oke and Pep leaned over the message, staring at it as if the words might change if they looked at them hard enough.

“What is it with this house on a rock?” Coke whispered.

“I don’t know,” his sister replied. “But we have to figure it out. Somebody wants us to be there on our birthday.”

“And don’t forget; we need to get to the ball of twine, too,” Coke noted. “We promised Bones.”

With so much on their minds, the twins went back to bed but slept poorly. They were groggy when their father woke them up early. He seemed anxious to check out of the campground and get on the road.

Northern Utah didn’t look much different from the eastern part of Nevada. Flat. Hot. Dry. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at, at least not along I-80. It was going to be one of those staring-out-the-window kind of days.

After a few miles, a sign appeared.

Dr. McDonald veered off the highway at exit 4.

“Ben, where are you going?” Mrs. McDonald asked.

“You’ll see.”

He drove a few miles into the state park without saying a word to anybody. Mrs. McDonald and the twins shot nervous glances at one another. It wasn’t like Dr. Benjamin McDonald to do impulsive, spontaneous things. He was a planner. He liked schedules and lists.

“
This
is a state park?” Pep asked, looking at the scenery. “It doesn’t look like any state park I ever saw.”

“Yeah, what’s so great about
this
place, Dad?” Coke asked. “There are lots of cooler state parks we could go to. This place looks like a lot of nothing.”

“A lot of
salt
,” Mrs. McDonald added.

“That’s
exactly
what it is,” Dr. McDonald agreed, smiling as he pulled off the access road and onto the white salt flat itself. “Thirty thousand acres of salt. Nothing but salt.”

“And we came here for
what
reason exactly?” Pep asked.

“Do you have a sodium deficiency in your diet, Dad?” Coke asked.

“Look around you,” Dr. McDonald told the family. “It’s so flat here that you can almost see the curvature of the earth. It’s so barren, even the simplest forms of life can’t survive. It’s like another planet, an alien world of potassium, magnesium lithium, and sodium chloride.”

The twins looked at each other. There was a good chance that their father had lost his marbles.

“Thousands of years ago,” he continued, “Lake Bonneville covered a third of what is now Utah. When the lake evaporated, salt and minerals were left on the bottom. And over time, the surface became flat and hard.”

“Okay, can we go now?” Pep said, shielding her eyes from the blinding sun reflecting off the salt flat. “It’s probably a hundred degrees. If the RV broke down, we could die out here.”

“Yeah, this place is lame, Dad,” Coke added.

“This place is for
me
,” Dr. McDonald said dreamily. “You get to go to your yo-yo museums and your Pez museums. You get to see your giant ball of twine and all those other goofball places Mom wants to visit. The Bonneville Salt Flats is a place I always wanted to go to ever since I was a little boy.”

“Why, Ben?” Mrs. McDonald asked. “What’s here? Is this some sort of midlife crisis for you?”

“Yes, it is,” Dr. McDonald admitted. “Do you guys know what the Bonneville Salt Flats is famous for?”

“I do,” Coke replied.

Of course, Coke knew all about the Bonneville Salt Flats from a Saturday morning TV special he’d seen years earlier. He remembered every detail.

It turns out that back in 1914, a daredevil named Teddy Tezlaff brought an early car—a Blitzen Benz—out to the Bonneville Salt Flats and drove it 141.73 miles per hour: the world record at the time. Ever since then car buffs from all over the world have come to the salt flats to see how fast they could drive. Over the years they bumped the world land speed record up to 300 mph, then 400 mph, and eventually past 600 mph.

“When I was a kid,” Dr. McDonald told the family, “this guy named Craig Breedlove brought a jet-powered car out here and broke the six-hundred-mile-per-hour barrier. I still remember the name of his car:
Spirit of America
. Ever since then, I wanted to come to Bonneville.”

“I understand, Ben,” Mrs. McDonald said, patting his shoulder. “So we’re going to watch a race here?”

“No,” he replied. “Same sentence. Take out the ‘watch a.’”

“We’re going to
race
here?” Pep asked, alarmed.

“That’s right,” Dr. McDonald said. He had a devilish gleam in his eyes, and he gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Are you out of your mind, Ben?” his wife asked.

“We’re going to see how fast this baby can go,” Dr. McDonald said calmly.

“Yeah, let’s do it, Dad!” urged Coke.

“This is insanity,” Pep said.

“It’s a recreational vehicle, Ben!” Mrs. McDonald said urgently. “An RV isn’t designed for racing.”

“Going fast is one of man’s most primal desires,” Dr. McDonald said, staring at the salt flat ahead of him. “This will be my only chance to ever do this. Fasten your seat belts.”

With that, he hit the gas pedal.

The wheels spun at first on the salt, but soon they got a grip and the RV lurched forward. They were all slammed backward into their seats.

“Ben, you’re going to damage the RV!” Mrs. McDonald yelled.

“It’s okay!” he shouted back. “It’s a rental!”

After a sluggish start, the RV started picking up speed.
Fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour
. With nothing around for miles and miles, Dr. McDonald didn’t have to worry about roads, stop signs, guardrails, traffic lights, pedestrians, or police cars. He pressed the gas pedal hard against the floor.

“I’ve wanted to do this my whole life!” he yelled.

Eighty . . . ninety
 . . . one hundred miles per hour
. It was bumpy. Everything was vibrating. The plates in the little kitchen were rattling.

“Woo-
hooooooooooo
!” Coke shouted. “Put the pedal to the metal, Dad! Burn rubber!”

“Slow down, Dad!” Pep said, gripping the armrests tightly.

“That’s enough, Ben!” Mrs. McDonald shouted. “You proved your point. We
get
it! It goes fast!”

But it wasn’t enough. The RV was still accelerating as the speedometer needle nosed past 110 miles per hour.

That’s when Coke saw something in front of them. It was just a dot on the horizon at first; but as they got closer, it appeared to be a person. No,
two
people. They were waving their hands frantically.

“Somebody’s out there, Dad!” Pep hollered, pointing.

“Hit the brakes!” ordered Mrs. McDonald.

“Steer around them!” shouted Coke.

Dr. McDonald took both suggestions, which sent the RV into a long skid and nearly caused it to flip over. Some of the cabinet doors flew open. Pots and pans came flying out and rattled against the floor.

The two people on the salt flat dove out of the way. The RV came within inches of mowing them down.

“That was
cool
, Dad!” Coke shouted when the RV had screeched to a halt. They all took a deep breath and then unfastened their seat belts and jumped out to see who was crazy enough to be running around in the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats without a car.

The two people were lying on the ground. One was a man and the other was a woman. Their clothes were ripped and ragged.

It took a moment, but once the twins got a good look at the faces, they realized they had seen these people before.

It was Bones and Mya!

“What are
you
doing out here?” Pep hollered.

“Water . . . water . . . ,” they begged.

Bones and Mya could barely speak; their throats were too dry and sore. They were barely alive.

“Do you know these people?” Mrs. McDonald asked Pep.

“No!” Pep lied. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“Well, you just said ‘What are
you
doing out here?’” Mrs. McDonald explained. “That sounds like you’re talking to somebody you’ve met before.”

“No, no, Mom,” Coke explained. “She didn’t say ‘What are
you
doing out here?’ She said ‘What are you
doing
out here?’ There’s a big difference. It all depends on which word you emphasize, you see.”

“I never met these people in my life,” Pep lied.

She had to. She had been sworn to secrecy.

Dr. McDonald poured water over Bones’s and Mya’s faces. Mrs. McDonald helped them up and brought them into the RV, where it was shady and air-conditioned. Bones put a finger to his lips to let the twins know not to tell their parents who they were.

Mrs. McDonald made them some instant oatmeal. After Dr. McDonald checked out the tires to make sure they weren’t damaged by their little sprint, he tried to get Bones and Mya to explain why they were wandering around the Bonneville Salt Flats with no food or water. They pretended that it was too painful to speak and just pantomimed that they would be okay.

“We’ll take you to the nearest gas station,” Dr. McDonald finally said.

“Thank you,” Mya croaked, looking up from the oatmeal.

In the back of the RV, Pep took out her notepad. She made a big question mark on it and handed it to Bones for him to write a reply.

Dr. McDonald pulled into a gas station and insisted on giving twenty dollars to Bones and Mya before they got out of the RV. They thanked him repeatedly and wrote down his address so they could repay the money when they could.

As the RV pulled away, Coke and Pep waved to Bones and Mya out the back window and wondered how they would ever get to Kansas.

After that morning excitement, the rest of the day seemed to go by in a blur. They passed the southern part of Great Salt Lake, which is the largest
salt lake
in the western hemisphere. It’s three to five times as salty as the ocean. Just about anybody can float in it.

“Think it’s possible to drown in there?” Pep wondered out loud.

“Sure,” Coke replied. “If somebody holds your head under the water long enough.”

Legend has it that there’s a monster in Great Salt Lake with a body like a
crocodile
and a
horse
‘s head. Mrs. McDonald said she’d like to take a look and write about it for
Amazing but True
. But everyone agreed that they had enough salt for the day and decided to press on.

In Salt Lake City, behind the State Capitol, there is what is called a “gravity hill.” According to the locals, a guy named Emo was buried in the area. At midnight, his grave gives off a blue glow and his ghost warps gravity so that cars parked at the bottom of the gravity hill will roll uphill. Mrs. McDonald insisted they try it, but it didn’t work. Maybe it does with a Mini Cooper or Smart Car, but not with an RV.

Then Mrs. McDonald wanted to drive three hours north of Salt Lake City to Blackfoot, Idaho—the Potato Capital of the World. They have the world’s largest potato there (made of Styrofoam) and also the world’s largest potato chip (about the size of a pizza). But the rest of the family voted against it, even if it meant they would not be able to sample the potato fudge or potato ice cream, which is sold in the gift shop.

It was still early in the day, so Dr. McDonald decided to see how many miles he could cover. A little over an hour from Salt Lake City, everybody whooped and hollered when they saw the sign that read . . .