Sinister Substitute (12 page)

“Asombrrrrroso!”
Sticky said. “You are getting the hang of being a gecko!”

Then, as he watched the Bandito Brothers, he whispered, “So,
señor
. What now?”

What now, indeed! It was three men (and a screaming coffined villain) against one boy (and
a lizard). And in order to get Veronica Krockle out of the skybox, Dave and Sticky had to wheel her past the Brothers (who were smack-dab in the way).

It appeared that they were trapped.

Outsized and outnumbered.

In a word, toast.

But something very strange was happening.

Or, more accurately,
not
happening.

Rather than pouncing on Dave, all three Brothers simply stared at him. (Well, Tito was staring at Sticky, waving and pulling silly faces, but the point is, none of them were pouncing as one might expect.)

Then Angelo said, “He’s bewitched, I tell you. Or he’s not of this earth.” His voice was raspy. His knees were rubbery. The hairs all over his tarred and feathered body were shaking in their roots.

“Let me out! Let me out!” Damien screeched from inside the coffin.

But Pablo (who was standing right beside the latched latch) didn’t budge. He, too, just stared at Dave, petrified by what he’d witnessed. “I believe you now,” he said to Angelo, his teeth chattering. “He has no suction cups.”

“Let me out, you fools, so I can kill you!”

“Señor,”
Sticky whispered ever so quietly in Dave’s ear. “Yell something. Make your voice low and horrible, then charge!”

“But you told me never to speak around them!” Dave whispered through his bandanna.

“That’s the madman, not them!” Sticky whispered. “He’s the one who remembers voices!” But after a moment, he added, “Okay,
señor
, I’ll do it.” He paused. “Ready?”

“You bungling bozos! LET ME OUT!”

“Ready,” Dave whispered.

And with that, Sticky blasted the room with a deep, growling …

“MOVE!”

The Bandito Brothers hit the walls like they’d been swept aside by shock waves, and (although his ear was now ringing with pain) Dave wasted no time. He engaged the tricked-out tires of Damien’s chair and wheeled Ms. Veronica Krockle out the door and down the pathway toward Goose Island.

Dave had not been thinking past the skybox door. His focus had been wholly and solely on getting himself (and the conked-out Ms. Krockle) around the Bandito Brothers and away from Damien Black. So, as he barreled along the cobblestone pathway, he was, at first, simply relieved.

He was moving!

Fast!

And the chair was amazing!

It was taking the bumps and dips and twists and turns like an ATV!

He even hitched himself on during the straightaways and
flew
.

Poor Dave. He wasn’t thinking about the five
steep steps at the end of the pathway. Or that the chair had no brakes. (Or parachutes or air bags or bumper guards, for that matter.) He wasn’t thinking that if the chair broke, he’d have no way to wheel Ms. Krockle out of there. That he’d have to
carry
her. Or that she almost certainly weighed more than he did, and that carrying her would require more than Gecko Power—it would require Super Strength. (Which was, in fact, a potential power, but not an ingot he happened to possess.)

No, Dave just blithely barreled along until Sticky whispered, “I think she’s waking up!” in Dave’s ear.

Dave now noticed that although his science teacher was still slumped over, her hands seemed to be moving and her blindfold seemed to have slipped. Dave thought this might be the result of all the thumping and bumping they were doing and said, “Check, would you?” as he steered through a sharp turn.

So, lickety-split, Sticky zippy-toed off Dave’s shoulder and onto Ms. Veronica Krockle.

The blindfold had, indeed, slipped, but her eyes were shut.

Except
, Sticky now noticed, there were slits.

Little sneaky-peeky slits.

Still. He wasn’t sure.

So he zippy-toed closer, reached up, and pried an eyelid back with his sticky-toed hand.

Well! Ms. Veronica Krockle was, indeed, awake. She had simply been doing her bumpy-bouncy best to figure out why in the world she was flying along a cobblestone walkway in a turbocharged office chair. But she now found herself eyeball to eyeball with a lizard.

A gecko lizard who seemed to be cocking an eyebrow.

A gecko lizard who seemed to be scowling at her.

A gecko lizard who snorted, then opened his mouth and grumbled, “Faker.”

Ms. Veronica Krockle screamed, then immediately fainted.

Dave (distracted by the commotion with Sticky and Ms. Krockle) realized too late that straight ahead of them were steps.

“Aaaah!” he cried, pulling back on the chair.

Unfortunately, office chairs (be they turbo or standard issue) are not equipped with seat belts. So although the chair’s momentum was halted at the edge, Ms. Veronica Krockle’s was not.

She took off like a shot.

Catapulted like a rock.

Flew like a teacher torpedo!

And Sticky (who was still on her lab coat at liftoff) went flying, too. “Holy hurling
habañeroooooos!”
he cried, flailing through the air.

“Sticky!” Dave shouted, and as he raced to his little buddy’s side, the turbo chair slipped away and landed with a clunky-crunchy crash, breaking both a leg and an arm.

Sticky, it turned out, was fine. (He’d had much worse falls before and survived them no problem.) But if a chair is going to break a leg and an arm from a tumble, you’d expect a human being to fare much worse.

In this case, however, there were geese.

And it just so happened that Ms. Veronica Krockle torpedoed straight into a gathering of geese that didn’t have the chance to scatter before she landed on them.

Can you say “pâté”?

If not, never mind. The point is, she survived, and once Dave and Sticky had regrouped, they were left with a very real dilemma:

How would they ever get the conked-out Ms. Krockle over the island and through the gate before Damien showed up?

“Just wake her up!” Sticky said, then zippy-toed up to her chest and started slapping her cheeks.

“Stop!” Dave said, then got busy refastening her blindfold. “I don’t want her to see me if I can help it!”

Sticky crossed his arms. “So,
señor
, how are you going to get her out of here?”

Dave looked around. “I have no idea.”

Sticky gave a slow nod. “Good thinking.”

“Hey! We got her this far, didn’t we?” Then, miffed by Sticky’s superior attitude, Dave grabbed the back collar of Ms. Krockle’s lab coat and began dragging her toward Goose Island.

Sticky stayed aboard Ms. Krockle like he was riding a slow-moving surfboard.
“Ouchie-huahua,”
he said with a tisk. “That is going to hurt.”

“Got a better idea, big shot?” Dave snapped over his shoulder.

Sticky didn’t. And instead of continuing to surf along on Ms. Krockle and snipe at Dave, he scurried up to Dave’s shoulder and mumbled, “Sorry,
señor.”

“Look,” Dave said. “I can’t worry about her bumps and bruises. I’ve got to get her
out
of here. That madman’s going to show up any minute, and when he does, it’s all over.”

And so Dave trudged along while Ms. Veronica Krockle thumpity-wump-bumped behind (leaving high-heeled-boot skids in her wake). Over the rickety bridge they went, across the island, over a half-drowned log, until they were (at last) at the gate.

The very tall, very locked gate.

Not that there was a padlock.

Or a handprint scanner.

Or a death laser.

It was just… locked.

Unopenable.

Rattle, kick, shake, and pummel proof.

And after trying everything he could think of, Dave gave the bars one final shake and said, “There’s got to be a release lever somewhere!”

Then several things happened all at once:

Ms. Veronica Krockle began to groan. (And really, who could blame her?)

Sticky scurried off Dave’s shoulder, calling, “I’ll be right back,
señor!”
because he had noticed something odd about a nearby goose.

And finally, Damien Black entered the cave (followed in breathless pursuit by all three Bandito Brothers).

“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Damien laughed as he swooped down the steps. He hurried toward
Dave with an evil sneer. “You are trapped, boy! You are
mine
.”

Dave’s heart hammered in his chest.

He looked around frantically.

He was doomed!

While Damien was swooping toward Dave and Dave was looking around frantically for an escape, Sticky was discovering that the odd goose he’d spotted was, in fact, a fake goose. A metal one, with lopsided eyes, painted poles for legs, and sadly patchy feathers.

And it ticked.

Or, more accurately, ticktocked.

Sticky did not for an instant think that it was a bomb.

Perhaps he
should
have, but he didn’t. After all, why would Damien have a decoy bomb in the midst of his gaggle of geese?

Think of the mess it would cause if it went off.

Think of the feathers!

No, knowing Damien Black as he did, Sticky immediately suspected that this ghastly goose was some sort of diabolical doodad that did …
something
.

Opened a trapdoor?

Whooshed down a net?

Something
.

And, given the perilous predicament they presently found themselves in, Sticky reasoned that
something
was better than nothing.

But how to make that something happen?

Sticky could find no levers, no buttons, no switches… just feathers!

But then he discovered a smooth crack at the base of the neck.

Not a crack … a joint!

Which meant that the neck moved somehow.

But how?

Sticky followed the crack around to the chest and realized that the whole, long neck was a lever (and the head was the handle).

Now, Sticky is one speedy gecko, and all this zipping around the ghastly goose had taken him only about ten seconds. Unfortunately, that was enough time for Damien and the Bandito Brothers to make it halfway across the island.

Sticky knew there was no time to lose. He took a deep breath, then turbo-toed up the ghastly goose neck, and with a mighty flying kick, he slammed down on the goose head, then flipped around, slid down the face, and held on to the beak, pulling the creaky neck lever down … down … down.

Immediately there was a noise.

A whirring, sucking, high-winds noise.

Immediately the large foil hose shot out from the cave wall and began whipping back and forth like an enormous elephant trunk.

Immediately Damien Black reacted in a way he had never (I promise you
ever)
reacted before.

He screamed.

He danced about, dodging the hose.

He screamed again.

Yes, the calculating, conniving, coldhearted Damien Black did what diabolically devilish men rarely do.

He totally lost it.

Sticky, you see, had overridden the automatic timer on the Komodo dragon’s feeding hose. A feeding hose that sucked geese into the dragon pit during periods when Damien was, say, traveling.

Or incarcerated.

Or just too lazy to feed the oversized reptile himself.

And now Damien was nose to hose with a vacuum so strong that it could whisk him through a hundred feet of tubing and drop him with a painful plop into a man-eating dragon’s sand pit.