Authors: Michael Perry
I expected to be nervous standing there with Dad, but I’m not. I have been preparing for this moment a long, long time, and I’m glad it has come. It’s better to be
doing
than
waiting
. I peek back at Toad and Arlinda. They too stand shoulder to shoulder, and when Toad catches my eye he winks.
“AWRIGHT, let’s GO here!” It’s the Fat Man, hollering at me.
“Keep your cool there, ButterButt,” I say. I figure if he’s gonna talk big, I’m gonna talk big, too. If this whole thing goes terribly wrong I want to go out in a way people will remember. “We’re gonna do this my way.”
“Gettin’ ordered around by a blankety-blank girl!” he grumbles.
“Get used to it, GreaseTrap,” I say. “Ma—you all right?”
“Yes, Maggie,” says Ma, but her voice is terribly soft.
Down the road I see a few GreyDevils appearing. Perhaps with all the commotion they think the cornvoys have returned. The soldiers encircling us are beginning to look over their shoulders.
“Okay, here’s how it’s gonna work,” I say.
“You didn’t really think we were gonna play by your silly, frilly little rules, did yuh?” says the Fat Man. “Thanks for findin’ yer old man. We’ll take him now.”
For the first time, I feel uncertainty. It’s one thing to talk tough about trading in your Dad, it’s another thing to do it.
“I’m not going in,” says Dad.
“Oh, yer goin’ in,” says the Fat Man.
“Dad . . . what about Ma?” I say. “The trade?”
“You don’t want
me
,” says Dad to the Fat Man, ignoring me. “You want your—my—
our
—
secret
.”
The Fat Man just stands there glaring. Lettuce Face stomps his foot like a tiny dancer.
Dad continues. “You’re terrified it’ll get out.”
“QUIET!” thunders the Fat Man. “If that were true, we’d have snuffed you the minute you stepped through that gate.”
“I knew that was a possibility,” says Dad. “But I was willing to gamble that you need me alive until you’re dead sure the secret is safe . . . and it’s not.”
Now the Fat Man’s fat face is turning purple.
“Nah, you’ll keep me alive because my daughter,
Ford Falcon
, has set the dead man’s switch.”
“That’s right, GreaseGuts,” I say. When Dad said “my daughter,” I felt a rush of pride. Then, quietly, under my breath and out of the corner of my mouth, I say, “What the heebie-jeebies is a dead man’s switch?”
Dad answers in a clear, firm voice, so everyone can hear him, even over the sound of the approaching GreyDevils. “A dead man’s switch is something automatically set in motion upon the death or incapacitation of someone . . . in this case, if anything happens to me, it triggers something that will make these two fellows very uncomfortable indeed.”
I look at Dad again. He is standing up straight. I have never seen him look more in command. Now he speaks to the Fat Man and Lettuce Face again, and this time the slightest taunting tone has crept into his voice.
“You never did find the four vials, did you?”
The Fat Man’s face turns an even darker purple, and Lettuce Face’s face goes even paler, beyond wilted lettuce to anemic lizard belly.
The GreyDevils are beginning to swarm. “It’s all those Corn-Eaters,” says Toad. I’ve never heard him use the term before, but I can figure what he means: all those soldiers are from the Bubble, meaning they’ve had Activax, and with this many of them gathered and nervous and sweating, the GreyDevils can smell the URCorn coming from their pores. At this point the soldiers have stopped paying attention to us completely and have turned their eyes and their weapons toward the shuffling mob.
“You’re out of cards, Lard-O,” I say. Actually I’m not sure exactly what cards
we
have—but it seems like the thing to say. “Time to turn over my ma. Let’s get this done before we’re neck deep in GreyDevils.”
I can see the Fat Man would like nothing better than to feed me to the GreyDevils, but he nods toward the security guard in charge of the BarbaZap gate, and when the man presses a button, the big gate slowly swings open.
“We’re still takin’ yer old man!” screeches Lettuce Face.
“We’ll see,” I say. “First, we get Ma.”
And then, as Ma steps forward, everything comes undone.
AFTER ALL OF OUR EXPERIENCE ON THE
SCARY PRUNER
, TOAD AND
I knew the GreyDevils were getting set to swarm, but when they see the BarbaZap gate begin to slide open, they go bonkers in a way we’ve never witnessed. It is like unlocking the door to a five-hundred-acre free buffet.
The soldiers start firing almost immediately and it’s horrible, the
whup
of the bullets hitting the moaning GreyDevils, but there are so many of them they just keep coming, and I can actually feel the earth vibrating as they tromp forward in their slow-motion stampede. The security guards, seeing the GreyDevils inbound, have thrown the switch that reverses the gate. It’s beginning to roll closed.
Dookie yanks his hand free from Arlinda. He is jumping up and down and trembling and spinning in circles, and saying “
shibby-shibby-shibby . . .
” over and over.
“Dookie!” I holler, trying to grab him by the shoulders. “It’s okay!”
For just a moment, he freezes, as if I’ve gotten through to him. Then he ducks under my arms and takes off running.
Straight toward Ma.
Straight toward the closing gate.
The BarbaZap!
I think.
“Henry!” hollers Dad, and we both run after him. He has a head start, though—we’re not going to get to him in time.
Suddenly, Dookie stops in his tracks, looks straight up at the sky, and falls twitching and shaking to the ground.
A seizure! And he is lying directly in the path of the closing gate, a moving wall of BarbaZap snapping with deadly electricity. I am running as hard as I can and keeping right up with Dad, but even as we run I can see the killer gate slowly but surely closing in on Dookie’s outstretched hand.
“DOOKIE!” I scream, knowing that the second the steel touches his fingers he’ll be electrocuted.
I hear a sound behind me like an avalanche of stones, and even as I run I turn to look and I see Toad’s silo, his Leaning Tower of Pisa, teetering and now tipping like a giant sequoia. After another season of nonstop cornvoy trucks, the rumble of the soldiers’ gunfire and the vibrations of the hundreds of GreyDevils have been just enough to finally topple it. As it sweeps toward the earth it throws a dark shadow across the narrow Cornvoy Road, and the topmost section smashes earthward straight through the BarbaZap fence. Wires screech and howl as the steel rips and twists, then with an earthshaking
thud
the entire length of the concrete silo hits the dirt. An angry buzzing, snapping sound erupts, sparks fly high into the sky, and the gate stalls, millimeters from Dookie’s hand. The falling silo has shorted out the electricity.
“Snooky holer-tables!” hollers Toad, pumping his fist when he sees the damage the silo has done, all those years after the government bulldozers bumped it. “That fight is
fit
!”
And then out of the smoke and pulverized concrete dust I see the GreyDevils come pouring toward us.
They have overrun the soldiers and are coming for the open gate, where Dookie is lying. I reach his side and drop to my knees. He is blinking at me in that quiet, goofy way he always does when he’s coming out of a seizure.
“Henry! Henry!” It’s Ma, trying to get to Dookie, but the Fat Man is holding her back, trying to drag her to the helicopter.
I look over my shoulder and see the GreyDevils stumbling toward us in a dirty gray wave, their desperate eyes fixed on the gap in the gate, looking right past us to the rows and rows of URCorn, their cracked and crusty fingers reaching out and grasping before them. Their voices swirl and moan in a tornado of sound. There is no way we can get back to Toad and Arlinda.
“The helicopter!” yells Dad, picking up Dookie.
Now the Fat Man is dragging Ma to the chopper. She is fighting him and reaching toward us, but he is jerking her backward mercilessly. Lettuce Face has already leaped into the chopper and is yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” at the pilot.
We catch Ma and the Fat Man right at the door of the chopper. The Fat Man whirls and snarls at us, one arm wrapped around Ma’s neck.
“Get back!” he growls.
“Dead man’s trigger!” my father hollers. “It’s locked and loaded!”
The Fat Man turns as pale as Lettuce Face.
The GreyDevils are pouring through the gate.
“Nowhere to go but up!” hollers Dad.
“I . . . ,” says the Fat Man, then he curses and lurches up the stairs, dragging Ma with him but making no effort to stop us. Dad lifts Dookie into the helicopter, I climb in behind them, the engine roars in tune with the GreyDevils, and then we are lifting up, up, and away. Toad and Arlinda stare up at us until we can see them no more and the fields of URCorn tighten into rectangles of brilliant green and then we are roaring through white sky, back to the Bubble and who knows what.
But hey, I think, as I look around: it’s the whole family . . . back together again.
WE SPEND THE NIGHT IN EMPTY ROOMS WITH SIMPLE BEDS. I PULL
my mattress off the rack and sleep on the floor. Dookie sleeps beside me. Ma and Dad are in another room. The last thing I hear is the low murmur of them talking.
The next day we are moved to the square room with three white walls and one mirror wall. Dad has his arm around Ma while she holds Dookie and hums his favorite old songs. Ma’s still terribly upset about his seizure. I forgot that she didn’t know about those. I explain how it’s been since the night of the attack.
As happy as we are to be reunited, you’d think we’d all be chattering like mad, but mostly we seem to be lost in our own thoughts. How do you go from having pie together on Toad and Arlinda’s porch to escaping a horde of GreyDevils in a helicopter and everything that happened in between and then just pick up where you left off? Being thrown back together in this way, we don’t really know how to begin. Plus, it’s not like we are sitting around our own kitchen table.
I look at us in the mirror. Ma, Dad, and Dookie, and me off to one side. It’s like a family portrait, only instead of smiling we’re just waiting to see what happens next.
We don’t wait long. The mirror changes to a window, and the Fat Man and Lettuce Face appear.
“Well, well,” says Lettuce Face. “Isn’t this nice. A family r
eeeeuuuu
nion.”
I dream of the day I can stick a Whomper-Zooka up this dude’s snoot.
“You’ll be turning us loose any minute,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” says Lettuce Face. “We have your mother, and—although I could really do without you—we have
you
. . . and your odd little brother.”
He points at Dad. “But most important, we have him.”
Dad steps forward.
“Not all of me, you don’t,” he says.
I step right up behind him. “Skip the mystery talk, Dad. I’m sick of surprises and secrets. Every time I turn around there’s another one. I never thought I’d say it, but I actually miss Hatchet. He’s forever attacking me, but at least I know what’s coming. Let’s wrap this up and catch the next helicopter outta here.”
Dad looks me in the eye for what seems a long time, then speaks.
“Final secret, Ford Falcon.”
The white room is silent except for the sound of Dookie softly and slowly repeating, “
Shibby . . . shibby . . . shibby . . .
” Ma draws him in close to her chest so he can feel her humming.
Dad squares his shoulders.
“Without me, there is no URCorn.”
“
SHUT HIM UP!
” screeches Lettuce Face.
“Doesn’t matter now,” says the Fat Man.
Dad walks right up to face the Fat Man through the glass. “I loved working for your company. I was doing experiments. I was playing with all the latest toys. I was using my nerd brain the way it was meant to be used. I worked hard, and I was rewarded for working hard. I could provide my family with all the things they needed and most of the things they wanted.
“And above all, I was proud to help feed the world.”
I snort. “Yah, feed ’em crazy corn, and make crazy money for CornVivia.”
“Yes,” says Dad, turning toward me. “Some of which was used to buy your diapers and keep a roof over your head. There is nothing wrong with being paid well for good work. And, Maggie, in the beginning URCorn truly was miraculous. It did everything the old advertisements promised. In a time when the weather was going topsy-turvy and other crops were failing and millions were going hungry, we came to the rescue.”
The Fat Man smiles, and says, “And we never had a fatter bottom line.”
“You oughta know about a fat bottom line . . .” I couldn’t let that one go.
“Maggie!” says Ma, shaking her head.
“Yes,” says Dad. “The bottom line. That’s where things began to go wrong. First came the Secrecy Signings. I signed, because I agreed: if CornVivia paid me to do research for them, it wouldn’t be right if I sold that information to some other country.
“Then came the Security Chip. That scared me. But there was so much restlessness in the country by then. Millions without jobs. Troublesome weather. Talk of strange invasions. CornVivia wanted security for their secrets and I wanted security for my family. So I submitted to the chip.
“Finally came the Top Secret project. They said they needed me to invent a lock. A lock made of chemicals that would add one more layer of protection for the secrets of URCorn.”
“Activax?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Dad. Then, very quietly, he says, “Had I known what I was part of, I would have walked out of the lab that day and never returned.”
Now he walks over toward Lettuce Face, who has been standing there all this time with his thin little lips stuck out in a pout.
“It was the Patriotic Partnering that first made me doubt what I was doing,” says Dad. “When the biggest food corporation in the country joined forces with the government, I felt trouble ahead.”