Candy Shop War (30 page)

Summer pulled up beside them. “You guys ready?”

“The library has an alarm,” Nate told her. “Did you try to get the alarm code?” he asked Pigeon.

“When I tried to get Mrs. Wagner to let me take the boat home, she started acting suspicious of me,” Pigeon said. “After she had started resisting the Sweet Tooth, I got nervous and couldn’t think of even a vaguely plausible explanation for why she should give me the alarm code.”

“So what do we do?” Summer asked.

“We try to get out before anybody responds to the alarm,” Nate said. “Let’s go.”

They rode their bikes down the path and then turned onto Mayflower, which they followed until reaching a tree-lined street called Goodman Road. Not far down the road they came into view of the Nelson J. Colson Memorial Library, a sprawling, modern structure with lots of huge windows. The unusual slopes and angles of the contemporary library contrasted sharply with the neighboring old barn and fenced pastures. The decrepit barn stood near a paved road that branched out from the library parking lot and passed beneath an arched sign for Goodman Farm.

“What’s with the farm?” Nate asked.

“It’s cool,” Summer said. “That’s the original barn. It’s mainly for show. The rest of the farm is more current. They have real animals, but they run it like a park so people can see how a farm works. You can milk cows, feed pigs, pet sheep, take a hayride, that sort of thing.”

“My family likes to go there,” Pigeon said.

“I’ve been there on field trips,” Summer said.

“Gotcha,” Nate said. “Where are we headed, Pigeon?”

“This way,” he said, riding his bike onto the lush lawn encompassing the library. The grass was thick and ready to be mowed, making peddling hard work. Pigeon gave up grinding forward and walked his bike over to the side of the library, leaning it against the wall behind a bush. Nate and Summer did likewise.

Pigeon led them along the side of the building, trudging through wood chips, weaving around shrubs and young trees. He peeked through a window. “Anybody bring a flashlight?” he asked.

“I forgot,” Nate said.

“I have one,” Summer said, removing a small black flashlight from her pocket.

Pigeon pressed the flashlight to the glass and clicked it on. “Not this one,” he reported. “I pretended to be admiring Mrs. Wagner’s view and unlocked her window. If she didn’t notice, it’ll make life easier.”

After peering into the next window, Pigeon gave them a thumbs-up. Pressing his palms against the glass, he slid the window sideways. “Phew,” he said. “If we’d had to break the glass, I would have looked ten times more guilty. If we’re careful, they may not ever realize anything was taken, and I’ll be off the hook.”

The windowsill was about the height of their necks. Nate boosted Pigeon and Summer through, then grasped the windowsill, kicked off the wall, and pulled himself up. By the time he was standing in the office, Pigeon had the keys in hand. A steady beep filled the air.

Clutching the flashlight, Pigeon led them out of the office and down a hall. The beeping continued, warning them to punch in the code to disarm the alarm. They reached a staircase that went down to a basement and curved up to a second story. Pigeon led them up. Near the top of the staircase, the beeping stopped and an obnoxious alarm started blaring. Emergency lights flashed.

They ran along a hall at the top of the stairs. One side of the hall had several doors and a couple of drinking fountains. The other side overlooked orderly ranks of bookshelves on the first floor. The hall let them out near a reference desk in an airy room divided by row after row of shelves.

Pigeon raced back into the book stacks, fumbling with the keys. At the end of the shelves they reached a wall with a gray door. Pigeon jabbed a key into the doorknob and opened it. The windowless room beyond was cluttered with books, cardboard boxes, stacked chairs and desks, framed pictures, wheeled carts, a pair of overhead projectors, a film projector, a phony-looking suit of armor, and metal shelves stocked with fake flowers and other diverse knickknacks.

The alarm blaring incessantly, Pigeon directed them to a shelf in an obscure corner of the room where the USS
Stargazer
sailed inside a clear bottle beside a marble bust of Mark Twain.

“It’s huge!” Nate shouted over the alarm. “That looks like a refill bottle for a water cooler!”

“I told you it was big,” Pigeon said.

The bottle rested on curved wooden mountings to prevent it from rolling. Nate scooped his arms under the bottle and lifted it off the shelf. It was almost too heavy for him to carry. Not only was the bottle big, but the glass seemed thick. “Lend me a hand, Pidge,” Nate grunted.

With Pigeon holding one end of the bottle, carrying the
Stargazer
was no problem. When they exited the storeroom, Pigeon kicked the door shut and made sure it was locked. They hurried between the bookshelves and hustled across an area full of tables and chairs near the resource desk.

Upon reaching the hall that led to the stairs, Nate and Pigeon stopped, the bottle cradled between them. Three figures waited in the hall, blocking their exit, lights pulsing around them. Denny, Eric, and Kyle.

“A boat, huh?” Denny called, striding forward. “Hand it over.”

“What are you guys doing here?” Nate asked.

Denny rolled his eyes. “What do you think, Dirt Face? We got a call from Mrs. White and followed you. Give me the boat.”

Summer took a baggie of Shock Bits out of her pocket and dumped some into her hand.

“Don’t make this hard!” Denny yelled, pointing at her. “Trust me, we have candy you guys haven’t seen.”

“Jump through a window,” Summer advised Nate, walking past him and putting the Shock Bits into her mouth.

Holding his end of the bottle with one hand, Nate snagged an Ironhide from his pocket. Like most jawbreakers, it felt smooth and hard against his tongue, and tasted sugary.

Denny shoved a small cookie past his lips. Eric and Kyle also each ate something. Kyle’s fingers began sparking.

Denny began to swell. In seconds his oversized T-shirt looked small on him. His shoulders widened, his limbs grew longer and thicker, his belly expanded. Warts erupted on his face, and his nose plumped up like a potato. A sloping brow jutted over sunken eyes. He sprouted up to well over six feet tall, his frame filling out into the powerfully bloated physique of a professional lineman. Opening his inhumanly large mouth, he roared, drowning out the alarm and displaying dull yellow fangs.

“Run!” Summer shouted.

“Can you hold it?” Pigeon asked.

Nate hoisted the cumbersome bottle onto his shoulder and fled into the room with the bookshelves. Several large windows at the far side of the room offered a view of the old barn, dimly visible by the lights of the parking lot. As he studied the far wall, a particular window caught Nate’s attention. It had a table beside it, which would provide the height he would need to leap through the glass.

As he ran, Nate questioned whether he really wanted to jump through a second-story window. He had the Ironhide in his mouth, but his skin did not feel any different. Then again, the bottle was heavy enough that it should be hurting his shoulder, but although he felt the pressure of the weight, there was no discomfort.

He heard another roar from Denny, alarmingly near. Even with his adrenalin pumping, the bottle was so heavy that he could barely manage, let alone run fast. Reaching the end of the room, Nate used a chair to step up onto the table near the tall window—a single pane of glass about four feet wide and eight feet tall. Trusting the jawbreaker, knowing that if it was a dud he was about to die, Nate charged across the table and lunged at the window with all his strength, aiming beyond the glass.

Head, arms, bottle, and torso punched through, and for a terrible moment, he lost momentum and hung draped over a jagged sheet of glass, feeling the pressure against his waist, but no pain. Then the glass buckled beneath him and he tipped forward, plunging headfirst toward the patio below along with a swarm of transparent knives. Disoriented as he was, Nate tried to twist his body to cushion the ship, but he felt the bottle rupture in his embrace as he struck the concrete.

Without the Ironhide he would have impaled himself and broken his neck. With the Ironhide, he experienced the wild rush of the fall, and a tactile sensation of striking the patio, but no pain. Glass had shredded his shirt, and shards glittered on the concrete all around him, but he did not have a scratch or a bruise on his body.

Two of the
Stargazer’s
masts had snapped, and a long crack traversed the bow, but otherwise the ship seemed mostly intact. Nate got up and ran away from the library, uncertain of where to go. He saw headlights, and recognized a police car coming down Goodman Road toward the library parking lot.

The nearest cover was the barn, so Nate ran toward the dilapidated structure. Without the heavy bottle, carrying the ship was no problem. Coming around to the side of the rundown building, he found a modern door. It was locked, but had window panes. He searched around for something to smash the glass, finally remembering that his hand would do just fine. He bashed his fist through a pane, receiving no scratch and feeling no pain, reached down, and unlocked the door.

Pushing the door open, he hurried inside and shoved it closed. Enough light filtered in from the parking lot through several high windows that he could faintly distinguish the strange forms of antiquated farming equipment on display around the room. Seeking a hiding place, Nate wove between obsolete plows and combines until he reached a rickety ladder that led up to a high loft. The rotten rungs creaked in protest as he ascended, cradling the
Stargazer
in one arm while climbing with the other.

When he reached the loft, Nate did not like the warped contours of the floor or the way the wood groaned beneath his weight. He reminded himself that if he fell, he just had to protect the ship, because his body would not suffer any injury. Emboldened by the thought, he proceeded to a hatch in the roof and started stacking old crates in order to reach it.

*****

Summer gaped at the monstrous new version of Denny, knowing that Nate would never escape with the ship if she failed to slow him. She held up her hands menacingly, hoping he might find the prospect of a shock discouraging. He leered and strode forward. Glancing back, Summer saw Nate dashing away with the
Stargazer
braced on his shoulder. Pigeon was swallowing some Shock Bits of his own.

Denny tried to brush Summer aside, but when his hand met hers, electricity sizzled. He lurched backwards several paces and dropped to one knee. Rising, he let out a barbaric cry of resentment.

Kyle and Eric rushed at Summer. Electricity crackled between Kyle’s fingers, and Eric no longer looked like himself. Though he was still roughly the same size, his skin had coarsened into green scales, his eyes were yellow and reptilian, his nose and mouth had merged into a snout, and sharp claws tipped his fingers.

Summer started chewing her first stick of Peak Performance gum as she backed away from her attackers. Kyle lunged at her, but she spun nimbly away from his grasp. Eric sprang forward, swinging a clawed hand. Summer ducked the swipe and grabbed his scaly upper arm in one hand, his forearm in the other. Heaving and pivoting, she swung him into Kyle, releasing his arm just before a blaze of electricity launched Eric into a bookshelf.

While Summer was occupied with Kyle and Eric, Denny had raced around the altercation in pursuit of Nate. Pigeon charged forward, fingers sparking, and tried to touch Denny, but the overgrown bully dodged around him and continued after Nate, roaring savagely. Pigeon swapped targets, tagging Kyle on the elbow and sending him flying.

Summer saw Nate crash through the window, hang suspended for an instant, and then topple out of view. Denny froze, stunned by the sight, probably not understanding that Nate was uninjured. Without knowing about the Ironhide, anyone would have expected to find Nate bloodied and dying on the ground below.

Kyle, Eric, Summer, and Pigeon all watched Denny edge forward and hesitantly peer through the empty window. “He’s fine!” Denny growled. “He’s up and running! Get the ship!”

Denny sprinted away from the window, back toward Summer and the others. Eric raced for the stairs, moving with remarkable speed. Pigeon ate another handful of Shock Bits and moved to block Denny. Kyle put his hand to his mouth and sprang at Pigeon. When they touched, lightning stabbed from the floor to the ceiling, blasting Pigeon and Kyle away from each other with much greater force than any Shock Bits jolt Summer had witnessed. With them having shocked each other, the effect had evidently been multiplied.

Without breaking stride, Denny picked up a table and hurled it at Summer. She rolled out of the way and ended up back on her feet, but Denny was already past her. Her reactions felt razor sharp. She had been diving out of the way before the table had left Denny’s hands.

Pigeon sat up shakily, looking shell-shocked. “I’m going to help Nate,” Summer yelled at him, already running after Denny. He was big, but swift. Even though she was running faster than she had ever sprinted, by the time she was in the hall, he was already down the stairs.

Summer noticed a bookshelf near the top of the stairs. Without pausing to worry, she vaulted over the railing, landed gracefully on top of the bookshelf, crouched, dangled from the edge, and dropped to the floor. The actions felt as simple as skipping down a sidewalk.