Joshua Dread (16 page)

Gradually it dawned on me. My parents hadn’t made these labels for their own use. They’d made them for me.

They must’ve known there was a chance they’d be attacked before they could get the chemical. That was why they’d brought me up here to explain exactly what the smoke creatures were and how to trace them. That was why they’d carefully labeled every step needed to run the tracking sequence.

They wanted me to know how to find them if they went missing.

I placed the vial into the slot and lowered a long straw into the liquid. Following the instructions my parents had left behind, I turned on the computer terminal and pressed another button that caused a single droplet of acid to rise up the straw and into a hole in the glass case. I took a deep breath and initiated the tracking sequence.

I stared at the monitor. At first, nothing happened. But after several seconds, a box popped up on the screen.

In geography the previous year, we’d spent an entire class pushing pins into a wall map where the lines of latitude and longitude met. “Lat” must have been short for “latitude.” Which meant that “Lon” was an abbreviation for “longitude.”

I typed “latitude longitude” into Google. After selecting the first site that showed up, I entered the numbers into the coordinate tracking boxes. Latitude: +45.262321, longitude: -69.012489. An instant later, a location appeared on the screen.

Carrolshire, Maine.

I printed out the map and the coordinates, grabbed my toothbrush and a clean T-shirt, and then headed to Milton’s.

After breakfast the next morning, Milton and I stepped out onto his front doorstep. A familiar black SUV had parked along the curb outside my house. A moment later, the door opened and Sophie climbed out.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, running to meet her.

“I thought maybe you could use some help,” she said.

“But what about last night?”

Sophie stared down at her shadow, which stretched across the grass. “Maybe I overreacted just a little bit. And … well—there’s something else. Last night, after I went home, I found
this
.”

She reached into the SUV, removed something, and held it out so that only Milton and I could see. A thick silver wristband, the kind Captain Justice wore to create all his holo-weapons.

“It’s a brand-new model,” Sophie said. “I’ve never seen him wearing it before. I found it inside a box marked ‘confidential.’ ”

Sophie flipped the wristband over and showed us what was printed on the underside.

A chill gripped my heart. The last time I’d seen that
Z
logo, I’d been running for my life, trying to avoid getting killed by a horde of Firebottomed Rompers.

“He had at least fifty other boxes,” Sophie said. “Uniforms, accessories, capes. All of them with this logo on there somewhere.”

“So it really
was
him?” Milton sounded like it hurt just to say these words. “Your dad is the one behind the smoke creatures and the Rompers?”

Sophie nodded, her expression hardening. “It has to be. I can’t see any other explanation.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“I didn’t get a chance. He left before I woke up this morning. Stanley said he had to go to some town in Maine.”

“Carrolshire?” I asked.

Sophie gave me a surprised look. “How’d you know?”

“Because I’m pretty sure that’s where my parents are.”

I pulled the map with the coordinates out of my pocket and told her what I’d discovered the night before.

“We need to find a way to get to Carrolshire,” Sophie said.

“Does that mean you’re coming too?” I asked.

“Of course. If my dad’s really doing this, I want to be the one to call him out on it.”

“This is awesome!” Milton said. “I mean, not the part about your parents disappearing or your dad trying to
kill us. But the three of us going on an adventure—it’s like we’re superheroes!”

I turned to face him. “What do you mean ‘the
three
of us’?”

Milton clenched his jaw. “I’m coming too.”

“You can’t,” I said. “It could be dangerous. And you’re not … I mean—you don’t have any …”

“Powers?” Milton jammed his hands into his pockets. “I can’t go because I’m not
special
like the two of you—is that what you’re saying?”

“Kind of. You could get really hurt.”

But Milton wasn’t giving in. He stomped the pavement with one foot, looking at me with pleading in his eyes. “I thought we were best friends.”

“We are—”

“And best friends help each other out, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Remember that time you had that weird rash on your armpit and I didn’t tell anyone?”

“Thanks for the reminder,” I muttered. “What’s your point?”

“I was there for you!” Milton said. “Just like that time you let your hair grow long and everyone started mistaking you for a girl? I supported you then too. And that time when—”

“Fine,” I said, before Milton could get any more out. “You can come too.”

“Great!” Milton pumped his fist with excitement. “How are we gonna get to Maine?”

I glanced at Sophie. “Could Stanley drive us?”

Sophie shook her head. “He isn’t allowed to drive me outside the county limit without my dad’s authorization. He’s been programmed that way.”

“And my mom is hosting her book club today,” Milton said. “So she can’t.”

“What about the bus?” Sophie asked.

“I already checked that,” I said. “There aren’t any stops near Carrolshire.”

“So, then, what are we gonna do?” Milton asked.

I looked past Milton, my eyes landing on my closed garage door. And that’s when it hit me.

“Milton, it’s your lucky day,” I said.

M
y parents kept their hover scooters in the corner of the garage. Even after Mom’s scooter had been blasted to smithereens during their attempt to flood the earth, they still had three older models that we could use. Luckily, I’d played around on their scooters enough over the years to know how to operate them.

With my feet planted against the metal board at the bottom, I flipped the On/Off switch. The hover scooter shivered as the engine began to hum. I gripped the handles and pulled upward very gently. The scooter lifted off the ground. Leaning forward on the handlebar
caused the scooter to float forward. Pulling it backward put it into reverse.

After giving a few more tips to Sophie and Milton, we found bike helmets and began to practice in the backyard.

Sophie figured it out right away. Within minutes, she was hovering across the yard. Soon she was accelerating her scooter from one side of the yard to the other.

Milton took a little longer.

“Make sure you pull up
gently
,” I said.

“Gently,” Milton said. “Got it.”

Milton concentrated on the handlebars.

“Is it doing anything?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“What about now? Am I flying?”

“No, you’re still on the ground.”

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe you’re being a little
too
gentle. Try pulling up a bit harder.”

Milton yanked upward on the handle. All of a sudden, the scooter burst fifty feet into the air. He screamed, hugging the handlebars close to his chest as he shot into the sky like a Milton-sized bottle rocket.

“Too hard!” I called up to him.

“You think so?” he screamed. “How do I get down?”

“Just push down on the handle—very softly. And be careful that you don’t—”

Before I could finish, the scooter performed several front flips. It would’ve actually been a kind of impressive maneuver if he hadn’t been screaming in a high-pitched wail the entire time.

“Milton!” I called. “Be careful not to twist the handles.”

But by this time, he’d lost control completely. A few seconds later, he was circling the yard upside down, hanging from the handlebars. He twisted and spun in the air, narrowly avoiding the roof. He finally came to a stop when he got snagged in the branches of a tree.

After a few more practice rounds, Milton got the hang of it. He hopped from foot to foot, gazing at his scooter proudly. “It’s like a real adventure! And you know what every good adventure needs, right?”

I shook my head.

“Snacks! If you let me borrow your backpack, I’ll get everything we need.”

“Fine.” I went inside and grabbed my backpack. As I handed it over to Milton, I reminded him, “Just essential items.”

Milton came back a few minutes later. The backpack was stuffed full of Dr Pepper, potato chips, and Justice Jerky.

I entered the coordinates into the VexaCorp navigator that was built into the front panel display of my scooter. A map showed up on the LCD screen, displaying the route to Carrolshire.

“Ready?” I said, glancing at Sophie and Milton.

“Ready,” they said at the same time.

We boarded our scooters and launched into the air.

If you’ve never traveled long distance by hover scooter before, I recommend it. The wind blasted my face as the landscape of country roads and fields drifted beneath us. I swallowed a few bugs along the way, but otherwise it was great.

After we’d been in the air for a few hours, the GPS system showed us nearing our destination. Up ahead I spotted the shape of a lone building on the horizon.

“I think that’s where we’re headed,” I called out.

“Looks like we’re not the only ones in the air.” Milton pointed at a cluster of birds flying above the building. There were at least a dozen of them, circling the building in a tight formation. As if they were guarding the place.

My grip tightened on the scooter’s handlebars. The birds were about the size of crows, but they didn’t look like any crows I’d ever seen. Their beaks and legs were silver. They had jet-black bodies that reflected the sunlight as they cut through the air.

As we got closer, the birds stopped patrolling the air around the building and instead began flying in our direction.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” I yelled.

“M-maybe they’re just migrating south for the winter,” Milton said. But I could tell from his shaking voice that he didn’t believe it.

“We’re too vulnerable up here,” Sophie called. “We need to get onto solid ground.”

We steered our scooters downward, bringing them to rest on a vacant field. I was still holding on to a scrap of hope that the birds would pass over us. But by the looks of it, they had other plans. I squinted into the sky, fear darkening my thoughts. The birds were descending on us like fighter jets.

Their shadows surrounded us. A split second later, the birds were everywhere.

Sophie, Milton, and I went running in different directions, trailed closely by swarms of birds. Shielding my face with one arm, I swung with the other, making contact with a bird that was trying to dive-bomb my head—

CLANG!

Pain erupted in my hand. It felt like I’d just slammed my knuckles against a steel pipe. Their beaks were silver and sharp as daggers. Their bodies were covered in smooth, black metal. I could hear the electronic whir of their wings.

These weren’t birds. They were machines.

“Why do robots seem to attack me every time I hang
out with you guys?” Milton screamed, ducking out of the way of a kamikaze bird.

A metallic
clack
rang out as I knocked another bird into the dirt. But there were plenty more where that had come from, flapping around me from all sides. If it hadn’t been for my bike helmet, my head would’ve looked like Swiss cheese.

Focus!
I told myself—not the easiest thing to do when a flock of mechanical crows was trying to peck my eyes out. I thought back on all the practice I’d had over the last few weeks—setting twigs on fire and heating up snacks after school. This wasn’t all that different, right?
Just think of the birds like big Hot Pockets with wings
. Hot Pockets that were trying to eat me instead of the other way around.