Poached (25 page)

I wasn't thrilled about what I had to do, but Marge and Bubba weren't leaving me any choice.

“Help!” I yelled to the tourists. “I'm being kidnapped! Help!”

The tourists looked at Marge and Bubba, alarmed. They backed away, not wanting to get involved.

“Help me!” I screamed, like my life depended on it. “Please! You're my only hope!”

The father reluctantly stepped forward, blocking Marge and Bubba's path. “What's going on here?” he asked.

“Don't listen to this kid,” Marge told him. “I'm with park security—”

“No she isn't!” I yelled. “She's only pretending to be! They grabbed me in World of Reptiles when my parents weren't looking!” Normally, my ruse probably wouldn't have worked, but today Bubba's and Marge's parkas were concealing their official uniforms.

The mother pulled out her cell phone. “I'm calling the police,” she said.

“Wait!” Bubba held up a giant hand. “I'm a cop and I can prove it. Let me show you my ID.” He let go of me to unzip his parka.

I spun away from Marge, wrenching my arm free from her grasp. Bubba realized his mistake and tried to grab me, but Marge lunged for me at the same time and they slammed into each other. Marge slipped on a patch of sleet, stumbled, and pulled Bubba down with her.

The tourists watched it all, unsure what to do. The mother still had her phone in her hand.

“Tell the cops to come to Shark Odyssey at FunJungle!” I told her, and then took off.

It isn't easy to run with your arms cuffed behind your back, but I did my best, charging toward the shark exhibit as fast as I could.

Marge and Bubba scrambled to their feet and came after me. Both were seething with anger, which seemed to make them faster than usual. Between that and my slower-than-average
pace, they closed the gap on me as we raced through the park. Marge kept yelling at people to stop me, but I kept yelling at people to stop her and Bubba instead. No one seemed sure what to make of the situation. If I'd been much older, I probably wouldn't have gotten away with it, but the few tourists around seemed to doubt Marge's claim that a twelve-year-old boy could be a wanted criminal. So no one intervened. They all simply stood back and hoped someone else would handle things.

Marge and Bubba both got on their radios. Bubba called the two cops he'd left in charge of Dad, while Marge put out a general APB to all FunJungle security. “I am in hot pursuit of Teddy Fitzroy in connection with the kidnapping of Kazoo the Koala and need backup. All available security personnel please respond. We are proceeding along Arctic Way—”

“Tell them we're heading to Shark Odyssey!” I yelled back. “They can ambush me there!”

I knew the park well enough that if I'd wanted to, I probably could have given Bubba and Marge the slip, but that would only have bought me a little more time. However, if I could get a few dozen security agents to converge on Hank the Tank, they could catch him—and maybe get him to confess that
he'd
stolen Kazoo, not me.

As I neared Shark Odyssey, there was still no sign of Hank. I wondered if he'd already gone inside—or if he was even there. It occurred to me that I'd merely assumed Hank
was heading to the sharks—if he wasn't, then I'd just made a huge mistake. I could see several other security guards closing in on the exhibit from various directions.

Even though I'd seen Hank enter through the security door before, I couldn't do it. I didn't know the code—and if I had, I couldn't have entered it with my hands locked behind my back. I still wanted to draw security inside, though.

Some tourists were coming out the exit as I arrived, holding the door open. I barreled through them.

“Circle around to the entrance!” Marge ordered the security guards. “We'll trap him inside!” Then she and Bubba came through the exit as well.

I charged into the shark tube. For once it was devoid of tourists, a sign of what a slow day it was at the park. However, Bubba was bearing down on me. Halfway through the tube, he snagged my arm.

“Gotcha!” he wheezed, exhausted from his run.

Marge staggered into the tube, even more worn out than Bubba. She was so winded I thought she was going to throw up. “Nice work,” she gasped.

A few sharks swam past us outside the tube.

I was suddenly overcome by a very bad feeling. If Hank Duntz was plotting something at Shark Encounter, the tube at the bottom of the tank now seemed like the worst place to be. “We have to get out of here!” I said.

Bubba and Marge didn't move. They were both too wiped out from their run. Bubba glared at me, as though he was angry I'd made him exert so much energy. “We'll go when
I
say it's time to go.”

“You don't understand!” I said. “Something bad is about to happen here!” I tried to pull free of Bubba's grasp, but he wasn't going to let me get away with that again.

Instead he clenched my arm tighter. “Marge was right,” he told me. “You can't be trusted. So do us all a favor and shut your trap.”

“We're in danger!” I yelled.

“You never learn, do you, Teddy?” Marge asked.

At both ends of the shark tube, metal doors slammed shut, sealing us inside.

“I
do
learn,” I said. “You just never listen.”

Now, Marge and Bubba finally grew concerned.

“What are those doors for?” Bubba asked, his eyes wide with fear.

“Safety,” Marge told him. “They seal off the rest of the exhibit in case something goes wrong with the shark tube.”

“But we're
in
the shark tube!” Bubba wailed. In the space of a few seconds he'd gone from imposing to terrified. Rather than a big, tough policeman, he now seemed like a little kid. “I don't like sharks. I don't like them at all.”

“I'm sure it's nothing,” Marge said, although she didn't
seem to believe this herself. “Just a glitch in the security system.”

“It's not a glitch!” I told her. “It's Hank the Tank! I told you he was up to something bad!”

Bubba let go of me. He stared at all the sharks circling above us and trembled in fear.

I ran to the closest metal wall and kicked it. It didn't do a bit of good. The steel door was sturdy as a sequoia tree. “Help!” I yelled. “Is anyone outside? Help!”

There was no response from the other side of the door. I looked up through the glass ceiling, wondering if any of Marge's security guys were in the viewing area above. If so, there was a chance they could see us down in the tube. I couldn't make out anyone, although it was tough to see through all the water.

Above us, Taurus the bull shark slid past ominously.

“I
really
don't like sharks,” Bubba whimpered. “And I'm not so good in enclosed spaces, either.”

Now that I was looking up, I noticed something else in the tube. The ceiling wasn't entirely glass. It was supported every twenty feet by steel ribs, which arced around the tube. Along the central rib was a thick wad of what looked like gray Play-Doh. Normally, I might have thought it was some kind of sealant for cracks in the glass, but there were wires snaking out of it. They connected to a small receiver that was taped to the steel rib.

“What is that?” I asked.

Bubba glanced up at it. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but he grew even more frightened. “Get away from it!” he yelled. “It's an explosive!”

We all scrambled to the far end of the tube and flattened up against the steel door.

The receiver beeped.

“Don't look at it!” Bubba ordered.

I turned away and tucked into a ball.

The putty exploded.

It wasn't a huge blast. If it had been outside, it probably wouldn't have even been that loud. In the enclosed tube, however, it echoed like crazy. A concussion of air hit me and the scent of acrid smoke filled the air. And then I heard the cracking.

I spun around.

Smoke drifted all along the top of the tube. Above us, the blast had spooked the sharks, which all darted about wildly.

A web of cracks was spreading quickly through the glass in the center of the tube. Water began dripping through, raining onto the floor. The cracks grew bigger as the water pressed down from above. The glass wasn't going to last more than another few seconds.

And when it went, the shark tube was going to flood with us inside it.

The cracks in the glass
ceiling widened. Water began to gush through.

My hands were still cuffed behind my back. “You need to unlock these!” I yelled. “I can't swim like this!”

Marge ignored me, staring at the glass. Thankfully, Bubba came to my aid, though his hands were shaking with fear so badly he could barely hold his keys.

Marge whipped out her radio and called to her security men. “We are trapped inside the shark tube and it's about to blow. Get down here and open the doors. Now!”

I watched the web of cracks spreading through the tube all around us. “I don't think we have time for that,” I said.

Bubba had given up any pretense of being tough. “I
don't want to die,” he whined. “Not like this. I don't want to be eaten by sharks!”

“We don't have to worry about the sharks,” I told him. I wasn't completely sure if this was true—Taurus might be trouble—but I needed Bubba to calm down and unlock my cuffs. “None of them are man-eaters.”

“Except for that bull shark,” Marge said. “That guy's a cold-blooded killer.”

Bubba burst into tears. It wasn't dignified in any way. For a big man, he cried like a little girl. “Why?” he bawled. “Why is this happening to us?”

Someone responded on Marge's radio, but between the steel doors and the water above us, the transmission came through garbled. “I do not copy,” Marge said desperately. “If you can hear me, get off the radio and open the doors!” Then something else occurred to her, and she added, “And if you see a man in a orange Astros cap up there somewhere, arrest him!”

Bubba was so upset he couldn't control his hands. He fumbled the keys onto the floor.

“Officer Stackhouse, please,” I pleaded. “If you don't unlock my cuffs, I'm going to die.”

“We're all going to die,” Bubba moaned. “We're gonna be ripped to shreds by sharks!”

“We won't,” I said. “If we don't panic, we'll be fine. In fact, I think we'll be able to swim right out of here.”

Marge turned to me, surprised. “How?”

“The water's going to come through pretty strong at first,” I said. “But once the tube fills up, that will stop. And then we ought to be able to swim. It's not that far to the surface.”

“But if the tube is filled, we'll be underwater,” Bubba mewled.

“I know,” I said. “We'll have to time it just right.”

Bubba nodded. His cheeks were still wet with tears, but my plan made sense. “And you're sure the sharks won't come after us?”

“Absolutely. Even the bull won't. He's too well fed to come after something as big as a human.” I did my best to lie as confidently as possible, although it was difficult. Taurus was circling the tube slowly, like he knew what was going on. It was extremely unnerving.

My words still worked, though. Bubba calmed down enough to grab the keys off the floor. He made another attempt at the lock.

There was a loud pop as a huge crack shot across the ceiling. A web of smaller fractures blossomed around it.

To my surprise, Marge was staying calm. She was definitely scared, but unlike Bubba, she was holding it together. “I think this is it,” she said. “Get ready.”

At the last second Bubba finally managed to fit the key into the lock. There was a click as he turned it, one of the
cuffs sprang open, and suddenly my arms were free.

There was no time to thank Bubba, though. Instead I sucked in as much air as I could and clamped my jaw tight.

The middle of the glass tube collapsed. A wave of water exploded toward us. I tucked down and braced for it, but it still bowled me off my feet. I tumbled backward and bounced off something hard, maybe the steel door, maybe the floor . . . I had no sense of where I was, or even of up and down. The water surrounded me, chilling me through. As I struggled to figure out which way was up, a few dark shapes shot past me. Sharks. They were only small ones who'd been dragged along in the surge of water, but they still triggered a primal fear in me.

The salt water stung my eyes, but I kept them open, trying to figure out where I was. I'd been pushed back down the tube, close to the steel door. Marge and Bubba were close by. If the sharks had scared me, they'd completely terrified Bubba. His eyes were so wide they looked like headlights.

I had no idea how long I'd been underwater. It was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed like much longer. The miniature tsunami had hit me so hard it had knocked the wind out of me. I was desperate to breathe, but I didn't have time to swim all the way to the surface.