Super Schnoz and the Invasion of the Snore Snatchers (4 page)

I was flying!

The town of Denmark stretched out below me like a village in a toy train set. I inhaled deeply and banked hard to the right, heading toward the White Mountain National Forest (WMNF) outside of town. The WMNF was almost a million acres, and within the park were four federally protected wilderness areas.That meant there were no roads or houses in the forest, and the only people were occasional hikers. The area's remoteness offered just the kind of solitude I needed to contemplate my alien problem.

That was when I caught a pungent whiff of something tantalizingly fishy. The smell was a combination of rotting bait and burning ammonia so intense it made my nose hairs stand on end. I scanned my mental scent library for a match. Nothing. The smell was completely new to my olfactory receptors. I had to find its source!

Closing one nostril with my finger, I began my descent into the WMNF. The closer I got to the ground, the more intense the smell became. I skimmed the treetops until I came to a clearing in the forest. To my wide-nosed surprise, I saw some kind of compound. There were two small trailers, a massive, globe-like structure with the lens of big telescope popping from the roof, an above-ground swimming pool, and a smaller structure about the size of my dad's garage. That was where that awesome smell was coming from. I had to find what was causing that odor!

I landed softly on an old logging road and walked stealthily toward the garage. Along the path, a hand-painted sign staked into the dirt read:
The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction—Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb, Director
.

A hoard of hungry mosquitoes buzzed around my nose. I shooed them away and kept walking. When I got to the garage, I peered into its dirty windows. I didn't see anybody, but the source of the smell was as plain as the nose on my face. Hanging like giant spider egg sacs were row after row of some kind of drying meat. Next to the Gates of Smell, this nasty jerky was the most horrifyingly delicious glop I had ever smelled in my life.

Quietly, I gripped the door handle and walked inside. The smell hit my cookie detector like a megaton stink bomb. It was as if I had died and awoken in stench heaven!

I grabbed two hunks of the rancid meat and held them to my nostrils. The rancid smell drove my nose crazy. My nostrils flared; my scent receptors quivered in ecstasy. I forgot all about aliens and snoring and basked in the pure joy of smelling!

The garage door flew open. I spun around and saw an older man with wild gray hair and a white lab coat. He was holding a loaded shotgun.

“Get your hands off my hákarl,” the man growled with a thick, European-sounding accent.

I held up my hands. “S-s-sorry,” I stuttered. “I was just…”

“What are you doing here?” the man interrupted. “Why are you wearing that costume and ridiculous-looking mask? Are you with the government?”

The old guy had just asked me three questions in a row. I didn't know which one to answer first, so instead I hurled the meat I was holding at him and made a break for the door. The man fired at me. I braced myself for the shotgun blast. But instead of bullets, all I got was water. He wasn't holding a real gun. It was just a fancy water pistol!

Once I got outside, I inhaled a hard gust of wind and sailed into the clouds. I looked down. The old man was watching me fly away, firing rounds of water into the sky.

CHAPTER 9

THE REYKJAVÍK REVIEW

W
hen I arrived back at the Nostril, Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers were waiting for me.

“Where have you—” Jimmy started to ask, and then pulled his shirt over his nose.

“Holy stinky skunk, Schnoz!” TJ cried out, plugging his nostrils.

“You absolutely reek!” Mumps gagged.

Vivian handed me my street clothes, “It's the Super Schnoz costume that smells,” she said. “Go outside and change.”

I stepped behind the nostril and took a huge whiff of my cape, tights, and shirt. They smelled exactly like the malodorous meat hanging inside that old guy's garage.

“I don't know what you guys are so upset about!” I yelled from outside. “That smell is awesome, second only to the Gates of Smell in my opinion.”

“We're not letting you back inside until you change!” I heard Vivian shout through the wall.

I peeled off my suit and plopped it in the grass. Within seconds, the smell had attracted a swarm of green poop flies (technical name: bottle fly). Poop flies were my favorite insect. Next to dogs, they were the only ones who loved stinky, rotting things as much as I did.

So as not to nasally offend my friends any further, I took a shower with a garden hose before slipping back on my street clothes.

“What nasty substance were you rolling in?” Mumps asked me when I went back inside.

“Some kind of meat,” I replied.

“Were you spending time at the roadkill butcher shop?” Jimmy joked.

“No,” I answered. “The meat was actually hanging from a peg, drying inside a building deep inside the WMNF.”

“Explain,” Vivian ordered.

I told the gang the whole story, from flying over the WMNF, smelling the meat, to almost getting my head blown off by a crazy old guy with a high-powered water gun.

“I wonder why a person would be living that far out in the woods.” Vivian said.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Don't know. But he was some kind of scientist. There was a sign along the path heading to his property that said
The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction
. The guy's first name was long with a bunch of squiggly lines over the letters. His last name was Wackjöb, with two dots over the
o
. Dr. Somethingorother Wackjöb.”

Vivian scratched her chin, thinking. “Hmmm…” she muttered. “TJ, would you please fire up your laptop and Google
UFOs, alien abduction, Dr. Wackjöb
.”

TJ typed in the search and hit Enter. He scrolled through a bunch of pages before finding something relevant. “This may be something,” he said. “It's an old article from the
Reykjavík
Review
—Iceland's English Newspaper.”

We huddled around the computer and read.

Doctor Defends UFO Research

By Sigudur Bödvarsson

REYKJAVÍK, Iceland
—The well-respected seismologist, Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb has been accused of misappropriating money from the University of Iceland's Geology Department where he had been Chairman. This week Karí Thordarson, University President, fired Dr. Wackjöb for the unauthorized funding of his controversial UFO earthquake theory.

The investigation looking into Dr. Wackjöb's activities has been ongoing for the past eight months. University officials feel they have unearthed enough evidence to terminate the doctor's tenure. “UFOs are the cause of the entire world's seismic activity!” Dr.Wackjöb shouted to reporters as police led him away from his office. “My scientific research will prove it!”

What Dr. Wackjöb calls science, others call “just plain kooky,” according to several of his colleagues inside the University's Geology Department. Dr. Wackjöb has also become a laughingstock in the scientific and academic worlds with his claims that aliens are abducting thousands of people (mostly children) each year and using them in their extraterrestrial earthquake experiments.

Dr. Wackjöb, who also has an advanced degree in astronomy from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany, plans to relocate to the United States to continue his UFO, earthquake, and alien abduction studies.

“That was his first name,” I said. “
A…owl…
bee…yourn
, or however it's pronounced. The sign said Aðalbjörn Wackjöb.”

“Do you think it's the same man, TJ?” Vivian asked.

TJ turned to me. “What was the name of his center again?”

“The sign said T
he Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction—Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb, Director
.”

“It has to be the same guy,” Jimmy said. “How many Aðalbjörn Wackjöb's can there be who study UFOs, earthquakes, and alien abductions?”

“I one hundred percent agree,” Vivian said. She then produced a flash drive from her pocket and plugged it into the USB port of TJ's laptop.

“What are you doing?” TJ grumbled, miffed that Vivian was touching his computer.

“I'm transferring the video of Schnoz and the alien from the computer to the flash drive.”

“Why would you do that?” Mumps asked.

Vivian peeled Mr. Sticky from the window and gently stroked the reptile's head. “Because Schnoz is living evidence of Dr.Wackjöb's theory and the video proves it.”

CHAPTER 10

GRÍÖARSTÓR NEF

V
ivian had a dentist appointment that afternoon, so we had to wait until the next morning before heading to see Dr. Wackjöb. I went to bed that night sniffling with anxiety. TJ had hooked up the camera system to get another video, but the whole thing still freaked me out. I smuggled a two-liter bottle of soda into my room and chugged it down before bed, hoping the caffeine would keep me awake.The idea was a complete waste of high-fructose corn syrup and carbonated water. By the time midnight rolled around, I couldn't keep my eyes open.

The morning came and it was clear there had been another earthquake.This one was a 6.0.The walls of my bedroom were slightly cracked and my dresser had toppled over.

“The town's in an uproar, Schnoz,” Mumps said when the guys arrived at my house. “There's damage to a lot of houses. People are really angry.”

“We have to get you out of town,” Jimmy said. “It's for your own safety.”

While I got dressed, TJ downloaded the new video from the camera to his laptop, and then to the flash drive.

“Let's watch it,” Mumps suggested.

“No time,” TJ said. “We have to meet Vivian and then get to Dr.Wackjöb's compound ASAP.”

Vivian was waiting for us when we got to the Nostril. She was holding up a brand new Super Schnoz costume.

“Where'd you get that?” I asked.

“I made it for you last night,” Jimmy said. “Your old one was way too smelly so I threw it in the garbage.”

I ran inside the Nostril and slipped on my new suit. It was the exact same color as my old one—black tights, black shirt, blue cape, and blue Super Schnoz emblem. Jimmy had added a utility belt with hidden pouches to hold jars of cayenne pepper, spray bottles of saline solution, and an electric nose hair trimmer.

“It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Schnoz!” I cried, jumping around the corner.

“Let's get a move on,” TJ said. “We need to see this Dr. Wackjöb.”

“How are we going to get there?” Mumps wondered. “It'll take hours to ride our bikes way out there.”

Vivian dragged out the harness I had used to fly everybody onto the school rooftop during my battle with ECU. The stitchwork Jimmy had done on the fabric was still perfect, right down to the feathers that made it look like a pregnant turkey buzzard.

“We're not riding our bikes,” Vivian said. “Schnoz is going to strap on the harness and fly us all there.” She slipped five jars of cayenne pepper and two spray bottles of saline solution into my new utility belt.

“What's this stuff for?” I asked her.

“Just in case,” she said. “You never know what we'll run into way out there.”

“Like Bigfoot!” Mumps screeched.

Vivian rolled her eyes as she and the Not-Right Brothers crawled into the harness. I secured the belts to my back, slipped on my Mardi Gras mask, and was ready to fly. The wind wasn't very brisk, so we had to wait for me to get enough air inside my nostrils for takeoff. When my nose finally inflated to its full glory we were off, sailing into the sky toward Dr. Wackjöb's compound deep in the WMNF.

The smell of the rotting meat guided my way. After thirty minutes of flying, I made a perfect landing on the path leading to the UFO Center.

“See the sign,” I said, pointing. “It's over there, stuck in the ground.”

“
The Center for UFOs, Earthquakes, and Alien Abduction—Dr. Aðalbjörn Wackjöb, Director
,” Jimmy read. “If this guy can't help us, then no one can.”

I pulled off the harness and hid it in the bushes. “Like I told you,” I said, “the old guy is kind of loony. He asked me if I was from the government.”

“Sounds paranoid to me,” Mumps said. “And a little—”

“I don't blame him,” Vivian interjected. “After getting fired from his job, the man has trust issues.”

Jimmy laughed. “You sound like a therapist. Maybe you should make him lie on a couch.”

Just as Vivian opened her mouth to fire a volley back at Jimmy, we all heard a loud crack in the nearby woods.

“What was that?” Mumps cried out.

I pressed a finger to my lips, hushing everyone up.We all grew as silent as dandelions and listened for more sounds.