The Wizzle War (10 page)

Mr. Wizzle and Mr. Sturgeon entered the room.

“Ah — not ready for bed yet — two demerits. Room very messy — another two demerits. Kind of dusty. Do clean it up.” He took out his notebook and began to scribble. “All, Bruno Walton. That gives you sixty demerits. Four hundred and fifty lines.”

“But sir,” protested Bruno, “you just assigned me four hundred.”

“Yes, and you deserved every one of them. Okay, that’s all.”

Bruno and Boots cast a beseeching look at their Headmaster.

Mr. Sturgeon nodded at them. “Carry on, Walton — O’ Neal.”

The door closed behind them. The inspection was over.

“The nerve of that Wizzle!” ranted Bruno. “The Lines Department’s going to kill me!”

“The Lines Department!” exclaimed Boots in horror. “They’ve got five rooms in Dormitory 1 full of tables and chairs! What if Wizzle and The Fish walk in on that?”

“Don’t worry,” soothed Bruno. “Security has Task Force B over there. They’ll look after things.” He pounded a fist on the desk. “I just can’t stand these sneak inspections! Tonight Wizzle gets another earthquake — at four o’clock in the morning!”

There was a knock on the window. It was Task Force A bringing back the ink-jet paper.

On Tuesday afternoon Mr. Wizzle drove his old white Toyota, packed full to the roof with cartons of printer paper, into the driveway of Macdonald Hall. He stopped right in front of the Faculty Building, got out and opened the trunk.

Bruno Walton watched through the glass doors from the outer office. “Okay, Larry, start!”

Larry dialled Miss Scrimmage’s number. “Hello, may I please speak with Miss Peabody? Yes, thank you. Tell her Mr. Wizzle is waiting on the line.” Larry switched on the outdoor intercom. “Mr. Wizzle, telephone, please. Mr. Wizzle.”

Bruno dashed out the side exit. In through the front door marched Mr. Wizzle.

“Miss Peabody on line one, sir,” said Larry.

“Thanks. I’ll take it in my office.”

As soon as Mr. Wizzle’s office door closed, a Committee Task Force led by Bruno Walton fell on the car.

“Hello, Miss Peabody. Walter Wizzle speaking. What can I do for you? … Pardon me? … Well, no, I don’t want anything. You called me … What do you mean you didn’t? … Now please don’t be abusive. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation, Miss Peabody … Miss Peabody? …” He hung up. There was definitely something peculiar about that woman.

He went back out to his car and, with the assistance of some
passing students, carried in the paper. With great relish he opened the first box with his pocket knife.

“Found your paper at last, eh, Wizzle?” said Mr. Sturgeon, passing by.

Mr. Wizzle smiled. “I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on.” He lifted the carton flap. Inside were carefully stacked rows of white serviettes. “Napkins!” he howled in anguish. “Table napkins! Why would they give me table napkins?”

Mr. Sturgeon peered politely into the box. “Perhaps they ran out of toilet paper.”

* * *

“Why would you give him napkins?” asked Chris Talbot at dinner.

Bruno shrugged. “We ran out of toilet paper.”

“Hey, Bruno,” said Mark, “I don’t like to seem ungrateful for all your work as President of The Committee, but we in the Lines Department have enough to do without you racking up lines like they’re going out of style. We’re not wizards, you know. They all had tears in their eyes when I handed out your four hundred and fifty.”

Bruno grinned. “Sorry. Hey, I really want to congratulate the Security Department. That was great work last night getting us through inspection.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Wilbur, his mouth full of meat loaf.

“Now, Chris, Elmer — listen. The Committee needs an emergency backup weapon in case Wizzle holds out to the end. We’re going to prepare for the ultimate protest demonstration. Guys, can you design me a giant helium balloon that looks like
Wizzle?”

“Are you out of your mind?” Boots interrupted.

“Nope,” said Bruno cheerfully.

“How giant?” asked Chris suspiciously.

“Oh — maybe ten metres high.”

Chris looked at Elmer. “Can you do it?”

Elmer chewed thoughtfully on a celery stalk. “With the proper materials it shouldn’t be too difficult. It would be just like an inflatable boat, except in the shape of a man.”

“If you can build it,” said Chris, “I can make it look like Wizzle. It may take time, though — I mean, a balloon that big.”

“No hurry,” said Bruno. “It’s just something we should be working on.”

Boots sat silently contemplating what he had just heard. Mr. Wizzle thought Bruno was a troublemaker. Mr. Wizzle didn’t know the half of it!

* * *

“Well,” said Ruth Sidwell, captain of White Squadron, “don’t you think we can win the war games without cheating?”

“Sure we can,” said Cathy, “but why take the chance? Besides, there’s no such thing as cheating. This is war. Peabody even said so.”

“I hear the Red and Green teams have some pretty strong stuff planned,” put in Diane.

“Yeah, well, we’re going to make them wish they’d never enlisted,” said Cathy. “We’re being given little water pistols to fire our blue dye at the enemy. Tonight Diane and I are going to sneak down to the storeroom and get some plastic bags. Then
we’ll have bombs. We can post people in trees, dig trenches and build earthworks for defence. By the time these war games are over, the world will be blue and the orchard will be ours!”

“Aren’t you getting a little carried away with all this?” asked Ruth uneasily.

“Of course not,” said Cathy. “And after we’ve won, it’s bye-bye Peabody for forty-eight hours. How’s
that
for strategic logic?”

* * *

Bruno and Boots were sitting at their desks doing their homework on Thursday afternoon when the door opened and Larry Wilson rushed in.

“Hey, guys, look what I’ve got!” He handed Bruno a typed letter with that day’s date of arrival stamped on it. “Mrs. Davis was opening the mail and I just happened to see this. It’s for Wizzle from some geologists: Ignatz, Sediman and Mortimer.”

Bruno read the letter out loud:

“What are you going to do?” asked Boots. “You can’t keep Mr.
Wizzle’s letter. That’s interfering with the mail.”

“Oh, we’ll give him back his letter,” said Bruno, “but first we’ll have to make a few minor changes. Somebody get Mark. We’ll need the print shop to make it look real
 …
”

* * *

Mr. Wizzle sat back in his office chair and read the letter:

Mr. Wizzle jumped up and began to pace nervously. This was certainly disconcerting news, although he should have known it anyway. After all, he’d been having tremors every night lately. He sat down on the corner of his desk and wiped the sweat off his brow. He had nothing to worry about. He had perfected his escape and could be out his bedroom window to safety in four seconds flat. With practice, he could easily cut that down to three. Still, the whole thing was an unnecessary emotional strain on him.

A lot of things had been bothering him lately. Like the printer paper. He still didn’t have any. It was as if an evil spirit
were keeping his paper from him. Two more shipments of napkins had arrived, along with five boxes of paper towels, but no paper. And what Miss Peabody had said was on his mind. Could she be right? Were he and the boys soft and flabby? Maybe the Wizzle System should be revised. And Mr. Sturgeon. What did the Headmaster have against expelling Bruno Walton? The boy was obviously a disruptive influence at Macdonald Hall and had more than once earned a one-way ticket home!

Head spinning, he took out a couple of aspirins and headed for the water cooler.

* * *

Saturday afternoon Bruno and Boots were lying in their room in the tiny space that remained. Fifty-four boxes of ink-jet paper took up most of the room. They were stacked everywhere except for the boys’ beds and desks, and the entranceway to the washroom.

“Look at it rain,” said Boots. “I’ve never seen such a miserable day in my life. It’s dark as night out there.”

“Pretty miserable,” agreed Bruno. “Foggy, misty, wet — a real downpour. Too bad Wizzle doesn’t have a picnic planned.”

“I hope Wizzle doesn’t have an inspection planned,” said Boots.” There’s no way all The Committee’s task forces combined could get this paper out in time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Bruno. “Security knows what they’re doing.”

“Yeah, well, I’d hate to have my life depend on Wilbur Hackenschleimer, especially if it’s suppertime.”

“Hey,” said Bruno, peering through the streaming window, “something’s going on at Scrimmage’s.”

Boots got up and joined him at the window. “In this miserable downpour? Miss Scrimmage never lets them outside without a written guarantee from the weather bureau.”

“All the same, there are people out there around the orchard. I can’t see what they’re doing. It’s too foggy. But it’s a big crowd.”

“They can’t be up to much in this rain,” said Boots.

* * *

“What a beautiful day for war games!” exclaimed Miss Peabody in jubilation.

“Beautiful?” echoed Miss Scrimmage. “It’s horrible! These are delicate young ladies! They’ll catch cold!”

“It’s only water, Miss Scrimmage, and a good soaking never hurt anybody. With the fog and the rain, it’ll make camouflaging all the easier.” She sighed. “If only I could take part.”

Miss Peabody addressed the assembled armies. “All right, girls, you’ll have fifteen minutes to take up your positions and set up fortifications. Remember, if you’re hit with the food colouring, you’re a casualty and that’s it for you. I’m the referee and I’ll be making sure there isn’t any funny stuff. All right, you’ve got fifteen minutes. May the best army win!”

Both armies scattered, the Blue-White toward the northern stronghold, the Red-Green to the south. Miss Peabody listened contentedly to the sound of preparations. She checked her watch. It was one o’clock. The fifteen minutes were up.

“Ten seconds!” she bellowed. Everyone tensed.
“Go!”

Behind the lines, Cathy and her officers were manning the catapult they had been up all night building. They loaded it with a gigantic plastic bag full of the blue-dyed water and let fly.

There were screams of shock in the ranks of the Red-Green army as the bomb landed among them and splattered blue in all directions.

“Charge!”
screamed Cathy.

The Blue-White army thundered through the gloom of the orchard, some running, some being pushed in wheelbarrows. The enraged Red-Green army opened fire. Streams of red dye cut into the ranks of the Blue-Whites.

“Hit the dirt!” cried Cathy. The Blue-Whites fell to the soggy ground and began establishing their position along a line in the orchard. The wheelbarrows kept on rolling, driving right into the ranks of the Red-Green army. In the lead barrow General Cathy Burton, a water pistol in each hand, sprayed dye on anything that moved. She paused only occasionally to reach for a dye grenade to throw at enemy pockets.

“Look out.”

On the limb of a tree sat a Red-Green sniper. As Cathy’s wheelbarrow surged past, the sniper sloshed down a bucket of red dye.

With a terrified scream, Cathy hurled herself from the barrow to the ground and looked up to see Diane dripping with red dye. Savagely she aimed both her pistols up the tree and shot the sniper down. A stream of red whizzed by her shoulder, missing her, but not by much. She jumped behind the wheelbarrow for cover and began to shoot back.

“I’m running out of ammo!” cried Cathy to Diane. “Give me
your gun!”

“I can’t! I’m a casualty!”

‘‘Give me your gun!”
Cathy ran out from behind the tipped barrow, dodging a barrage of enemy fire, grabbed Diane’s pistol and began to shoot her way back to the ranks of her Blue-Whites. Reaching no-man’s-land, she made a mad dash and leapt behind a mountain of mud the Blue-White army had built up for cover.

“How’s it going?” she asked Ruth Sidwell.

“I’ve never been so terrified in my life! Where’s Diane?”

“Casualty,” said Cathy. “But how’s it going? Are we winning the war?”

“Who can tell in this mud?”

“We can’t use the wheelbarrows anymore!” gasped Wilma Dorf. “They’re all bogged down in the mud!” Suddenly a large red bomb exploded in their midst. Ruth and Wilma were hit, but Cathy threw herself aside just in time.

“Retreat!”
she howled, pausing to shoot a sniper in a tree. “Regroup at Checkpoint B!”

At Checkpoint B the Blue-White army was hit by a major enemy offensive. Through a gap in the trees came an onrush of Red-Green troops armed with water pistols and small bombs, carrying large pieces of cardboard for protection.

A small group of defenders retreated, drawing the enemy surge through the thin passageway.

‘‘Attack!”
cried Cathy Burton.

From the trees swarms of Blue-Whites appeared, dropping large bombs on the trapped Red-Green forces below. The bewildered Red-Greens fought back as best they could, but
were wiped out by superior fire power.

Cathy grabbed the catapult in her arms and the Blue-Whites ran forward to encounter the bulk of the Red-Green army. Onward they charged, slipping and sliding in the mud, wet and filthy, to find that the Red-Greens were gone.

“Oh, those sneaky —” Cathy interrupted herself. “Okay,” she whispered. “They’re waiting to pounce on us. Now what are we going to do?”

“Occupy all their territory and try to corner them?” asked Janice Adams.

“Nah!” scoffed Cathy. “That’s what they’re expecting us to do. We’re going to sit right here and fortify ourselves. We’ll be so strong by the time they come at us that we’ll wipe them out.”

“I don’t understand it,” said one of the lieutenants of the Red-Green army. “Why did we leave our position? We could have had them all.”

“We were losing too many troops,” said the Captain. “Now Burton knows she has three-quarters of the field. She’s going to try to corner us. But when she does, she’ll spread her forces too thin. We’ll just sit here and fortify ourselves, waiting for them to come. And when they do, we’ll punch a hole right through their lines and double back and wipe them out!”

* * *

It was four o’clock and the rain was still pouring down. It had been more than two hours since the armies had started the waiting game, and the tension on both sides had reached the breaking point.

Walter C. Wizzle walked across Miss Scrimmage’s front
lawn carrying his umbrella, intent on visiting Miss Peabody. He had resolved to tell her that she was right about physical fitness, and that he was going to begin morning calisthenics at Macdonald Hall first thing Monday. He was also going to ask her advice on organizing the exercises.