They Came From Planet Q (8 page)

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Authors: Laura Dower

BOOK: They Came From Planet Q
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X
seemed to be for windows.
Y
seemed to be for stairwells.
Z
seemed to be for fire lines.
One store had about three different
Y
s in its space.
“That's the store we need to find!” I cried. It just made sense: The more stairwells the store had, the more access we'd get to the ground floor. “I bet the firequartz is down there somewhere!”
The power was out but the escalators were still accessible. What a difference it made walking here now. No people were in the mall, shoving and pushing us around. We walked the escalator all the way to the lowest level of the mall.
Wow. It was darker than dark down there—and Jesse's penlight didn't do much good.
We'd just reached the very bottom when we heard a boom. Plaster and other building material tumbled down the escalator steps behind us. The quiet of the mall was gone. Had something broken through a wall upstairs?
A Planet Q robot.
Somewhere up above us, in the midst of the rubble, I heard a deep beeping sound. I snapped my camera at the dark and noise.
“LOOK OUT!” Jesse cried.
All at once, we watched as a real, live robot appeared at the top of the escalator. It stood about eight feet tall. And it didn't look happy.
“Oh no!” Damon yelled. We saw a chunk of metal railing at the top. It teetered and tottered.
“IT'S GOING TO FALL!” Stella wailed.
But it didn't fall. It broke off and
flew
up just like the other toys had done that afternoon. It flew up and out of our view. That piece probably went all the way out through the giant hole in the mall ceiling and into one of the many metal piles in the parking lot.
“WHOA!” Damon yelped.
“This is getting scarier!” I cried and Jesse nodded.
We knew that the B-Force was at full force now. The robots had all the power. We had to move fast down here. We turned away from the escalator and followed the map into the belly of the lowest level.
With each step, I snapped more photos. As we walked past some shops, Jesse and Damon grabbed supplies. They wanted to get a first aid kit and a box of garbage bags. Just in case. We didn't know where we were headed—or how long we'd be down there.
“Stella, where's the store with access doors?” I cried. I needed her to tell me where to run.
But before we could go anywhere, the ceiling above us started to crash in. Another, even bigger robot appeared. It had a bulb glowing on its metal head! It stepped down, narrowly missing us.
Damon freaked out the worst I've ever seen him freak out about
anything
. He actually leaped into Jesse's arms.
Stella the Ninja froze and screamed.
I raised my camera to take a photo, but an incredible thing happened.
My camera started to shake. I wrapped the strap around my wrist and held on for dear life. But it was no use. The magnetic force ripped it right out of my hand.
“Noooooo!” I wailed as the camera went up into the air, just like all the other objects we'd seen fly today.
But I wasn't about to give up my camera to some B-Monster.
“Give it back!” I wailed. I put up my arms. Stella came alongside me and did the same. Together we yelled out, “KIIIIIIYA!”
All at once, two more huge robots showed up, knocking down a long, white brick wall and crashing through the escalator stairs.
It was like a scene from the movie. I remembered watching the people of Riddle tossed around in a sea of destruction and I didn't want to get tossed around like they had.
“Make a break for it!” I cried.
“We need to find the store with all the
Y
s!” Stella said, waving the map. “It says Store LL310.”
I wanted desperately to stay and fight for my camera, but we needed to locate the firequartz. The clock was ticking. The bots were closing in.
Finding anything down here in the half-darkness was impossible. Some storefronts had numbers, some didn't.
Finally we caught up to the right address.
313, 312, 311 . . .
“Here!” Jesse cried.
We stopped in front of the store marked LL310.
“No way,” I said with a deep sigh. My whole insides deflated.
I could hardly speak as I read the store's sign: REELY GOOD THINGS.
CHAPTER 12
ARE YOU FOR REEL?!
I could hardly believe it! This was the store where Dad had brought Grandpa Max's camera to be repaired before he gave it to me! I recognized the name right away.
As Damon would say, “Whoa.”
Reely Good Things had no people inside, but it had plenty of merchandise, just like Dad said. It was packed to the gills with music players and videos and DVDs galore, including some B-Monster movies. There were shelves of old Oswald Leery movie merchandise, too. Whoever owned this store really was a superfan.
There was even a reel-to-reel machine hooked up to show movies on a back wall. Hence the name: Reely Good. It was the kind of place I would love to explore on any normal day. But this day was anything but normal.
“Quick!” Jesse called out. “Find the access doors. They're supposed to be right here . . .”
“Hey!” Stella said, circling the store. “I don't see anything. They're supposedly right here on the map, but I don't see—”
All at once, Stella leaned against the wall and it began to rotate taking Stella with it. Just like that, she disappeared behind the wall for a moment and then came out the other side.
“Actually, that was fun,” Stella giggled.
“Let me try now,” Damon said, walking over.
“No!” I shouted. “We don't have time for fun, you guys.”
I sounded like Stella.
While we bickered about the doors and how to find the right stairwell to the basement below, Jesse searched the store shelves for something to help us. He clicked off the reel-to-reel projector and took a look there, too.
Jesse plucked the last reel from the machine and held it up to see the movie.
“Oh, man!” Jesse cried. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost.
“What's wrong?” we asked.
“Read
this
and weep,” Jesse said. He held up a reel in his hand. Some of the film unraveled to the floor. The label was half picked off.
THEY CAME FROM PLANET Q
ORIGINAL REEL
“ORIGINAL REEL?” I cried.
“How could this have happened?” Stella asked.
We all raced over and had a look. The reel had been watched—but only halfway.
“Maybe . . .” I said slowly. “If the reel was only half-watched . . .”
“Then only half the movie will come to life?” Stella blurted.
“You guys,” I said. “A B-Monster comes alive in the reel's opening segment. After that all bets are off. The rest doesn't matter.”
Damon grabbed the reel and shoved it into his backpack. We'd deal with its destruction later. Right now, we had firequartz to find.
“Hey!” Stella called out. She'd wandered to the other side of the store. “Over here!”
Stella pulled back a fancy curtain to reveal another secret door. It was marked on the map as a staircase, but this looked way more like the entry to a bank vault. Stella pushed and pushed but it wouldn't budge.
“It looks as if it has been sealed shut for a century,” Jesse said.
“Wait. What's
this
?” Damon shouted. He rubbed his finger along the edge of the enormous vault-like door. Then he showed us his finger tip. It was covered in a thin coating of red dust.
Red dust!
“Wow,” Jesse cried. “Just like Leery said!”
“It's all over my shoes!” I said.
We had to get this heavy door open. The four of us pressed and wiggled, nudged and leaned.
Nothing.
Somewhere upstairs, outside the shop, I heard a loud blast followed by a roar and a crash. More bots had crashed into the mall. They were catching up to us.
“We have to figure this out before the bots destroy the mall!” Stella cried.
“Forget the mall!” I said. “These bots will destroy us!”
“They can't get the firequartz,” I said. “Push the door again.”
But four fifth-graders—no matter how motivated we were—were still no match for this heavy door.
Damon took off from where we stood.
“Hey!” I cried. “Don't run away again!”
But this time, Damon wasn't running. He was
helping
. Damon Molloy hit a button and the store register's cash drawer went
pa-ping
.
“Hey!” Damon called to us. He held up a key. “What do you think this is for?”
Jesse grabbed the key and dashed over to the vault door. He shoved it right into the lock. Like magic, the key clicked.
As the door opened wide, a swirl of red dust blew into our faces.
CHAPTER 13
THE INCREDIBLE FIREQUARTZ QUEST
“After you,” I said to Damon, fanning the dust away from my eyes.
Some of the dust was probably firequartz, but most of the dust was just old cobwebs and floor dirt. This place hadn't been explored in forever. All the dust that had been unearthed during the filming of
They Came from Planet Q
was now whirling through the air like a mini-tornado. It was hard not to cough and sneeze.
“Um . . .” Damon stammered, pinching his nose. “After
you.
”
“I knew there was no way that chicken-boy would go step into the untested unknown first!” Stella cried.
“Enough!” I cried. I went in first.
After all of our bad luck
before
entering the mall, we'd really lucked out finding the reel and the red dust in the same store! We were on a roll.
A
rock and roll
, actually.
Stella and Jesse crowded behind me as we stepped onto the shadowy, stone staircase that (we hoped) led to the firequartz. It was hard to see going down the stairs. Good thing Jesse and Damon had gathered a few supplies, like flashlights—and we still had that penlight.
We went slowly. The red dust left a thick coating on all of the stone steps, which made them slippery.
“No footprints in the dust,” Jesse commented. “That means no one else has been here, at least not for a whi—”
CCCCCCCCRASH!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZPPT!
BLOOOOOONK!
“What was
that
?” I stammered. But I knew what it was. And so did everyone else.
The bots were still coming. They sensed the rock. We had to move.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, Jesse shined the flashlight around.
I couldn't believe the walls. Everything—
everything—
seemed to glow red down here. But this was just a room filled with red dust residue—traces of firequartz long gone.
The only source of power in the room was one slab . . . the one Leery had described to us . . .
“Hey, look at Stella!” Damon cried, laughing out loud. Jesse had his light trained on Ninja and she was covered from head to toe in red dust.
“Ugh,” Stella said, coughing. Then she pointed at Damon and Jesse and me, too. “Looks like we're
all
covered in firequartz dust, bozo.”
We all laughed.
“Wait!” Stella cried. “Do you feel that?”
We all paused.
“Feel what?”
“Air!” Stella said. “I feel fresh, cool air. Where is it coming from?”
Jesse noticed a crack in the wall and the ground. We traced it with the flashlight.
“I bet this crack came from the tremors before the bots got here!” Jesse guessed. “And that's probably when all the red dust swirled around, too! And now that the bots themselves have begun drilling, looking for the last piece of firequartz . . .”

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