Zeke Bartholomew (10 page)

I held up the jug.

She furrowed her brow. “You're going to use Drano to get us out? You're more hopeless than I thought.”

“After all we've been through, I'd have thought you'd give me a little more credit.”

“Nope,” she said.

“Okay, fine. You don't have to give me anything. But you're going to want to get far, far away from here?”

“Um…why?” she asked cautiously.

“Because I'm going to blow a hole in this wall.”

“You're going to…you made a…a…”

“A bomb. That's right. And it's going to save our behinds.”

“You made a bomb in your blown-to-smithereens GeekDen?”

I smiled inwardly at her referring to it by its proper name.

“That's right. Who deserves some credit now?”

“Is it going to work?”

“If it doesn't, I hope you have laser beams in your eyes, because I'm out of ideas. Now, get back.
Way
back.”

Sparrow turned and jogged to the sewer junction.

“Farther,” I shouted. “At least a hundred yards.”

I heard the patter of Sparrow's feet in the water as she went farther back. I felt around the broken wall. There was one spot that seemed to be relatively less dense than the rest. I set the jug down and threaded a piece of wiring into the cap. Then I took out the pack of matches I'd saved from the GeekDen and opened it. Just two matches. Of course.

I pulled out the first one and struck it. Nothing. I struck it again. Still nothing. Flustered, I struck it again with such force that it sparked up, and immediately went out.

Crap.

I was sweating. One match left.

I took it out. Held it. Stared at it.

“Come on, little match,” I said. “You're our only hope.”

I held the match against the matchbook and struck it and…the match leaped out of my hand and landed in a puddle of water.

“No,” I said, scrambling to pick it up. The head was soaked. It was useless. “No. Nonononononono…”

It was over. We'd have to wait. I'd failed. I'd come so close, only to let Le Carré win. I let down Sparrow. Kyle. My father. Everyone. Because I was too clumsy to light a match.

I knelt down. Tried not to cry. Then I felt a warmth on my hand.

A small ray of light, illuminating my knuckles. It was coming through the demolished wall. A small speck of sun was sneaking through.

I looked around. This wasn't over yet. I went back into the GeekDen and picked up a shattered magnifying glass lens. Then I angled the lens so that it reflected the sunlight onto the fuse.

The fuse began to simmer. Then it began to smoke. And then, just like that, it burst into flame.

I'd done it! I lit the fuse!

Holy crap, that was one short fuse!

I turned around and sprinted as fast as my unathletic legs would carry me. I could hear the fuse burning behind me. I had five seconds, ten at most. I reached the junction, and just as I was about to turn, just as I saw Sparrow crouching behind a boulder, a massive eruption threw me off my feet, sending me sprawling.

I hit something hard and felt a pain shoot through my shoulder. Then I was all wet.

I couldn't move. My body ached. I smelled smoke. I tried to sit up. Then I felt an arm wrap around my waist.

“Come on, Zeke.” It was Sparrow. She was using her good arm to help me up.

I got to my feet, steadied myself.

The corridor was filled with thick smoke. We coughed and approached the wall. Suddenly the smoke lifted and lightened. Through the haze I could see a hole in the rocks, no more than two feet high and a foot and a half wide.

But outside there were trees.

“You did it,” Sparrow said. “Now, come on!”

She ran toward the hole, letting me drop into the muck. I sat there, regaining my breath, smiling. When it returned, I got up and jogged forward, ready to save the day.

5:02 p.m.

Two hours and fifty-eight minutes until I never get to eat my dad's spaghetti and meatballs again. On the plus side, I'll never have to eat his Mandatory Monday Meatloaf again either.

It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the sun. It wasn't as bright as I would have thought, which meant the day was slowly slipping away. Which meant Le Carré's plan was coming closer and closer to fruition.

Sparrow was standing just a few yards ahead of me, rubbing her shoulder. I jogged up to meet her.

“Where is Le Carré's hideout?” I asked her. She turned to me but said nothing. “Don't you know?” I said. “Don't the people at SNURP know?”

She replied briskly. “Don't you think if we knew where he was, we would have shut his whole operation down by now?”

“Well, that's just spiffy,” I said. “What do we do now?”

“The ComLet is no use. So I can't radio for help. We need another way of figuring out where he's headquartered.”

I saw a tree stump nearby. I walked over to it and sat down.

“What do you think you're doing?” Sparrow shouted at me.

“I'm thinking,” I said.

“We don't have time for you to pick your nose.”

“First off, you could be a little nicer to me, considering I got us out of that hole. And second, it's not like I'm slowing down some plan. We've lost our leads. Ragnarok is gone with Kyle. We don't know where Le Carré is. We don't—”

“We don't what?” Sparrow said.

“Maybe we do.”

Sparrow came over to where I was sitting.

“Spill it.”

“Derek Lance moved in next door to me, and the car that picked me up was full of Le Carré's men. If this plan is scheduled to go off today, there's no way they would have wasted time driving, unless…”

“Unless Le Carré's headquarters was within driving distance.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Now, let's think about SirEebro. That kind of machinery doesn't run on triple-A batteries. It would require an enormous power source. Something far beyond what this town has. It has to be something that would register. Something that would show up on a thermogram.”

Then it hit me. How we could find Le Carré.

“Come on,” I said. “Can you run?”

“Can I run?” she asked quizzically.

“With your arm like that.”

“Faster than you can.”

“That's what I thought you'd say. Come on, there's not much time.”

I took off running, and heard Sparrow matching me stride for stride. I wasn't in the greatest of shape, and it didn't help that Sparrow had the constitution of an Olympic sprinter. I began to pant and sweat and huff, and even with a damaged shoulder she looked to be exerting as much physical energy as I did when sharpening a pencil.

It was just about a mile away. The houses and trees and roads all began to look familiar. I had reservations about going there, but we didn't have a choice. I just hoped he wouldn't be…

“Zeke!” my dad cried out. He was standing in our driveway. I used a bad word under my breath.

We ran up to the driveway, where my dad gathered me up in his arms and squeezed me harder than I'd ever been squeezed in my life. Not counting the giant Ragnarok, but for different reasons.

“Where have you been?” he said. His face was unshaven, eyes red, and he looked like he hadn't slept a wink. “Nobody's been able to find you, you haven't answered your cell phone. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, Dad. Let's go inside. I'll explain everything.”

“Of course, right…” He looked at Sparrow. “Who is—”

“I'll explain inside.”

We followed him into the house. He poured us each a glass of water, and we downed it in seconds. And a second and third glass. My dad sat at the counter, waiting expectantly, dying to know what happened.

“Okay, here's the story,” I said, not sure what my next sentence was going to be. I couldn't tell him about Ragnarok, or SirEebro, or Le Carré. Not that he'd believe me anyway. “We've been…this is…I—”

“I'm his girlfriend. Wendy.”

We both looked at Sparrow. Both our jaws were hanging open.

“You're his…”

“You're my…” We spoke at the same time.

Sparrow walked over to my dad and extended her hand. He shook it, wearing a look on his face like he'd just been told he'd won a contest to go live in an ivory tower with a troupe of goblins.

“Wendy Peters.”

“Wendy,” my dad said, trying to process everything. “You're Zeke's…”

“Girlfriend,” she repeated. “It's new. Right, honeybunny?”

I choked on my water.

“Right, Zeke?”

“Right. Of course, um, sugarbear.”

“We were out playing flag football and got so exhausted that we just fell asleep on the field. Sorry we weren't able to call.”

“Right,” I said. “And I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket, and it broke during the game.”

“You were playing…football?” my dad asked. He couldn't have been more surprised if I'd told him I'd been practicing hang gliding.

“Just flag football,” Sparrow said. She touched her shoulder. “Banged up my shoulder a little bit.”

“Yeah…shoulder…” my dad said. I could tell that half of him wanted to be relieved I was home, half of him angry that I hadn't gotten in touch, and half confused beyond belief. But that was three halves. Which made as much sense as anything did right now.

“Anyway, Dad, we can talk more later, but Wanda and I—”

“I thought her name was Wendy,” he said.

“That's what I said. Wendy.”

“You said ‘Wanda.'”

“You're hearing things, Dad. Anyway, we need to go over a problem set that's due tomorrow. Can we talk later?”

“Right. Later. I need to see if we have any beer.”

As my dad went to the fridge, I led Sparrow upstairs to my room. Once we were inside, I shut the door and locked it.

“‘Sugarbear'?” she said.

“Like it's any worse than ‘honeybunny.' Obviously you've never actually had a boyfriend, because the only people who call themselves honeybunny and sugarbear are, like, lame old people.”

“Why are we here?” Sparrow asked.

I looked around my room. Ordinarily I would have been mortified to have a stranger, let alone someone like Sparrow, in my room, but I didn't have time to freak out. The world was at stake. And the only thing that could save it was one of the very first inventions I'd ever created. Only it hadn't quite been created for the task at hand.

I pulled out a trunk from under my bed. There were numerous locks on it. Sparrow shook her head.

“What are you keeping in there, the mystery of Atlantis?”

“Ha-ha. Ha-ha. And I'm totally not being sarcastic. This is how we're going to find Le Carré.”

I opened the mass of locks—combination 4-8-15-16-23-42—and opened the trunk. It revealed dozens and dozens of gadgets of varying shapes and sizes. From a pen that never ran out of ink to my old movement detector. But what I was searching for was at the bottom.

I pulled out what looked like a metal rod attached to a small LCD monitor. Wires and batteries ran along the sides, and the whole thing was held together by duct tape.

Sparrow looked at it like I'd just sneezed in her face.

“That's going to save the world?”

“I'd think I've earned a little trust so far.”

“Okay, Brainiac. Explain.”

“A few years ago,” I said, “Kyle and I heard that some kids from our grade were starting a bonfire, making s'mores, all the good stuff. But we didn't hear about it until later that night when we got an accidental text message from Donna Okin. Obviously someone forgot to tell us, so we had to find it ourselves. So I built this. I call my own personal thermography device. I call it the ‘HeatSeeker Four Thousand.'”

“Why Four Thousand?”

“I dunno. It sounded cool.”

“Go on.”

“The HeatSeeker Four Thousand can find large sources of heat within any given radius. Now, the larger radius you set it to, the more juice is needed to power it. Hence all the batteries. If I can find a few more batteries, we can find the largest sources of heat within a thousand-mile radius. And I have enough batteries lying around here that it should do the job.”

“How…how did you make this?”

I couldn't be totally sure, but Sparrow sounded moderately impressed.

“It's actually similar in theme to a common thermometer. Everything generates heat. Vehicles, even people and animals. Using a combination of mercury and electric power, I can use the HeatSeeker Four Thousand to find things that emit large amounts of heat. It shows up on the LED screen. Yellow denotes smaller sources of heat. Red, larger. The redder, the hotter.”

“So we're looking for something that would emit enough heat to power SirEebro.”

“Yes. Red, big-time.”

“What ended up happening with the bonfire? Did you find it?”

I paused for a moment. Bad memories.

“Yeah,” I said. “We found it.”

“And?”

“When we got there, the kids just started laughing. Turns out we weren't supposed to have been invited at all.”

I waited for Sparrow to offer a sympathetic word, but she didn't. There was a small twitch in her eye, but that was it.

“Anyway, I think this can help us. Look around for extra batteries. Anything. Just start pulling them out of remote controls, toys, anything.”

Within minutes, we'd pried batteries from my cordless phone, my Nintendo DS, a penlight, my portable computer speakers, even a remote-control car that had somehow found its way under my bed and that I hadn't seen in years.

I hooked them all up to the HeatSeeker 4000 and turned it on. The LCD popped on. Sparrow and I huddled over it. Several red dots began to appear on the screen. Some were faint; some were a harsher red, indicating larger sources of power.

But still, nothing of the magnitude that would have been needed to operate SirEebro.

“Where is it?” Sparrow asked.

“It's not on the screen.”

“I can see that. What's wrong with your gizmo?”

“Nothing's wrong with my ‘gizmo,'” I said, letting my annoyance show. “It's obviously outside the range we have enough power for.”

“So we need—”

“More batteries,” I said.

“There aren't any more. We emptied your room.”

“I know.” I put my hand on Sparrow's uninjured shoulder. “I need you to go distract my dad.”

“Excuse me?”

“I need to go into the living room. He's got, like, seventeen remote controls there. Ask him to give you a tour around the house or something.”

“I…I can't do that,” she said.

I cocked my head. “You dive-bombed me from the sky. You survived a fire-controlled monster and a homemade bomb. You're telling me you can't engage my dad in small talk?”

She looked at me like I'd asked her to translate ancient Greek into Sanskrit.

“You know? Small talk?”

Now she was figuring out how to turn the Sanskrit into pig Latin.

“Just ask him normal things. To show you around. What his job is like. Baby pictures of me. Scratch that, there are some of me naked in the bathtub. Just anything!”

“I—”

“Suck it up, spy. Get down there and engage my father in small talk!”

Sparrow hesitantly stood up. She looked at me, then at the door, then back at me. I thrust my finger toward the door.

She walked toward it, opened it, and went down the stairs. Slowly.

I crept to the top of the stairs and listened.

“Hi…um…Zeke's dad,” she said tentatively.

“Oh, hey, there, Wendy!” my dad replied. “How are you two doing?”

“We are doing just peachykins.”

Peachykins?
Had she never spoken to someone's parents before? I banged my head against the banister.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? We have some diet soda and tomato juice.”

“No. That's all right. My thirst doesn't need to be quenched.”

This was getting painful.
Get
to
the
point, Sparrow,
I thought.

“I was wondering, Mr. Bartholomew, father of Zeke. Do you have any pictures of Zeke naked in the bath?”

Thankfully my lungs stayed inside my body, because I almost coughed them out.

“Um…yeah, I think so. You want to see photo albums?”

“Affirmative.”

“All right, then. Don't tell Zeke I'm showing you these. He'd stop speaking to me for a week.”

“I will not tell Ezekiel.”

Okay, I had to concentrate before my head exploded. I heard footsteps as my father led Sparrow into the den, where he kept all of our old photo albums. I hadn't looked through them in years. I always had a hard time with it. Mom was in them. Easier to keep them closed. Not to think about it.